Dear Friends, REDEMPTION. The dictionary defines it as “atonement for guilt; deliverance from sin.”  That somehow seems an appropriate way to describe Jesse Bradford’s challenge in STRONGER THAN SIN. Can Jesse redeem himself for his past actions?  Is love powerful enough motivation for Jesse to become a better man? In STRONGER THAN SIN, Jesse’s sinful ways came about as a result of his losing his way to the cult of celebrity after becoming a superstar football player.  Sadly, this is something with which we can all identify since it seems that all too often we hear a news report about a professional athlete who has gotten in trouble. Despite his faults, however, Jesse is a man capable of great love who just needs to find the hero within him once more. From the moment that Mick’s sister, Dr. Liliana Carrera, walked onto the scene in SINS OF THE FLESH, I knew she had to get her own story. I fell in love with her caring, loyalty to her brother and her inner strength. There was no doubt in my mind that any story where she was the heroine would be emotionally compelling and filled with passion.  And there was no…

The bookshelves at your local brick-and-mortar bookstores are teeming with how-to-write manuals. For the young fiction writer, there are classics such as E.M. Forster’s Aspects of the Novel and John Gardner’s The Art of Fiction, plus whole series devoted to specific prose concerns like plot construction and character development. For the budding playwright, notable must-haves include Lajos Egri’s The Art of Dramatic Writing, with its dialectic approach, and Jeffrey Hatcher’s The Art and Craft of Playwriting, with its more Aristotelian approach. For the up-and-coming screenwriter, some selections would have to be Syd Field’s nuts-and-bolts Screenplay and Christopher Vogel’s hugely influential The Writer’s Journey. But what’s a person to do if they’re like me, suffer creative attention deficit disorder, and want to excel in fiction, theatre, and film? Surely there have to be some tools which apply to all three. And so over the years, I’ve distilled a list of ten hard-and-fast principles which can apply to all forms of contemporary storytelling, regardless of genre or medium. Now none of these principles, these commandments, are original to me. They have been collected and culled over years spent reading and studying craft, usually while curled up on a soft warm surface and/or…

It’s November and time to think about sharing a meal with loved ones. I’ve always tucked bits of my family history into my Devil books but I didn’t realize how many ways they’d crept in until I started thinking about Thanksgiving traditions. My grandmother was born in a sod house in the Oklahoma Territory, where her father was an itinerant farm worker. She didn’t remember the house fondly — it was more of a hut, really, especially for seven children. It was dark and scary inside, the roof often dripped clods of dirt or mud into her food and hair, and continually sweeping the dirt floor never improved it. Somehow, years later, that dark and scary place climbed out of my subconscious to become Viola’s first home in THE IRISH DEVIL. “The mud-brick hovels revealed themselves as a pitiful group, with ill-fitting doors and crumbling bricks”This hut was smaller than the others and its only window was broken. The ragged curtains fluttered gently in the rising breeze…; “He cautiously entered the tiny hut. Mud-brick walls were totally covered by peeling pages from magazines and catalogues, forming a poor man’s wallpaper. The roof was a canvas tarpaulin, split open over one…

Dido Kent #1 February 2010 On Sale: February 2, 2010 Featuring: Dido Kent; Richard Montague; Catherine 304 pages ISBN: 0312562942 EAN: 9780312562946 Hardcover $23.99 Add to Wish List Jane Austen, Mystery Historical, Mystery Amateur Sleuth Buy at Amazon.com Bellfield Hall by Anna Dean Or, The Observations Of Miss Dido Kent 1805. An engagement party is taking place for Mr Richard Montague, son of wealthy landowner Sir Edgar Montague, and his fiancee Catherine. During a dance with his beloved, a strange thing happens: a man appears at Richard’s shoulder and appears to communicate something to him without saying a word. Instantly breaking off the engagement, he rushes off to speak to his father, never to be seen again. Distraught with worry, Catherine sends for her spinster aunt, Miss Dido Kent, who has a penchant for solving mysteries. Catherine pleads with her to find her fiance and to discover the truth behind his disappearance. It’s going to take a lot of logical thinking to untangle the complex threads of this multi-layered mystery, and Miss Dido Kent is just the woman to do it. Excerpt Chapter One Bellfield Hall, Monday, 23rd September 1805 My dear Eliza, I must begin another letter to you,…

Another Halloween has passed us by, and I’ve handed out the candy to princesses and cowboys and football players and teenagers in Scream masks. But as always my favorite costumes are the good old fashioned monster costumes. Not surprisingly I’ve got a soft spot for those old fashioned monsters. Give me a vampire, a werewolf, a zombie, a mummy, a witch. Please. I love monster movies, monster books, monster artwork, monster dolls and toys. My favorite monster movie, one I watch every Halloween, is Bram Stoker’s Dracula. What a romance! What a monster! Sometimes I troll the Internet observing great monster artwork. Some of my favorites are Native American renderings of werewolves. Considering what I write, no big shock there. I also have a freaky Barbie collection. I bet you didn’t know they had monster-ish Barbies. I’ve got The Munsters, The Addams Family, The Wicked Witch of the West and several others. And when it comes to books about monsters, werewolves are always my favorite. My most recent release, MARKED BY THE MOON (available now!)is a continuation of my popular Nightcreature Novels, and it has a great monster. Julian Barlow is an ancient berserker–a Viking warrior who, in the heat…

April 2010 On Sale: April 13, 2010 Featuring: Georgina Jackson 320 pages ISBN: 141658787X EAN: 9781416587873 Trade Size $15.00 Add to Wish List Women’s Fiction Contemporary Buy at Amazon.com Writing Jane Austen by Elizabeth Aston Critically acclaimed and award-winning—but hardly bestselling—author Georgina Jackson can’t get past the first chapter of her second book. When she receives an urgent email from her agent, Georgina is certain it’s bad news. Shockingly, she’s offered a commission to complete a newly discovered manuscript by a major nineteenth-century author. Skeptical at first about her ability to complete the manuscript, Georgina is horrified to know that the author in question is Jane Austen. Torn between pushing through or fleeing home to America, Georgina relies on the support of her banker-turned-science student roommate, Henry, and his quirky teenage sister, Maud—a serious Janeite. With a sudden financial crisis looming, the only way Georgina can get by is to sign the hugely lucrative contract and finish the book. Excerpt Email from [email protected] To [email protected] Ring me. Henry stood at the door of Georgina’s room, holding a weighty textbook in one hand and marking his place with a finger. He looked at his lodger with concern. “Gina, why the screech…

We’ve had a lot of books to movies/TV this fall. Have you seen The Walking Dead on AMC? In case you were wondering there are zombies on that series but that isn’t really what it’s about. It’s really about people trying to survive in rather extraordinary circumstances. Some films we’ve seen so far from books include Freakonomics, Let Me In, The Social Network (based on THE ACCIDENTAL BILLIONAIRES), It’s Kind of a Funny Story, Secretariat, Conviction, Red and others. There are even more in November. I can’t wait for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1, and I’m also looking forward to Fair Game [book] and Love & Other Drugs. Oh, and if you haven’t seen 127 Hours or read the story, you need to. It’s about what happened to mountain climber and caynoneer Aron Ralston (James Franco) who was trapped in a canyon for several days. Danny Boyle directs and it’s one of the best films you’ll see this year. On another note: You guys we’re getting very close to the holidays. I don’t know about you, but I’m so not ready. My favorite thing to do this time of year, especially when it’s nippy outside, is…

Don’t you love snow globes? I do. They’re so darned pretty. And fun. And fascinating. And even fun to make. Well, as long as you have a daughter who has the craft gene helping you. (I think that gene skipped a generation in my family. My mom had it. My daughter had it. Me. Not so much. Oh, heck, let’s be honest. Not at all.) My daughter Rose and my friend Theresia and I experimented with the art of making hand-crafted snow globes last month and had a great time. And, like all those great times, it went so fast! Have you noticed how hard times like illness, unemployment, and family troubles just seem to drag while the most wonderful, memorable times in our lives rocket past? What’s with that? Have you ever had a moment you wished you could freeze and stay in for a really long time? I guess that’s why we all love to take pictures. We want to capture those special moments so we can look back and enjoy them over and over again. I think that’s why snow globes appeal to us so much. The fun, sweet, idyllic scenes inside them are captured forever. Shake…

July 2010 On Sale: July 20, 2010 Featuring: Mary Crawford; Fanny Price 352 pages ISBN: 0312638345 EAN: 9780312638344 Trade Size $14.99 Add to Wish List Mystery Historical, Jane Austen Buy at Amazon.com Murder At Mansfield Park by Lynn Shepherd Complete with romance, intrigue, and crimes of the heart, MURDER AT MANSFIELD PARK is an irreverent new twist on an old classic. Murder at Mansfield Park takes Jane Austen’s masterpiece and turns it into a riveting murder story worthy of PD James or Agatha Christie. Just as in many classic English detective mysteries, this new novel opens with a group of characters in a country house setting, with passions running high, and simmering tensions beneath the elegant Regency surface. The arrival of the handsome and debonair Henry Crawford and his sister forces these tensions into the open, and sparks a chain of events that leads inexorably to violence and death. Beautifully written, with an absolute faithfulness to the language in use at the time, Murder at Mansfield Park is both a good old-fashioned murder mystery that keeps the reader guessing until the very last page, and a sparklingly clever inversion of the original, which goes to the heart of many of…

Writing humor is not for the faint of heart. It is a difficult task for anyone – stand-up comics, sit-com writers and even those who produce comic strips. However, humor writing is the hardest for the novel writer because body language, facial expressions, tone of voice, funny drawings, and sound tracks are not available for use. Novel writers are slaves to the power of their words. The problem inherent to writing humor is that everyone has a different idea of what constitutes a funny situation. You, as the writer, can’t tell someone what is funny. Each person is unique and therefore, has a different sense of humor. There are even some people who have no sense of humor at all (I refer to them as humor-challenged). You have to realize you can’t please everyone, so you have to write what makes you laugh. How can you effectively use humor in your writing? One way is to make an ordinary situation extraordinary. Shake things up with a surprise situation or an unexpected result to an otherwise normal day. Play with words by using metaphors, similes, irony or satire. Bring misunderstandings to the forefront of the action and incorporate a bit of…