NOTES FROM THE AUTHOR
I hope you enjoyed reading the first part of Hope and Rock's story. Their journey will continue in Corrupting Cinderella, available December 2, 2014.
Although I strived to be accurate in the legal and courtroom scenes, I may have bent reality to fit my needs on occasion.
The same goes for the Motorcycle Club, I have created. I conducted a significant amount of non-fiction research and a few interviews. While I wanted the MC to feel authentic, this book is a romance first and foremost. It was not intended to be an exact portrayal of an outlaw club. It is a romantic fantasy—heavy emphasis on the romance—so I bent things to suit the needs of the romantic elements of the story.
The world of the Lost Kings MC takes place in a fictionalized version of the Capital Region of New York. It's loosely based on the tri-city area of Albany-Schenectady-Troy and the counties of Albany, Schenectady and Rensselaer.
As I mentioned in the beginning, I had a wonderful group of beta readers help me with Slow Burn. Without their continued support and demands for me to finish, I might still be muddling around with this story. Some of them also wisely pointed out the limitations of having an MC set in New York, where the winter months can be long and cold!
Although I adore the MC sub-genre, I set out to do things a little different with the Lost Kings MC. It is in no way intended to be an accurate portrayal of MC life. It is my fictionalized, romanticized version. I'm a romance writer at heart. The romance and internal conflict of a lawyer and a criminal getting together, was what grabbed me about Hope and Rock's story the most.
I can't deny that a certain television show we all know and love influenced the Lost Kings series. What has always intrigued me the most, was Jax's inner struggle to move his club away from the bad stuff and into more legitimate businesses. What if he had managed to do that earlier on? Throughout Slow Burn, there are references to what the Lost Kings were like before Rock, Wrath and Z took it over. There will be glimpses of where they came from in future books, especially Wrath's story (book 4).
During the beta process, I got a wide range of responses on Rock. The overwhelming response was love for him. But a few did tell me they found him too soft. I took that as a compliment and here is why: 1. That's how he came to me in my head and 2. I love MC romances because it is a sub-genre where stepping outside the normal confines of the rules of romantic fiction is acceptable. Pretty much anything goes—which is what makes MC Romances so fun and surprising to read. However, as a woman and a writer, I've become mildly alarmed at how outright abuse and the disrespectful treatment of women has somehow become synonymous with an "alpha male" in a lot of romantic fiction today (not just MC Romances). It is possible for men to treat women—weather they be club whores or lawyers—like human beings and still be "tough." The two things are not mutually exclusive. And that is what I set out to do with my story. I didn't want to have my MC be completely stripped of the things that make it an MC romance, but there were also certain things I deliberately chose to avoid.
Take it as you will.
Thank you for reading.
ALSO BY AUTUMN JONES LAKE
CATNIP AND CAULDRONS
Onyx Night
Onyx Shadows
Feral Escape
Catnip and Cauldrons: Books 1 - 3 Boxed Set
Stand alone
Love, Again
Love Down Under
ANTHOLOGIES
Crimson: Volume 2
COMING SOON
Corrupting Cinderella (Lost Kings MC, Book #2)
Available December 2, 2014
Slow Burn Page 22