Please Welcome Beth Kery to the Island!

I’m thrilled to be back here on the island and am looking forward to kicking back, soaking up some rays and sharing a margarita klatch with the ladies of DIK!

The topic: love triangles—talk amongst yourselves. :)

Now talk to me. What’s your honest opinion about love cubed? Do you have a favorite love triangle story? Leave me an answer, and you’ll qualify for a $15 Amazon gift card.

Originally, the theme of my upcoming anthology, Three to Tango, with Emma Holly, Lauren Dane and Megan Hart (I’m writing as Bethany Kane for this one) was ménage a trois, but I’m glad it became the more general love triangle theme. Why? Because while a ménage a trois can mean many different types of love affair, the love triangle theme has even more possible permutations. It gave a lot of room for the four writers to create their own unique stories and relationships.

My favorite love triangle comes from the classic movie, Casablanca. Yes, it would be nice to be Ingrid Bergman’s character, Elsa, and have two such amazing men want you. (Or it would be terrible, depending on how you look at it). She was lucky enough to experience a spiritual love and deep, abiding respect for her husband, and at the same time, the earthy, passionate kind of love for the warrior-hero archetype, Rick. In many ways, the Casablanca triangle can be likened to the even more famous and enduring King Arthur triangle between Arthur, Lancelot and Guinevere.  The woman in both of these love triangles is the lynch pin. She’s the one who feels the friction because she desires and loves both men. With sexual liberation and the gay rights movement, we are opened up to a whole new realm of the love triangle.

The appeal of the love triangle doesn’t have to be sexual. Even teenagers are being exposed to a new world of romantic geometry, as in the wildly popular Twilight series. One could even make an argument that there’s a love triangle in the Harry Potter series.

In my contribution to the Three to Tango anthology, On the Job, I decided to have a little fun with the triangle concept. My heroine feels that the hero, Walker, abandoned her once, when she was young and most needed him, and as a result, she’s out to inflict of a little pain of her own now that’s he’s returned—pain of the sexual torture variety. Such games are tricky, however, and Madeline soon learns that sex as a means of revenge puts her heart at high risk. When she learns by accident that Tony, her and Walker’s long time friend, has made a huge mistake and is about to pay for it by his freedom, she ups the stakes. She brings Tony into her sexual power play, not only to prove her point to Walker, but to tell a good friend good-bye. In the end, I was happy with this blazing hot erotic romance with a touch of suspense that involves a passionate, fiery romance between two people and an enduring love and friendship between three.

The permutations in a love cubed are endless.

I hope you’ll check out Three to Tango, where four authors put their unique spin on the eternal theme of love times three.

Three to Tango, available now from Berkley Heat