Book: THE CAPITAL OF DREAMS Character Name: The Goose How would you describe your family or your childhood? My family hardly paid any attention at all. I could have been any goose to crack out of the egg. I knew I was different. But my family alas, did not know I was different. It was muddy. I do remember that. So much mud. So much squawking. What was your greatest talent? I consider myself to be a public intellectual. I think public speaking is something I am gifted at. I believe I could only truly feel myself when I am in front of a crowd of a thousand people. Significant other? I belong to a human child. That was my ambition. I did not want anything to do with other geese. I was laughed at on the farm. They said you are not a dog, you cannot acquire a child. But I knew I would. So I found a lost one on the side of the road. A very posh erudite child from the city. I wanted a well-to-do child, who would have a similar vocabulary to me. Biggest challenge in relationships? Accepting that your partner is going to make…

By Lauren J. A. Bear When I set out to write about mothers in literature, I knew it would be complicated. Because motherhood is complicated. The moms I know – myself included – certainly do our best, but we are all working within the parameters of our current existence and under the veil of our past experiences. I always say, I might be correcting the mistakes of the mothers before me, but I’m making entirely new ones in the process. Defining a “good” mother in fiction or reality is, thus, a subjective task. There’s Marmee March, of course, morally steadfast and true, and Mrs. Rabbit of Beatrix Potter lore, always aproned and full of sage advice. But one of the hallmarks of good literature is authenticity. Nobody is an angel of the home all the time. On the flip side, there are quintessentially bad mothers: Mrs. Wormwood from MATLDA, vain and self-centered, or sociopathic Cathy Trask from EAST OF EDEN. While some may find the antics of Jane Austen’s Mrs. Bennett entertaining, I’m no fan. Her meddlesome desperation never felt like it had her daughters’ best interests at heart. There must be a middle ground. Moms who are devoted to…

Happy New Year everyone! I’m multi-genre author Debra Parmley, and I write while living the RV lifestyle full-time with my husband. I’m excited to bring you “Tales from the Trailer” a new feature on Fresh Fiction where each month I’ll be sharing stories of our travels and the RV lifestyle from an author’s point of view. For 23 years we had lived in Bartlett, TN just outside Memphis and we had talked about getting an RV and traveling more when he retired from his pressure washing business. Then Covid changed things in the US, and I said, “What are we waiting for? Everything is shut down anyway. If we must stay home, why not do that in a home on wheels? We can just move the home and go see national parks and our beautiful country. Let’s sell the house, buy an RV and go.” So, we did. By October 2020 we had bought the RV, a 2010 Tiffin Allegro diesel bus, parked it at our house, and started moving things into it while I worked on downsizing everything in our house.  When we put our house on the market, it sold 6 days after we listed it with two…

1–What is the title of your latest release? THE MAP OF BONES 2–What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book? A fast-paced adventure thriller, two pioneering women – separated by nearly two hundreds – go in search of the women in their own family, a quest that takes them from Europe to building a new life in South Africa. Quickly, they discover the past is far from dead and buried and they cannot escape the long-hidden secrets within their own family.  It’s an adventure detective novel, a quest novel celebrating incredible heroines, a novel about the power of words and how they connect generations. 3–How did you decide where your book was going to take place? I was in the Huguenot graveyard in Franschhoek South Africa back in 2012, when I had a sudden vision of a young woman in 19th century dress rubbing the lichen from a headstone to discover who was buried there.  I had to write The Map of Bones to find out who she was and what secrets were buried in the red earth of Africa.  It was quite a ride writing the book! 4–Would you hang out with your protagonist in real life? Absolutely!  She’s…

1–What is the title of your latest release? THE BANISHED BRIDE 2–What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book? It’s the first book in my “Intrepid Heroines” series—and Aurora Sprague needs every bit of grit and determination she can muster! Forced to become a child bride to a complete stranger in order to pay off a gambling debt of her wastrel father, she is banished to a remote estate while her husband—who has also been forced into the marriage by his own father—rides off from the wedding to return to his military assignments abroad. As the years pass—without a word from her legal husband—Aurora and her loyal former governess starts their own thriving business advising women on how to outwit the wiles of scheming men. When one of her clients is in danger of violence from a drunken spouse, Aurora insists on helping the woman escape to a relative in Scotland. But on the journey home, she finds a knife-wielding stranger in her carriage—and is quickly drawn into a cat-and-mouse intrigue involving the roguishly handsome British agent, who is chasing a French spy. It turns out they work well together trying to unravel lies and secrets . . . but…

1–What is the title of your latest release? THE LIFE CYCLE OF THE COMMON OCTOPUS 2–What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book? Eighteen-year-old Penelope Winters moves to Edinburgh for university to unearth a piece of her divorced parents’ history that she knows they’ve been keeping from her. She contacts an estranged friend of her father’s, a novelist called Lord Lennox, who invites her to spend the weekend at his centuries-old estate on Scotland’s east coast. As she pulls at the thread of her family’s secret, she unravels more than she bargained for. 3–How did you decide where your book was going to take place? The setting came first. I was writing scenes set in Edinburgh before I knew I was writing a novel. 4–Would you hang out with your protagonist in real life? Yes. I’ve been spending quite a bit of time with Pen over the past five years. I sometimes get annoyed with her, for the same reasons her friend Alice does, but like Alice I care deeply about her and especially appreciate her spikey, darkly funny side, which she hides from most people. 5–What are three words that describe your protagonist? Perceptive, determined, careful. 6–What’s something you…

1–What is the title of your latest release? REMEMBER WHEN. Book 4 of the Ravenswood series 2–What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book? Clarissa Ware, Dowager Countess of Stratton, mother of the Ravenswood clan, finally gets her own happy ending with the man she has secretly loved since childhood, despite his somewhat lower social standing. 3–How did you decide where your book was going to take place? The mansion and park of Ravenswood in Hampshire already existed from the previous three books in the series. Although the stories sometimes stray to other places, like London, I like to center them mostly around Ravenswood itself since it is central to the series and readers will be familiar with it. This story takes place almost entirely there, with a few scenes set at Clarissa’s childhood home ten miles away. 4–Would you hang out with your protagonist in real life? Probably not. I am a 21st century author, living a quiet existence in a modest home in rural Saskatchewan, Canada. She is a Regency-era British aristocrat. She lives in the realm of my imagination, which seems very real indeed when I am in the process of writing but is not reality in…

1–What is the title of your latest release? FOR ONE NIGHT ONLY 2–What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book? For One Night Only is a second-chance romance about Valerie Quinn, a bisexual actress with a bad reputation, who reunites the pop punk band that made her famous as a teen to generate some positive press. But getting the Glitter Bats back together for one last show doesn’t just mean facing the found family she walked away from, but navigating lingering feelings for her co-founder and first love Caleb Sloane, the anxious sweetheart whose heart she broke when she drove him from the industry. 3–How did you decide where your book was going to take place? I live in the Pacific Northwest, so for a while I considered having the entire novel take place in Seattle. (After all, it’s the birthplace of grunge, and seemed like a natural backdrop for a story about a rock band!) But as I got to know the characters, it made sense for most of them to live in Los Angeles, especially with long careers in the industry. With its music scene and massive venues, LA also seemed a fabulous place for a one-night-only reunion…

1–What is the title of your latest release? TEMPLE OF SWOON 2–What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book? A rookie archaeologist leads her first expedition to search for a lost city in the Amazon rainforest alongside a handsome journalist who is documenting the excursion for a magazine, only his true mission is to sabotage the team. 3–How did you decide where your book was going to take place? The archaeological team is searching for a lost city, so I chose the Amazon rainforest as the setting since so much of it is still uncharted and could possibly contain an ancient city that’s been lost for hundreds of years. 4–Would you hang out with your heroine in real life? Absolutely. She’s hilarious, quirky, and she always brings snacks. 5–What are three words that describe your hero? Compassionate, loyal, mysterious 6–What’s something you learned while writing this book? Cannonball trees in the Amazon have 8-10” fruit containing hundreds of seeds that can fall from the tree and injure or kill people below. 7–Do you edit as you draft or wait until you are totally done? Edit as I draft 8–What’s your favorite foodie indulgence? I love chips of all kinds, especially…

1–What is the title of your latest release? THE DROWNING GAME 2–What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book? Nadia and her sister build yachts for the ultra-wealthy. While Nadia works in the U.S., Cass is overseeing a build for a Chinese billionaire in Singapore. When Cass is found dead after a fall from a hotel balcony, Nadia learns that her sister was involved in dangerous, globe-spanning work to save a family. Solving her sister’s death will drag Nadia into the same terrifying web of espionage, dark family histories, and cutting-edge AI. Will she survive? 3–How did you decide where your book was going to take place? Once I hit on using the superyacht industry as the milieu my sisters live in, I was limited to locales where yachts are built. I also needed to focus on the ultra-high-net-worth individuals who buy these floating palaces. Russian oligarchs have gotten plenty of attention—I wanted something different. When I read that Chinese billionaires sometimes hide their wealth in Singapore, I had my setting. Then I started playing “what if?” What if someone needed to flee China? What if people were willing to kill to stop them? What if a woman was asked…