In 1999 I first came up with the idea for the world of Elenchera and more than a decade later it comprises twenty-three lands, 500+ maps (I wish I was joking!), 47,000+ years of events spread across twenty-five Shards (or ages) of history. I wanted a fantasy world that had something unique about it just as Tolkien’s Middle Earth, Pratchett’s Discworld and Lewis’ Narnia all have. While I would never preach that Elenchera should be spoken in the same breath as those worlds I do feel after more than a decade of work that it has something special about it. I love history, always have and always will. It was my favourite subject at school and whatever aspect of history I had to study I never struggled to find something of interest. When I first began building Elenchera I turned to our own history for inspiration. Reading Cassell’s World History from cover to cover I not only learned about some interesting events but I gained an understanding of how many societies have developed, their innovations, reasons for fighting wars and how every powerful empire eventually falls with the passing of time. Elenchera is a world that begins with an almost…

Call Of Duty #2 April 2010 On Sale: April 1, 2010 Featuring: Danika Morales; Alex North 400 pages ISBN: 1414320515 EAN: 9781414320519 Paperback $12.99  Add to Wish List Inspirational Fiction Mystery, Suspense Buy at Amazon.com Resonates with today’s headlines. Sworn To Protect by DiAnn Mills Danika Morales has sworn to protect our borders. But that oath has come with a price. Two years ago, her husband was shot and killed trying to help undocumented citizens—the very people Danika is responsible for deporting as a border patrol agent. His murder was never solved. Now, a recent string of attacks and arrests leads Danika to believe her husband’s death wasn’t just a random act. It may be part of a larger conspiracy, and it appears that she’s the next target. When the Border Patrol discovers that one of their own is leaking top-secret information, Danika turns to the only person she can trust—a doctor at the local medical clinic. Together they search for answers before more innocent lives are destroyed. . . . her writing has been compared to another outstanding Christian writer, Dee Henderson. Excerpt Chapter 1 McAllen, Texas The Rio Grande River separating Mexico and the US was not just…

Last year when I began writing my Immortal Series with Red Sage, I set out to create a different breed of immortals. I’d read vampires, shifters, fairies, and demons. I wanted something a little more human, with human traits and normal lives, but with the added complication that these characters didn’t die. I get a lot of questions about my immortals. So today, I’d like to introduce them to you. Making: An immortal shares his/her blood with the dying. Not through fangs, but by conventional means of cutting. My immortals have been known to run onto crash scenes armed with pocket knives to rescue victims. They’ve also used shards of glass to slice the flesh of themselves and a mortal, pouring their blood into their veins. Immortals can die at the hands of other immortals. If they lost their footing and fell off a cliff, they wouldn’t die, but if another immortal pushed them—delivering the death blow, so to speak—they would perish. Only with other immortals are their lives challenged, which sometimes makes for a volatile situation if a new immortal comes into their midst. In my latest release, TREFOIL, the heroine Lillian has mortal frailties, which can happen if…

As a child and young man, I was a voracious reader of 19th century seafaring novels and obscure early 20th century adventures about spies and bomb-carrying anarchists in Europe.  I had fire in my belly and the books I read helped fuel it.  But I always wanted to translate the escapism of the books into a life of real adventure.  So, when MI6 tapped me on the shoulder after I left university, I accepted its offer of employment without hesitation. I was an MI6 field operative who worked at the sharp end.  I travelled the world alone, met the bravest men and women, did great things, terrible things, hard things, witnessed unbelievable heroism, and saw deprivation, sorrow, love, compassion and death. Some of the things I saw and actions I made affected me but not as much as you may think.  I was young, fuelled by my passion for adventure and an unrelenting motivation to combat bad people’s intentions towards the west. I have the luxury of pausing and looking back at that life now.  I am older, wiser and have a few more inches on my waistline.  But I never paused for a moment in those days.  Not once….

June 2011 On Sale: June 1, 2011 Featuring: Hope McNeill; Max 304 pages ISBN: 042524119X EAN: 9780425241196 Paperback $16.00  Add to Wish List Fiction, Mystery Cozy Buy at Amazon.com A mystery not just for dog lovers A Pug’s Tale by Alison Pace There are pugs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art! In the many years that Hope McNeill has worked at the museum, this is the first time she’s been able to bring along her pug, Max. (Officially at least. Previously she’s had to smuggle him in inside her tote bag.) The occasion: a special “Pug Night” party in honor of a deep-pocketed donor. Max and his friends are having a ball stalking the hors d’oeuvres and getting rambunctious, and making Hope wonder if this is also the last time she gets to bring Max to the museum. But when a prized painting goes missing, the Met needs Hope’s–and Max’s–help. In her quest for the culprit, Hope searches for answers with an enigmatic detective, a larger-than-life society heiress, a lady with a shih tzu in a stroller, and her arguably intuitive canine. With luck, she’ll find some inspiration on her trips to Pug Hill before the investigation starts going downhill……

I’m addicted to writing books. Reading them, too. Writing and reading and true love and chocolate–life doesn’t get much better than that. Well, maybe watching The Princess Bride while munching crème donuts. When I was in grade school one of our assignments was to read a poem in front of the class. I couldn’t decide between Alfred Noyes’ “The Highwayman” and Shakespeare’s “Venus and Adonis” (I love horses). Why yes, I was an overachiever, why do you ask? I chose Alfred Noyes. The bell rang before I finished and no one moved. At that moment I decided I’d be an actress when I grew up. And I’d write a romance inspired by my favorite poem. I’ve achieved both goals, although THE LANDLORD’S BLACK-EYED DAUGHTER took longer (I played Nellie is South Pacific at age 19). First, I want everyone to know that THE LANDLORD’S BLACK-EYED DAUGHTER has a happy ending. And now…here’s an excerpt:   1 April, 1787   Elizabeth Wyndham gazed at her reflection in the mirror above her dressing table. Dispassionately, she scrutinized her ink-black hair, which fell in ringlets on either side of her face, not unlike a spaniel’s ears. A scowl caused her delicately arched brows…

Wacky & Wild Mystery #7  April 2011 On Sale: April 5, 2011 Featuring: Edwina; Darla Denman; Debbie Sue 320 pages ISBN: 0061910147 EAN: 9780061910142 Trade Size $13.99 Add to Wish List Mystery Private Eye, Mystery Woman Sleuth Buy at Amazon.com A mystery to laugh with… I Can’t Make You Love Me, But I Can Make You Leave by Dixie Cash Darla Denman, the former Queen of Country Music, has trouble on her hands. First, her career ain’t what it used to be – she’s gone from big arenas to run-down bars and first-class jets to fourth-class buses. Second, that fourth-class bus has plum stopped working just outside of Salt Lick, Texas, and sure enough, there’s barely enough money to fix it. Third, someone has gone and murdered Roxie Jo Jenkins, her ex-husband’s new wife and her current pain-in-the-you-know-where opening act. Now Domestic Equalizers Debbie Sue and Edwina are on the case. These two best friends, hair dressers turned private eyes, are determined to help the singer they idolize while staying out of heap of trouble they normally find themelves in (and can’t you just hear their put-down husbands laughing at that?). A comeback tour ends with a former star in…

Q: Your newest book takes us back to Fool’s Gold, California. It’s a town with more men than women and yet you never seem to have a hard time working in smart, hunky guys. Tell us about Finn, the brooding pilot who makes our heroine Dakota swoon in ONLY MINE. Do you find it’s harder to write the male or female characters, and why? I don’t find it difficult to write from the male perspective. In some ways, it’s easier because men tend to cut to the chase more quickly than women. They think in straight lines, whereas we women take a circuitous route. One of the things I love best about writing is the freedom to slip into my characters’ heads and to look at the same event from different perspectives. I think it makes me more empathetic in real life, too. Q: When you first created Fool’s Gold and started writing novels based there, did you have upcoming characters–like Dakota and her sisters–in mind, or has that come since you created the town? How has the series evolved? I tend to think about a year ahead. So while I wrote the 2010 Fool’s Gold books, yes, I did…

August 2011 On Sale: July 26, 2011 Featuring: Jaine Austen 304 pages ISBN: 0758238479 EAN: 9780758238474 Hardcover $22.00  Add to Wish List Mystery Amateur Sleuth, Mystery Cozy Buy at Amazon.com Our summer mystery picks Pampered To Death by Laura Levine Jaine Austen is looking forward to an indulgent spa getaway— until she learns it’s more about deprivation than relaxation. Between miniscule meals and a deadly brush with fame, surviving this vacation will be no piece of cake… When Jaine’s friend Lance surprises her with a trip to The Haven, an über-luxe health spa on the California coast, she and her feline pal Prozac are eager to hit the road and bask in a week of pampering and pedicures. But upon their arrival, she discovers that this oasis in the hills is merely a fat farm in disguise, complete with celery-juice cocktails, humiliating weigh-ins, and a zero-tolerance position on carbs. And as she gets to know her fellow inmates, she realizes 300-calorie dinners aren’t the craziest thing she’ll be dealing with. Among her bulge-battling companions is Mallory Francis, a B- list movie star with a knack for making frenemies with everyone she meets. When she’s found strangled during a seaweed wrap…

I have a confession. OK, I probably have a lot of them. For the sake of this blog post though, we’re focusing on the fact that I’m an utter moron when it comes to movies and television. I lack the attention span for either one, so when I’m asked the inevitable, “which actors and actresses do you imagine playing your characters in the movie version of your book?” I freeze. I was asked to blog about this a few weeks ago at The Debutante Ball, and spent hours browsing online so I wouldn’t look like a complete idiot. I eventually came up with a photo of a younger, curly-haired Meg Ryan and another shot of Pierce Brosnan. It was as close as I could come to my mental picture of my heroine and hero from MAKING WAVES. A friend emailed right away to remark on my choices. “Um, have you actually seen any movies in the last ten years?” Define “seen.” Does falling asleep halfway through count? So my friend helped me assemble a cast list I must grudgingly admit is much better than mine. Here are the ideas… Juli, my plucky, spunky, smart-as-a-whip heroine: Kate Hudson. This actually makes…