Hello! I’m so excited to be back with you on the Fresh Fiction Blog! If we haven’t met before, I’m Lisa Kessler and I passionate, page-turning paranormal romances filled with plenty of twists and turns, danger and adventure, and sexy romance that will curl your toes. I love writing paranormals, and I don’t stop with vampires and shifters. In the Sentinels of Savannah series, I’ve got a sexy crew of immortal pirates, but they’re not vampires. Their final plunder as mortals turned out not to be gold, but the Holy Grail. They’ve been immortal ever since, living and working at their favorite port city, Savannah Georgia! My new release, Pirate’s Promise, is book 5 in my Sentinels of Savannah Series but it can be read as a standalone. Why pirates in Savannah? My grandmother was born and raised just outside of Savannah in Darien, so I’d visited America’s Most Haunted City before and pirates are a big part of their history. I’ve wanted to write a pirate series since the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie came out, but I didn’t want to write a historical soooo… One day it hit me! What if the pirates were still here, today?…

Welcome back to Fresh Fiction, Isabel! It’s hard to believe BLOOD AND EMBER, the third book in your Stormbringer series, is already out. What have you loved about writing this series the most?  Getting to build my own world! Bits of it were tough–the maps especially, as I am not a person who’s good with space and distance. (I am a person who lives in Massachusetts and continually refers to “going up to New York City.”) But I got to think up holidays and histories and peoples, which was tons of fun. I also got to create a world with a benevolent goddess of death and vengeance, and not in a gross “scorned woman” way, which I am into. Olvir embarks on a harrowing journey to hopefully figure out the true nature of his powers, and his friend Vivian (a warrior in her own right!), is not going to let him go about this on his own. Of course, their friendship develops into something more. How did you balance their epic journey with their changing relationship?   The thing I’ve found about travel is that it gives you a lot of time and space to think–like, just being away from your normal surroundings can…

F: Female Warrior I: Independent woman E: Enigmatic alpha R: Riding crop fun C: Convenient marriage E: Enemies to lovers * C: Cave secrets O: Old enemies returned W: Wolf Pack Run B: Birth of a new era O: Ominous messages Y: Young love lost * W: Wild wolf pack O: Only one I’ve ever really wanted L: Love wasn’t part of the plan F: Finally together as equals * FIERCE COWBOY WOLF by Kait Ballenger Seven Range Shifters #4 Cowboys by day, wolf shifters by night: These bad boys are ready to heat things up in a sexy paranormal wolf shifter romance from author Kait Ballenger. Packmaster Maverick Grey is reconciled to spending the rest of his life alone. No woman can compare to his former love, least of all Sierra Cavanaugh–a woman who makes level-headed Maverick’s blood boil with a fire even his worst enemies could never evoke… But then, with his reputation on the line, and the pack’s safety his primary concern, Maverick finds himself in need of a mate, and Sierra comes to him with a proposal. All she wants is to become an elite warrior, and she needs Maverick’s help to get to her goal….

People change.  It’s one of the oldest adages in the book.  And yet, there’s a deeper truth: people RESIST change, even change they ought to embrace (because often change equals opportunity). For example, we moved in December 2020, because the company my husband works for relocated to a different part of North Texas.  I did not want to move, and the re-location was close enough that – in theory – we could have stayed where we were, and Jake would have just had a longer commute.  Much longer, but still doable, especially since he was partly working from home.  So much had already changed during the pandemic.  I had started teaching my continuing education writing classes from home.  I’d even had to have a virtual book launch party. But by wholesale saying no more change, I was missing out on an opportunity.  Jake and I were living in a one-bedroom apartment, which had worked until suddenly we were both working from home – with different work styles.  I have to have noise on in the background.  Jake needs quiet to focus.  We needed a change – just to function.  Once we committed to the move, we found a place that…