Gwen Reyes // Critic (reposted from Fresh Fiction TV) Legally embattled Hallmark heroine, Lori Loughlin’s name has yet to leave the news this week. In the wake of her involvement with the “Operation: Varsity Blues” college prep and college admittance scam, the family-friendly network has officially decided to part ways with one of their biggest stars – Loughlin. According to a statement sent by Hallmark, despite judge-granted permission for Loughlin to travel for work to British Columbia, where many of her Hallmark shows including, WHEN CALLS THE HEART and GARAGE SALE MYSTERIES, they no longer want to stay in business with their biggest stars. “We are saddened by the recent news surrounding the college admissions allegations,” Hallmark said Thursday. “We are no longer working with Lori Loughlin and have stopped development of all productions that air on the Crown Media Family Network channels involving Lori Loughlin, including GARAGE SALE MYSTERIES, an independent third party production.” This decision does not come as a shock, as the squeaky-clean entertainment company likes to keep anything deemed controversial away from its brand. When your marquee star’s hands are dirty with a scandal like the one cooked up by William “Rick” Singer to collect money…

Thanks so much for having me here on Fresh Fiction. I’m a huge fan of your site. I’m excited to be celebrating the release of my book, Story of Us. In the book, Sophia Strombi is the younger sister of a lifelong friend of Declan James. That isn’t the only thing that’s supposed to keep her off limits for his heart; he also hires her to be the manager of his pub, On Dec. With a background in marketing and promotion, Sophia is eager to bring in new business for the local establishment. One of her ideas is to bring in a speed dating company. I thought, for this post, it might be fun to have both of my main characters answer a ‘speed dating’ questionnaire. I’ve selected ten questions from an online questionnaire that I’ll put below and answer in character for each of the questions. Let’s see how well suited they are after the fact! Sophie Strombi 1. What makes you happy/sad/angry? Creating a really successful marketing campaign makes me happy professionally. Personally, being with my family and just sitting back and watching them all interact with each other brings me a sense of happiness. It makes me…

Parenting is tough. Understatement of the year, right? First, it’s the baby years of all-hours-of-the-day feedings and forever dodging spit up. Next, it’s the toddler years, when you’re convinced they’re going to trip and fall down any flight of stairs within a three-mile radius if you turn your head for one second. Then comes elementary school, where you’re trying to keep your sanity while trying to coach your kids through “new” math (which makes absolutely no sense whatsoever—why can’t five plus seven just be twelve without all these darned boxes and rounding and uuuuuuuugh). We’re now into the middle and high-school years at our home, and trust me, those each come with their own (frequent) moments of chaos and homework calamity. Add in two kids in sports that of course never meet at the same time or place, and yeah, insanity can quickly become magnified tenfold. So why do we let them do it? Because we love our kids (and we wouldn’t trade a moment of any of it for the world.) Band, choir, drama, sports—these are just a few of the extracurricular activities that threaten to gobble up those precious few minutes between work/school and bed. But they’re also…

Enjoy this fun interview between bestselling author SOPHIE JORDAN and Fresh Fiction Editorial Manager, Danielle Dresser! For readers who aren’t caught up, can you tell us a bit about the Rogue Files series, and your latest release, This Scot of Mine? Well, believe it or not, This Scot of Mine is the fourth book in the Rogue Files series. They’re all connected through characters often family members. By book four it’s a little challenging to relate how they are all connected. Book five, possibly the last in the series, is coming this October. Hmm. Maybe it’s time for a family tree!?   This Scot of Mine is a crazypants idea I came up with while on a writers retreat …. I pitched it to some of my other fabulous writer friends and we all brainstormed until I arrived at the final idea of a girl who PRETENDS to be ruined and pregnant (all lies for good reason) and gets paired up with the hero who needs to get married but has this curse hanging over his head.  I’ve read about secret babies before, but not so much about made-up pregnancies in historicals! Clara was such a fun heroine. What was your favorite part about writing her…

Dear Readers: Magic, mayhem, and an assassin who never gives up—these things and more can be found in WINTER’S WEB, the latest novella in my Elemental Assassin urban fantasy series. The Elemental Assassin series focuses on Gin Blanco, an assassin codenamed the Spider who can control the elements of Ice and Stone. When she’s not busy killing people and righting wrongs, Gin runs a barbecue restaurant called the Pork Pit in the fictional Southern metropolis of Ashland. The city is also home to giants, dwarves, vampires, and elementals—Air, Fire, Ice, and Stone. In WINTER’S WEB, Gin and her friends volunteer to help out at a renaissance faire. Everyone is determined to relax and have a good time—until Gin notices something slightly off about the larger-than-life characters. Some folks might be dressed up as gallant knights, but their swords are very, very real—and so are their dark and deadly intentions toward Gin and her friends. Read an excerpt of WINTER’S WEB: https://www.jenniferestep.com/books/winters-web/ If you enjoy WINTER’S WEB, I hope that you’ll check out the other novellas and books in the series. I hope that everyone has as much fun reading Gin’s adventures as I do writing them. Happy reading! 😊 New…

Shannon moved up the beach by half a mile and settled into one of only two second-story suites the boutique hotel offered. With the uninterrupted views of the ocean and a private patio that had its own plunge pool, this hotel was exactly what she envisioned while staying in Tulum for a vacation. She was on the balcony when she heard Avery enter the room. Shannon stood from the shady spot she’d propped herself up on to greet her friend. Avery held her welcome drink in one hand and her purse in the other. “Eeeeek. This place is awesome,” Avery said, tossing her purse aside and offering Shannon a one-arm hug. “Beautiful, isn’t it?” The bellhop placed Avery’s bag in the room and asked if there was anything else he could assist with. Shannon tipped the man and closed the door behind him. “Check out the balcony.” Avery didn’t need to be asked twice. She wandered outside and tossed her arms wide. “A private pool?” More like an oversize hot tub, but yeah. “A great place to wash the salt water off after a day in the ocean.” “This is fabulous.” They talked briefly about her flight and drive from…

Instead of trying to find your perfect match in a dating app, we bring you the “Author-Reader Match” where we introduce you to authors as a reader you may fall in love with. It’s our great pleasure to present Kirsten Weiss!  Writes: I write cozy mystery in its various forms, including paranormal. My latest release is the cozy mystery CHOCOLATE A LA MURDER, book four in my Perfectly Proper Paranormal Museum series. I call this series “paranormal light.” There may be something supernatural happening at the San Benedetto Paranormal Museum (it is, after all, a paranormal museum), but that’s up to the reader to decide. The real defining elements of my books are love and humor. The main characters love and care about each other, and the quirky humor reflects that. About my heroine: Maddie Kosloski returned to California after a decade overseas and discovered she had a lot of rebuilding to do. CHOCOLATE A LA MURDER is the fourth book in the cozy mystery series, and at this stage, Maddie’s finally ready to settle into her new life with her new love, police detective Jason Slate. But the universe has some zany curveballs (and murder) in store. Plus chocolate. Lots…

Instead of trying to find your perfect match in a dating app, we bring you the “Author-Reader Match,” where we introduce readers to authors you may fall in love with. It’s our great pleasure to present Jolina Petersheim! Writes: My father was raised Mennonite in Lancaster, Pennsylvania; my mother Brethren, and I grew up as a caretaker’s daughter on a sprawling Civil War–era farm/camp in western Tennessee. This combination allowed me to see the intricacies—and complications—of community, so I love placing my characters inside morally twisting novels and then watching how they find their way out. (My newest novel, How the Light Gets In, might be the most morally twisting to date.) About: I am happily married to a “strong, quiet type” mountain man and mother to our three fluffy-haired little girls, ages six, four, and one. We’ve lived in five different homes in ten years of marriage (one a solar-powered farmhouse in Wisconsin, where How the Light Gets In is set). My husband—who also has a Mennonite/Amish background—is busy building our sixth house in the foothills of the Cumberland Plateau in Tennessee. We strive to live with the same simplistic, family-oriented mindset as our ancestors, but due to our…

Spoiler alert: I’m about to seriously date myself. When I was in college, all my girlfriends were crazy about the movie Somewhere in Time, starring Jane Seymour and the late Christopher Reeve. In case that film was before your time, it’s about a modern-day playwright named Richard Collins, who travels back in time to meet, court, and win the heart of Elise McKenna, a turn-of-the-century actress whose image and mysterious story have captivated him. Just as it appears that love will win the day, Richard reaches into his pocket and pulls out a forgotten 1979 penny, which immediately yanks him out of the past, away from his soul mate, and literally “back to the future.” My own stories are set in my native South, and I feel as if I spend a big chunk of my writing time dodging The Dreaded Coin, working as hard as I can to skirt my way around anything and everything that might yank a reader out of the story. It doesn’t take much. One factual inaccuracy (like putting the Brazos River in Mississippi) or one line of dialogue that sounds nothing like authentic Southern speech (“I’m mad about you! Mad I say!”), and the…

I’ve written over thirty romances set during the Regency period in England. I love the Regency, but lately, I’ve wanted to explore a different time period—the French Revolution. I get varied reactions to this announcement. Some of my readers are excited. Others are not interested in reading a book set during that time period. I hear, “Guillotines are not sexy” and “I like my British dukes, thank you very much.” You know the great thing about my books? As Marie Antoinette said, “You get your cake and can eat it too!” Okay, she didn’t say that, but she never said “Let them eat cake either.” But you will get everything you love in a Regency in one of my French Revolution-set books, especially To Tempt a Rebel, which releases March 12. 1. Page-turning Suspense The guillotine may not be sexy, but when my hero and heroine face the National Razor if they are caught out after curfew, it certainly makes those midnight rendezvous a little more tense and meaningful. With all the turmoil and unrest during the revolution, Alex and Tristan are always just one step ahead of the guards, and I promise you’ll keep turning pages to see if…