Oh Brother!

Hello, Susan Sleeman here. Happy 4th of July to all the Love Inspired readers. Today I want to talk about brothers. I have one, only one, so I’ve often wondered about the dynamics between brothers, and I wanted to explore how they would interact with each other as adults. So I penned a romantic suspense miniseries about the Morgan brothers for Love Inspired Suspense, Harlequin’s inspirational line. As those of you who are parents know, no sibling in a family is exactly like the others so I made sure the brothers were very different from each other and their approach to life was different as well.

In the first book, High-Stakes Inheritance that released in September of 2010, I featured Ryan Morgan, the youngest brother, the helper, and nurturer in the family and the only one who doesn’t carry a gun. He’s a counselor who runs a wilderness-counseling program for wayward teens, and of course, he can’t help but fall in love with his opposite, a strong-willed, opinionated woman.

In Behind the Badge releasing this month, I feature Russ Morgan the local police chief who’s opinionated, powerful, and closed off, keeping his feelings to himself. He often comes across as brusque and harsh, but inside beats a heart filled with softness. I paired him up with a rookie deputy who understands the rigors of Russ’s job and can look beyond the tough-guy exterior and see the hurting man behind the badge.

The final book, The Christmas Witness, will release in December and features the third brother, Reid Morgan. He believes in honor above all else and sees himself as a knight in shining armor, needing to protect those who he feels are weak or are the underdogs. I paired him with a woman who has been hurt many times and is unwilling to accept help for fear of being hurt even more. Reid is the perfect man for her as he won’t back down when she gets all prickly, but he’ll stand by her side no matter what.

The men are all different but they’re all the same in that they embody the heroic tendencies that I love to see in a romantic suspense book—brave, courageous, determined, dedicated, and persevering even in the face of death. What more could a woman in peril ask for?

So tell me, what do you like to see in a hero!

SUSAN SLEEMAN is a best-selling author of inspirational romantic suspense and mystery novels. She grew up in a small Wisconsin town where she spent her summers reading Nancy Drew and developing a love of mystery and suspense books. Today, she channels this enthusiasm into writing romantic suspense and mystery novels and hosting the popular internet website TheSuspenseZone.com. Susan currently lives in Florida, but has had the pleasure of living in nine states. Her husband is a church music director and they have two beautiful daughters, a very special son-in-law and an adorable grandson. To learn more about Susan visit her Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/SusanSleemanBooks , website http://www.susansleeman.com or follow her on Twitter http://www.twitter.com/susansleeman