Have you ever opened a book and found yourself walking the streets of your favorite city? I have. I’ve been transported to real-life places like New York, Atlanta, and Miami, and found myself yearning for imaginary worlds like the dangerous island cliffs of Thisby. It’s my favorite part of writing and reading—watching a setting become alive. Books, where setting and atmosphere created a significant dynamic between characters, is what inspired me to become a more atmospheric writer. Thankfully, my co-writer, Jude Sierra, is well known for using personal backdrops to amplify her characters, especially in her critically acclaimed Idlewild and well-loved new release A Tiny Piece of Something Greater. A love for setting and mood was one of the core concepts Jude and I used for building Shadows You Left. Gray, storm soaked skies, Seattle’s height, and sea-side scents, and the forest spanning the outskirts of the city were all used as parallels to mimic emotions and conflict between our two leads, Erik and River. As challenging as it might be, creating a character out of your setting is an intimate and poignant way to inject personality into the fringes of your story. We used this technique as we navigated…
In my newest book, His Second Chance at Forever, (Book #1 in the Santa Barbara Sunsets trilogy) I write about a nurse practitioner who has different ideas from her brooding doc boss. In fact, it’s a main source of conflict between them right off. One of the fun things I included in a small secondary thread was how Claire Albright believes in alternative approaches to medical care for all-around wellbeing. She also believes in the calming effect of certain essential oils. Jason his clueless, and at first, more than a little skeptical. For those who aren’t familiar with essential oils, they are concentrated forms of plants and flowers that are often used in massage therapy and aromatherapy. From my perspective, they are heavenly. More and more people are discovering them, too. What about you? FYI: Breathing in essential oils goes to the part of the brain that is linked to emotions. Good ones. The soothing scents tend to cause a positive reaction in mood, blood pressure, and heart rate to name a few. If you suffer from white coat syndrome (fear of seeing your doctor) you might appreciate how Claire set up soothing aromatherapy in the office waiting room without…
R.C. Alvarez here, the paranormal romance writing team of Storm Navarro and Jolie de la Cruz! Picking a location for the setting of our book was not a difficult choice. We chose what we knew best: Texas. Growing up here, we’ve seen all sorts of people and creatures. Big and small. Loud and quiet. A certain respect for others and nature is bred into you. Everybody knows Texas is sweet small towns and rich southern culture, but it’s also wild landscapes and even wilder animals. From salamanders, frogs, and toads to all the different kind of birds. You can hardly drive down a winding back road without spotting a deer or two any time of the year. Cows and horses and sheep are cute in their pastures, but don’t let the quaintness fool you. In the wide expanse of Texas wilderness, there can be dangerous things too. Scorpions, wild hogs, large spiders, venomous snakes, coyotes, bobcats, and mysterious mountain lions. There even used to be wolves that roamed the arid lands of West Texas before they were nearly wiped out about 50 years ago. Neither of us has ever seen a wolf in person or a mountain lion for that…
I don’t just write and read historical romance, I’m a passionate defender of the subgenre. Although trappings of the past can be fun (Candlelight! Carriages! Architectural grandeur! Bodices and bustles!), what intrigues me most about writing historcials is the very thing most often criticized—that the society was stuffy, restricted, and in dire need of change. For instance, in nineteenth-century England, married women, by law, were not separate entities from their husbands. Men controlled the money, the legal system, and access to education. In such a world, love itself—powerful, unpredictable, capable of smashing social and economic barriers, and, ultimately, bringing those ‘in command’ to their knees—was a radical threat to the social order. Women who chose to flout norms faced very real economic/social consequences, yet history sparkles with them. Armed with wit, intelligence, and creativity, they forged their own way. I’m inspired by the unconventional women who took charge of their destinies despite the forces stacked against them. Lady Clarissa Laithe, the heroine of my latest book, Heart’s Desire, undergoes a transformation and becomes such a lady. As the story begins, she is someone who has done what she was told and fulfilled the expectations around her, but a confrontation with…
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 AUBREE VALENTINE! What I Write About: Heartwarming contemporary romance with laugh out loud moments. My current release, while not about those striking hot cops – does feature a cameo by one of NYPD’s finest AND guarantees to tug at your heartstrings. About Me: Thirty-something woman, living in the suburbs and dreaming about small-town life seeks fans of real-life love stories with all the feels. What I’m looking for in my ideal reader match: Someone who doesn’t mind head-strong (and sometimes a little damaged) leading characters. Must love sexy and sassy banter Enjoys books where friendships and family are just as important as the romance Appreciates everyday heroes and those men/women in uniform What to expect: Sometimes adorkable declarations of love Swoon-worthy alphas who still believe in opening up doors A HEA that will keep you believing in love. LOVE UNDER CONSTRUCTION by Aubree Valentine 425 Madison Avenue Book 6 Jameson She hates me. I can’t say I blame her, in fact, I…
My top five favorite workplace romances? The author who immediately comes to mind on workplace romances is Jayne Ann Krentz. Most of her early heroes felt like cowboys in the boardroom. I used to eat up her contemporary romances like they were going out of style. So I’d have to put an oldie but a goodie, Sweet Fortune by Jayne Ann Krentz, on my list. And if she’s there, then I have to also add Susan Elizabeth Phillips and the first in her Chicago Stars books, It Had to Be You, about a woman who inherits a football team yet knows nothing about the sport. The humor and conflict between the hero and heroine are laugh-out-loud funny. And the steam factor is high! On a less contemporary note, I’m a huge Shelly Laurenston fan, and she’s known for writing zany paranormal romances. But one workplace romance that’s stayed with me is Big, Bad Beast, which pits wolf shifter and former Marine sniper Dee-Ann Smith up against Ric Van Holtz, her boss. I laugh and flip page after page whenever I’m reading Shelly Laurenston’s books. Staying in the paranormal lane, I’d have to go with Thea Harrison’s The Elder Races series,…
Shakespeare, hot Brits, and aspiring author advice – enjoy Danielle Dresser’s chat with award-winning romance author Melonie Johnson! Welcome to Fresh Fiction! Please introduce us to your Sometimes in Love series, and tell us more about book two, Smitten by the Brit, out next week! Hi! The Sometimes in Love series centers on a group of five best friends, and their friendship plays a strong role in all of the stories, but each book also focuses on one of the girls going after her goals, chasing her dreams, and finding her HEA. Of course, sometimes, the road to a happily ever after isn’t so smooth, so get ready for some bumps along the way. Smitten by the Brit is the second book in the series, and features Bonnie and Theo, the best friends of the hero and heroine in book 1, Getting Hot with the Scot. And speaking of bumps, this book opens with a pretty big one. Bonnie Blythe is smart, hardworking, and fiercely loyal to the people she cares about – even though in the case of her fiance, he doesn’t deserve it. What did you love about creating Bonnie? What surprised you about her as she developed…
The importance of family, however the characters choose to define that term, forms the core of my Where the Wild Hearts Are series. In some form or another, each main character is searching for a place to belong—even if they outwardly resist the idea. Older generations play a significant role. Lou Warrenton, the eighty-year-old veterinarian in Wild on My Mind, gave the hero a family when Bowie was kicked out of foster care on his eighteenth birthday and helped him develop into an amazing single father. Although Bowie now has taken over running the Sagebrush Zoo that Lou used to own, the older man still shows up to work every day and forms a significant part of both Bowie and his daughter’s lives. Lou was based on my grandfather, who at the age of ninety-four, still went to work three days a week at the same company where he’d worked for over seventy years. Like Bowie, I still turned to him for advice. Although Lou may be unsteady on his feet and require more naps than he had as a young man, he is still a vibrant part of his family and the zoo. In the second book, Sweet Wild…
My newest book, THE DARK BONES, is about a cop who learns that her father—a retired police officer—has killed himself. My heroine, Detective Rebecca North, cannot believe it. But in order to prove it Rebecca must return to her small and rural home town where she will be forced to face a lot of dark things she’s been running from, including Ash Haugen, the man she left behind long ago, and a cold case everyone thought long buried. At the heart, THE DARK BONES is about second chances, about being forced to revisit mistakes from the past, and then digging deep in an effort to set things right, and heal. It’s about the cold case wounds I suspect we all have buried in our subconscious somewhere, in one way or another, those unhappy events that have helped shape everything we do, and everything we have become. In Rebecca and Ash’s case, it’s also about being able to love again once they’ve addressed the reasons underpinning their old mistakes and lies. I’m a plotter for the most part. I go into a new story knowing who my protagonists are. I know what their big ‘wounds’ are, and I know what they…
“To bask in passion’s glow. To bathe in love’s fountain. To swim in the rivers of Eros.” “It sounds quite vile. No thank you.” It was very difficult not to laugh. She managed it, just. MUCH ADO ABOUT DUTTON by Claudia Dain The other day one of the authors in one of the many online reading groups I’m in posted a question asking readers how many love scenes they demanded in a romance. I get why authors ask this, but I feel like it’s a difficult thing for readers to answer. I know there has been a lot of debate and general discussion about how many love scenes/sex scenes put in romances, and over how the quantity and quality of love scenes in a book should be advertised to readers. I remember reading a few years ago that a favorite romance author of mine felt pressured by her publisher to include a specific number of sex scenes in her book. I felt that was unfair; not just because I think that she should be allowed complete freedom in her creative process, but also because those scenes weren’t what I found most enjoyable about her books. In the end, I took…