Carly Phillips on Returning to Her ‘Dare to Love’ Series

From this question, the Dare to Love family was born. In backstory, Robert Dare was married and had a family with one woman and yet had an ongoing affair and a family with his mistress. 8 siblings (5 legitimate and 3 illegitimate) who didn’t know about each other until one of the children in the “illegitimate” family needed bone marrow and he came to his wife to have his other kids tested to be donors. Yep. The man was and still is a bastard. But the concept was different, at least to me. And from this family’s history that I just shared, came resentment and pain. Nine children who shared a history and yet each experienced it differently and the hurt caused different emotional scars for every one of the kids. I couldn’t wait to tell their stories.

The oldest legitimate child, Ian Dare, stepped up for his family, became the father figure to the rest of his “full” siblings … and had control issues in all of his relationships, including with the heroine who came into his life courtesy of the half-brother he resented. I wrote Dare to Love.

And a funny thing happened … readers responded to Ian. He became the gold standard for all the heroes in the series who came after him. He was pure Alpha, said what he thought, did what he wanted, made demands, and readers loved him. For the next three years, throughout 5 of the legitimate siblings (Yes, you smart readers, there originally were 6 siblings, one of whom “accidentally” got dropped and so I revised the earlier books), 1 of the illegitimate siblings, and 3 unexpected New York Dare cousins (whose stories are even hotter than the original/Dares), I wrote my heart out in this series.

The End of the Dares … Or is it?

Until I reached burnout with two stories left untold. I then did the most difficult thing possible and it hurt me to do it – I stopped writing the Dares and moved on.    

Readers constantly wrote and asked when and if I’d write Sienna and Jason’s stories. The answer? I didn’t know. I couldn’t imagine going back to that world. For a long time, it felt limiting, like I’d explored everything about the pain Robert Dare had caused his children, and going further would bore me … so wouldn’t it bore my readers?    

Over the next three from 2016 – 2019 I went on to write 12 books and 2 novellas (in 4 new series) and I even revisited Ian and Riley from Dare to Love in another short story via my newsletter for readers. And still I’d receive letters asking for the final Dares.  Then suddenly, while writing The Knight Brothers series, I came to book 4 and a hero that reminded me of Ian Dare.

Ethan Knight meets Ian Dare

Meet Ethan Knight in Dare Me Tonight … Ethan had experienced the ultimate pain and betrayal by his now deceased wife. He’d always been intimidating to the outside world yet fiercely protective of his family but he became an angry, isolated human being who needed a heroine to soften him. And I found myself thinking, wouldn’t it be FUN to have Ethan Knight go up against Ian Dare? Isn’t it time to revisit the untold Dare sibling stories? And so Sienna Dare, the youngest of the Dare children, and part of the illegitimate family, became Ethan Knight’s heroine.

No worries! Dare Me Tonight, like every Carly Phillips story, is a complete stand-alone. You won’t be lost or confused if you jump in with this story but you will, I hope, become curious about the rest of the Dare and Knight families. Because of course, the point of this entire piece is family and how much we love to dive into their worlds.