Interview with Blair Babylon, Author of Stolen by the Billionaire

06 Mar 2024

What’s the story behind the story? What inspired you to write Stolen by the Billionaire?

Blaze Robinson is the third of four best friends who met while they were on scholarship at the billionaires’ boarding school where they went to high school. The first guy was Tristan “Twist” King, a computer hacker turned stock market genius who picked up his hacker black hat one last time for the woman he loved. His story starts in Twisted. The second man was Micah Shine, an heir to a mafia family who witnessed a horrific crime as a child and has been in hiding ever since, who falls in love with a beautiful con artist in Atlantic City against his better judgment and gets pulled back into the world of organized crime.

Blaze seems to be the only one of the quartet who has always been on the straight and narrow, enlisting in the US military right out of high school and eventually joining the Navy’s elite SEAL team, but even a handsome man’s looks can be deceiving. He parlayed a small loan from a person he shouldn’t have taken money from into a crypto fortune while in the military, and after a mission gone terribly wrong, emerged into civilian life as a billionaire. When the mafia comes to collect the debt and demands he commit a crime instead of repayment, Blaze uses his military-acquired special skill set to threaten the ingénue niece of the head of the Mafia crime family, inadvertently putting her in danger. Never one to leave a damsel in distress or shy away from a fight, Blaze rescues Iowa farm girl Sarah Bell, and they take off in a forced-proximity road trip across the country, stocked by the mafia at every turn. The last of the four high school friends, Logan Bell, is a story for another day.

If you had to pick theme songs for the main characters of Stolen by the Billionaire, what would they be?

Blaze — “Innocent” (TV) by Taylor Swift.

What’s your favorite genre to read? Is it the same as your favorite genre to write?

I read almost everything except horror. I love SF&F and romance the most, and I write mostly romance.

What books are on your TBR pile right now?

Lessons in Chemistry (Hazelwood), The City We Became (Jenisin), Neon Gods (Robert). I’m behind on reading.

What scene in your book was your favorite to write?

When he holds a knife to her throat.

Do you have any quirky writing habits? (lucky mugs, cats on laps, etc.)

Not really.

If you could choose one thing for readers to remember after reading your book, what would it be?

Love always wins!