Good mornin’ to all y’all at Fresh Fiction. Thank you so much for inviting me and my characters from The Empty Nesters back for a visit. As military wives for the past twenty years, Carmen, Joanie, and Diana through wars, rumors of wars, death, divorce, fears, and joys, but nothing had prepared them for the day they walked away from the army recruiter’s office in downtown San Antonio. Each of them has a daughter, and each of those daughter...

Welcome back to Fresh Fiction! Can you tell us a little bit about yourself, and your book, MOON WATER?  Hi! Many thanks to Fresh Fiction for the warm welcome. Career-wise, I’m a family nurse practitioner and a long-time nursing educator. In 2015, I switched from writing nursing research articles and texts to writing novels. Creating meaningful historical fiction is the more difficult yet most rewarding writing I’ve ever done. It is an art fo...

Thanks for stopping by Fresh Fiction! Can you tell us about your new series, Devil You Know, and the first book, How to Love a Duke in Ten Days? Thank you so much for having me! In the Devil You Know Series, I wanted to celebrate those fierce female friendships that so many of us rely on. Alexandra Lane, Cecelia Teague, and Francesca Cavendish meet at a boarding school and realize they’re girls who want to enjoy all of the pleasures that men ar...

Complex as its luxurious brocaded gowns in rich colors, the Renaissance abounds in stories of intrigue, political maneuvering, lust, and murder, and features larger-than-life historical figures.  In this month’s column, we will look at four novels exploring this world of splendor and violence. We begin with THE VATICAN PRINCESS by C.W. Gortner, which features one of the Renaissance’s most fascinating characters, Lucrezia Borgia.  This novel...

In my next book, the romantic mystery Divorce is Murder, divorce lawyer Toby Wong is forced to move back to the small town she was happy to leave. I set the series in my own hometown – a place I love, yet left – on Canada’s gorgeous Vancouver Island. Writing about Toby got me thinking about why it’s good to leave – and come home.   1) You expand your worldview Every town and neighborhood has its own culture. By the ...

In UNBREAK ME, LJ Delisle is a Haitian-Creole cowboy with a heart as big as his smile. When he meets Andra Lawler, she’s living like a hermit on her family’s horse ranch and has barely spoken to a man in years. She’s been through hell, and when LJ shows up in her life, a girl might be forgiven for thinking he was a gift from the karma fairy, here to make up for all the hard knocks she took in her early twenties. Here are five ways he turns ...

Welcome to Fresh Fiction! Please tell us a little bit about yourself and your latest book, THE LAST WIDOW. THE LAST WIDOW is a Will Trent and Sara Linton book. But I wrote the story so that you don’t have to have read any of the previous books in order to know what’s the what. The stakes for Will and Sara are higher than ever before, as Sara is in imminent danger and has to do something she’s never done before–hurt people instead of t...

Last fall, the leaves started turning gold and brilliant red. The birds sang as they migrated South, and I was forty-thousand words into creating, The Bewildered Bride. Everything was wonderful. Peace and love seemed to be everywhere. Then, the words stopped.   Nothing. Not a jot. Not even an extended ellipse.   I’m not one to panic, but for a writer to have their characters who had been happily chatting with you to go silent—that’s a...

Deadlines seem far enough away in theory, but in the end, there never seems to be enough time. Days before I have to hit ‘send’ for the next finished book or the latest edits, you’ll find me invisibly tied to a chair in front of my computer. But food can’t come in second or third place behind coffee or the next full can of my favorite energy drink. Here are a few of my favorite go-to foods that keep me from face planting into my keyboard....

1)  Authors (at least this author) loves hearing from readers. The beautiful thing about writing a book is that not only do we get to share a story that’s been consuming us for so long, but we also get to connect with new people.  Shortly after writing my first novel, The Hope of Azure Springs, I received a message from a young woman telling me how the story helped to answer a question that had plagued her for years. I wanted to cry! All the ...