Party Post 19: Ally Blake

When Ally was a little girl she made a wish that when she turned twenty-six she would marry an Italian two years older than her. After it actually came true she realised she was onto something with these wish things.
So, next she wished that she could make a living spending her days in her pyjamas, eating M&Ms and drinking scads of coffee while turning her formative experiences of wallowing in teenaged crushes and romantic movies into creating love stories of her own. The fact that she is now able to spend her spare time Googling pictures of handsome guys for research purposes is merely a bonus!
Come along and visit her website at www.allyblake.com

All I Want for Christmas... is a tall, dark, handsome stranger

Two years ago my husband and I took a two week trip to Italy. He is of Italian descent and ever since I saw The Godfather I wanted to marry a man of Italian descent. So a trip to Italy for the pair of us was a no-brainer.

I went with great plans to write a book set there. Because:

a) Italian heroes are ever popular – no argument from me.

b) it would make the trip a write off – boy do I love this job!

c) it would give me a perfect excuse to ogle handsome strangers while still in my husband’s company! (Seriously, the partners of romance writers really should be given awards, back rubs and condolences for what they have to put up with on that front;))

My heroine, Gracie Lane, was set, as this was the third book in a trilogy about three girls living in a beach side suburb of my home town Melbourne. And I knew she was going to Rome to find her long lost father. I, on the other hand, was going to Rome to find her hero.

Luca Siracusa was an enigma to me. I had a fuzzy image in my head. Okay, so the fuzzy image looked a fair bit like the heavenly Raoul Bova from Under the Tuscan Sun. But that was all I had. So as we traversed the length and breadth of that beeeeautiful country, I was on the look out for real, flesh and blood, Italian hunks to fill out my two-dimensional hero.

Would I find him chatting up girls on the Spanish Steps in Rome? Would I find him posing for a photograph pretending to hold up the Leaning Tower of Pisa? Or would I find him sitting back in a café on Capri drinking an espresso with the sun on his face?

I thought I’d found him in Verona, a city full of beautiful people, in which the locals promenade the twining cobbled streets in fur coats, and designer clothes and elegant suits just because they can. The crowd parted to reveal a little girl in a navy velvet dress with white lace cuffs, white stocking, patent shoes and a blue bow in her ringlets. And on the other end of her hand was a man. Tall, dark, and handsome, even from the back ;). He wore a coat that floated behind him like a cape as he carefully led his daughter through the busy street. I kept a close eye on him, taking heed of his movement, his walk, the tilt of his head before I lost him in the crowd.

I used all of that in my book in the end. But it still wasn’t enough. I knew what he looked like, I knew how he walked, I knew how moving it would be to see such a gorgeous man taking such care of a delightful little girl. But I didn’t know him.

As I sat on the steps of the magnificent Trevi Fountain when we returned to Rome for the last days of our trip, alone, with my notebook and pen in hand, while my husband went off in search of cappuccinos, there were people everywhere; tourists throwing coins, local men selling bottle openers emblazoned with the Pope’s face, pairs of nuns sifting through the bottle openers, gypsies “giving away” one Euro roses.

I closed my eyes and let the sounds and scents and feel of Italy wash over me. And when I opened them there he was. Tall, dark, handsome, Italian...ish and holding out a cappuccino he’d gone searching for, on his own, for me, with little more local language in his vocabulary than “ciao” and “mamma mia”.

Of all my heroes Luca has the most of my husband in him; his kindness, selflessness, his innate style, and natural smarts, and of course his irresistible gorgeousness ;).

But I have no complaints about travelling the world over to find what I had under my very nose. I mean come on, I got to see the statue of David up close and personal! But that’s a whole other book...

Where else to find heroes...

The Pink Heart Society is the daily destination for lovers of category romance. In search of a hero? Come to Male on Monday, our most popular destination, and no wonder! With breakdowns and pictures galore of new beautiful men every week – Christian Bale, Hugh Jackman, Paul Newman to name a few of my favourites – you could never be short on hero inspiration!

GIVEAWAY

“A MOTHER FOR HIS DAUGHTER” is a Silhouette Romance release in North America this December.

To go into the draw to win an autographed copy of Ally’s preceding novel, “HOW TO MARRY A BILLIONAIRE”, featuring some of the same characters from her current novel, leave a comment at the end of this post!