by Julie Leto

There are so many tales to tell with this book! I mean, let’s start first with the series, The Bad Girls Club. I wrote my first BGC book back in…2003? Yikes! I can’t remember. I remember the book, though. It was the unfortunately titled Brazen & Burning (I wanted it to be called SLOW BURN, but the title was already taken) which starred a romance novelist heroine named Sydney “Slow Burn” Coburn and the man who had the audacity to forget her after suffering a major head injury. He never does remember her, but they start new memories in the most delightful ways. Fun story to tell, so it wasn’t surprising that when my editor contacted me, Leslie Kelly and Tori Carrington to revitalize the series for Blaze, we all jumped at the chance.

At the time, the project I was working on was a novella for a Harlequin collection that will be out in September called WITCHY BUSINESS. In this short story, the heroine, Regina St. John, had a sister named Lilith who actually never made an appearance in the story, but was mentioned. I figured anyone named Lilith had to be a bad girl, and thus the story of STRIPPED was born.

The novella in Witchy Business is very paranormal, but I knew my Blaze editor might be a bit put off by me putting in too much paranormal in an otherwise contemporary romance series. (I should note, however, that as I’d written the first paranormal Blaze back in 2004—UNDENIABLE—I had precedent.) So I decided that Lilith would have lost her powers in the beginning of the story because she’d been using her psychic powers for personal gain, rather than for the good of others. This is a tenet made popular by the television show, CHARMED, of which I am a great fan. I always loved this particular storyline on the show because it ensured the Halliwell sisters didn’t simply take over the world. I mean, who else didn’t watch Samantha Stevens on Bewitched and wonder why she didn’t run McMann and Tate? I’ve always been a huge fan of fictional witches (thus the naming of several characters in my early books Samantha, Serena, Tabitha, Endora and yes, even Maurice) and this book, which has now grown into the St. Lyon Witch series, is a homage to my favorite witches.

Of course, I’ve created my own world. In my world, there are two kinds of witches—sacreds, who possess magical powers and mundanes, who are simply Wiccan practitioners. Regina St. Lyon is the Guardian Witch, meaning that while she is not a ruler or a queen of the witches, she is responsible for the safety of her fellow witches, be them mundane or sacred. Threats are warlocks, vampires, demons and the like. Her sister, Lilith, is psychic, but doesn’t like living by the rules, so that puts her on her sister’s naughty list, though they are still very close and love each other deeply. In Lilith’s story, STRIPPED (out this month) she has to try and reconcile with the police detective who dumped her after he figured out she was using her powers to manipulate him. Lilith didn’t take kindly to being dumped, but the only way for her to get her powers back is to show the Council of Witches that she can do a good thing by helping Mac Mancusi, the hero, solve a case that revolves around a mysterious drug shipment about to hit the streets of Chicago. Without her powers, Lilith has to rely on her instincts and her smarts, both of which she has in spades, and is able to win back Mac as well (this is a romance, after all, isn’t it?!)

In creating this series, I even interviewed a wonderful friend of mine who is Wiccan in order to create the world as authentically as possible, but then adding my own fantastical spin. Any mistakes are, of course, my own. But I found many very interesting parallels between the Wiccan religion and Catholicism, which really isn’t all that surprising since I do, thanks to my Catholic school upbringing, know my history. I introduced secondary characters within STRIPPED, Rick Fernandez, a devout Catholic, and Josie Vargas, a born-and-raised Wiccan, to explore the differences and the similarities. And naturally, they get their own story next August!

So that’s my Tell Tale…starting with Samantha Stevens and carrying over to Pru Halliwell and even Hermoine Granger, I’ve always had a fascination with fictional witches. Now I’ve created my own. I hope the Access Romance readers will check them out!

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