I am a child of the country and grew up near a very small town, so that life was familiar to me. As for coming up with the town, I knew it had to be southern, and there is no state more southern that Georgia and old southern charm. There is a LilyAnn in everyone’s high school. The smartest, prettiest girl who made everything look easy and garnered all the awards, then never quite figured out how to transition that success into adulthood. I wanted to write about a woman like that who found a way to put the past aside and step into her own. Here is a sneak peek of YOU AND ONLY YOU: Lily was busy putting up new stock, mostly oblivious to the customers coming and going. She opened the top on another box of painkillers, checked to make sure the unit price was the same as the shelf price, and then began sliding the bottles into place. She heard footsteps coming down the aisle and absently stepped to the side to let them pass as she continued to work. Instead, the footsteps stopped and then someone tapped her on the shoulder. “Excuse me, lady. Where…

The books in the Willow Park Series are named NOBODY’S ANGEL, NOBODY’S FOOL and NOBODY’S PRINCESS—I’m guessing you’re seeing a pattern here. Despite being the last book in the series, NOBODY’S PRINCESS got its name first and provided the framework for the other two. But just what makes Tiffany Desjardins NOBODY’S PRINCESS? On the surface, she is a princess, from her size 2 Versace dresses all the way down to her Jimmy Choos. But Tiffany gave me the chance to explore something about women that is a bit of a hobby-horse of mine. Women and our sense of self. As women we go from being somebody’s daughter, to somebody’s wife, and in some case, somebody’s mother. It’s so easy to lose who we are in that process. In addition, society has long defined our value by the way we look. Although this is changing, traces of it still linger, and far too often well fall into the trap. Tiffany has spent her life defined by other people. First her father, then her first husband and now, her fiancée. As a beautiful girl, she has also become valued only for what she looks like, and has shaped her entire identity around…

In November, I was fortunate to participate in a boxed set with ten other awesome romantic suspense authors, and feature the novella, True Navy Blue. This was the beginning of Zak and Amy’s story. Once high school sweethearts, they hook up one final time before Zak goes off to the Navy to fulfill his goal of becoming a Navy SEAL. At the end of the novella, we are left with Zak and Amy foiling a terrorist attack in San Francisco at the Ferry Plaza complex, when Amy frantically calls on Zak for support after he has just received his Trident. The full length book just released: True Blue SEALs: Zak, takes the story further to Zak and Amy’s wedding, and his first deployment on a super secret mission in the Canary Islands off the coast of North Africa, where the balance of power in the region is threatened. Zak returns home a different man than the one who left. We have the usual cast of regulars, including Zak’s LPO for SEAL Team 3, Kyle Lansdowne, Fredo, Cooper, Armando, T.J. and several of the bachelor SEALs, including Lucas, Alex and Carter, as well as wives and families. Brothers to the end….

I have often been asked if I am anything like the main character in my Culinary Competition mystery series, Amy Ridley. There are a few things, like we are both short and blonde, but the biggest connection is a mutual love of trying unusual foods. Amy uses the unique ingredients she finds to develop prize-winning recipes. While I have never competed in a culinary competition, I write my foodie finds into my books. There’s a running joke in my family that the odder a food is, the more likely I’ll buy it. Fermented foods, condiments and dried goods like unusual varieties of rice or ancient grains are some of my favorite things to buy. Recently, on a trip to Detroit’s historic Eastern Market, I stopped by a store that had a large selection of bulk foods from shawarma spice to dried beans. I got a small bag of Scarlet Runner Beans, which I’ve had fresh but never dried, and another variety of bean that I had never heard of before – Lupini. When I got home I decided to look up directions for how to prepare the Lupini beans. I clicked on a blog post with instructions and, I admit,…

Hi, ya’ll. I’m Romance author Min Edwards and I’m a misplaced Texan. I was raised in the Texas Panhandle in an oil refinery company town. I think most of those have disappeared now, but it was an interesting place to grow up. I left that oil refinery behind as soon as my high school diploma was in my hot little hands and journeyed off to college, Texas Tech University, married, and also left as soon as that BA degree in Anthropology was mine… didn’t even wait for the ceremony. I then spent a few years, eleven to be exact, in far-flung places, the Philippines, London, Cuba (Guantanamo Bay), London again, Maine, then back to Texas for the next few decades. During that time I went back to school—I seem to be a perpetual student—and received an MA in Anthropology from The University of Texas at Austin. In 2011 I got a wild hair up my… well you know where… and left all my friends, family and the vibrancy of Austin, and moved lock, stock and barrel—and there were a lot of barrels—to the upper coast of Maine. So far up that I’m even several hours east of Bar Harbor! I…