For good or for ill, we live in a connected, online society. And I’m old enough to remember how nuts it was, clustered around one of the gumdrop-bright iMacs in the physics lab, Sophomore year, watching the Super Bowl commercials someone had put online. They each took about 45 years to download, but we all watched them in awe and amazement. Can you imagine? A place on the computer to watch videos? Crazy! Well, fourteen thousand cat videos later, here we are. Apart from the amusement of vines, memes, and cute kittens, the internet has brought me a very specific experience that I think many of us might share: Being in an online fandom. To me, there’s literally nothing better than finishing a book, walking out of a theater, or waiting on a season finale of a show, then going online and finding Your People. People who love the thing you love, who want to keep talking about it, engaging with it, and theorizing about it. I’ve now been involved in online fandoms and fan communities for a variety of things for over half my life, and although there’s the usual strangeness that happens whenever any group of people comes…

Welcome back to Fresh Fiction! Can you tell us about your new release, FROST AND FLAME, the second book in the Gods of War series? Frost and Flame is Bane and Nola’s story.  Bane is an ice-cold warrior with a bloodthirsty dragon-like beast trapped inside him.  He’s determined to win the war, so he can kill his queen–the woman who murdered his wife.  Nola is a Korean-American mortal woman who suffers with fibromyalgia and doesn’t know she has ties to Bane’s world. . . or that she’s an up-and-coming queen with the ability to control Bane’s beast.  Needless to say, he isn’t happy about it.  But, the two must work together if they are to survive the war.  If only they could stop lusting for each other. . . (Narrator: They can’t!) Nola Lee is destined to rule, but she doesn’t know it at the beginning of the novel. That being said, she’s hardworking and kick-ass, as well as vulnerable and sensitive. She has spent most of her life unwell, having dreams of a golden god. Now, that god is here, and her illnesses are under control. What went into creating this multifaceted character?  I wrote Frost and Flame while…

CHAPTER 1 It was a cool, pretty October Friday morning in my home town of Salem, Massachusetts. My beautiful Laguna blue 2014 Chevrolet Stingray Corvette convertible was in the shop because some inconsiderate dope had run a shopping cart down one side of it, leaving a significant gouge in the passenger door. My aunt Ibby was in Boston at a librarians’ convention, so her vintage but trustworthy Buick wasn’t available either. My hours as a field reporter at WICH-TV had just been cut nearly in half because the station manager’s wife’s nephew had just graduated from broadcasting school and “needs some experience.” I’m Lee Barrett, nee Maralee Kowalski, thirty-three, red-haired, Salem born, orphaned early, married once, and widowed young. My aunt Isobel Russell and I share the fine old family home on Winter Street, along with our big yellow-striped gentleman cat, O’Ryan. “Might as well walk to work,” I grumbled to the cat, who watched with apparent interest as I pulled on cordovan boots over faded jeans, then tossed my NASCAR jacket over a white turtleneck shirt. “With the new schedule I don’t have to get there until noon anyway.” O’Ryan gave a sympathetic “Mmrrow,” and followed me to my…