RWA-NYC‘s heroes and heroines of summer blog series continues.  Last month, they included an interview with the star of Starling, J. Alex Cook.  This month, the interview is with with the book’s hero, Paul Marion Keane.

Choosing to call Paul the book’s hero is complicated, and not just in the “that’s like asking which chopstick is the fork” sense that LGBT romance brings to the table.  The thing is, Paul is sort of a mess, although Paul’s awareness of that can be highly variable.  He’s not always exactly hero material.  When Alex faces peril, Paul’s ability to come to the rescue can, at times, be dubious.

When I go to events with authors of heterosexual romance, a big topic of conversation is always alpha heroes.  They’re really in right now.  Betas are so last year.  On some level, I totally understand what this means — I do watch, and write about, True Blood, after all.  On another level, I just don’t get it.  I’ve spent a lot of time making faces at Erin going “Is Paul an alpha?  Is anyone an alpha?”

We’re in edits for Starling right now.  We’ve done the bigger stuff requested by our publisher, and I’m now doing some incredibly fine-tooth comb stuff that’s largely about the fact that we’ve written several books since we wrote Starling and we know more now, and I want us to get everything right.

One of the more interesting things this has produced is that Paul, while still a complete mess, feels a lot more alpha on the page.  Alex, for the record, feels as strong and masculine as he always has, but a bit more mysterious and a lot more buffeted by the randomness of his circumstances.

So no one’s a fork (or everyone is), Paul’s totally alpha but still a mess, and, oh yeah, his boyfriend took his dog.  We hope you enjoy meeting him.