Hi, I’m Nina Croft, writer of all sorts of romance. And I’m here to talk about my latest release, DECEPTION, book 2 in my Dark Desires Origins series, a mixture of science fiction, paranormal, and romance. The remnants of humanity have fled to the stars in search of a home. Now, after five hundred years, they’ve finally reached a system capable of supporting life. It’s time for a new start. * D – D is for Destiny, my heroine, the only person to be born on the journey from Earth and with a mysterious role to play in the survival of humanity. E – E is for Earth. Which is long gone and now the future of mankind lies in a galaxy far away. C – C is for Chosen Ones. The people who won the lottery and got a place on the fleet leaving the Earth. Except the lottery might have just been a little bit rigged. E – E is for Ever after. And that’s a long time if you’re a warlock, like Milo, my hero. P – P is for Prejudice. Milo has always dreamed of a world without prejudice, where the “monsters” no longer need to…

One of the things I love most about mysteries is the setting, the town where the characters come to life. I’ve lived on both coasts and multiple states in the middle so the chances are pretty good that an author can take me home for a few hours to enjoy my old stomping ground. The Oregon coast however, is very near and dear to my heart and I was hooked when I heard about Wendy Lynn Watson’s new mystery series she’s writing with Melissa Bourbon. You seriously can’t go wrong with this duo!  *** Kym: Welcome to the Cozy Corner, Wendy! Wendy: Thank you:) You teach law and politics at the University of North Texas. How does that come into play with your writing? (I actually picture you in Viola Davis’s role in How to Get Away with Murder—only your crimes are on the page. I’m close, right?) Wendy: That’s a great question! I don’t usually draw directly from the subjects I teach in my writing.  However, the students themselves keep me abreast of all sorts of things happening in the world that I would never hear about from people at my own stage in life.  They keep my creativity…

Hi, Julie Ann! Welcome back to Fresh Fiction. Please tell us about yourself and your new book, RIDE THE TIDE.  Holla Fresh Fictioners! It’s so good to be back! My name is Julie Ann Walker, I’m the NYT and USA Today bestselling author of steamy, sexy romantic suspense novels and epic love stories that will melt your heart. (Or at least that’s what I TRY to write. Ha! I guess I’ll leave it up to you guys to determine whether or not I hit my mark.) I have a mutt named Conan who suffers from allergies, howls at sirens, and would love to FINALLY catch a squirrel. And I’ve travelled to over 50 countries because I suffer from more than my fair share of wanderlust. For readers who aren’t familiar with the Deep Six series, can you catch us up to speed on what’s been going on?  Deep Six is a romantic suspense and adventure series set on a fictional island in the Gulf of Mexico. It follows six “retired” Navy SEALs as they hunt for the lost treasure of the world’s holy grail of sunken shipwrecks, the Santa Cristina. The series tagline is: Six men. One sunken Spanish galleon….

Each time I come to the last book of a series I’m overcome with sadness. I’ve spent a long while with these characters, and in this case, the fictional town I built from an outlaw hideout. I’m one of them. I know their deepest desires and what they dream of. Over the many months, they burrowed into my soul and became a part of my fabric. In a way it’s as though family members have died, leaving behind nothing but cherished memories. After four books in the Outlaw Mail Order Brides series, there are a lot of small details and threads to wrap up, details readers will get perturbed at if I leave something hanging. The story has to end in a totally believable way which means nothing so far out it seems beyond the realm of reason. It has to be plausible and it has to be filled with deep emotion. Some things I can tie off during the writing of the last book but others that can only be done with an epilogue, especially if it involves the future. In ONCE UPON A MAIL ORDER BRIDE, I wrote an epilogue because that seemed the best way to complete the…

In THE MISTLETOE TRAP, Julie’s fairly certain she can convince her best friend Gavin to watch chick flicks with her. Convincing him to join her and his sister doing facemasks proves to be more of a challenge. So, she simply swipes some on his face and tells him he might as well let her do the rest. There are some movies that practically require fuzzy socks and a warm blanket. Here are my top five movies to cuddle up with this holiday season. 1–Just Friends – Ryan Reynolds, friends who start to fall, and a wild yet loveable Rockstar. This movie is full of lots of hijinks and laughter and is one of the movies I can’t wait to snuggle up next to my husband and watch. 2–The Holiday – This is one of those amazing movies with not just one romance, but two! And not to spoil it if you haven’t seen it, but just wait till you see Mr. Napkin Head. Talk about swoon (which is something I never thought I’d say about something involving napkins. LOL) 3–While You Were Sleeping – Not only does this movie have a lot of quotable lines, it’s one of Sandra Bullock’s…

1–What’s the name of your latest release?  My latest release is called Little Wishes. 2–What is it about?  Little Wishes is about a young couple in 1960’s England in a small coastal town in Cornwall who fall in love, but for whom life conspires to keep them apart. Fifty years later they reconnect. Little Wishes is about taking all of those lost chances from the years they weren’t together, and making them come true. It’s about a love that lasted fifty years, despite life getting in the way. Ultimately it’s about my characters reconnecting both with people they had lost, but also with parts of themselves that needed reawakening. 3–What word best describes your main character(s)?  Tom is stubborn, loyal, but occasionally cowardly. Elizabeth is both brave, romantic, and sorry. 4–What makes your story relatable?  I think we all have moments in our histories when we can look back and think things could have gone either way. Choices about work, where we live, which relationships we will fight for, and which relationships we let go. Hopefully, for most of us, we take the right decision, follow the path that makes us happiest. But part of us perhaps will always wonder,…

Hoping to escape the mother-­daughter conflict that was about to escalate to a new level, Emma hurried outside. Pausing on the snow-­covered path to the driveway, she allowed fat snowflakes to fall on her, even catching a couple with her tongue. Snow couldn’t hurt you. She looked all around, taking in the other large homes, beautifully blanketed in snow, and the mountains behind them. This place was truly magical! As she walked up the driveway, she spotted what looked like a caretaker’s cottage and slowly approached it. Hopefully the ol’ grump wasn’t as bad as Gillian had described. Holding her breath, she tentatively knocked on the door, expecting a gray, grisly old man to answer. To her surprise, a younger man opened the door. Dressed in jeans and a plaid flannel shirt, he stared at her with a puzzled expression. She suddenly wondered if she’d knocked on the wrong door. She smiled stiffly. “Sorry to bother you. I—I was looking for the caretaker, and I thought this was the right—” “Yeah, yeah.” He studied her with a furrowed brow. “This is, uh, the caretaker’s cottage.” She blinked. “Oh, so . . . are you the caretaker?” For some reason this guy didn’t…

“I’ve never known why he did it,” Sharine said, and right then, she was magnificent in her cold anger. “If I ever see him again, I will ask him—if I can stop myself from first stabbing out his eyes.” Titus approved of her bloodthirsty need for vengeance. “I think at times, that I should release the anger,” she said, “that my vengeance should be to erase him from my thoughts.” “You can erase his face and his eyes instead,” Titus muttered. “And release your anger in his flesh.” It would still not be enough. An unexpected burst of that astonishing laughter that was sunshine falling in a rain over him. He clenched his gut against the glory of it. If he’d thought her beautiful before. . . well, if the Hummingbird was beautiful, Sharine with her blade of a tongue and golden laughter was extraordinary. Fighting the urge to touch her, this being beyond his reach, he said, “Am I to take it that you have no more feelings for the blue-green donkey?” He had to break the moment, break his entrancement. “If you are pining for him, admit it now so that I can smite you for bad taste.” “Smite me?”…

1–What’s the name of your latest release?  Wolf Untamed 2–What is it about?  Wolf Untamed is the 11th book in the Special Wolf Alpha Team series. In this story, Officer Diego Miguel Martinez and his SWAT team of werewolves have been dealing with a city gone mad. People are behaving strangely, committing violent crimes out of the blue, without even remembering it. Is it delirium–a new drug supposedly flooding the streets–or is it something much more terrifying? Bree Harlow is dealing with issues of her own. Her ex-husband was sent to prison and her son, Brandon, has been struggling. He’s been acting out and getting into more and more trouble, and Bree has no clue what to do next. When she takes him out for breakfast at their favorite diner, hoping to get him to open up about what’s wrong, the situation takes a drastic turn after someone walks into the place with a gun. As Diego and some of the other members of the SWAT team show up to help, Bree’s life is sent careening down a completely unexpected path. Bree’s son is definitely dealing with some big issues, just not the issues she assumed. 3–What word best describes…

As we approach the (much different this COVID year) Thanksgiving holidays, traditionally a time of fetes and family gatherings, this month’s selection of novels explores families and family-like relationships that can be either blessing or curse. We begin with THE WRIGHT SISTER by Patty Dann.  While everyone is familiar with the famous brothers who made the first flight at Kitty Hawk, few know about the sister who supported and took care of her famous brothers for most of her life.  After Wilbur’s death, at age 52, Katherine married a widowed friend of the family, Harry Haskell.  Furious and feeling betrayed, Orville remained with a housekeeper in Dayton, Ohio, while his married sister began a new life in Kansas City.  The story is told via her (unanswered) letters to the brother who never forgave her for “abandoning” him and her “marriage diary,” detailing her joy in her new life, her enthusiastic support for the suffragette cause, and her never-realized hopes to reconcile with her brother. A vivid portrait of a woman who was long restrained from becoming all she could be by the demands of her restrictive family. We continue with a better-known woman in LEARNING TO SEE: A NOVEL OF…