I’m going to let you in on a little secret. Ready? Okay, here goes. I have a secret love affair with the best friend’s little sister love trope. Yep, you heard me right. I love it. LOVE. It. Madly, truly, deeply. There’s just something about a forbidden romance on that kind of level that gets me hooked on a story. Most of the time, the trope has an older brother (or four, if you’re talking about my newest release, THE CEO’S SEDUCTION, the first in an exciting new series) who absolutely does not approve of the sister and his best bud dating. Because of this, you have an automatic tension in your book that sizzles, snaps, and pulls you in. There’s the secrecy of the love affair, something both the heroine and hero will fight to keep… But you know it’s all gonna come out eventually, and when it does, which way will the cards fall? Will the hero bail, and apologize to his best bud, or will he stand by the heroine’s side, and take whatever comes his way, all in the name in love? If I’m being one hundred percent honest, I think that’s my favorite moment in…

Remember finals? The last-minute scrambling? The late-night pizza and Mountain Dew fueled explorations into complex topics that, when illuminated by morning and a couple hours of sleep, failed to retain that brilliant, panic-enhanced hue? And then handing in something you feared might just be garbage? You would have thought we’d have learned. But here we are, a couple of weeks from Christmas, madly surfing Amazon for gift ideas and tossing the decorations at the tree with Whoville efficiency. How does this happen every year? If you are a writer, or anyone else who works with deadlines, this time of year can be especially sleep-deprived. And it doesn’t help much that it’s now dark before dinner. Suddenly 5:00 feels like 10:00, and I spend a significant portion of my day dedicated to yawning. And I wasn’t there, but I’m relatively sure that when the gods of the work calendar congregated to decide how long we should have to accomplish any given task, they began with a blank calendar. If a job is to take three weeks, it should take three weeks in December just like it would in May. Not so much. At least if you have a life. So here…

GIVEAWAY: a copy of SLEIGH BELLS RING Admit it. You love Christmas romances just as much as I do. Why do these stories touch our hearts so profoundly? Because every page engages our five senses of sight, smell, hearing, taste, and touch. They evoke our memories of the scent of mulled cider sipped near a real Christmas tree. The way a warm sugar cookie melts on our tongues. Curling up under a cozy afghan in front of a crackling fire. Imagining the soft touch of his finger stroking the curve of our cheek. Christmas carols add the background music to our own romantic Hallmark movie. Christmas is the season of miracles, and we want to believe in miracles. But most of all, it’s the season of love. Sweet romance novels stoke our imaginations with the possibility that we, too, will live happily ever after with our one true love. SLEIGH BELLS RING is a collection of four contemporary Christmas novellas in which each Tucker sister is the heroine of her own story. The Tucker girls have inherited their father’s Kentucky horse farm for Christmas. Make that . . . a run-down horse farm. It needs some serious TLC in order…

Excerpt -Mated to the Vikens Erik, Planet Viken, Viken United Compound, Transport Center Nerves made my heart beat faster than I wished as I watched my two brothers-in-arms. Gunnar, with his black hair and blacker heart, stood silent and still as a statue as we waited for our mate to arrive via transport. He’d vowed not to love her, but Rolf and I didn’t need him to do so. “How long must we wait?” Gunnar turned on the Viken warrior behind the transport station, every line in his body screaming of his irritation. “For someone not interested in a mate, you’re fucking impatient,” I countered. While the other two stood near the transport area, I leaned against the wall. Gunnar regarded me over his shoulder with a look that screamed fuck you. “Not long, sir,” the attendant said. “The transport signal is strong. Your mate should arrive in the next few minutes.” “Relax, Gunnar,” Rolf said. He could always calm our friend. “Earth is a long way from here. A long, long way.” They stood shoulder to shoulder. Next to Gunnar’s darkness, Rolf looked like a beacon. Always smiling, his pale blond hair and bright green eyes nearly made him…