Big news – I have a brand new book out which I have been keeping under wraps until now.  To quote Connie Brockway, I have “gone rogue” with this one, and I am releasing it independently. It’s called THE SEXY GIRL’S GUIDE TO COWBOYS, and it’s a wild, quirky time travel romance that takes a modern day heroine back to Dodge City in the Old West.  Official release date: June 20. It’s a story I wrote in 1995, when I was still an unpublished writer and time travels were all the rage.  When I finished it, however, publishers weren’t buying time travels anymore, so I had to shelve it and start something new. I wrote PRAIRIE BRIDE, also set in Dodge City, and sold that book to Harlequin.  It was my first published novel.  After that, I wrote THE MARSHAL AND MRS. O’MALLEY, then ADAM’S PROMISE. Let us now do some time traveling of our own, and skip ahead to the year 2011. Here we are, with Blackberries and Ipads, and the ability to self-publish e-books.  It is astounding, and I love the fact that I can finally deliver this book to readers, and do it quickly without waiting a…

April 2010 On Sale: April 13, 2010 Featuring: Jane Slayre; Mr. Rochester 402 pages ISBN: 1439191182 EAN: 9781439191187 Paperback $15.00  Add to Wish List Paranormal, Fiction Buy at Amazon.com The best way to read Jane Eyre Jane Slayre by Sherri Browning Erwin “READER, I BURIED HIM.” A timeless tale of love, devotion . . . and the undead. Jane Slayre, our plucky demon-slaying heroine, a courageous orphan who spurns the detestable vampyre kin who raised her, sets out on the advice of her ghostly uncle to hone her skills as the fearless slayer she’s meant to be. When she takes a job as a governess at a country estate, she falls head-over-heels for her new master, Mr. Rochester, only to discover he’s hiding a violent werewolf in the attic—in the form of his first wife. Can a menagerie of bloodthirsty, flesh-eating, savage creatures-of-the-night keep a swashbuckling nineteenth-century lady from the gentleman she intends to marry? Vampyres, zombies, and werewolves transform Charlotte BrontË’s unforgettable masterpiece into an eerie paranormal adventure that will delight and terrify. Previous Picks

I can’t fathom writing a novel without weaving suspense and romance into the plot. The idea of two people falling in love while sharing danger has my fingers poised to type 95,000 words filled with a new adventure. The hero and heroine are independent people who show a strong reliance on each other to solve a crime. No weak heroes or wimpy heroines, simply two people who initiate action and are committed to whatever is ahead. They refuse to stop their investigation until the villain is arrested—or has met his/her demise. Along the way they find an appreciation for the strengths and values of the other. He pulls her from a burning car, and she pulls the trigger at the precise moment to save him. They are self-sacrificing and capable of great love. After spending all that hair-raising time together, the two experience a sundry of emotions, and their hearts take a dip into new territory, often more frightening than physical danger: love. When you think about it, love is suspenseful. Adrenaline flows like a waterfall racing down a mountain slope. In some instances it’s forbidden. Hearts pound like a tympani on steroids. Take a look at the characteristics: Pulses…

June 2010 On Sale: June 8, 2010 Featuring: Anna Karenina; Count Alexei Vronsky 320 pages ISBN: 1594744602 EAN: 9781594744600 Paperback $12.95  Add to Wish List Fantasy Steampunk Buy at Amazon.com So true you’ll want to read the original… Android Karenina by Leo Tolstoy, Ben H. Winters Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters co-author Ben H. Winters is back with an all-new collaborator, legendary Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy, and the result is Android Karenina an enhanced edition of the classic love story set in a dystopian world of robots, cyborgs, and interstellar space travel. As in the original novel, our story follows two relationships: The tragic adulterous love affair of Anna Karenina and Count Alexei Vronsky, and the more hopeful marriage of Nikolai Levin and Princess Kitty Shcherbatskaya. These characters live in a steampunk-inspired world of robotic butlers, clumsy automatons, and rudimentary mechanical devices. But when these copper-plated machines begin to revolt against their human masters, our characters must fight back using state-of-the-art 19th-century technology and a sleek new model of ultra-human cyborgs like nothing the world has ever seen. Filled with the same blend of romance, drama, and fantasy that made the first two Quirk Classics New York Times best…

I was talking with my husband the other day about how children say they are “bored” when they’re at an event that they don’t enjoy. That statement didn’t make much sense to me, and I realized it might be directly related to my profession. As a writer, I think I view everyday actions differently than most. When I’m walking down the street, I’m thinking about the people, shops, and even the vehicles, from the perspective of how they can be weaved into a storyline. Something as simple as taking out the trash can, in my mind, turn into an abduction. Take CHASING AMANDA, for instance. Molly Tanner got into her car in a Walmart parking lot and saw a man trying to get (what looked like) his daughter into his vehicle. The child was struggling, trying to avoid the restrictions of the seat belt. Everyday occurrence? Not on that day. In MEGAN’S WAY, when Olivia found herself in the hands of an attacker, she had started out by simply using a social network. Again, common occurrence, but it was twisted and turned into something vastly different. Perhaps if children (and adults) viewed their surroundings with a tad bit more curiosity,…

Thanks so much for having me here today to talk about the seventh book in the Cat Star Chronicles, VIRGIN! I thought I would let my characters do the talking… Marla: Hello! This is Marla Elkhorn, interviewing Cheryl Brooks, Dax Vandilorsk, Ava Karon, and Waroun, the author and main characters of The Cat Star Chronicles: Virgin, which was released earlier this month from Sourcebooks Casablanca. It’s such a pleasure to have all of you here today on Fresh Fiction. Waroun, I understand you claim responsibility for the pairing of Dax and Ava. Would you care to tell us about that? Waroun: Oh, absolutely! I’m the only reason they’re together today. Mainly because I didn’t steal the lovely lady right out from under his nose. Dax: Really? I thought Threldigan was the one trying to steal her. Cheryl Brooks: (scratches head) That’s what I thought too, but then, I’m only the one who wrote the book. What do I know? Waroun: (waggles his sucker-tipped fingers) Ava’s essence was so delicious! Ava: Not sure you ever got that much of it. Waroun: (regretful sigh) Once was enough. Marla: Ahem. Well… moving right along… Ava, what can you tell us about yourself? Ava:…

Like many readers, I have always loved LITTLE WOMEN and read it many times. But I didn’t know very much about Louisa May Alcott until I picked up a biography of her at the library. What I learned was surprising and intriguing. Louisa wrote many more novels and stories than just LITTLE WOMEN and its sequels. Some of what she wrote was considered so sensational, it was published under a pseudonym or not published at all and later found among her papers. Speaking of her papers, she burned a lot of them, journals and letters, before she died. That piece of information, along with questions that had lingered for me about why Louisa wrote LITTLE WOMEN the way she did, prompted me to consider writing a novel about the young author. That was when the real research began. I read every biography of her and her family that I could find. Interestingly, they varied in tone and slant, which is how I learned the truth about biographies: They say more about the biographer than the subject of the book. From there, I went on to read the journals and letters that remain, collected by a family friend after Louisa’s death….

May 2011 On Sale: May 3, 2011 Featuring: Louisa May Alcott; Joseph Singer 368 pages ISBN: 0425240835 EAN: 9780425240830 Paperback $15.00  Add to Wish List Historical Buy at Amazon.com Twisted classic in form of “what if?” The Lost Summer Of Louisa May Alcott by Kelly O’Connor McNees In the bestselling tradition of Loving Frank and March comes a novel for anyone who loves Little Women. Millions of readers have fallen in love with Little Women. But how could Louisa May Alcott-who never had a romance-write so convincingly of love and heart-break without experiencing it herself? In her debut novel, The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott, Kelly O’Connor McNees deftly mixes fact and fiction as she imagines a summer lost to history, carefully purged from Louisa’s letters and journals, a summer that would change the course of Louisa’s writing career—and inspire the story of love and heartbreak between Jo and Teddy “Laurie” Laurence, Jo’s devoted neighbor and kindred spirit. In the summer of 1855, Walt Whitman’s controversial Leaves of Grass has just been released, and the notion of making a living as a writer is still a far-off dream for Louisa. She is twenty-two years old, vivacious, and bursting with…

Reunions are tricky and usually I avoid them. But when I had the chance to reconnect with a childhood girlfriend, I jumped at it. I’m speaking of course about the sleuth of my mystery series, Louisa May Alcott. I read LITTLE WOMEN several times in my early years; Jo was a model for me, a girl of strength and strong opinions, independent, temperamental, yet also solid, steady, gentle. Later I realized that Jo was Louisa’s alter ego: both of them were writers, both chose independence and work over being a wife and mother, both worked hard to keep the wolf from the door and their family intact. Working with Louisa as a character in my novel, LOUISA AND THE MISSING HEIRESS, required getting to know her very well. I read her works, this time delving particularly into some she published under a pseudonym, the somewhat lurid tales she called her ‘blood and thunder’ stories. Because Louisa was a lady from a good family, when she wrote fiction of what some might deem a questionable nature, she did not use her family name. But the reasons for sometimes publishing under a pen name are deeper than that: Louisa and her family…

September 2010 On Sale: September 28, 2010 Featuring: Jane Austen 320 pages ISBN: 0061958301 EAN: 9780061958304 Trade Size $13.99  Add to Wish List Jane Austen, Paranormal Historical Buy at Amazon.com Twisted take on Jane Austen Jane And The Damned by Janet Mullany It’s more than her wit that’s biting… Jane Austen Novelist . . . gentlewoman . . . Damned, Fanged, and Dangerous to know. Aspiring writer Jane Austen knows that respectable young ladies like herself are supposed to shun the Damned—the beautiful, fashionable, exquisitely seductive vampires who are all the rage in Georgian England in 1797. So when an innocent (she believes) flirtation results in her being turned—by an absolute cad of a bloodsucker—she acquiesces to her family’s wishes and departs for Bath to take the waters, the only known cure. But what she encounters there is completely unexpected: perilous jealousies and further betrayals, a new friendship and a possible love. Yet all that must be put aside when the warring French invade unsuspecting Bath—and the streets run red with good English blood. Suddenly only the staunchly British Damned can defend the nation they love . . . with Jane Austen leading the charge at the battle’s forefront. Biting…