Cover Chat “Diner” – Wilde Heroes And Heroines

Code name “Diner” is off to the editor and I’m getting the launch set up. This includes one of my FAVORITE events, the cover reveal!

(drumroll, please?)

“Diner” has a NAME! it’s no longer “Kid’s book” or “Diner” or even that @#$@^$$ WIP! (IYKYK)

May I present?

Dueling Flames

Hagerstown’s latest full length novel for 2024. This will be number SIX in this club’s series, and revolves around Kid and his perfect woman, Sierra.

Here’s the blurb:

I’m always falling for the wrong woman
…and Sierra Winchester might be the worst one yet.

There is a feud between my family and hers. She was born trouble. Her estranged husband is out to kill me. And, she’s as loony as her Maemaw.

None of that matters. Because she’s the perfect woman for me—”Kid”—the black sheep of the MacMillans. Biker. Destroyer. The kind of man who knows exactly how and where to hide the bodies she’ll leave in her path.
Dueling Flames by Calia Wilde

Cover Deets:

Photographer: Paul Henry Serres (https://www.paulhenryserres.com/)
Model: Jesse Flynn (https://www.instagram.com/jesseflynnfitness/)
Background art and logo: Adobe Stock Images (https://stock.adobe.com/)
Typography: Univers and Zebrawood (licensed through Linotype and Fonts.com)

When you zoom in, you’ll notice the smoldering embers. This ties into an event in the book. But it also represents the “wild fire” attraction between the two main characters. They quite literally can’t keep their hands off each other. Is it magic or just lust? We’ll never know what Maemaw Winchester put in that bread.

This background choice also coordinated perfectly with the Mandarin Red color of the primary title text.

Speaking of Mandarin (aka mandolins) and wild fire… check out this song that helped fill out the playlist for the book:

The entire playlist is on Pandora.

Title concept and origin:

Dueling was an easy choice because of the feuding family concept that was there right from the very first imagined scene.

BTW, did you know that the wall-banger WAS the first scene envisioned? Second was the “you’re always falling for the wrong girl, Kid,” wedding scene. Which tied nicely to the quickie in the diner.

Flames came later.

As I wrote and re-wrote the story, one thing that stood out. That was the fact I wasn’t going to make Sierra live her HEA in an old broken down house. (see Snake in the House by Del McCoury for inspiration on how bad things could have gotten) … so I needed that old house GONE. What better way than to burn it down? Now as to WHO was going to do this, that was up in the air for quite a while.

It came down to two words, Embers and Flames. I compared each in a thumbnail test. Flames won hands down. The rest, as they say, is history.