Cranberry Cove is a small fictional town in western Michigan located right on the shores of Lake Michigan where the influence of the Dutch settlers is still strong to this day. By 1900, one third of the Dutch in America had settled in West Michigan. The Dutch were known for their frugality, industry and hospitality. Many were farmers and today many of the area’s family farms still bear Dutch surnames. Others were skilled craftsman, carvers and furniture designers who came to work in the furniture industry that at the time was booming in West Michigan. Many of the characters I’ve created for Cranberry Cove are of Dutch origin—the VanVelsen sisters who own Gumdrops, the candy store; Bart Dykema the butcher and Phyllis Bouma, the local librarian. Gumdrops carries many Dutch treats including Droste pastilles, Van Melle fruit toffees and Katjes winegums and the Van Velsen sisters always have a pot of erwtensoep—Dutch pea soup—on the stove. Ollie bollen—fried doughnuts—are a huge treat and are the precursor of the doughnuts we eat today. There are a small handful of cranberry farms in Michigan. Most of the nation’s cranberries come from Wisconsin with Massachusetts and New Jersey not far behind, while the…

(Keep reading for the giveaway at the end.) A lot of times people ask me where I find inspiration to write my books. Of course it comes from many places, but a couple of times I have ended up writing about a trope of a movie I really love. Want to know a secret? Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! indirectly inspired me to write BRAZILIAN CAPTURE. I love books where either the heroine or hero is kidnapped. It gives us a lot to work with as authors, like how the relationship between captor and captive change and grow. In case you haven’t seen, Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! features a young Antonio Banderas. He’s just released from a mental institution and kidnaps the woman he’s obsessed with—a jaded porn star—because he wants to convince her to marry him. Before you throw tomatoes at me, understand this movie was written and directed by Pedro Almodóvar, therefore political correctness is not an option. Controversial or not, it’s a movie about two lost souls who end up finding and choosing each other. So as you see, when you take the general idea—finding love despite the circumstances— it’s easy to relate it…

Hello, I’m Diane Alberts, though I also write as Jen McLaughlin, and I’m excited to be here today to chat with you all! Thanks so much for having me here today! <3 This might (or might not) surprise some of you who have met me at signings, but I am an extremely, extremely shy person. Like, I can meet a person three times, eat meals and have detailed conversations with them those three times, and I’ll pretty much assume that they will not remember me every time I come across them. I will, hands down, wait for the other person to come up to me before I say hello, just in case they did, indeed forget me. For this very reason, I love to write heroines and heroes who are the complete opposite of me. I love writing people who are confident, outgoing, and who will walk into a room and completely own the place without so much as batting an eye. As it so happens, one of my besties in the author world is this exact type of person, and I love her because she’s so frigging awesome like that. To be able to walk in a room with…

Win a copy of KILLER CHARACTERS Take a trip south to Oyster Bay, North Carolina and meet the members of Bayside Book Writers group. When one of their members is suspected of murder it dividese the group and it’s up to Olivia to find out the truth before it’s too late! Just leave a comment below to be entered to win a copy of KILLER CHARACTERS. KILLER CHARACTERS by Ellery Adams Books by the Bay #8 From the New York Times bestselling author of Writing All Wrongs, it’s a rotten state of affairs in Oyster Bay, and the Bayside Book Writers are out to end a nasty plot… Restaurant owner and aspiring novelist Olivia Limoges is happily enjoying her new marriage. Sadly, the same doesn’t hold true for Laurel, a fellow Bayside Book Writer. While struggling with a demanding job, twin boys, and a terminally ill mother-in-law, Laurel learns that her perfect marriage is mostly fictional. When she catches her husband fooling around with his mother’s hospice nurse, she issues impassioned threats that will later come back to haunt her. After the nurse meets a deadly denouement, Chief Rawlings is forced to take Laurel into custody. While Olivia protests the…