With a summer movie line-up that looks like the shelves of the young adult section in my favorite bookstore, I guess I’m not the only one who thinks YA novels make excellent cinema. By June 11, 2014, the film adaptation of DIVERGENT had earned nearly 268 million worldwide. In one week, THE FAULT IN OUR STARS raked in 79 million. THE GIVER, a film adaptation of Lois Lowry’s Newberry Medal-winning young adult novel, comes out in August 15, 2014 and a film adaptation of THE MAZE RUNNER by James Dashner is coming September 19, 2014. Hollywood has taken an interest in the young adult market, and they’re looking to what teens are reading to find amazing stories that translate into movie magic. This is by no means a new trend, but it continues to be an advantage for book fans and movie fans alike. Fantastic novels reach a far wider audience once they’ve been adapted, and teens who might not normally read over summer break might be tempted to give the novels a try. YA novels that are adapted into movies are chosen in large part because of you, the fans. You talk about the books you’re reading. You recommend…

As a historian, my historical romance novels have a firm grounding in reality. The settings, the events, the feel can be traced through research and research and research of the period, of the people, of events. In THE WICKED BARGAIN, Ethan’s story of being taken by the Barbary Pirates and sold into slavery in the Middle East is based on fact. The Barbary Pirates exist even to this day. These are not the pirates like we love in Pirates of the Caribbean, nor even Black Sails or the latest Crossbones. Pirating for hundreds of years, they strike fear into any ship they come close to. They raid, seize control of the ship, take prisoners and loot only to sell the people into slavery. History also shows they have arrived and landed on Greece, Italy, Sicily, Spain and up to the British Isles. They leech off the close seaside inhabitants, kidnapping them at night to make a profit off them to buyers in the Arabia and elsewhere. The Western European powers and the United States found the way to be left alone is to pay the pirates a bribe to do so, or, in Great Britain’s power, a well-armed navy escort…

Ernest Hemingway exuded a brand of masculinity and a philosophy of life that has been a fascination to both men and women. Men admired his adventures in World War I, the Spanish Civil War and World War II along with his legendary hunting and fishing expeditions. Women were charmed by his masculine self-confidence and good-natured story-telling. Marlene Dietrich called him “the most fascinating man I know” and said he “found time to do the things most men only dream about.”  She was right. He courted life-threatening adventures, glamorous friends while writing articles, novels and short stories that captivated the world. As a former English teacher at Hemingway’s alma mater, Oak Park and River Forest High School, I first explored Hemingway’s high school years as a means of my engaging students in his novels.  My students were quick to view Hemingway as a legendary author who led an action-filled life, but many felt that their own lives paled in comparison to his and that being in school was often “just boring.” My students’ attitudes inspired me to do some research on Hemingway’s life as a high school student.  I studied his yearbooks, his high school writing and even met some of…

It’s release day For ONCE UPON A HIGHLAND AUTUMN! It’s a pleasure to be here at Fresh Fiction to share this day with you. I also thought I’d share some of my deep, dark writerly secrets today, and tell you a bit about the story behind ONCE UPON A HIGHLAND AUTUMN. ONCE UPON A HIGHLAND AUTUMN is the second book in the Once Upon A Highland series, which began with Once Upon A Highland Summer. Each book in the series has a different magical theme, an otherworldly, mysterious edge. Highland Summer featured a pair of meddlesome ghosts, who return from the grave to see that their descendants find the love, fortune, and happiness they themselves missed out on. In ONCE UPON A HIGHLAND AUTUMN, it’s Megan MacNabb’s turn to be caught up by mysterious forces, this time an ancient curse. ONCE UPON A HIGHLAND AUTUMN is actually two stories in one. Megan and Kit’s love story is interwoven with the tale of how the dreadful curse that lies upon Glen Dorian came to be, a tragic story of love, loss, and war, that is still awaiting an ending when Kit and Megan’s story begins, some seventy years later. Now for one of…