Enjoy an excerpt from AVALANCHE where the hero and heroine meet! First meetings are the best! Excerpt Fireworks exploded across the dark sky, but Jenny Snowfeather hardly noticed. The news about the cabin break-in had cast a shadow over her brother’s Fourth of July barbecue. She’d suspected a bear at first, until she learned two hunting rifles and ammo had been stolen, along with food and blankets. A bright flash startled her. “Watch out!” a man cried as the stray spark zoomed toward her like a small meteor. She spun around to escape, slamming right into the man and his plate of barbecued chicken. He grabbed her, stumbled, and pulled her with him to the ground. A second later, the blazing miniature rocket whizzed over their heads and crashed into the lawn only a few feet away. She squeezed her eyes shut at the near miss. When she opened them, Jenny found herself face-to-face with the handsome stranger. His large, brown eyes stared back in surprise. Her gaze traveled to his arm, sheltering her body. Quickly, he withdrew it and rolled over, raising himself to his elbows. “That was a close one. Are you okay?” She sat up and lightly…

Hello, everyone! Victoria Blue and Angel Payne here, saying hello once more! We’re the team behind the SECRETS OF STONE romance series, with Book 4, NO MAGIC MOMENT, newly released! In all of our books, but especially with Michael and Margaux’s journey, we love to explore all the “unique” details of our characters’ lives, including the day-to-day personality traits that make them tick. A lot of our readers ask where we come up with such interesting quirks for the Stones and their friends–and we often say we draw on a lot of the weirdness from our own lives. Over the years, as friends, we’ve learned a lot of these things about each other, and we thought you’d might have fun taking a peek at our weirder sides, as well. We like to call this… “Guilty Pleasures with Victoria and Angel”. We hope you enjoy! How many do you agree with? What are your own guilty pleasures? Pop Star: Victoria: Taylor Swift Angel: twenty one pilots Broadway Musical Song: Victoria: Seasons of Love from Rent, of course Angel: Unexpected Song from Song and Dance “Calories Aren’t a Problem” Dessert: Victoria: Apple pie a la mode Angel: A Farrell’s Tin Roof Sundae…or…

Hello All! For those who don’t know me, I’m A.M. Griffin and I write smexy stories of alien abductions, vanilla stories about invasions and teenage love and I’ve just added sexy paranormal wolf shifters to my repertoire. I’m so excited about this new series and I’m happy that the readers can take this adventure with me into my new paranormal world. LOVER CLAIMED is the second book in the Dark Wolf Enterprises series. The first book in the series is titled SHIFTER CLAIMED. Dark Wolf Enterprises is a multi-million dollar investment company owned and operated by a family of wolf shifters, the Farkas. Unfortunately for the brothers and owners; Andras, Kristof and Lajos Farkas, someone is embezzling millions of dollars from their company. LOVER CLAIMED picks up where Lajos has separated from Kristof at Trudy’s house. Lajos has a simple task, to take Trudy’s dog to her best friend Meisha’s house and then to go to Trudy’s business to look for any clues left behind by the other shifters who attacked her. The problem? Meisha Komano doesn’t take kindly to coming home to find a stranger in her kitchen. The stranger could be one of the drug fiends from her…

For more than twenty years, America has been obsessed with reality TV. Something about watching “real” people engage in a variety of activities calls to our inner voyeurs. Producers love reality TV because it costs less to produce than a scripted series. Americans love getting a peek at outrageous activities and cutthroat competitions. Let’s take a look at some of the good and bad things reality has to offer. The Good: Anyone can be on a reality show, claiming their fifteen minutes of fame, even if they aren’t an actor. All you need is a sense of adventure, the willingness to try something that seems a bit wild, and the ability to not go to work for the duration of filming. When Jen gets laid off at the same time her apartment converts to condos, she doesn’t know what to do with her life. Going on the show gives her a chance to decompress and figure things out while competing to earn enough money to help her pay off her debts. It’s a win-win situation. The Bad: Reality TV also tends to bring out the worst in people. From Puck on the Real World to Omarosa on The Apprentice to…

My grandmother was an Edwardian. Whenever I say or think that it makes me realize just how close the first decade of the twentieth century actually was and at the same time what a colossal difference there is between my life in America now and the Edwardian attitudes to class, social conventions and the formality that existed between parents and their children in England when my granny was a girl. Florence Violet Williams was born in 1895, she was nineteen at the start of World War I. When her fiancé, Raymond, was killed in the Battle of Somme in 1916 Florence never thought she would marry. But she did. She married my fun-loving grandfather – George Dudley who survived the war in Mesopotamia to sweep her off her feet at a dance held in the house of a neighbor. The grandmother I knew had a cloud of white hair and large, dark eyes. Like many women of her age she never raised her voice, but she was a huge stickler for the rules. I never saw her in pants, and she always wore a hat when she went out and if you wore a hat you had to wear gloves…

When I’m strolling Riverwalk in New Orleans, with thick fog rolling in and the mournful toot of a tugboat off in the distance, I have every confidence that I can convincingly capture this ethereal moody image on paper – even though I don’t actually live there. I’m one of those authors who buzz in and out of cities to snatch a quick whiff of atmosphere and head-spinning locale. And I really love it that way. Because when I visit New Orleans, I’m dashing around that grand old city at breakneck speed, tasting oysters, downing an Ibita Beer while listening to zydeco music, sneaking into above-ground cemeteries, and buying potions and spells at French Quarter voodoo shops. These are all fabulous elements that come together and form a kind of author’s gumbo that I can sprinkle like zesty herbs throughout my Scrapbook Mysteries. The same goes for Charleston, South Carolina, the setting for my Tea Shop Mysteries. Charleston is another old-world city that’s filled with history and mystery. They’ve got narrow alleys where duels were fought, Revolutionary War-era graveyards, spooky old plantations, the pounding surf of the Atlantic, and historic grande dame homes along with old Huguenot families with plenty of…

I loved writing COLD PRESSED MURDER, the second book in Berkely Prime Crime’s OLIVE GROVE MYSTERY series, following ONE FOOT IN THE GROVE. One of the elements I’m most excited about in this second cozy mystery is the recipe section at the end of the book. Each recipe featuring olive oil is taken directly from the pages of the story. And one of my all-time, most favorite recipes was developed just for this story! Precious Darling’s Famous Cold-Pressed Olive Oil Peach Cake is to die for. It’s dense, super-moist and sweet—but not too sweet. And it’s deliciously satisfying, especially when topped with fresh fruit. Happily, when I developed and tested the recipe, it was during peach season here in Virginia. So once I nailed the recipe down, I baked one final version, sliced myself a fat piece of warm cake, and slathered that puppy with fresh peaches and freshly prepared whipped cream. Not normally a cake person, I was on cloud nine devouring the fruits of my labors! Moreover, the cake tasted absolutely scrumptious the next morning when I had a piece for breakfast, topped with a medley of fresh fruit and yogurt. Needless to say, my olive oil cake…

The heroine of my Profiler series, Evelyn Baine, is kind of a badass. Not in the walks-with-swagger, carries-a-big-gun and takes-no-prisoners kind of way you might expect, but in a quiet, ultra-observant way. The FBI authorizes her to carry a badge and a gun on her hip, but she rarely uses them. Most of the time, it’s her intellect that has law enforcement officers across the country asking for her help. She’s a profiler for the Bureau’s elite Behavioral Analysis Unit, which means that instead of leading an investigation and chasing suspects, she travels to a much scarier place: into their minds. It’s her job to figure out not just what kind of person committed the crime she’s been called to profile, but also how police can find him and what he’ll do next. Throughout the course of my Profiler series, Evelyn’s ability to predict the next moves of serial killers, child abductors, terrorists and kidnappers has put her into their paths. Along the way, I’ve gotten to show some of her physical strength, too, but also how she outwits criminals into underestimating her. Regardless of her tiny, 5’2” frame, she’s still got FBI tactical training and more than her fair…

Ask me how much fun it is to kill people and to eat fab food! But believe me, it is not for the feint of heart. We can all handle the murder part because what’s a cozy mystery without some (off screen) bloodshed? But writing a culinary mystery adds another ingredient – food stress. Believe me. It’s great fun plotting a new book. By the time I started this second one in the Dinner Club Mysteries, ROUX THE DAY, the characters were my old friends. The task is finding ways to make sure readers feel that way too, while knowing these characters must face challenges that will in some way change them or the way they look at the world. Without losing the friendship of readers. The setting, Half Moon Bay, a quaint village-like community in Burlington, VT remains the same for each book. Although this time the body is found at a fundraising Casino Boat event, miles from shore, cruising on Champlain Lake. The victim is TV personality Miranda Myers and her co-emcee, Connor Mac, shares a past and an argument with her. Now he’s disappeared and tops the suspect list, with J.J. a close second. It’s up to…

“Don’t even think about it,” Julian warned as he leaned back on the plush seat of their limousine. “Think about what?” Kristin asked angrily. “If you jump from a moving vehicle, you’ll more than likely end up breaking your neck, and that would be a shame. You’d miss Vegas and the wedding.” It irritated her that he not only had known exactly what she was contemplating, but had quickly come to the same conclusion as her. There was no way she was taking a swan dive from a moving vehicle. She’d been so shocked by his outrageous behavior that she hadn’t been able to speak until now, even though they’d been riding for several minutes. How he’d gotten the fancy limo down a closed street, she didn’t know. But Kristin was fairly certain it had a lot to do with the chief of police being Julian’s cousin, Dante. The old chief had retired just a few months ago, and Dante Sinclair had taken the promotion when it was offered to him. Kristin shot Julian a furious glare. Even though it was already getting dark, the vehicle had lights in the passenger area. As far as Kristin could tell, the fancy…