My third romantic suspense with paranormal elements, The Wild Irish Sea, hit the shelves this week. I certainly had quite a time mixing together the plot, characters, mental telepathy, beautiful Irish scenery and a few Celtic legends. I’m thrilled that readers and reviewers are enjoying this story. If you haven’t heard about or picked up your own copy of the book yet, I’d like to give you a brief glimpse of some of the things you can look forward to when you read The Wild Irish Sea. Being a late night person, I occasionally tune in the various talk shows, so with a nod to David Letterman, here are my Top Ten Things You Will Love About The Wild Irish Sea: 1.The cover – I really can’t take much credit for this. I love all my covers and they are all the work of the fantastic Sourcebooks Art Department. I will say that I did suggest the seascape on the bottom of The Wild Irish Sea. I’ve always loved… seascapes! Yes, that’s my story and I’m sticking with it! 2.Kevin Hennessey — Okay, what’s not to love about a tough, but vulnerable Irish hunk of a hero? Kevin is my…

May 2010 On Sale: May 1, 2010 Featuring: Robert Rodi 288 pages ISBN: 0452296137 EAN: 9780452296138 Trade Size $15.00 Add to Wish List Non-Fiction Memoir Buy at Amazon.com Dogged Pursuit by Robert Rodi How a rescue dog rescued me “A charming, hilarious look at a little-documented world.” — People In dog years, Robert Rodi is 350. Age, however, couldn’t possibly have prepared him for his experience with canine agility-the athletic cousin to best-of-breed shows. Rodi, an epicure and urban intellectual, picks up agility with aspirations for blue ribbons. His dreams of glory quickly fade when faced with the competition: hearty Midwestern handlers and their ferociously fit pups, who annihilate scrawny, scruffy, Dusty, Rodi’s rescue dog and would-be champ, in the ring. The duo is utterly lost in the agility circles, but as in the best human/pet stories, they forge an everlasting bond to carry them through. Combining the wit of Christopher Guest’s Best in Show and the charm of Marley & Me, Dogged Pursuit is an uproarious account of a neophyte’s year in the dog show world that abounds in humor and warmth. Previous Picks

May 2010 On Sale: May 1, 2010 Featuring: Robert Rodi 288 pages ISBN: 0452296137 EAN: 9780452296138 Trade Size $15.00 Add to Wish List Non-Fiction Memoir Buy at Amazon.com Dogged Pursuit by Robert Rodi How a rescue dog rescued me “A charming, hilarious look at a little-documented world.” — People In dog years, Robert Rodi is 350. Age, however, couldn’t possibly have prepared him for his experience with canine agility-the athletic cousin to best-of-breed shows. Rodi, an epicure and urban intellectual, picks up agility with aspirations for blue ribbons. His dreams of glory quickly fade when faced with the competition: hearty Midwestern handlers and their ferociously fit pups, who annihilate scrawny, scruffy, Dusty, Rodi’s rescue dog and would-be champ, in the ring. The duo is utterly lost in the agility circles, but as in the best human/pet stories, they forge an everlasting bond to carry them through. Combining the wit of Christopher Guest’s Best in Show and the charm of Marley & Me, Dogged Pursuit is an uproarious account of a neophyte’s year in the dog show world that abounds in humor and warmth. Previous Picks

Welcome to Susan’s Money, Honey Blog Tour in which she will heroically address the Top Ten Responses Commonly Heard when An Ill-Groomed Stay-at-Home Mom Announces her Secret Career as a Romance Writer. (If you’re dying to see all ten responses, check out my website.) Hello, Fresh Fiction! Welcome to the blog tour! Today we’re discussing Response #9: The dreaded “Don’t you get tired of writing the same story over & over?” Okay, this one kills me. Really, it does. People who don’t read romance seem to have this incredible misconception about the genre. It’s like they think that because romance novels feature a love story and a happy ending, they’re all the same book. This is like saying all detective novels are the same because the plot revolves around a crime and we get to find out whodunit at the end. Or that all thrillers are the same because the hero gets to foil a Plot to Destroy the World As We Know It. That’s not a formula–that’s a contract with the reader. It’s the reason we read genre fiction in the first place. If I want a happy ending, I read romance. Exquisite world-building? Science fiction. A near miss…

As a thriller writer, I’m always searching for the idea that sends a chill slithering up my spine. A decade ago, I felt just such a chill when I came across a news article about an incident that had occurred thirty years earlier. The year was 1968, and it happened in mid-March, in a place called Skull Valley, Utah. It was chilly that afternoon, with patches of snow on the ground. While doing chores in his yard, Ray Peck developed an earache and decided to go to bed early. When he woke up the next morning and stepped outside, he was stunned by what he saw. His yard was littered with dead birds. It seemed as if they had dropped from the sky struck down in mid-flight. Not far away, a struggling rabbit was twitching in its last death throes. Over the next few days, the local university began receiving frantic calls from farmers across Skull Valley. Thousands of their sheep were lying dead in pastures, a death toll that eventually mounted to over six thousand animals. No one could explain it. No one admitted any wrongdoing. Thirty years later, the answers were finally revealed when the U.S. government declassified…

July 2010 On Sale: July 6, 2010 Featuring: Fiona Bristow; Simon Doyle 496 pages ISBN: 0399156577 EAN: 9780399156571 Hardcover $26.95 Add to Wish List Romance Suspense Buy at Amazon.com The Search by Nora Roberts The #1 New York Times-bestselling author presents a riveting novel where a canine search and rescue volunteer fights danger and finds love in the Pacific Northwest wilderness. To most people, Fiona Bristow seems to have an idyllic life-a quaint house on an island off Seattle’s coast, a thriving dog-training school, and a challenging volunteer job performing canine search and rescues. Not to mention her three intensely loyal Labs. But Fiona got to this point by surviving a nightmare… Several years ago, Fiona was the only survivor of the Red Scarf serial killer, who shot and killed Fiona’s cop fiancé and his K-9 partner. On Orcas Island, Fiona found the peace and solitude she needed to rebuild her life. But all that changes on the day Simon Doyle barrels up her drive, desperate for her help. He’s the reluctant owner of an out-of-control puppy, foisted upon him by his mother. Jaws has eaten through Simon’s house, and he’s at his wit’s end. To Fiona, Jaws is nothing…

I’ve been hearing a lot from readers about the secondary story in my latest contemporary romance, CRUSH ON YOU. Gil Marino and Clare Knowles are best friends and have been so since childhood. Unlikely friends, on the face of it, as he was the school jock and she was the geeky girl who was treasurer of the Science Fiction Society. But he attended every one of her birthday parties, starting when the invitations came with Barbie on front through her Sweet Sixteen when he was the shy girl’s support and escort. When she gets engaged and asks him to be the “Man of Honor,” what’s a buddy to do? Except Gil doesn’t feel like her buddy anymore. Some time in the last year his feelings for his BFF have changed–and he doesn’t know what to do about them. A friends-to-lovers romantic theme is one of my very favorites (and is the subject of two fun movies, “Made of Honor” and “Some Kind of Wonderful”). It’s delicious to watch the couple struggle with emotions that appear to come out of the blue. For his part, Gil can pinpoint the exact time when Everything Changed (on a road trip, three nights they…

Max Bravo #1 July 2010 On Sale: June 22, 2010 Featuring: Max Bravo 304 pages ISBN: 0312559739 EAN: 9780312559731 Hardcover $24.99 Add to Wish List Mystery Pet Lovers Buy at Amazon.com The Dog Park Club by Cynthia Robinson Max Bravo, an opera singer, is the unlikely protagonist in the first in a dynamite new cozy series that is wry, darkly comic, terminally knowing (David Gates, bestselling author of “Jernigan”). A noir tale of dogs, murder, and purple fleece jackets. Max Bravo is vain, arch, brittle, and bored. His opera career has stalled out on the mid-tier. His hobby — debauchery — has become routine. And there’s not enough fairy dust in the world to change the fact that, after a thirty-year adolescence, Max is finally middle-aged. But when Max becomes enmeshed with the eccentric regulars at a Berkeley dog park, he finds himself swept along into a bumbling, keystone chase to corner the murderer of a beautiful and beguiling young woman. Excerpt 1 I saw Amy Carter the day before she disappeared. It was in Berkeley, at the dog park. Amy was always there. She was a regular. There were eight of us regulars. We dropped by, drifted in, just…

This summer, I’m indulging in some of the FAB books I’ve been dying to read all winter and spring. Join me, then check out my blog in July where we’ll be talking about what we love about each of these jewels. There will be a special contest just for fans who comment on my summer reading challenge!!! Don’t miss out ;o) Anna’s Challenge Here’s the list: THE OCEAN BETWEEN US by Susan Wiggs BLUE-EYED DEVIL by Lisa Kleypas BEACH MUSIC by Pat Conroy STEAMED by Katie MacAlister TRIBUTE by Nora Roberts AIN’T SHE SWEET by Susan Elizabeth Phillips (I reread it EVERY summer) WUTHERING HEIGHTS by Emily Bronte (another summer tradition)

Junior! Don’t chain your uncle in his coffin again! The Dark Forgotten series is about a lot of things: passion, adventure, mystery, and learning to live with a world that’s gone in an utterly unexpected direction. It’s also about families, whether we’re talking blood relatives, vampire clans, or a pile of hellhound puppies. At the centre of the stories is the Carver family. They’re witches who have served the people of Fairview for hundreds of years, but tragedy has scattered the current generation. One of the themes of the series is how the Carvers reunite and heal. Of course, every family member does this on their own unique terms, and you wouldn’t believe who some of them bring home to dinner. Kids these days! At the beginning of Ravenous, Holly Carver is the one left running the family ghostbusting agency. Her parents were killed in a car accident, and her sister, Ashe, has gone to live in Spain. Holly’s grandmother, though still full of spit and vinegar, is in a seniors’ residence. It’s up to Holly—and her scrumptious vampire partner, Alessandro Caravelli—to save the day when a portal to another dimension starts spewing demons, hellhounds, and other surprises into their…