Ah, summer. It’s a time that’s ripe for romance, don’t you think? I love it when weather places a central part in the story. Sounds kind of crazy but hey, if it’s cold outside, don’t you want to snuggle up with a big, warm man under a cozy blanket? Or stare at that gorgeous guy wearing only swim trunks as he struts around the pool on a hot summer day? Yeah. Me too. Currently in central California (where I live), we are in the depths of summer. We’re talking it’s bone melting hot. Add smoke from nearby fires and the air quality is awful. This doesn’t make me feel very romantic. It just makes me wish for cooler temperatures and pumpkin spice lattes… But I digress. What I do adore is a fun summer romance novel. There are so many out there, I can’t name them all, and yeah, I’ve read too many to count. Jill Shalvis is my go to for a solid, sexy contemporary romance—and she uses weather in her stories almost like a secondary character. I love that! I like to lose myself in the summery details. The characters are hanging out by the pool or the…

We are finishing up the audio book this week for Nashville SEAL: Jameson. This will be the 25th audio book I have done with the same narrator, J.D. Hart. Mr. Hart himself was a country western star in Nashville as a younger man, and played world-wide on tour. He then went on to a successful acting career, as well as being a voice-over talent, and now audio book narrator. I didn’t know J.D. at all when we first started, but over the course of the past two plus years, we’ve gotten to be best friends. I quizzed him about his earlier days, and his stories inspired my Nashville SEALs series with Jameson Daniels, as my hero. J.D. graciously allowed me to infuse some of his stories into the books. So now that we’ve completed Nashville SEALs, and are nearly completed with Nashville SEALs: Jameson, we’ve come full circle. The stories he’s told me have become my stories, and now he’s telling them back through my words and imagination. As best friends, we work so seamlessly together, it’s just amazing. Here’s my blurb for Book 2, which is a continuation of the story in Book 1, the novella. For a brief…

With the lush PBS Masterpiece series “Indian Summers” soon to begin Season Two, it’s time to look at another round of novels that explore the exotic, complex world of the British Raj in India and the struggles for Indian independence. Beginning with the earliest-set book, we have THE LINNET BIRD by Linda Holeman. Born Linny Gow in the slums of Liverpool in the early 1800’s, forced into prostitution at age eleven by her stepfather, the tenacious and enterprising Linny manages to escape that life, reinventing herself as a seemingly respectable middle-class young lady. Her friendship with a merchant’s daughter puts her into position to accompany the girl to India as part of the “fishing fleet,” young women of good birth but no fortune who sail to the subcontinent in search of husbands. With the threat of discovery always looming over her, Linny snares wealthy British officer Somers Ingram as a husband, only to discover that violence and danger can lurk in other places besides the back alleys of Liverpool. But Linny hasn’t traveled this far to yield to unpleasant circumstance; using all her inventiveness and tenacity, she will find a way to claim the freedom—and love—she’s always wanted. THE LINNET…

Nina Croft’s, CHOSEN, book 1 in the Laws of Segregation, is free for three days only: 23 – 25th August 2016 On the world of Arroway, witches have been persecuted for a thousand years. Now, Tallon, Enforcer for The Order of Warlocks has been sent to hunt and destroy Shayla, a powerful, young witch. But when he sees her, she awakens something inside him—some connection forgotten in the years of persecution. And when he starts his spell, she counters with magic so strong it rips them from their own world and into a new one—Earth. Drawn together as unlikely allies in this strange new world, Tallon and Shayla must work as partners to find a way home. They relearn the bond that long ago tied witches and warlocks as one, and in doing so discover that not only is their future at stake, but the future of their whole world. Download from Amazon CHOSEN by Nina Croft Laws of Segregation #1 Novella / Short Story | Fantasy | Romance Paranormal [ e-Book] Buy CHOSEN: Kindle | Amazon CA | Amazon UK | Amazon DE | Amazon FR

Dani pointed to the far wall of cages, oblivious to his disgruntlement. “Those are all the dogs whose time here expires. Feel free to take them out into the holding room”—she indicated a white door that had a sign reading holding room— “and do whatever you gotta do.” Turning her back on him, she squatted down in front of a large cage and opened it. Tyler bent down to see a massive gray dog with black spots and stripes. The dog lifted his head slightly, his floppy ears pricking as she cooed. “Hey, Fugly, how you doing, bud?” Dani’s hand glided over the dog’s head and neck, and he relaxed back on his side with a whimper. “What happened to him?” Tyler asked. “Someone hit him with their car. A yard crew behind them stopped and picked him up, brought him here, but there’s only so much I can do. The X-rays show he needs leg surgery, but my regular doctor is off today, and the prick subbing for him won’t do a damn thing to help.” Tyler came closer, squatting behind her. The dog lifted his head and met Tyler’s gaze with soft green-gray eyes. Rex’s eyes had been…

There is a contradiction at the heart of the HEAT series, and in particular A LOVE TO KILL FOR. Sex, violence, wry humour, conspiracy and intrigue – and love. The whole theme – the whole point – of Heat is that Liam Murdoch, the quintessential male archetype, is fighting against love to preserve his most valued possession. His independence. Liam Murdoch is your mother’s worst nightmare. He has a degree in calculating the odds, and a major in lock picking, from the University of the Mean Streets of LA. He owes nothing to anybody, and when he sees something – or somebody – he wants, he plays the odds and takes it – or her. He is unattached and likes it that way. His one passion is his freedom and playing the odds in life. In his book, all women are bad news, and the one thing he does not need, is love. He is the hunter, the predator. Love is a weakness, and he is anything but weak. And then he meets Catherine Howard, the ultimate, archetypal woman, embodying every contradiction under the sun. She is cold as ice, calculating and ruthless, yet at the same time she is…

That is a common question I’m asked when I introduce myself to someone as an author. And, although it sounds vague when I answer “everywhere,” that is the truth of the matter. I started making up stories in my head when I was a young girl. Long road trips (no iPads, iPhones, or portable DVD players in those days) were the perfect place to imagine myself in all sorts of interesting situations. I also used that same method when I was falling asleep at night. I would climb into bed and refresh my memory on where the story stopped the previous night, then pick it up from there. Much to my parents’ amazement, some nights I was anxious to go to bed, just so I could continue my story. Years later, when I worked in Manhattan, I took a train from my home in New Jersey, and most times the same people would be on the train each day. To amuse myself, I made up stories about them. I had a lengthy story going one time that covered weeks, concerning the woman next to me, who had a husband—sitting on my other side, who was cheating on her, with the…

When I began to write FORGED IN FIRE, book 3 of the Delos series it was to introduce Matt Culver, one of the three Culver children who would eventually take over and run Artemis Security. It would be a Delos charity secret, in-house firm created to lend security to the 1,800 charities they had around the world. The more I got into FORGED IN FIRE, Beau Gardner, a West Virginia hill boy, who was a sergeant in Delta Force and in Matt’s unit at Bagram, just kind of took a more important part in the over all plot. As always, I have a plot, but when I sit down in the morning to start another chapter, I may have a vague idea of what’s going to happen, but not “exactly” what will emerge in the plot. Beau Gardner was that kind of secondary hero, in the background, but he emerged later in the book to take on a far more important part in it. And by the end of Matt’s book, I knew I had to write Beau’s book, and his story of escape with Callie McKinley, Dara’s sister. Their story was no less intense, cliff-hanging, filled with danger and…

To tell you the truth, I have no idea where the plots of my books originate. Not really. Not even when I’m writing them. For me, a book comes together in chunks. These chunks are of different sizes, ranging from huge (the identity of the killer, say) to very small (the name of a new restaurant in town). The other thing that keeps me from remembering where I get my ideas is my incredibly poor memory. Case in point: a couple of months ago I was talking to some nice ladies who knew I also wrote the PTA Mysteries under the name Laura Alden. They asked about the motive of the killer in that book and—please believe me when I say I am not making this up—I had no idea who killed the victim, let alone why. It was not a proud moment in my life, and I’m sure those nice ladies think I’m a nutcase (“You wrote the book and you don’t remember?”) but I truly could not summon up the killer’s name. And I never remembered to go back and look so I still don’t know. Anyway, CAT WITH A CLUE started with the following idea: What if,…

The sign in the window of a hardware store on the Main Street of Dubois, Wyoming, stopped me in my tracks. Butch Cassidy? Here? I opened the heavy oak door and stepped into a treasure/junk hunters’ dream. Everything you can imagine had been jammed onto sagging shelves and hung from hooks: shovels, axes, pitchforks, hammers, screws, nails, hinges, brackets, chains, knobs, saddles, tack, chaps, ropes, gun racks, guns, oilcans, generators. Smells of dust and grease and dried leather clogged the air. Yes, I could imagine Butch Cassidy browsing through all this stuff. Tacked on the wall was a poster of Butch himself with his wide grin and cowboy hat and the story of how he used to shop here in 1890 to buy supplies for his ranch just outside of town. Just outside of town? That meant Butch Cassidy had ranched next to the Wind River Reservation which lies south of Dubois. I couldn’t believe my luck. I had been writing crime novels set among the Arapahos on the reservation for almost twenty years. Before that I wrote history, and I will forever remain a history nut. Even though my novels are contemporary, with two modern-day sleuths, Vicky Holden, Arapaho…