By: M. M. Crane

I have never been asked by a ridiculously handsome man to pretend to date him or marry him, or act as if I am madly in love with him for the sake of [insert a compelling reason, like our careers or some such thing]. Obviously I view this as a great travesty, but I deal with this enduring disappointment the way I deal with most things: I write about it.

I have thus far written some 30 or so books with a fake relationship element, but I am particularly proud of Reckless Fortune—my new book that approaches this trope by marrying it up with a contemporary Alaskan spin on a mail-order-bride as well. 

In Reckless Fortune, Autumn McCall enters a contest that pairs her up with brooding bush pilot Bowie Fortune and requires them to reenact a version of an old school Alaska frontier-style, mail-order-bride marriage. They both know they’re just pretending, but that doesn’t prevent sparks from flying as the two spend time together. And especially not when disaster strikes and they crash down in the formidable Alaskan wilderness with very little hope of making it to safety…

I loved writing this book, not least because I got to spend a lot of time thinking about the extraordinary courage of the women who decided to take their chances with strange men in far-off locations all throughout history in the hope of a better life. The women who set out on difficult journeys hundreds of years ago, praying that the man waiting for them on the other end wasn’t going to be the more difficult than the wilderness. 

But I also really loved the fact that the mail order marriage in this case is fake. Both Autumn and Bowie know they’re taking part in a contest—a publicity stunt to draw tourists to a remote stretch of the Alaskan Interior. They both know that either one of them could call it off at any point. Instead of being stranded with no recourse in the middle of nowhere with a man she doesn’t know at all, Autumn is choosing to be there. Bowie is choosing to participate in this marriage that isn’t actually a marriage.

Hopefully readers will find that as exciting as I do.

It’s always fun to play with forced proximity in a romance. In real life there are a thousand ways to disengage—even right in front of each other. It’s far too easy to hide from anything intimate behind a screen, or let the bustle of our noisy lives distract us. The beauty of fake dating in a book is that the people involved are forced into acting as if they have a kind of intimacy they haven’t earned, making what happens between them all the more delicious. The beauty of setting a fake dating story in the Alaskan wilderness is that there’s not a whole lot of the noise of the modern world to offer any distractions.

How can they help but fall in love?

Reckless Fortune is out 9/27 and I hope you love it!

M. M. Crane is a pseudonym for a USA Today bestselling and RITA-nominated author. She currently lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband.