Fresh FIction Box Not To Miss
Natalie Walters | Exclusive Interview: DEADLY DECEIT
Author Guest / November 30, 2019

Welcome to Fresh Fiction, Natalie! Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your new book, DEADLY DECEIT?  Hi! I’m an Army wife, married to my GIJOE for 23 years. We have three kids who are all officially adults now and spreading their wings, which this mama-heart still finds hard to handle. We are currently stationed in Honolulu, Hawaii, which is my husband’s home state and the first time in our 25 years in the Army where we’ve lived in the same state as family. Deadly Deceit brings readers back to Walton, Georgia and into the lives of Deputy Ryan Frost and reporter Vivian DeMarco. A year has passed and neither Vivian nor Ryan are sure they are where they’re supposed to be. The untimely death of Vivian’s boss puts her on the trail of a headline worthy story but someone called The Watcher, is determined to stop her. Ryan knows Vivian is as tenacious as they come but he can’t let her risk her life for a headline. Working together, Ryan and Vivian must overcome their pasts if they want to stop The Watcher and give themselves a chance at a future. The only reason journalist Vivian…

A Conversation with Ani Katz
Interviews / November 29, 2019

In A Good Man, the narrator Thomas Martin has the outward appearance of a man who tries to always do the right thing and sees himself as a protector, provider, and patriarch . . . and then his world unravels. What inspired this character? I was originally inspired by a tragedy that happened in the extended family of a close friend several decades ago. I was also frustrated with what I’d begun to see as a trend in contemporary literature, where something shocking and gruesome happens, but a detached point of view without agency keeps the reader at a safe, voyeuristic distance. I wanted to subvert that storytelling trend in order to fully explore toxic masculinity and the dangers of outdated gender norms. This is your debut novel. In addition to The Adversary by Emmanuel Carrère, were there any other true stories that inspired A Good Man (without giving away the ending)? Did you need to do any research to create Thomas’s world? I read a good deal of relevant true crime, including Joe McGinniss’ Fatal Vision and Errol Morris’ A Wilderness of Error, which is a critique of McGinniss’ book. I also read a lot of longform journalism about…

Sonya Weiss | Reader to Reader
Author Guest / November 29, 2019

I spend a lot of time writing because I always have ideas and characters whose story I can’t wait to tell. These ideas can be sparked by something I see in the news, or it stems from me playing the what-if game. Like what if that soccer mom is really a spy? Or what if that guy walking his dog just got left at the altar? Because I’m a pantser, meaning I don’t plot out the story first, I don’t always know how the story will play out. So it’s like I’m reading the story as I write it. But I also spend a lot of time reading and I love to recommend great books to others. I also love discovering new authors and reading books that I just can’t put down. I’ve read in every genre under the sun though I do have some favorites. I love romance novels. Contemporary, paranormal, historical. Someone mentioned Duchess Wars by Courtney Milan to me today and I just put that one on my to-be-read list. I also love to read sci-fi. I loved the original Roswell, The 100, and the X-Files. I’m a big fan of Star Trek. Someone gifted me a…

Jennie Marts | Exclusive Interview: WISH UPON A COWBOY CHRISTMAS + Giveaway!
Author Guest / November 29, 2019

Welcome back to Fresh Fiction, Jennie! Can you tell us a little bit about your latest book, WISH UPON A COWBOY? Sure! Thanks for having me! And I’m super proud of this book! It’s fun, sweet, sexy, and will make you laugh and cry! It’s the fourth book in my hockey-playing Cowboys of Creedence series. Logan and Harper’s story is about a mother who is fighting to get back her son and a rancher who is trying to save his ranch, and how they help each other to accomplish both. It has a hot cowboy, a sassy heroine, an adorable eight-year-old boy, a marshmallow-eating cow, a feisty kitten, and a Christmas miracle at its heart. It received a STARRED Review from Booklist calling it a “smart and delicious romance” and Publishers Weekly claims “Able plotting, red-hot sex, and a large dollop of sweetness make this holiday charmer ideal all year round.” It’s a perfect romance-reading treat to give yourself for the holidays! Harper Evans has just gotten out of jail, but she lost custody of her son to the mother of her deceased husband. She’s willing to do whatever it takes to get her son back, and that means finding…

Melia Alexander | The Love-Lock Bridge
Author Guest / November 27, 2019

I’m such a sucker for happily-ever-afters. What romance author isn’t? So when I first laid eyes on the Hollhenzollern Lock Bridge in Cologne, Germany, I was as good as a fish on a line–completely hooked. It was a chilly but sunny clear spring day, and I stood at one end of the bridge and gawked at the thousands of locks that extended nearly to the other side, all in a rainbow of colors. So. Many. Locks. (photo from Atlas Obscura) Some locks were inscribed with a couple’s names and wedding date, others had names and dates inked on, and yet others had metal tags with messages written on them. They were messages of love that pledged eternal devotion. Sigh. So sweet, so romantic, so up my alley! Lock Bridge had made such an impact on me, I had to incorporate it in my new rom-com, SEDUCED BY THE SOLDIER. In it, Blake and Zandra travel through three European countries so that Zandra can complete a photography assignment for a popular e-zine. There are adventures and surprises along the way, of course, and by the time they get to Cologne the two are very much into each other but unwilling to…

Rosanne Bittner | Top Five Reasons Why I Love the Old West
Author Guest / November 27, 2019

I have had a love affair with American History, especially America’s “Old West” nearly all my life, probably because I grew up on TV westerns like Gunsmoke and old western movies starring Clint Eastwood and John Wayne. But I truly believe there is a part of me who, in another life, lived in the west, either as an Indian or a pioneer woman. My top five reasons for loving the West would be: The magnificent landscapes The phenomenal growth of our frontier The rugged pioneers The fact that men set their own laws, sometimes “on the spot” The respect and admiration most men of the West had for the pioneer women who dared to join them in a savage land And a sixth. . . complete strangers often ended up marrying out of need and loneliness, which is what my book is about. Excerpt: August 1869 Kate ducked into the tall grass as soon as she heard men’s voices. She slowly crawled to get close enough to listen, then parted the dense, yellow blades to see five rough-looking men gathered around a lonely, half-dead cottonwood tree. One of the men raised up in his stirrups and flung a rope over…

Eva Leigh | Exclusive Interview: MY FAKE RAKE
Author Guest / November 27, 2019

Welcome back to Fresh Fiction, Eva! Can you tell us more about your new series, Union of the Rakes, and book 1 in particular, MY FAKE RAKE?  Thank you so much for having me back! I’m very excited to introduce my Union of the Rakes series to your readers, since it combines two very important things in my life: my love of the Regency, and my love of the ‘80s. The whole premise of the Union of the Rakes might sound familiar to ‘80s film fans: five very different boys meet at Eton when they’re assigned to an all-day punishment in the library. Yes–it’s the Breakfast Club! Twenty years later, the boys are now grown men in a close friendship, and each one finds their own HEA in the pages of the Union of the Rakes books. My Fake Rake is a mash up between Weird Science, Can’t Buy Me Love, and Some Kind of Wonderful. That means we get fake dating, makeover (it’s his makeover), and friends to lovers, all in one book!  One of my favorite things about this new series of yours is that it’s inspired by 80s movies! Where did this fabulous idea come from? What’s…

Catherine Wiltcher | How Working in Movie Production Inspired My New Novel
Author Guest / November 26, 2019

How sixteen years of working in movie production inspired me to write my new novel. . .  My new erotic romance, Hot Nights in Morocco, sees the heroine, Charlie Winters, traveling to North Africa to begin her first job on Hollywood producer Jake Dalton’s new movie. It’s an exciting world I know a little something about because for sixteen years I lived and breathed movie production, (that’s until I hit thirty-four and chose to embark on a new adventure–raising a family and writing books!) During my time in the industry, I was lucky enough to work on some amazing shoots in some pretty far-flung places, many of which have given me the backdrop to my stories. Nevertheless, one thing people never warn you about is all the downtime on movie sets. If you’re not directly involved with the actual shooting of a scene, it can often feel like you’re sat watching your art director’s paint dry. . . As a production manager, my job was to oversee things like the budget, crew hospitality, kit hire, and cast management. Most of this takes place in a temporary office on the Unit Base so trips to the set necessitated a lot of…

Kym Roberts | Cozy Corner Interview: Lynn Cahoon
Author Guest , Cozy Corner , Interviews / November 25, 2019

Kym: Welcome back to the Cozy Corner, Lynn! Lynn: It’s so nice to chat with you again. 🙂  With three working series, you are one busy woman! What keeps you on track the most? I do a lot of planning. A. Lot. I use Asana to track the projects – like writing a book. Or planning my release. It sets up dates to check in as well as gives me check list inside each project to backward plan the process. I have a google/phone calendar (as well as a day job online calendar) and I’m good at blocking out big things. Like deadlines.  And releases.  The other thing is I’m not afraid to re-plan/re-organize if things go sideways. (Like a few months ago when a novella took me twice as long to write as it was planned for. New series, I needed more time but I hadn’t planned for it. The good news is I had some free writing time that I could move somethings around.  Since book 4 in the Tourist Trap Mysteries, you’ve done two novellas in-between each full-length book. That alone is an incredible pace without sticking your other two series into the mix, and you’re the…

Emily Littlejohn | Exclusive Excerpt: SHATTER THE NIGHT
Author Guest / November 25, 2019

From Chapter One Halloween. Since becoming a cop six years prior, I’d grown to dread the thirty-first day of October. I could no longer believe the holiday was simply a night of innocent fun. I’d been witness to desecrated graves and smashed pumpkins; violent bar brawls and deadly DUIs. The night gave liberty to all sorts of spooks and ghouls, not only encouraging them to come out and play but practically daring them not to. I was also a parent, though, and slowly learning that Halloween was a night I needed to tolerate, if not someday even embrace. My daughter, Grace, was nearly a year old and already she was captivated by the glowing pumpkins and toddler-size spider webs that adorned front porches and yards all over town. Luckily, because Grace was so young, my fiancé, Brody Sutherland, and I still had full control over what she wore. He wanted to dress her as a witch, while I was leaning toward a cute bunny. After a heated discussion in the back aisle of a costume shop on Colfax in Denver, where the three of us had gone for a quick weekend getaway in late September, we split the difference and…