Tawna Fenske - Humor, Suspense, Assassins and Romance

When Tawna Fenske finished her English lit degree at 22, she celebrated by filling a giant trash bag full of romance novels and dragging it everywhere until she’d read them all. Now she’s a RITA Award finalist, USA Today bestselling author who writes humorous fiction, risqué romance, and heartwarming love stories with a quirky twist. She lives in Bend, Oregon, with her husband, step-kids, and a menagerie of ill-behaved pets, where she loves hiking, standup paddleboarding, and inventing excuses to sip wine on her back porch. She can peel a banana with her toes and loses an average of twenty pairs of eyeglasses per year.  As our Author of the Day, she tells us all about her book, Killer Looks.

Please give us a short introduction to what Killer Looks is about.

KILLER LOOKS is a prequel starring the three men at the center of my new Assassins in Love series. Dante—the bald, brooding giant with a soft spot for animals—gets tasked by the Duke of Dovlano to target a brutal gun runner. Dante brings in his buddies, Matteo—a genius with a fierce love of family and a fondness for knives—and charming Sebastian “The Dentist” LaDouceur. When the job goes sideways, three killers with a conscience have to decide if they’ll stick together, or if it’s every man for himself.

What inspired you to write about three killers with a conscience?

Two years ago when I wrote the final book in my popular Ponderosa Resort rom-com series, Dante the bodyguard came storming onto the pages of DR. HOT STUFF like a buffalo in a lingerie shop. While the couple at the core of that story (Dr. Bradley Parker and Lady Isabella Blankenship) got their happy ending, Dante kept popping his head up and growling about how he needed his own series. Even better? He had buddies who deserved happy endings, too.

Tell us more about Dante. What makes him tick?

Just like I fell in love with Dante when I wrote him in DR. HOT STUFF, readers went nuts over the brooding, mysterious gunman who’s fiercely protective of women, kids, and animals. An assassin with a heart of gold, so to speak. From the moment that book hit shelves, I had readers emailing me wanting to know his story. What made him the way he is? Would he ever walk away from the job? What would his romantic happily ever after look like? Those questions burned in my brain for months before I decided to write his story. And since I love writing series books centered around tight-knit families, I pulled in two of Dante’s pals and their twisty, juicy, complicated stories.

Why a rom-com? What drew you to the genre?

Last week, I grabbed a stranger’s butt in the grocery store before discovering he wasn’t my husband. The week before that, I loudly told a stranger on the beach that my dog only likes people with balls. I could keep going, but basically, I’m a magnet for absurd, embarrassing, and quirky mishaps. I’m also happy let you laugh at me…er, with me. My fondness for humor has carried me through 40+ published rom-coms, and even when I’m writing about assassins, there’s loads of comedy laced in my stories.

Please give us three good-to-know facts about you.

I may have lost count of how many dogs and cats I have, but it’s a lot. Suffice it to say, it’s one reason Dante the hitman loves animals so much.

I love playing outside, whether I’m camping, hiking, snowshoeing, doing yoga by a river, or standup paddleboarding. Fresh air fuels my soul.

Once, after too many glasses of wine, I went online and bought a custom trophy that says “Kitty of the Month.” The fam decided to have fun with it, so at the start of each month, we have a dinner discussion about which cat scored the most points for specific good deeds. Each month’s winner gets announced in my author newsletter.

What did you have the most fun with when writing this story?

I knew from the start that I wanted the Assassins in Love series to have three books with a different hitman as the hero of each story, and that I wanted to release them within weeks of each other. What I didn’t decide until I was midway through writing the final book was to write a fourth story—a prequel novella—so readers could meet the men and see how they responded when a job went sideways. Approaching it ass-backwards like that was an awesome blessing in disguise because by the time I sat down to write the KILLER LOOKS prequel, I knew what made these guys tick. I knew Sebastian’s deadly smile and his habit of using jokes to bust tension. I knew Matteo could crack any computer system, and that he values family above anything else. I knew Dante dreamed about returning to a farm like where he grew up, and that all three guys would require seriously strong women to tame them.

Which character was the most challenging to create and why?

They’re all challenging in their own way. Dante is gruff and grumbly and looks way scarier than the other two guys, but he’s a marshmallow inside. He loves animals and dreams of settling down on a farm with a sweet girl. Then there’s Matteo—a certified genius with a knack for throwing knives and an overprotective streak with family. Spoiler alert: Readers will really see the family man come out when Matteo discovers his ex has a toddler who looks remarkably like him. But I’d have to say Dr. Sebastian LeDouceur, DDS has been the most fun and challenging. Besides being a former black-ops military man, he’s a dentist. I mean an ACTUAL dentist. It started as a joke with my own dentist, who lobbied for more than a decade to have a romance hero who shares his profession. Doing that in a way readers will find believable and sexy as hell was so much fun! From the feedback I’ve seen so far for KILLER LOOKS, it sounds like I hit the mark. Seb is a reader favorite!

Do any of your characters ever take off on their own tangent, refusing to do what you had planned for them?

AJ, the three-year-old Matteo meets in KILLER MOVES had a mind of his own for sure. Toddlers never do what you want them to do. And Matteo’s middle sister, Nicole—hoo boy! That woman is a firecracker. Watch out for her. But my wildest character is Matteo’s grandmother, Nondi. I won’t say much more, since I don’t want to give away spoilers. Let’s just say she’s a force to be reckoned with.

Readers say Killer Looks had them at the edge of their seats. How did you pull this off?

While I’ve built my career in rom-com, my comedies that have the biggest fandoms have always contained threads of suspense. Taking it to the next level for the Assassins series was so much fun! I loved the challenge of striking the right balance between humor, romance, and suspense. This was my first time doing a rapid-release series, and I think the quick pace of that production schedule helped spur the books to be fast-paced.

Killer Looks is a prequel to the Assassins in Love series. How does it tie in with the rest of the books in the series?

KILLER LOOKS introduces readers to all three assassins, but since Dante’s the one readers begged for, he gets top billing. He also gets the first book in the series with KILLER INSTINCTS (April 7) followed by Matteo’s story, KILLER MOVES (May 12) and Sebastian in KILLER SMILE (June 9). They’re tightly-woven stories, with Dante paring up with Matteo’s sister, Jen, followed by Matteo’s second-chance romance with his ex-love, Renee, while Sebastian ends up with Matteo’s other sister, Nicole. Readers get to know them all very well by the end, though all the books are standalones you can read in any order.

Do you have any interesting writing habits, what is an average writing day like for you?

I’m one of those authors who insists on keeping her day job. Since my day job is working as the PR and Communications Manager for my tourism bureau, it basically means I get paid to write about hiking or take travel writers out snowshoeing or drinking beer. Not a bad gig, but it keeps me busy 24 hours a week and forces me to be laser-focused on the author gig for the rest of the week. My dedicated author days are Mondays and Fridays, but there’s often spillover into weekends and evenings. I work at a standup desk, so you’ll often find me balancing in odd yoga poses as I type and swill tea and wonder why I have so many drink stains on my boobs.

What are you working on right now?

I’m days away from finishing the final Assassins in Love book, KILLER SMILE. Then I jump back into my Juniper Ridge rom-com world and the fifth book in that series, JUST FOR SHOW. Incidentally, I realized while writing Sebastian-the-dentist-assassin’s story in KILLER SMILE that he had a lot in common with Cooper Judson, the brother at the center of JUST FOR SHOW. I ended up making them old acquaintances, with Seb standing in as a stuntman for some of Cooper Judson’s films. It was such a kick to combine those two completely opposite worlds!

Where can our readers discover more of your work or interact with you?

I’m most active on Facebook, but I’m trying to do more on Instagram. The best way to get behind-the-scenes secrets about my books, not to mention fun giveaways and cute pet pics, is to subscribe to my newsletter: https://tawnafenske.com/subscribe/