In 1820, author Washington Irving published a short story called “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” which is still an American classic to this very day. If you do the math, you’ll see that this story is almost two hundred years old. So, why do some stories continue to be popular generation after generation? Well, aside from Irving being one of the first authors to make it BIG in 19th Century America, so big, in fact, he paved the way for other famous writers, such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and even beloved goth man, Edgar Allan Poe, Irving’s story tells some universal, timeless themes, and here they are in no particular order: GHOST STORIES WILL ALWAYS BE COOL – As long as humans have lived on Earth, ghost stories have been around to scare off our knickers. Our fascination with death and what lies beyond is bred from our fear of the unknown, so stories of darkness, things that go bump in the night, and wispy wraiths moaning about unfinished business will always be popular. In “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” the old wives of the town insist that the valley is filled with seen and unseen things, and trust…

It seems that every romance reader has their own personal favorite tropes that they’re drawn to when they select a romance to read. You know, those little hooks like secret baby, enemies to lovers, brother’s best friend stories that they just can’t get enough of? One of my longest standing favorite tropes is the Ugly Duckling to Swan/Makeover trope. You know, when the girl, for whatever reason, is never really “seen” by the man of her dreams until some miraculous makeover? Fortunately, my idea of a swoony-worthy ugly duckling retelling has changed from when I was thirteen to now. Back then, it seemed the idea was that WE had to be the ones to change, like poor Sandy did for Danny in Grease. Today I’m glad that we can recognize that if our heroine ended up with a guy who only saw her AFTER the big makeover, she’d be stuck with a superficial twit who never really loved her for her inner beauty and character. When I set out to write this ugly duckling story, I wanted the woman to be funny and spirited and already attractive in her own personal way—but lacking the confidence to see herself in the…

In my most recent two books – RESISTING THE REBEL and THE REPLACEMENT CRUSH – the heroes save the heroines from creepy guys. Both books are definitely rom-coms, but deal with an important issue facing girls and women – jerk guys who intimidate and bully girls to try to get what they want. While I consider myself a strong feminist and completely support girls standing up for themselves in every way possible, there are times when it’s not enough- when someone else needs to step in. Standing around as a disapproving spectator doesn’t cut it – good guys need to step in. In RESISTING THE REBEL, the hero Caleb has the school “bad boy” reputation, while the real bad guy Gus puts on a phony act to try to win over Mandy, the heroine. However, as the story progresses Caleb realizes what Gus is up to, so he sets out to 1) prove to Mandy that he’s the better guy, 2) protect her from Gus, and 3) demonstrate his superior kissing skills, because this is a rom-com, after all. In THE REPLACEMENT CRUSH, Jake the Snake is a more serious threat. He intimidates the heroine Vivian and threatens her, after…

About MAY THE BEST MAN WIN Opening five lines: On the upside, the prelude had already begun, and chances were good that Mozart’s Sonata in E-flat Major pumping through all those organ pipes would cover any sounds of distress emanating from St. A’s sacristy. Jase Foster crouched in front of Dean Skolnic, groom du jour, and cursed. This had to stop happening. “You think she’s gonna notice?” Dean asked, wincing as Jase pulled one strip of duct tape after another off the garbage bag of ice currently secured to Dean’s shoulder. “The arm?” Jase clarified, because while he wasn’t an every-Sunday kind of guy, they were in a church so he couldn’t flat-out lie. Theme: Enemies-to-lovers, second-chances Inspired by: An intense discussion over the myriad flavors of “HOT” guys came in…and the subsequent dive into Pinterest’s man-candy files that left me with a handful of “tuxedo-fine” morsels, and a story idea about a group of best men I just couldn’t ignore. Order: First in the Best Men Series MAY THE BEST MAN WIN Scrap book: https://www.pinterest.com/miralynkelly/may-the-best-man-win/ About Emily Klein… Emily’s first thoughts about Jase: Best man her butt. Seriously, how did Jase Foster keep getting this gig? Obviously, the guys…

  He’s quiet. My other characters made things (relatively) easy for me. They let me use their voices to establish personalities and explain things and move the plot forward and all that good—and necessary—stuff. George, though…George is not a talker. He made me work for it. Instead of words, I had to use body language and facial expressions and grunts to define him. Despite this, it was surprisingly fun to write George. Once he did start speaking to Ellie, everything he said had extra importance. He’s like that quiet person we all know in real life. When that person finally says something, we all go quiet and listen. He’s willing to change. There’s something so special about his conversations with Ellie. He doesn’t talk to anyone else, but he’s willing to push himself out of his comfort zone because there are things he wants to say to her. This shows how very important Ellie is to him. It was late in final edits (really, really late) before my editor realized that George never told Ellie he loved her. We hadn’t noticed that scene was missing because it was so obvious that he did. After all, he talked to her. Of…

My idea way to spend a Saturday? Is that a trick question? You’re asking a writer who works at home and whose kids are grown up and aren’t going to school any more. If I don’t look at the date up at the top of my computer screen, I rarely know what day of the week it is. And I only look at the date to see how much time I have before the next deadline. Even so, there is something special about Saturdays that goes back to childhood. When I think about Saturdays, memory transports me back to a time then I was about twelve years old. Saturdays were magical back then. School was over for the week, you could wear blue jeans instead of school clothes, and Sunday stood there as a buffer between Now and Monday. I don’t know if my Saturdays all had a sameness about them then, but I remember them all following the same pattern. My friends and I went to the movies. First we gathered at somebody’s house to decide which movie to go to. There were three movie theaters in our neighborhood, the Earle on 74th Street, the Colony on 82nd Street,…

There’s a fine line between love and hate. So it’s no surprise that “Enemies to Lovers” is one of the most popular tropes in all of storytelling. From Jane Austen to Julie James, from Shakespeare to soap operas, the push/pull between a hero and heroine as they go from “I hate you” to “I love you” can be entertaining to watch. Instalove, or love at first sight, definitely has no place here. Hollywood has certainly made a buck or two producing romantic comedies that put the hero and heroine at odds from the very beginning: The Proposal, Sweet Home Alabama, You’ve Got Mail. Kate Moseley, the heroine in The Cutting Edge described the trope perfectly: “Did you ever play with magnets? You know how you used to have to push them around and they’d push away. You’d push them around the table when all you really had to do was flip them over. And then suddenly… Don’t you see? That’s why everything has been so awful. All we needed was a little flip.” Aaah… the flip. Isn’t it glorious? That’s what has us all waiting on the edge of our seats. Or in the case of romance novels, turning the…

Since I’m a secret readaholic who loves cloak and dagger mysteries, my choices this week shouldn’t put you at death’s door or make you scream bloody murder. They should make you want to step into the garden where time stands still for your very own suspenseful reading gala. If you haven’t caught on yet, you will when you see my top three choices of cozy reads this week. Come on! The festival’s about to begin and there are three mysteries waiting to be solved! Find the clues, and you just might solve a murder! CLOCK AND DAGGER by Julianne Holmes Clock Shop Mystery Expert clockmaker Ruth Clagan has another murder on her hands in the second Clock Shop Mystery from the author of Just Killing Time. Ruth has three days to pull off four events—including the grand reopening of Cog & Sprocket, the clock shop she inherited from her grandfather—so she doesn’t have time for Beckett Green’s nonsense. The competitive owner of a new bookstore, Green seems determined to put other businesses out of business by also carrying their specialty items. He’s trying to steal Ruth’s new watchmaker, Mark Pine, not to mention block her plans to renovate the town…

Hi! I write the Cookbook Nook Mysteries, which means I spend a lot of time researching cookbooks and recipes. Poor me! Also, because I include recipes in my mysteries, I do a lot of taste testing. Feeling sorry for me yet? Probably not. You would if I was a lousy cook, but I’ve been cooking all my life. I catered during high school, and I ran a restaurant in my twenties. However, my protagonist, Jenna Hart, a former advertising executive who moved home to the seaside town of Crystal Cove, California to help her aunt open the Cookbook Nook, a delightful bookstore packed with cookbooks and cooking items, is not a cook. She needs simple recipes, i.e., 5-ingredient recipes. To help Jenna, I include a simple recipe that she could whip up in each book. FYI, she’s determined to become a better cook. In fact, in GRILLING THE SUBJECT, she has advanced to ten-ingredient recipes. How? Because Katie, the chef at the Nook Café, is teaching Jena to think of dry ingredients as one “recipe” and the liquid ingredients as another “recipe.” Then she can combine the two recipes into one. Two fives add up to ten. Does that make…