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Borders Letter With Tara Janzen-- Borders Romance Newsletter, November 2007  

Hold on, dear readers, and get ready for more wild rides with the chop shop boys of Steele Street and Special Defense Force. All the CRAZY books are rolling into a new series of LOOSE books, starting with ON THE LOOSE, the story where we find out if Honey York, a Harvard educated, blue-blooded blonde has what it takes to bring one of the biggest and baddest of the Steele Street guys to heel. C. Smith Rydell has seen and done it all, but he’s never “been there, done that” with anyone like Honey. When he does, he finds out that once was not nearly enough. ON THE LOOSE is a thrill-a-minute, high-stakes adventure, with risks not only to life and limb, but to the heart. This is also the book where we find out what the “C” stands for in C. Smith Rydell, and I can guarantee you’re going to be as surprised as I was!

Hot cars, bad boys, and smart women have proven to be an irresistible combination, and the LOOSE books have it all, following up with CUTTING LOOSE, LOOSE AND EASY, and LOOSE CHANGE. The building where the Special Defense Force team is housed, the old chop shop at 738 Steele Street, with it’s seven floors of American muscle cars and gothic catwalk of a freight elevator bolted into the brick, doesn’t actually exist, but Denver’s historical district in Lower Downtown, an area affectionately referred to as LoDo, is real and a wonderful place to visit. So if you come to Denver, don’t miss LoDo.

Writing these books has turned into an amazing personal adventure for me. During the research, which never stops, thank goodness, I have met so many exciting and generous people, military guys and mechanics who have been so willing to share their knowledge, experience, and some of their own stories with me. I have to confess that the cars have stolen my heart almost as much as the guys. Did you know cars breathe? I didn’t when I started the first CRAZY book, but now I know they not only breathe, but they like cold air, and the more cold air you give them, the faster they run.

Another thing that has been particularly fun for me about the books is the pacing. Most of the action in all of the stories takes place in twenty-four hours or less, with the love stories racing along as fast as the cars. The books have been described as leaving readers “breathless,” which I love – and I hope you do, too!

Fresh Fiction Blog with Tara Janzen for November 1, 2007

One of the questions I’ve been getting asked a lot lately is if my new book, ON THE LOOSE, is still part of the CRAZY series, and the answer is Yes! All of the same characters from Steele Street and SDF, Special Defense Force, are in the LOOSE series of books. We’re still at the chop shop in Denver, dear readers! Much to my surprise, while tramping through the wilds of El Salvador with C. Smith Rydell and Honey York in ON THE LOOSE, I came across another lost chop-shop boy from Steele Street, and his story is told in CUTTING LOOSE, which comes out in January.

So many people who have read the books have fallen in love with the cars, all those beautiful American muscle cars from the sixties and seventies, the ones with engines so big the insurance companies balked at underwriting them. In one instance, they did more than balk. By refusing to insure the cars, they actually shut down production on Don Yenko’s 1969 Chevy Yenko “SYC 427” Novas. Yenko converted thirty stock SS-396 Novas into the barely street legal monsters, before the insurance companies got cold feet. Marrying that much power to something as relatively small and light as a Chevy Nova made a car that even Yenko considered “a beast, almost lethal.” Which, of course, is why I had to have one in the books! She’s named “Mercy,” because she has none, and of course, she’s raced by a girl who blows the tires off everything that goes up against her.

The first car in the books is Jeanette the Jet, a 1969 Camaro with a 383 LT1 stroker under the hood – my dream car. Or so I thought until I met Angelina, a 1970 Chevelle SS 454, Black Cherry with black racing stripes. And then came Coralie, a 1967 Pontiac GTO, Signet Gold with a 360-horse Ram Air 400. She stole my heart – up until I met Charlotte the Harlot, a 1968 Shelby Mustang CJ428, Candyapple Red with white stripes.

So what do you think? What’s the toughest, coolest car to ever come out of Detroit? Or does your favorite rubber-souled machine come from someplace else? If so, let me know. Right now, I’m spending my days dreaming of another 1970 Chevelle SS 454, the rare and wondrous LS6. Can anybody beat that for sheer heart-pounding, automotive infatuation?

Riding with the Top Down blog with Tara Janzen, for Oct. 24, 2007

One of the great things about writing the Crazy books, and now ON THE LOOSE and CUTTING LOOSE, was learning about and falling in love with American muscle cars from the late sixties and early seventies. There is a beautiful, hot, fast car in every book – Jeanette the Jet, Roxanne, Angelina, Charlotte the Harlot, Mercy (because she has none), Babycakes, Trina, Nadine, Betty, Corinna and Coralie - the automotive machines of our dreams, girls! A 1969 Camaro, a 1968 Shelby Cobra Mustang, a 1970 Chevelle SS 454 – all of them with strokers and headers, plenty of torque, more cubic inches than the insurance companies wanted to cover, and quarter miles under fourteen seconds right off the dealer’s floor. Be still my beating heart!

But when I go out to my driveway every morning, there it is, my car, a mini-van on steroids. There aren’t any headers on it, and no sexy Camaro curves. It ain’t no pony car. It’s a draft horse. It’s a ski bus, a Dodge Durango in the nearly invisible color called silver. There are no racing stripes, no cowl induction, no spoiler, no hood pins. It rolls on Michelins, not slicks. It holds a driver, six sound-asleep, drooling teenagers, skis, snowboards, poles, boots, countless bags and boxes of food to power those kids up, and a decent (okay, more than decent) 5.7L Hemi V-8 under the hood. But it’s still a tank, not a 1970 LS6 Chevelle.

How did this happen? What’s feeding my inner NASCAR? I don’t need a jet-fuel dragster, but gosh, is it too much to ask for a Shelby?

Okay, maybe that is a bit much. Carroll Shelby didn’t make that many “snakes,” but goodness, a girl should be able to break out of mom-mode a little and get something that rumbles and roars a bit when she turns the key. I’ve gotten letters from women who have done it. They’ve sent me photos of their “babies,” Malibus, Mustangs, and Chargers, oh my! I’ve heard their stories of street racing (I never did that!), and doing a quarter mile across the Susquehanna Bridge.

So tell me, ladies, how many of you are driving the car of your dreams? How many of us are stuck driving a “bus?” And for those of us still in the bus, what are we dreaming of owning some day, when the kids are gone, and the keys only belong to us? For me – I’ll be turning over those four hundred and fifty four cubic inches of raw power and rumble under the hood of a Black Cherry 1970 LS6 Chevelle with black racing stripes. What about you?