Tirza Schaefer: Romance Author & Goddess Facilitator
Booklist
1. Her Badass Bikers (Standalone)
2 The Hopping Hippos (Duology)
3. The Hopping Hippos Part 2 (Duology)
4. Fromance (Short Edition) (Standalone) (FREE with newsletter subscription)
5. Fromance (Full Edition) (Standalone)
Seals in Spain (Trilogy, ongoing story with the same MCs)
6. Tank
7. Dom
8. Seb
The BFF Diaries (5-Book Series with alternating MCs, connected through friendship)
9. Izzy's Law
10. Ria's Healing
11. Reyna's Dancers
12. Sassy's Success
14. The Korean Cartel (Standalone)
15. Her Viking Warriors (Standalone)
Books in the Badass Lovers Series
The Creation Story
The Badass Lovers Series is a collection of books that (will) have characters living in the same world and you will find that they hop in and out of each other's books on occasion. In that sense, it will probably be good advice to read them in the intended order, but bear in mind, this is not a single ongoing story and you'll find that you are able to enjoy some of the books if you don't keep to this order, even though you might not get the same nuances from the storyline and deeper insights that you would otherwise have. Also, when I started writing these books, they didn't get written in the same order.
It all began with TANK...
TANK was the first book I wrote in this world and was originally intended as a standalone. However, by the end of it, I was so much in love with Sarah and her three men TANK, DOM and SEB, that I could not yet part with them. So I decided to make a series out of it and call it the Seals in Spain trilogy.
IZZY'S LAW (formerly published as Izzy) was next but I already knew that this was going to be the first book in a series. Originally intended as standalones with a reverse age gap theme, four out of five books being reverse harem constellations, I intended to only have the main characters loosely connected. If that. However, as so often in an author's life, characters took on lives of their own and by the time RIA'S HEALING (formerly published as Ria) rolled around, the concept had already changed to have closer connections.
In the third book of The BFF Diaries, (the new name of the series after originally being named The Milf Diaries which I later decided sounded too much like erotica and wouldn't do the complex storylines and character arcs justice, hence the change), I was planning to bring the women together in a sacred circle, addressing choices regarding motherhood long before this became a hot topic in the US. I also decided to bring the characters from this series together with the ones from the Seals in Spain trilogy.
While I had started on all the as then still not published books in both these series already, things didn't really flow in my writing. And then HER BADASS BIKERS came. I had originally intended (I keep saying this phrase and end it with a but then, haha) to make this a standalone but in reality, it ended up being the opening of the Badass Lovers Series. I decided to bring them into the second book of the Seals in Spain trilogy and have them reappear there.
Then I was invited to take part in a charity romance anthology with a friends-to-lovers theme with almost forty bestselling and award-winning authors. As the word count limit was 5K, I wrote this story's first draft in one sitting and called it FROMANCE. I had so many ideas that I couldn't include in it because of the limitations, I decided to write an extended version of it, much like I had done previously with my anthology story A LITTLE SLICE OF HEAVEN which was then extended into a novella and published solo after the anthology Summer Heat in which the original shorter version had been unpublished again. FROMANCE, the extended version, had become the second book of the Badass Lovers series and the Seals in Spain trilogy and The BFF Diaries follow in that order. In FROMANCE, we meet Ava and HER BADASS BIKERS again and these characters will also show up in DOM, the second book of the Seals in Spain.
But again, fate had different ideas. I had started a rockstar romance a while back and while I had left it at about halfway point, it was sitting there, waiting for me to do something with it. The opportunity came when I was invited to take part in a rockstar romance anthology, so, thinking I didn't have much to add to my unfinished story, I signed up to Rock My World. Unfortunately, I realised that the story needed some severe cutting back because of the word limit but, as is often the case when you have to delete large parts, it was a blessing in disguise because the result was a novella that I loved way better.
While it was published in the anthology, I mused about making it part of my Badass Lovers world, trying out different variations in my mind of how I could incorporate the rockband in my other books. At the same time, I wasn't happy with my initial plot outline for the extended version of FROMANCE (SHORT EDITION) and when talking over the teenie-safe aspects of the story with my then 15-year-old youngest child, who has an uncanny ability for sparking my imagination with her own, and running it by my best author and blogger friends and my police officer ex-husband which I have always been good friends with, I came up with a much better plan, as is often the case in the creative process.
Thus, THE HOPPING HIPPOS, were moved to #2 in the Badass Lovers Series world because they would have a guest appearance in FROMANCE (FULL EDITION) which would also feature the characters of HER BADASS BIKERS and subsequent installments in this shared world. I also wrote a second part to the Hippos, THE HOPPING HIPPOS PART 2, because the character would not let me go and so this book is a free download for newsletter subscribers, just like FROMANCE (SHORT EDITION).
In The BFF Diaries, there will be five books in total. After IZZY'S LAW and RIA'S HEALING, some of the characters from this series will also be appearing in the last three books that will make up this Badass Lovers Series. After REYNA'S DANCERS, there still are SASSY'S SUCCESS and the HOLLY'S CALENDAR BOYS to go and get their own space and I am excited to write their stories as well. I've already started on both but stopped when I did not yet know how to connect all the characters of the series, let alone the Badass Lovers Series. Now there is a plan and I am so excited to build this world with all its wonderful characters in it. I'd also love to remind you that worlds change and characters have their own heads.
After these two series, there will be another couple of standalones, called THE KOREAN CARTEL and HER VIKING WARRIORS. Those books will then close the cycle and the world of these fifteen books and this Badass Lovers Series. I am excited to see what the characters all get up to. If I have learned one thing in my writing career so far, it is that characters always take on a life of their own and don't do what you had planned them to do. Most of the time. So let's just keep it all open for some surprising twists and turns. You never know what they come up with...