I may have written a book entitled PERFECTED, but that doesn’t mean I believe in perfection, or that I even strive for it. In my novel, the main character, Ella, was bred to be the perfect pet. She was raised to put her masters’ happiness before her own. In return, she’s been promised a perfect life, one of idle luxury, one of comfort and stability, but ultimately a life that doesn’t truly belong to her. At first, Ella’s new life at her masters’ house seems charming. Her owners surround her with beautiful things: fancy cars, expensive houses and fine clothes. It isn’t until she finds herself falling for Penn, her master’s son, that her perception of the world begins to shift. This world might appear perfect from the outside, but it’s only a veneer. Scratch the surface and there’s ugliness underneath. I don’t know anyone who could be considered perfect. Do you? Someone who always has their hair perfectly coiffed first thing in the morning, whose home is immaculate and never suffers from an occasional nervous breakdown? It may be that people like that actually exist in reality, but I certainly don’t know any of them. Our flaws are the…

Does anyone enjoy a bad dream? I hate nightmares. I go out of my way to avoid anything that has the potential to produce negative, terrifying thoughts that might creep into my subconscious and come to life while I sleep. If I see something frightening on the news, accidentally find myself in a movie that has too much violence or any amount of horror (before I run out of the theatre), or if a real life incident gives me the chills, I have to put sweet thoughts into my head before going to sleep. I will curl up with a happily ever after book or watch ten to fifteen minutes of a sappy movie before turning out the lights so that my last waking thoughts are pleasant ones. Yes, I am a bit of wimp. And I’m okay with that. In my new novel, SHENANDOAH DREAMS, Melissa Smith believes she is experiencing one heck of a nightmare. Melissa is chaperoning her sixth grade students on a week-long sailing cruise aboard the historic schooner Shenandoah. This is her fifth year on the trip, and she’s expecting it to be her best yet. Sleeping in the only cabin that is board for…

I have a friend who used to cut right to the chase whenever we saw each other after a long absence.  “New?” she’d say instead of “Hey, how are you, what’s new?”  Put on the spot, my mind always went blank.  “Not much.  You?” Things constantly happen, there’s always something new to share, yet we often don’t think our “stuff” is interesting enough—well, at least that’s how I feel—to tell the other person about.  My friend, Linda, must have thought I was the most boring person on the planet, when I was actually being humble. And considerate. On the other extreme—raise a hand if this rings a bell—how many have friends who think every little detail of their lives is worth sharing?  Admit it, you’ve made excuses to avoid them.  Ever seen someone like that in a store and pretended you didn’t notice them?  Who’s willing to admit that?  I’ll go first – YES. Is it human nature, or am I just weird? (Fingers crossed I’m not the only person in the world who does this.) When Fresh Fiction offered me the guest blog spot for today, I jumped at the chance, because there does happen to be something “new”…

YAY! It’s time to celebrate! The second book in my New Jersey Ice Cats series, A PERFECT TRADE, is out! As regular visitors to my blog posts here know, this is Tru and Jenny’s story. Readers first met this couple in A PERFECT DISTRACTION and it was clear from their first interaction, that there was a problem between them. Here is a brief reminder. In this scene, Maggie meets Jenny for the first time at an Ice Cats’ team dinner:   “Hello, gentlemen.” A throaty voice curled around them, like the tendrils of smoke from a vamp’s cigarette in a film noir. Maggie recognized the blonde—Jenny, queen of the puck bunnies. The players welcomed her with enthusiasm as she walked around the table greeting them. “Ice Man. Chance. Blade.” Each name was accompanied by a touch, a brush against a shoulder, a tap on the arm. “Mad Dog.” Vlad grinned as she reached him. “Remember me, Jenny?” “Detroit. The natural hat trick.” Her eyes twinkled. “You scored the overtime winner with fourteen seconds left.” “A memorable night.” From the Russian’s tone, he didn’t mean the goal. Jenny laughed. She trailed a French-tipped finger along his shoulder, then moved on. “Juergen Ingemar….

Let’s start with the basics. Kathy Lyons has a new book out! It’s hot contemporary, and it’s about… A. Her fantasies about her older brother’s best friend. B. Her fantasies. She doesn’t have an older brother. C. Jade Lee’s older brother’s best friend. D. Even Jade doesn’t have an older brother. E. A woman who has loved a good person since they were kids and now has two weeks to find out if their attraction is real. Answer: E, though almost all the others are true. I don’t have a brother, but I have wondered about what he’d be like. And even more important, what his best friend would be like. (And in case you wondered, Jade Lee is my historical name. Yes, I’ve a split personality). True or False? 1. In her fantasies, Kathy’s brother looks and acts like Dr. Simon Tam from Firefly. A hottie who gives up everything to save his sister from evil baddies. Answer: False. Anyone that hot is not related to me. 2. Her brother’s best friend is just like Jay Chou, aka Kato from The Green Hornet movie. Answer: True. In my fantasies, my brother has a zillion hot best friends. 3. The…

Naming a book is kind of like naming a baby—you want to go with something you love, but also something that “fits” and is unique enough to be remembered. It’s a tall order! So what’s an author to do when faced with naming a whole series worth of books? Enlist help, of course. The original title of book one in the Pine Mountain series was IT’S NOT YOU (because poor Bellamy Blake hears that an awful lot). But my editor and I wanted something more romantic, so I put the question to my critique partners. They put on their thinking caps, and came up with TURN UP THE HEAT. It set the precedent for the slight foodie theme, but then I realized I had three (at the time) more books to go. Thinking caps back on. Book two is head chef Carly di Matisse’s story, and I wanted something really special. She’s one of the most central characters in the series, in charge of the kitchen and the other chefs…but not quite in charge of her heart. Carly needs a place to belong, and to discover that she can be loved by a good hero, right where she is. So…

Thank you for having me. I’m very excited to be here and so happy that today is release day for my debut novel FIND MY WAY HOME. A contemporary story about a small town Southern gal wanting more from life and thinking if she could only hit the road for the big city, she might find what she’s looking for. *cough, cough* Well, we all know that’s not necessarily true. Bertie Anderson, wants to make it big as an interior designer. She’s three weeks away from reaching her goal when she’s given the challenge of redesigning the old Victorian in town she’s always dreamed about. But there’s a catch: if she finishes in three months, she’ll be rewarded with a big bonus. Big. Piece of cake, right? It would be if her client wasn’t bad boy Keith Morgan, retired tennis pro and single-dad-on-the-edge. Keith has moved to Harmony, NC with a huge chip on his shoulder (along with a ton of guilt) to make a better life for himself and his ten-year old daughter. What he’s not prepared for is small town, Southern quirkiness, his aunt’s ultimatum to get married in three months, and his uncontrollable attraction to his maddening…

I hear tell that some authors don’t like that question. Not me! Maybe because I have a great memory—but mostly because it’s fun to retrace, for myself and readers, how disparate images and incidents came together, shifted, and took shape on the page. In CRIME RIB, second in my Food Lovers’ Village Mysteries (out July 1), the TV show Food Preneurs comes to Jewel Bay, Montana to film the 35th Annual Summer Art and Food Festival and its centerpiece, the annual steak grill-off. My protagonist, Erin Murphy, manages a grocery specializing in local foods. After disaster struck the village in DEATH AL DENTE, Erin is content this time to stay on the sidelines, keeping her focus on the Merc and scouting festival vendors for new products. When the show’s producer is killed in a hit-and-run, Festival organizers beg her to step in and help out, to give Jewel Bay a shot at national publicity. How can a local girl say no? But when the host reveals a less than camera-ready side of himself, and a contestant is attacked and killed, Erin worries that the town’s reputation as a family-friendly, food-loving, vacation village will go up in flames. And when the…

Oh, Brody, Brody, Brody. #Swoon (hopefully you’ll be saying the same thing when you read SHARING YOU) Brody is a character you might want to shake, but you can’t help but falling in love with. He’s been married to a woman for six years, but he fell out of love with her long before they married, and he’s more than positive that his wife never loved him. By trying to do the right thing by her, he ended up entering into a life that would slowly break him. His spirit, his fire for life, pretty much everything that makes Brody Brody has been dying since he married Olivia Reynolds. But he feels responsible for her, he feels like he owes it to her to take care of his wife who is only a shell of the girl he fell in love with in high school, and what kind of a man would he be if he left her? So every day he goes home to where his wife may or may not be, and stays on his side of the house to avoid her unless she’s having one of her psychotic fits … we’ll call them “episodes” for now ……

HOW TO MARRY A COWBOY, Mason and Annie Rose’s story, is the final book in the Cowboys & Brides series that started out with BILLION DOLLAR COWBOY last year. Mason was one of four cowboys who showed up on my porch a couple of years ago. They were all sexy as the devil in blue jeans. They had hats in hands and were there to ask me to write their story. And I refused. They were all rich cowboys and I had no idea how to write about the rich and famous. But I did listen to them a little and it didn’t take long for them to convince me that they were really good old boys and that the money didn’t make them any different than the other cowboys I’d written about. I didn’t realize until I started writing HOW TO MARRY A COWBOY that Mason Harper had two personal rules and he’d never crossed the line before. The first one was to never get involved with a woman in the house, no matter who she was and the second one was to never get involved with the nanny of his twin daughters, Lily and Gabby. Then Annie Rose shows…