I’ve been thinking about some shared elements of a really great book and movie. Some are easy to spot: great characters, chemistry, sexual tension, decent plot. But one of the unnamed ingredients in a book that makes a reader sigh, cry, and hug the book to her chest in pure love is the knock–out ending. In the romance novel, happily ever after is a given. Most readers insist on a wonderful satisfying journey to get to the happy ending. But what about the ending itself? Whether it be the quiet revelation of love or the bigger than life explosion of a character realizing he or she must take a risk, I’m a sucker for the final payoff. Let’s list a few. The Proposal – The journey between this prickly couple made for the sleeper of the year, and when the hero finally realizes what he’s lost, he goes after her in the big chase and confession we love to see. My Best Friend’s Wedding – Had it all. The hysterical truck chase, the confession, and the realization this hero was not her happily ever after. Alone at the wedding, trying to be cool with her loneliness, her gorgeous best friend…

When I was a child, “home for the summer” meant that respite from school – June right on through to the week after Labor Day, that golden time of endless fun in the sun. Summer meant later lights out at night, reading in the shade of the back yard trees, and chasing fireflies at night with my friends in the neighborhood. There were the annual trips to visit my mother’s aunt in North Weymouth, Massachusetts, where a year’s worth of paper dolls awaited, saved for me by Great–Aunt Bess from the Boston Globe. There were long hot days at the New Jersey shore – running on sizzling feet into the cold water of the ocean – trips to amusement parks where I’d watch my older brother test his skill shooting with an air gun at moving targets, visits from relatives, and lazy days when there was nothing more to do than watch the clouds go by. When I was in college, “home for the summer” meant catching up with my friends from high school, revisiting old hangouts and renewing old friendships. There were summer jobs and trips to the beach, and reading something other than textbooks. For the characters in…

Call me crazy, but I love January. For me, January means getting over that winter hump and looking ahead to spring. The thing I won’t do in January is set New Year’s resolutions. Maybe I’m a party-pooper, I don’t know. All I know is that the last New Year’s resolution I set was giving up chocolate. If you know me at all, you know the idea of this is laughable. I have a ferocious yearning for dark chocolate. I eat one piece every day. That one piece is enough to keep my cravings satisfied and it’s only 52 calories (I did my research on that calorie count). Yet, I still tried to convince myself I could give it up. Forever. Forever lasted 22 hours. In less than a day I’d blown my New Year’s resolution. For whatever reason, when I call a goal a resolution, I tend to fail at reaching that goal. Sad, but true. So, instead of setting resolutions, I like to think of the new year as a chance to look back on the previous months and take stock of what I’d like to do differently going forward. It’s also a chance for me to think about…

“How do you say goodbye to a piece of your heart? If you’re a quilter, you have a time-honored way to express yourself. “A quilt is an object of peculiar intimacy. By virtue of the way it is created, every inch of the fabric is touched. Each scrap absorbs the quilter’s scent and the invisible oils of her skin, the smell of her household and, thanks to the constant pinning and stitching, her blood in the tiniest of quantities. And tears, though she might be loath to admit it….” That’s a quote from the beginning of THE GOODBYE QUILT, a story about letting go, leaving home, and obviously, quilting. I am not a quilter, but I’m a quilt-appreciator. The background of the author photo for this book is a family heirloom quilt, which is about a century old, yet just as sturdy now as when it was stitched. A really good quilter knows how to make things that last. When my own daughter was leaving home, I made her a scrapbook. However, The Goodbye Scrapbook doesn’t resonate in quite the same ways as THE GOODBYE QUILT. In the novel, the narrator, Linda, creates her quilt from the bits and pieces…

Susan Mallery has entertained millions of readers with her witty and emotional stories of women and the relationships that move them. In her latest novel, ALREADY HOME, Jenna Stevens, still reeling from a recent divorce, is unpleasantly surprised by the arrival of her birth parents, who seem to want her to feel a family bond immediately. She was perfectly happy with the loving, traditional parents who raised her. Can she learn to love a second mother without damaging her relationship with the woman who raised her? Join Susan’s Members Only area at www.susanmallery.com for exclusive sneak peeks, short stories, and more. Recently, a friend recommended a cookbook to me. She said the chocolate chip cookie recipe in her favorite cookbook was to die for. Thick, soft, chewy, chocolatey goodness. I’m a sucker for chocolate chip cookies, so I ordered the book. This is a cookbook for someone who loves cooking. The thing is, though – and I’m letting you in on a big secret here – I don’t love cooking. I understand my friend’s mistake. After all, the heroine of my latest book, ALREADY HOME, is a chef. During the course of the book, she reconnects with her creativity in…

In the pictures I have of my mother she looks like the Duchess of Windsor. My husband, who didn’t like her, would say, “Uh oh, here comes the Duchess,” when he heard her car in the driveway. Raised in an orphanage, how did my mother come by that royal presence? How could she have been so fragile, and yet accomplish so much in her young widowhood, raising my brother and me? How can she exist so powerfully after she is dead? She seems to have left tracks in my brain like indelible markers that are more than memory, leaking into my present. She died while I was downstairs in the hospital coffee shop drinking a milkshake and leafing through Newsweek. I found her on the floor after her last desperate moment of pride trying to get to the bathroom alone. She was crumpled at the foot of the bed, a terrifying stranger in a hospital gown. I screamed for the nurse who came running. It took the two of us to get her back in the bed where she lay, dignified once again, even in this unbelievable death. In life she didn’t look like anyone’s mother. She was too young-looking,…

There are probably some people who wonder why I decided the world needed another vampire novel, let alone one about a bloodsucker who works for the president. But to me, changing the War on Terror to the War on Horror didn’t seem like that much of a leap. My vampire Nathaniel Cade even has his birth in U.S. history. I got the idea when reading a weird factoid about a sailor pardoned by President Andrew Johnson after being accused of killing two men and drinking their blood. I wondered: What would a man sitting in the Oval Office do with a vampire? Then it hit me. That was the wrong question. The right question is: What wouldn’t the president do with a vampire? Since 9/11, it seems that the United States has struggled with one nightmare after another. There’s a feeling that the ground isn’t stable under our feet; that it might crumble at any moment and the graves will open and all kinds of nasty, hungry things will spring out. You can see how we’re handling it in our hunger for stories of zombies and vampires and conspiracies. John Connolly‘s Charlie Parker is a detective constantly fighting ghosts and…

Romance novels are often accused of being formulaic.  Of being the same story, told often.  After all, how many different ways can you tell the story of a girl and a guy (or a guy and a guy, or a were-beast and a girl, depending on the genre you prefer) falling in love and working there way to a happily ever after?  My general response to that is, how many different ways are there to make a dress? The answer of course, is TONS.  From choice of fabrics, line, length, cut, style, and level of sophistication, there are a million different ways to make a dress.  And is a dress going to be the same old dress, sewn often?  No, of course not.  Any dress Michael Kors makes is going to be different from Christian Dior, from Jessica McKlintock, from the Gap. Similarly, there are millions of different ways to tell a love story, because a love story is unique to each individual couple.  That said, much like with clothing, there are certain patterns that romance writers follow, called tropes.  These tropes are not meant to make the stories the same – but they are recognizable – just as a…

Hi y’all! And how is everyone at Fresh Fiction today? In southern Oklahoma things are hopping right along. Spring has sprung. Summer is well into coming into its own and the flowers are blooming. And I have a new book on my bookcase! LOVE DRUNK COWBOY just hit the stands today and I’m so excited I could just dance a jig with a peg legged pirate, or maybe do some line dancin’ with a tall, dark sexy cowboy! Yes, indeedy, that does sound better. LOVE DRUNK COWBOY is the debut book in the new Spikes & Spurs series which has grown into four books already with the possibility of more on the horizon. Red’s Hot Cowboy will be out in September; Darn Good Cowboy Christmas in October and an untitled fourth book in the spring of 2012. What happens in Vegas is supposed to stay in Vegas. Right? That’s what Jasmine and Ace thought when they had a secret wedding but then it was broadcast on national television and the secret was out of the bag. We haven’t come up with a name for it yet but believe me, my fabulous editor Deb Werksman will find a perfect fit for…

For a solid 24 hours, my novel THE COLOR OF HEAVEN outsold THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATOO on Kindle, and for the next two weeks sold at a record rate of a book a minute. It rose to #4 on the general fiction Kindle list at Amazon and hit #1 on the contemporary romance list. I was flooded with letters from readers who believed my fictional story was true, and I had to write back and explain it was not.  Some went hunting on the internet, looking for actual news items about the story.  Other readers wrote to share personal stories of connection with lost loved ones, who they believed were watching over them from some other dimension. THE COLOR OF HEAVEN isn’t a religious book.  In fact, it’s more of a love story than anything else, but it touched a nerve with so many different kinds of people – men and women, young and old. Some key parts of THE COLOR OF HEAVEN are based on my own life experiences (the character’s car accident and her daughter’s illness) but the essence of the story comes from my imagination and my research into the fascinating subject of actual, documented…