Fresh FIction Box Not To Miss
Julie Rowe | Grab a copy of SEARCH & DESTROY for only 99 cents!
Author Spotlight / January 27, 2020

Search & Destroy is on sale for 99¢ for a limited time­ ─ Jan 27th to Feb 3rd. Get your copy today! “Julie Rowe creates a chilling story in Search and Destroy.  The threat to mankind is real and harsh. The entire book is a high-octane race against the clock with lives in the balance.” -Jeanne S., NetGalley “Julie Rowe provides a high paced action novel with steamy romantic scenes thrown in. Her characters are well-crafted and her subject knowledge is spot on. The multifaceted plot included everything from relationship quandaries to bioterrorism threats and kept the reader engaged the entire time.” -Tara M., NetGalley Search & Destroy excerpt: Their fight, in all its stupid, irrational glory flared up in full color, 3-D splendor in her head. She had told him in no uncertain terms she didn’t want him to take care of her, yet here he was doing it anyway. Instead of feeling angry, she felt…guilty. She’d been wrong. About Halverson, the reach of the FAFO, and what she really wanted—a man she could depend on. She’d thrown it all away. She sure as hell didn’t deserve to have him looking after her now. Carmen turned away the next time he offered her more…

Kym Roberts | Cozy Corner: Interview with Darcie Wilde
Author Guest / January 27, 2020

Kym: I have the distinct pleasure of welcoming back one of my favorite mystery writers. Darcie Wilde has written under several names and several genres, but her Rosalind Thorne Mysteries are as delightful as they are intriguing. Welcome back to the Cozy Corner, Darcie! Darcie: So nice to be back with you and your readers! I was thrilled to see your Rosalind Thorne Mysteries continue! Congratulations on your continued success with this lovely series. Has the experience of changing publishing houses effected Rosalind’s direction for the future?  Actually, there’s been very little change in direction.  Since I changed publishers, I am once again working with the series’s original editor, the fabulous Wendy McCurdy.  Wendy was the one who had the idea to create a mystery series for Rosalind rather than just a straight set of romances. Go Wendy! In your latest Rosalind Thorne Mystery, And Dangerous to Know, you open each chapter with a small clip of written correspondences that tell a large part of the story all by themselves. Did you write the clips first, last, or did they develop with each chapter? I keep a running list of possibilities as I research, and I’m generally researching and rewriting…

Alicia Anthony | Top 5 Reasons Why We Love Series + Giveaway!
Author Guest / January 27, 2020

I don’t know about you, but I love a good book series. When I began writing my debut novel, Inherent Truth, I didn’t originally plan for it to become a series. However, as things progressed and the characters revealed themselves, it became clear–this book was meant to be the kick-starter for a far more complex story than could be told within the confines of one novel. And so, Blood Secrets was born. I’ve thought about that a lot as I’ve navigated this journey, and after talking with some friends I’ve come up with what I consider the top five reasons why we love book series so much. I can’t wait to see if you agree. Reason #1: Characters become friends. Come on, don’t act like you’ve never closed a book and felt like you suddenly lost your best friend. We’ve all been there, and series have a way of roping us in, wrapping us up in these fictional lives so that we begin to feel like family. Most series provide a diverse cast of characters so that almost any reader can find a favorite, providing enough common ground that each turn of the page feels like a chat with a…

Toni Blake | Exclusive Excerpt: THE LOVE WE KEEP
Author Guest / January 24, 2020

Suzanne was fed up. Ready to throw in the towel and give up on the Neanderthal on her couch. The only prob­lem with that plan? It didn’t get him off her couch or out of her cottage, or get her out of the position of car­ing for him. So giving up was not an option—not be­cause she was determined or noble but simply because she was stuck. So as the early darkness of winter fell over Summer Island, she did two things. First, she texted Dahlia, irate. Look, I don’t know where you are or why you’re not answering Zack, but he’s had a major mental setback. I accept that you’re not here, physically—but I need you to be present with him, Dahlia. He’s officially despondent now, and I’m not sure what to do. Please call him as soon as you see this. Second, she made a delicious dinner. Remembering that Dahlia had once mentioned Zack loved her meat­balls, Suzanne got out the recipe, which Dahlia had given her along with others, and started squishing ground beef into a mixture of bread crumbs, minced onion, Parme­san cheese, an egg, and some spices. She took her time, since he clearly needed…

Terri Reed | Creating Characters Led to Personal Growth + Giveaway!
Author Guest / January 24, 2020

Thank you, Fresh Fiction, for hosting me on your blog. While coming up with a topic for this blog, I asked myself what is it about books that captivate me. The answer is Characters. So often when I think about books I’ve read and loved, I remember the characters. When I first started writing I had no clue what I was doing. I didn’t understand craft, but I knew I had stories to tell. My mother-in-law encouraged me to ‘just’ start writing. I did, but my characters were flat. It took me many sets of revisions to the stories before I was really able to know and understand my characters. It was painstaking work, hence why it took me ten years to sell my first full-length novel to Harlequin. Now, nearly three decades since writing that first story, I finally feel like I have a grasp on characterization. But it required many classes and workshops, learning from authors whose work I admired and wanted to emulate. As authors, we want our characters to be likable, relatable, sympathetic and fictional people the reader can root for from page one to the end. I embarked all those years ago on a quest…

Nicci French | 20 Questions: LOSING YOU
Author Guest / January 24, 2020

1) What’s the name of your latest release?  Losing You.   2) What is it about?  A teenage girl goes missing and her mother has one short and terrifying day to find her. 3) What word best describes your heroine?  Unstoppable. 4) What makes your hero irresistible?  There is no hero. The heroine has to save her daughter by herself. That’s what makes her irresistible: she is like a tigress. 5) Who are the people your main characters turn to when they need help?  Nina turns to the police but the police don’t believe her. One of the themes that repeats in our novels is that people have to save themselves… 6) What do you love about the setting of your book?  Sandling Island is inspired by an island near where we live in South East England. It’s swept by the wind off the north Sea, it’s linked to the mainland by a causeway that is covered by the tide once a day and it produces the best oysters in the world. 7) Are you a plotter (follow an outline) or a pantster (write by the seat of your pants)? Every book is a bit different. But this book is…

Nina Croft | Favorite Science Fiction and Fantasy Worlds + Giveaway!
Author Guest / January 23, 2020

My Dark Desires series takes place around a thousand years from now, in the year 3048, in a distant star system, and follows the adventures, romantic and otherwise, of the crew of the space cruiser, the Blood Hunter. It was my favorite series to write, so when my publisher asked if I would be interested in writing a Dark Desires Origins series, I jumped at the chance. The new series takes place five hundred years before the original Dark Desires books, when the fleet of ships carrying the last of humanity, first reach their new home. What most of the fleet don’t realize is that it’s not only humans who escaped the destruction of Earth. One of the ships carries a cargo of supernatural beings, captained by a thousand year old vampire. (Ricardo Sanchez, hero of Break Out, book 1 in my Dark Desires series.) Malfunction, book one in the new series tells the story of Katia, a werecat, and Logan, a human, as they fall in love while investigating a series of murders and trying to stay alive. Both series are a blend of science fiction and fantasy—which have been favorite genres of mine for many years. So I…

Courtney Moulton | Five Ways My Life Has Changed Since Becoming an Author
Author Guest / January 23, 2020

When I was a teen, I wanted nothing like I wanted to be a published author, and my dream came true in 2009 when I was 23 and sold my first book to a major publisher. Over ten years later, I feel like I’ve grown up in the publishing industry. My fifth release, WARDENS OF ETERNITY, is a historical fantasy about a young woman who must use her wit and magic to outmaneuver Nazis and Ancient Egyptian gods to prevent global destruction. My dream has come with amazing experiences and daunting responsibilities, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything! My art has become my job. That’s amazing! Not many people get to do their art every day and get paid for it. That’s because it’s very hard to make a living doing art. My life depends on my writing and that’s a huge weight on my ability to focus and create. In addition, authors get paid different amounts on different schedules. There’s very little we and our agents can do about that. Sometimes an author is living on a fixed income for a long time. I’ve been able to travel and see amazing cities and meet wonderful people. Some of…

Maddison Michaels | THE SINFUL SCOT
Author Guest / January 22, 2020

Hi Everyone, my name is Maddison Michaels and I’m thrilled to be doing a blog post for Fresh Fiction! First off, just to tell you a little about myself, I write historical romances that incorporate sexy history with a dash of mystery. My debut novel THE DEVILISH DUKE won the Romance Writers of Australia Romantic Book of the Year in 2019 for best historical romance! It is book one in my ‘Saints and Scoundrels’ series, and book two is THE ELUSIVE EARL, with my current up and coming new release THE SINFUL SCOT being the third book in the series (they are all stand-alone, though the characters do make appearances in the other books). One of the things I love about writing historical romances is researching the era and the setting that the book is set in. And I had such fun researching the Scottish Highlands which is where THE SINFUL SCOT is set in. I’ve never travelled there myself (though it’s on my bucket list) so I immersed myself online as much as possible to get a feel for the country-side. During my research, I spent some fun times looking at all of the castles in the regions, and…

Diana Lloyd | Perfect People Are Boring
Author Guest / January 22, 2020

Perfect people are boring. Also, kind of annoying. I’ll admit to occasionally pretending perfection but the ruse never lasts long. I don’t enjoy reading about perfect characters and I don’t really enjoy writing them either. Real people are flawed, sometimes hopelessly so. Characters in books need to have flaws too. Human foibles bring book characters to life. Visible “flaws” are limited by the eye of the beholder. I found The Emotional Wound Thesaurus (Angela Ackerman & Becca Puglisi) to be an invaluable resource for writing flawed characters. Emotional wounds and internal flaws are the salt & pepper of romance authors. Sprinkle that stuff liberally or risk a bland story. In my historical romance series, What Happens in the Ballroom, I purposely gave my characters a little more emotional baggage than they could successfully bear. And then I poked them with a sharp stick before writing their happily-ever-after. For book 2 of the series, ABOUT AN EARL, Oliver Chalford, the new Earl of Winchcombe, has scars he can hide and one he cannot. Unable to erase his physical scar, he struggles with the scars within that threaten to destroy his chance at happiness.  The son of an abusive alcoholic, Oliver wishes…