This summer, a fiction writer/blogger declared that all writers must revise their books according to reader reviews. Now let me be the first to state that I love my readers. A lot. My readers have given me lots of ideas and motivation. For example, the readers were the first to ask me if Sancho Panza, who first appeared in UTTERLY CHARMING, would get his own story. Hmmm. Write about a guy who resembles Travelocity’s roaming gnome? As the hero? Really? Okay. I decided to give it a go, and that resulted in COMPLETELY SMITTEN. Readers have asked if I would write more about the Fates, and I did in the Fates Trilogy. (You can get all three books in one volume as an e-book.) Readers who’ve finished my latest, CHARMING BLUE, want Tank’s story, and believe me, I’m considering it. (But I’m also rather fond of Ramon and Gunther as well.) Yet I think rewriting to reader reviews is a bad idea. It would be a great idea if every reader said the same thing. But they don’t. For instance, after Sourcebooks offered WICKEDLY CHARMING for free as an e-book promotion last fall, I got two back-to-back reviews. The first…

Sometimes I want to stand up and announce, “Yes, I write romance books and I’m damned proud of it!” But I haven’t yet. I don’t shy away, either. I’ve had more people give me strange looks when I mention I write romance. I usually get hear responses like, “Oh, you write those kind of books.” Or one better: “I don’t read trashy books.” Well, someone is because romance accounts for over half of book sales each year. Which is a good comeback line in case you need one. But just for the record, I write erotic romance with a touch of quirky humor. I want to make the reader laugh, and I want to make them turn the ac down a bit. I want to entertain you, and hopefully, I will. I also write what I like to read. One of my favorite storylines has always been the ugly duckling who turns into a beautiful swan so in WHERE THERE’S A WILL I played around with that theme. Haley, the heroine, lives her day to day dreary life with no hope of change until she does a week’s worth of work for a coworker that she has a crush on….

What do you get when you force two sworn enemies in to a marriage of convenience? Opposites attract and attack! Andreas Ferrante had already chosen a suitable bride and was about to ask her to marry him when he got the news about the conditions on his late father’s will. He must marry Sienna Baker – the woman he has loathed since she was a troublemaking teenager – in order to claim his inheritance. Sienna is the last woman on earth he would ever choose to be his bride! Sienna has done everything she can to avoid coming into contact with the brooding Andreas over the last few years. She knows what she did to him all those years ago was wrong but she also knows it’s too late to undo the damage. But she needs money and it is rather a large fortune to be had! But marrying him? A massive fortune, two strong wills and a monumental attraction that has simmered for years is brought out into the open and it’s fireworks from day one. Andreas and Sienna start out as enemies but eventually find that hate is very definitely a two-sided coin! Do you think love and…

My “first novel” was called INVASION OF THE MUTANOIDS. Yeah, you read that right. I started scribbling it out in an unlined art book in the winter of 1988.  I had just turned nineteen.  I eventually “published” the book myself in the winter of 1998, after being turned down by every imprint I submitted the damn thing to.  In the ten year gap, in addition to being a writer, my job description included: dishwasher, prep cook, adult book store manager, cameraman for a religious talk show, film director, musician, producer of audiobooks . . . oh, and for an entire year, I paid the rent by selling my body to science.  (This was, incidentally, how Robert Rodriguez footed the bill for his first feature film El Mariachi—and when I say that, I mean that this was exactly the way he did it.  See, the medical research lab I volunteered at was the very same place Robert did his time in my hometown of Austin, Texas;  Inspiring, no?) During this ten years, I banged away on the novel, never quite sure if it was done, moving forward in fit and starts, like many young writers do when they are first getting…

April 2010 On Sale: April 19, 2010 180 pages ISBN: 1603810463 EAN: 9781603810463 Kindle: B003UBPAWE Paperback (reprint) $12.95  Add to Wish List Mystery Cozy Buy at Amazon.com Delightful tale of an English fete, reissued in case you missed it! Mrs. Malory And The Festival Murder by Hazel Holt Writer Sheila Malory, seen before in Mrs. Malory Investigates and other mysteries, visits the annual Taviscombe Festival, which has been appropriated and aggrandized by Adrian Palgrave, a poet and biographer of little renown. Palgrave, who has been named literary executor for writer and man-of-the-world Lawrence Meredith, a leading literary figure of the 1920s and 30s, is found beaten to death during the first performance of the festival, and suspects are all around. TV documentary-maker Oliver Stevens fears disclosure of an affair. Young Robin Turner, treasurer for the festival, had been criticized frequently by the dead poet Two other deaths and an attempt to destroy Meredith’s papers lead Sheila to search for long-held secrets that bred fatal consequences. Previous Picks

July 2012 On Sale: July 17, 2012 336 pages ISBN: 0765327341 EAN: 9780765327345 Kindle: B007NJ66B8 Hardcover $25.99  Add to Wish List Thriller Buy at Amazon.com Events at festivals – in this case a pre-WWII suspense A City Of Broken Glass by Rebecca Cantrell In Rebecca Cantrell’s A City of Broken Glass, journalist Hannah Vogel is in Poland with her son Anton to cover the 1938 St. Martin festival when she hears that 12,000 Polish Jews have been deported from Germany. Hannah drops everything to get the story on the refugees, and walks directly into danger. Kidnapped by the SS, and driven across the German border, Hannah is rescued by Anton and her lover, Lars Lang, who she had presumed dead two years before. Hannah doesn’t know if she can trust Lars again, with her heart or with her life, but she has little choice. Injured in the escape attempt and wanted by the Gestapo, Hannah and Anton are trapped with Lars in Berlin. While Hannah works on an exit strategy, she helps to search for Ruth, the missing toddler of her Jewish friend Paul, who was disappeared during the deportation. Trapped in Nazi Germany with her son just days before…

September 2012 On Sale: September 4, 2012 Featuring: Elizabeth Parker 304 pages ISBN: 1250007429 EAN: 9781250007421 Kindle: B008VA7ELE Hardcover $25.99  Add to Wish List Mystery, Mystery Amateur Sleuth Buy at Amazon.com Time for festivals and in this case, murder Murder Most Austen by Tracy Kiely A dedicated Anglophile and Janeite, Elizabeth Parker is hoping the trip to the annual Jane Austen Festival in Bath will distract her from her lack of a job and her uncertain future with her boyfriend, Peter. On the plane ride to England, she and Aunt Winnie meet Professor Richard Baines, a self-proclaimed expert on all things Austen. His outlandish claims that within each Austen novel there is a sordid secondary story is second only to his odious theory on the true cause of Austen’s death. When Baines is found stabbed to death in his Mr. Darcy costume during the costume ball, it appears that Baines’s theories have finally pushed one Austen fan too far. But Aunt Winnie’s friend becomes the prime suspect, so Aunt Winnie enlists Elizabeth to find the  professor’s real killer. With an ex-wife, a scheming daughter-in-law, and a trophy wife, not to mention a festival’s worth of die-hard Austen fans, there are  no shortage…

Every reader has a keeper shelf tucked somewhere.  A place for those books too special to part with, many of which might be autographed and personalized. But now e-readers are changing the face of the book industry.  What will happen to the keeper shelf as there are fewer print books around?  Several New York publishers are already moving from releasing mass-market (paperback) print editions to purely e-books.   And it’s not just about having something tangible to hold in your hands. There’s a bigger issue. I’ve noticed a disturbing trend at signings these past couple years.  As e-readers grew in popularity, fans who were buying more e-books started bringing their actual electronic reading devices to be signed.  The problem with that is that at some point they would upgrade to a new e-reader and, after years of use, the signature would probably wear off. Fans wanted to meet us–the authors– and get their “books” signed, but they didn’t have a physical book to bring in.  Plus, many bookstores are now requiring readers to purchase a book at their store to attend a signing, and some are either preventing or limiting any backlist books readers would otherwise bring in.  Fans carry in…

Vampires. They’re a subject near and dear to my heart, whether they be sparkly, terrifying, seductive or I-vant-to-suck-your-blood… I don’t care what form they come in. When I decided to write KISS OF STEEL, which is set in a Victorian-era world ruled by the blue bloods of the Echelon, I knew I wanted to use the vampire myth somehow. My blue bloods are gentleman who deliberately infect themselves with the craving virus in order to become elite; making them stronger, faster, invulnerable to illness or injury… and with a thirst for blood. Women are denied the Blood Rites for fear their gentle natures won’t be able to control the strong hungers that develop, their purpose in life to become a blue blood’s thrall – or blood slave. The craving virus gifts its bearers with many advantages but there is also a cost. Over the years the virus eventually colonises the body, and the Fade begins. The first signs are albinism and the faint, decaying stench of rot. Eventually the victim evolves into something more. A creature with no reason, driven only by its hungers and its invincible strength. A vampire. History is full of supposed vampires and their legends. Whilst…

Sugar Land Mystery June 2012 On Sale: June 5, 2012 Featuring: Walker “Bear” Wells 352 pages ISBN: 0425247732 EAN: 9780425247730 Kindle: B0073XV22W Paperback $15.00  Add to Wish List Mystery Buy at Amazon.com An unlikely post-career for a football player…minister solving a murder! Faithful Unto Death by Stephanie Jaye Evans Everything looks perfect in Sugar Land, Texas. But it’s not. No one knows that better than Walker “Bear” Wells, a former college football player now serving as a minister in this upscale Texas town, where famous athletes mix with ranchers and the local parish priest wants to arm wrestle. It’s a beautiful master-planned community, but people can’t be held to neighborhood restrictions, and Bear deals daily with emotional and spiritual problems, in both his flock and his own family. But never murder. Not until a man is found dead on the nearby golf course, his skull crushed. Bear has no interest in playing detective. His job is praying for the dead, not searching for their killers. But every time he turns around, another facet of the investigation tangles with his own life…like the fact that the murdered man’s son—and a main suspect—is currently dating his own rebellious teenage daughter. He made…