Friday Friends: No Shrinking Violets – #EroticRomance #FridayFriends

For this week’s Friday Friends feature, I want to introduce you to the work of Fiona McGier. Actually, if you’re a regular visitor to Beyond Romance, you will recognize her name. I’ve read and reviewed many of her quirky romances over the years.

I happen to know that Fiona is very happily—and lustily—married to a man she considers her soul mate. Whether she’s writing werewolves, spies or paranormal time travel, she excels at portraying the glorious conjunction of love and lust. Her heroines tend to be feisty, self-confident women with strong libidos. No shrinking violets in Fiona’s novels! The men with whom these women connect appreciate both their strength and their sensuality.

Unlike my own books, Fiona’s romances almost always focus on heterosexual and monogamous relationships. That doesn’t make them any less erotic. She’s expert at portraying the thrill of making love—as opposed to just having sex. I adore the authenticity of her work.

Fiona has written quite a few books, almost all of which are available through Smashwords and/or Amazon. Here are few of my personal favorites.

Saoirse McColl, a research biologist, keeps getting fired from labs for refusing to produce results the clients want. Her best friend suggests she look for a new line of work. She applies to an ad for a high school biology teaching job at an academy in northwestern Maine that promised living quarters plus salary.

Diego Vargas, a werewolf, is the principal of the academy, despite having no background in education. He has proven to the pack leader that he is dependable and detail-oriented, but he hates hiring new teachers, not knowing what to ask them.

Once Saoirse is in his office, Diego can’t concentrate because his wolf loves her smell. When it turns out that she is the best-qualified candidate, Diego and his wolf rejoice, because both are convinced she’s their mate. But she’s not a shifter, so they need to bide their time, waiting for the right moment to inform her that she’s living in a compound of mostly wolf shifters.

Can these two find happiness together, once the scientist discovers that myth is reality?

My review: https://lisabetsarai.blogspot.com/2020/08/review-tuesday-when-wolf-howls-by-fiona.html

 

Dr. Marcus Jones is world-famous for inventing a procedure to make cardiac surgery quicker and safer. He has achieved much in the ten years since he graduated from medical school, including accumulating more wealth than he had ever dreamed of growing up in the projects in Chicago. But he has not been as successful in his personal life. His lawyer wife is divorcing him--but then, he was never really in love with her. He has only felt that way about one woman--the one he dated back in college--the one who got away. When he finds her name on the internet, he contacts her, determined to see if he can rekindle what they once had together in college, back when he could only spare one night a week away from his studies and his world revolved around Tuesdays.

My review: https://lisabetsarai.blogspot.com/2021/03/review-tuesday-two-for-tuesday-by-fiona.html

Raul Roderick, a sexy Hispanic action movie star addicted to life in the fast lane, needs to clean-up for a major role that even he doubts he can deliver. The indie director sends him up to a resort owned by his grandmother in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area of upper Minnesota, to learn to commune with nature. His guide is Veronica, the director's cousin, a tall, athletic woman who has the relaxed, sensible nature of someone who knows herself well, and has the natural confidence that comes from being surrounded by a loving and supportive family. Raul's initial clumsy attempt to seduce her makes her laugh--so he calls her fat. Is there any hope that their relationship will progress beyond its rocky start? Can Raul overcome his partying nature to discover who he really is, and what he really wants from life? And can Veronica ever learn to trust a man who "lies for a living?"

My review:

https://lisabetsarai.blogspot.com/2021/08/review-tuesday-for-love-of-his-life-by.html

When romance author Delu Morris is troubled with unexplained panic attacks, she seeks help from a doctor who’s researching dream-therapy. He explains that he’ll accompany her into her dreams to revisit her memories and to try to uncover if an event from her past is causing her trouble now.

His grad assistant is a handsome Scotsman who wears a kilt the first time he meets her. She’s intrigued, but they remain at arms’ distance while he’s a part of her therapy team. When she discovers that only he can make the machine work, he confesses that he’s the 7th son of a 7th son, and the Unseelie are using him for some unknown reason. When he touches the controls, he pushes a wee bit o’ magic into the machine to make it work.

Will they discover together what her long-lost memory is? Or will the guilty person manage to keep her from that discovery—for good?

My review:

https://lisabetsarai.blogspot.com/2023/10/review-tuesday-gaelic-magic-by-fiona.html

He's loved her for years, but she keeps running away from her blue-collar man, to please her family. She runs away from the church when her attorney fiancé answers his cell phone during the ceremony. Will she ever stop running away and make the right choice?

As a child, veterinarian Pamela Wilson always used to run away from home to get attention from her status-conscious, preoccupied parents. Years ago she met a man who loved her unreservedly, but her parents didn't approve of his blue-collar job, so she ran away from him too. When the ambitious lawyer she's marrying answers a phone call while she's walking down the aisle, it's the last straw! She runs away again—this time to a cabin her parents don't know about, owned by the mechanic. Does he still own it and is he still single? Will she finally stop running away and make the right choice?

My review:

https://lisabetsarai.blogspot.com/2025/03/review-tuesday-right-choice-by-fiona.html

Excerpt from The Right Choice

With a start, Pamela sat up suddenly. The sound that had woken her up was being repeated, from close to where she was sitting. She concentrated and realized that the faint grating noise was a lock being opened, and the thwack that had woken her up was the sound of a window being pushed open.

The cabin was no longer deserted. There was someone in it who was determined to let the fresh lake breezes in. She breathed a fervent prayer of supplication. Please, dear God, let it be Eric, and not someone in his family whom I’ve never met. Please let it be Eric.

She got out of the car, yawning and stretching. She walked slowly up the short walk to the front door to see if, despite her swearing in His house, God was in the mood to give her a break. Tentatively she knocked at the front door of the screened-in porch.

“I’ll be right there!”

She smiled, breathing a quick, Thank-you God, as she waited for Eric to come to unlatch the screen door. She watched as he rounded the corner onto the porch. He stopped dead in his tracks when he saw who was at the door. Then he walked quickly over and opened the door. “To what do I owe this unexpected pleasure?”

Pamela smiled at him. “Aw, come on, you must have seen me sleeping in the car when you got here. You knew it was me, didn’t you?”

As he pushed the screen door open, a slow smile crawled across his face.

“Yeah, I guess I did see a car with Illinois plates that I didn’t recognize. So being a suspicious kind of guy, I looked in the window. And was I ever surprised! I asked myself, Why is Mel here? And then I remembered the news story that’s being replayed over and over again, and I knew. You’ve run away again, and you need a place to hide out in for a while. Right?”

She gave him a defensive look. “Can’t I just be visiting you? Since I haven’t seen you in so long?”

“Bull shit, Mel! You’re using me as a safe haven again, aren’t you? Admit it—then maybe I’ll let you stay.”

She didn’t realize that her lower lip was trembling as she turned to look at him. But he did. She saw on his face that he was having some kind of internal struggle with himself. She tried to influence him in her favor.

“You will? You’ll let me stay her for a couple of days? Really?”

He nodded. “Yeah, sure. You can tell me all about why you ran away this time, and I’ll be sympathetic. It’ll make me fel good knowing that I’m not the only man you’ve run away from.”

She shot him a reproachful look. “That was totally different, and you know it.”

“Which time?” The sarcasm in his voice was extra heavy.

 

If you like authentic, original erotic romance, do check out Fiona’s books!