THE SEDUCTION OF KINLEY FOSTER is a book that gets into full swing when the heroine ends up on a plane full of individuals who sell guilty pleasures. You know – those sex toys you have stashed in a drawer near your bed. What? You don’t have one of those drawers. What are you waiting for…get yourself some toys. No – you are not too old for such nonsense. I promise. Now that we all have the same drawer, or are in the process of getting such a drawer, I thought I’d share with you my top ten guilty pleasures in life. Calling in sick on a rainy day and reading a book from my to-be-read stack. I feel luxuriously sinful sitting by a window and listening to the rain and thunder while reading an awesome book on a day I should be at work. Not that I would ever do such a thing. Having an evening at home alone and no one to cook dinner for. I don’t mind cooking, but deciding on what to cook day-after-day-after-day wears me down. So any day I don’t have to decide what to cook is blissful. Dark Chocolate Dove bar every evening…
I’ve been skinny—or even average-sized—a vanishingly small proportion of my life. For a couple of decades, charitable observers might have called me chubby. In more recent years, though, chubby no longer suffices. I’m big. Fat. Plus-sized. Call it whatever you want, but I’m not the sort of woman who can simply stroll into a random store at a mall, pluck something off a rack, and expect it to fit. I’m also not the sort of woman who shows up on the covers and in the pages of most romance novels. But growing up, that didn’t stop me from searching desperately for heroines who resembled me. I hoarded the rare Silhouettes, Harlequins, and other books with plump lead characters. I didn’t always love the way their weight was addressed, but I was so desperate for any fictional representation of myself that I didn’t really care. Those books reassured me that I too deserved a happily ever after. I too would find love and have lovers—ones who wouldn’t simply overlook my weight, but find me beautiful. So I read and reread my stash of plus-size romances compulsively, hoping in their pages I’d find the certainty I lacked in real life. Over time,…
Things are a little rough for Izzy Lane. Still reeling from the break-up of her marriage, the newly single mom moves back to the Philadelphia home she grew up in, five-year-old Noah in tow. The transition is difficult, but with the help of her best friends—and her elderly neighbor, Mrs. Feldman—Izzy feels like she’s stepping closer to her new normal. Until her ex-husband shows up with his girlfriend. That’s when Izzy invents a boyfriend of her own. And that’s when life gets complicated. Blogging about her “new guy” provides Izzy with something to do when Noah’s asleep. What’s the harm in a few made-up stories? Then, her blog soars in popularity and she’s given the opportunity to moonlight as an online dating expert. How can she turn it down? But when her friends want to meet the mysterious “Mac,” someone online suspects Izzy’s a fraud, and a guy in-real-life catches her eye, Izzy realizes just how high the stakes are. That’s when Mrs. Feldman steps in, determined to show her neighbor the havoc that lies can wreak. If Izzy’s honest, she could lose everything, and everyone. Is the truth worth any cost? Writing a Woman’s Life columnist Yona Zeldis McDonough…
Sometimes (usually) when I sit down to begin a new mystery, I literally freeze. “Breathe,” I remind myself. So I do, slowly. In and out. That blank computer screen is sometimes as terrifying to me as rewatching The Shining. And that’s where I am these days—staring at the screen, trying to remember how I started MURDER AT LAMBSWOOL FARM (the newest seaside knitters mystery) as I begin the next one. What came to my mind first as I began writing MURDER AT LAMBSWOOL FARM? The murderer? The motive? The victim? The answer came to me with a start. It wasn’t any of those things. In the case of the Lambswool Farm book, it was an article I read about an organic farm that hosted dinners in a beautiful field, the well-set table groaning with the farm’s fresh produce. It had little to do with a murder, but was rather a place where I’d be happy to spend the months I would devote to writing the book. So I began creating the farm itself, its fields and lambs and a barn turned into my dream kitchen. Without a murderer. A victim. A motive. It’s the way I write: scene by scene,…