I never intended to write a series of connected books. I was always a stand alone girl. Well, okay, there were a few books in my old series romance novels days that were connected, but for the most part I started each book with new characters and a new setting. Fresh start–fresh mind and all that. Then, about ten or twelve years ago all that changed. I wrote HOT BLOODED with the idea of a companion book, COLD BLOODED in the back of my mind. My editor liked the detectives of the New Orleans Police Department in the first book so well he suggested we go for the second. Okay, no problem. I remembered most of book one and had enough notes to make certain the second novel made sense, that each character looked the same, was true to him/herself, lived in the same house, d rove the same car and so on and so forth. You get the idea. Want to know more click here Visit FreshFiction.com to learn more about books and authors.

Captain Chase Eversea and Rosalind March employ a street urchin, Liam Plum, to help with their search for Lucy, Rosalind’s missing sister—but when the boy’s sister and only surviving relative disappears, too, the mystery thickens, sizzling attraction deepens, and they’re forced to admit how much the boy matters to them. Chase is recruited to give the filthy boy a bath (with lavender soap, no less), and this scene starts after Chase carries a sleeping Liam to bed and Chase and Rosalind are tantalizingly alone again… “He weighs nothing at all.” He said it nearly tonelessly. They sat in silence. Knowing they’d both just irretrievably given up the safety of ambivalence toward the boy. They’d allowed him to mean something. Neither of them were pleased about it, but neither would they give him up for the world now. The fire popped loudly. Rosalind jumped. For more in Julie Anne Long’s exciting excerpt click here Visit FreshFiction.com to learn more about books and authors.

I’m sure we’ve all had weeks full of ups and downs, because after all isn’t that part of life? This week has been full of them for me, both in my family life, and in my reading life. I was fortunately enough to read The Perfect Couple and The Perfect Liar by Brenda Novak . I totally enjoyed both books in the series, and was truly satisfied when I had turned the last page. The new trilogy is an extension of last year’s trilogy featuring The Last Stand. Do not however despair if you have not read last year’s books. This year’s books are in my opinion totally independent not only of those, but of each other as well. Previous characters do have cameo appearances, but each story is written as to truly stand alone quite nicely. So as you see the books I was able to read were a definite up for me. So, you may ask what did you read or hear that caused a downturn in the reading side of your life. I discovered that two authors I have read and enjoyed will no longer be under contract. Want to know more… read the rest by clicking…

Books Included: This week I seemed to spend half my time buying books, getting a ticket for a book signing and then standing in line and waiting for a signing. It probably was only a couple of hours but I’m sure you know what it’s like to try to mesh your schedule with a family’s schedule especially when there is car pooling involved! So, here’s how it worked out — I got up before dawn and showered and dressed to leave at 6:30am to go to downtown Dallas on Tuesday, August 4th, the day BAD MOON RISING was officially released. Now in the old days with a “real job” that was my usual routine but it’s been a couple of years and I only get up that early to work in my “work clothes” aka pajamas, so to be actually showered and dressed is a shocker, but I managed. Then I drove downtown barely missing the rush hour traffic and just avoiding a few of the angry drivers. Oh, yes, and the sun rose. It may have been beautiful but I was too busy trying to keep my eyes open and avoiding other motorists without the help of coffee. Sigh….

I admit it. When I think of my all-time favorite romance novels, it’s the guys I remember. Sometimes the plot. But always the guy. The heroic, fire- fighting single dad secret-billionaire with the hot bod. Or the dark, tortured soul needing redemption (still sporting, of course, the requisite hot bod. Perhaps with a few scars). So why is it, I got to wondering, that I don’t remember the female leads as quickly? The heroines who often are just as intrepid and heroic as their male counterparts? Because I like to become the heroine while reading. So it takes me a minute, sometimes, to remember there was a female lead (who had a name that most likely was not the same as my own). Curious to know more? Then click here Visit FreshFiction.com to learn more about books and authors.

Last year around this time, I was getting ready to start promoting my debut, Fatal Fixer-Upper, first in the Do-It-Yourself Home Renovation mysteries from Berkley Prime Crime, featuring New York designer turned Maine renovator Avery Baker, and her boyfriend, hunky handyman Derek Ellis. The book came out in November 2008, and since then, my life has pretty much gone by at warp speed. Launching a first book was insane, and then came Thanksgiving and Christmas, before we sold one house and moved into another in January. Since then, we’ve been renovating what is our ninth house in nine years. All while we’re going about the dual businesses of real estate and writing, and while raising two boys under eleven and caring for the menagerie of pets they’ve accumulated between them. The latest house is a brick mid-century ranch, long and low-slung, with a big picture window in the front, situated on a large lot surrounded by tall trees. Chapter 1 of Spackled and Spooked has a description that matches that one in pretty much every particular. In Spackled and Spooked, Derek and Avery are renovating just such a house. It’s a local haunted house; I thought the idea of a…

Myths and legends and the paranormal world When I first conceived of the idea for the Demonborn series and Dark Hunger, I knew I wanted to write about strong men, demons, crime fighters and the battle between good and evil. Next, I needed to build my paranormal world and make it different from all the other paranormals out there. What could make mine unique — fresh? The answer to that for me was to write about a world that intrigued me, a setting that I felt at home with, but one that naturally lended itself to a dark, eerie atmosphere that enhanced my story lines. I also thought having the paranormal creatures appear in the normal world was even more terrifying than to have a completely fantasy world. What if demons actually existed on Earth? Born a Southerner, spooky stories about ghosts, local legends, cemeteries, and odd things that go bump in the night filled my childhood. Since my series is a dark, gritty romantic suspense filled with evil demons and murder, my setting had to reflect that same creepy feeling. Click here to read the rest of Rita’s blog, leave a comment or enter her blog contest. Visit FreshFiction.com…

Whenever people find out that Allyson Roy translates into a husband and wife team named Alice and Roy we get reactions from other couples as varied as: “We just luuv doing things together.” — to — “We’d be divorced if we tried that!” Well, we not only made it through our second book — BABYDOLL comes out today! — but the first in our Saylor Oz series won a Daphne du Maurier Award for Excellence in Mystery/Suspense. To celebrate, we thought it would be fun to have a little quiz aimed at assisting those of you who choose to test the waters of writing together as a couple. Want to take the quiz? Then click here Visit FreshFiction.com to learn more about books and authors.

Might not work for you. It’s a concept I’ve been mulling lately as I get ready to teach another year of school, where I have to individualize learning to best reach all my students. I was thinking about this concept as I read an article in a writing magazine that said, “write every day, even if it’s for 20 minutes” and also gave other such advice as “keep a journal”. It’s great advice, sure. But I don’t do either and I’m a published author of 21 novels. I write in big spurts, and then will go weeks and sometimes months without writing a thing. That “20 minutes” the author advises is spent doing all those things I didn’t do during that intense focus on writing. But that’s me. My big on and off spurts are how I balance and prioritize my time, and that’s what I’ve learned works best for my life. During the school year my priority is on my family and my teaching job. Writing is third. Over the summer, I can easily make writing number two and devote 40+ hours a week to my craft. Click to read the rest of Michele’s blog and to leave a…

This week one of my Yahoo groups was discussing the newest Suzanne Brockmann book, Hot Pursuit. One of the ladies in the group was planning on buying a copy, but the store she went to wasn’t offering a discount, so she did some calling, and found a store with a discount and placed the book on hold. In her doing this she found that the store wasn’t getting as many copies of a book as they might have before the economic downturn, and it led several people to say they either didn’t read Brockmann any longer or they would be getting her book from the library. This takes me to the next lady, who said she checked her library and they did not have any of Hot Pursuit on order. I found this interesting as I believed her to have been a very popular author, and even with funding dwindling I would have thought they would have ordered at least one copy. Read the rest of the story click here Visit FreshFiction.com to learn more about books and authors.