I’m a sensory person. Writing reels me in when it’s rooted in taste, touch, sound, sight, and smell. When writing my contemporary young adult novel, JUST ANOTHER EPIC LOVE POEM, I wanted to deliver to readers the Iranian American cultural experiences of the protagonist, Mitra, through the tastes and smells and textures of her family’s Iranian recipes. In an Iranian household, food isn’t just sustenance–it’s sacred. Meals like ghormeh sabzi and fesenjan take all day to prepare; rice is soaked, rinsed, washed, and rinsed again; vibrant saffron threads are folded into fragrant stews. Hospitality is at the heart of Persian cooking. The Farsi equivalent of bon appetit–nooshe jaan–literally translates to “may your soul be nourished.” In Just Another Epic Love Poem, Iranian food weaves through Mitra’s life as its own character, an entity with which she exists in complex relationship. Ever since her family’s separation, caused by her mother Jaleh’s addiction, Mitra has lost connection to certain dishes she used to share with her mom. Ash-e reshteh, the earthy, herb-infused noodle soup served on Iranian holidays, no longer symbolizes good luck and the possibility of life’s different paths for Mitra; now it serves up grief. As her mother attempts to…

Book Title:  THE FORGER AND THE DUKE Character Name: Amaranthe Illingworth   Amaranthe, the heroine of THE FORGER AND THE DUKE, is being interviewed by Derwa, the young child of her maid, Eyde. Eyde and Amaranthe left Cornwall six years before this conversation taking place in Amaranthe’s home in George Court, London, 1776.   So we begin. How would you describe your childhood? Idyllic, though I didn’t know it at the time. My father was the vicar of St. Cleer, a small, ancient village in Cornwall. I never heard him raise his voice, not even in the heights of a sermon. My mother was the daughter of a lens maker, a respectable trade. Her family came from Portugal; they were conversos, Jews who converted to Catholicism during the Inquisition in order to keep their home and their lives. You’ve met Joseph, who is older than I by four years. He tormented me but lightly, as I helped him with his studies, and he would not have been accepted into Oxford without me. The only time my mother scolded us was that winter Joseph dared me to walk out on the ice over the pond near our home, and I did….

1–What is the title of your latest release? A GRAVE ROBBERY 2–What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book? Victorian sleuth Veronica Speedwell and her handsome sidekick Stoker are at it again! But when the wax figure they find turns out to be an actual corpse, they end up facing their deadliest foe yet. 3–How did you decide where your book was going to take place? I had just taken my characters into the country, so it was time to go back to London for a proper city adventure. I needed access to laboratories, private clubs, cemeteries, and gaslit streets. 4–Would you hang out with your protagonist in real life? For a short period of time only. I adore Veronica, but I’m quite certain we would butt heads and I think she could take me in a fight. 5–What are three words that describe your protagonist? Intrepid, resourceful, outrageous. 6–What’s something you learned while writing this book? That no matter how hard I try to get my little ducks in a row, they will always choose chaos. I work extremely well under pressure; unfortunately, I seem to only be able to work under pressure, so if I have loads of…

1–What is the title of your latest release? ‘BOUT TO DYE IN BIRMINGHAM, A Cousins Cozy Mystery- Book One 2–What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book? Pair comedienne Leeann Morgan’s southern drawl with actor Leslie Jordan’s bowtie charm and you have Maggie and Francis, first cousins and best friends solving hometown murders in Birmingham, Alabama. 3–How did you decide where your book was going to take place? I lived in Birmingham at the time and wanted to use its distinct Deep South flavor in a series featuring local areas. Also, with my job, I’d probably driven on every road in the county, which gave me so many story ideas. 4–Would you hang out with your protagonist in real life? I may have taken “write what you know” a little too far in this case. I hang out with her all day, every day in my own head. I originally started writing this out of boredom during Covid, and I didn’t limit myself from worrying if it seemed too much like me because I never thought anyone else would read it. 5–What are three words that describe your protagonist? Optimistic, loyal, and an over-thinker 6–What’s something you learned while writing…

1–What is the title of your latest release? WATCH IT BURN 2–What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book? After the wife of a prominent man in the small town of Edenberg, Texas, drowns in only two inches of the Guadalupe River, three women refuse to believe it was a “slip and fall.” As they dig for clues, they discover that the dead woman—Beverly Hoffman—and her husband are the founders of a cultish organization slowly taking over their town. They must decide whether or not to infiltrate the institution to dismantle it from within. 3–How did you decide where your book was going to take place? I’ve enjoyed visiting the Texas Hill Country, which is three hours from my home, since I was in high school. Edenberg, Texas is a fictional town based on a real-life tiny tourist town named Gruene, home of the oldest dance hall in Texas. I thought this would be the perfect place for one man to garner control and share his cult-astic ideas. 4–Would you hang out with your protagonist in real life? My protagonist is unique in that she is dead. (Yes, the dead woman in the middle of the river is one of…

The Wickedness of a Highlander, Book 4, Midnight in Scotland Series by Elisa Braden Zombie Fallout 22: Bridging the Gap by Mark Tufo Dredge’s Enchanting Mate, Book 6, Saber Chronicles by R.E. Butler Finn’s Fury, Book 8, Riot MC Biloxi Series by Karen Renee The Last Duke She’d Marry, Book 3, Scoundrels of Mayfair Series by Anna Campbell Monster Bully by Sam Crescent Daddy’s Little Cowgirl, Book 33, Daddy Series by Lila Fox Cruises Can Be Murder, Book 22, Charlie Parker New Mexico Mystery Series by Connie Shelton Wild Magic, Book 4, Wild Magic Series by Odette C. Bell The Empty Throne by Megan Derr     Each Monday the Smashwords store lists the top ten most highly anticipated indie fiction ebooks based on the previous week’s preorder accumulations. Each title on the list is scheduled to release within the next week. To help the talented authors on this list accumulate even more preorders, click the title of the book. The hyperlink will bring you to a Books2Read page where you can order from your preferred ebook retailer. If the preorder is part of a series, click the hyperlinked series title to learn about the other books in the series….

Rhys Bowen and Clare Broyles give the inside scoop on their new Molly Murphy book, IN SUNSHINE OR IN SHADOW.   RHYS: Last year I blogged with my daughter Clare to introduce you to her and to our co-written Molly Murphy books.  This year we are celebrating the publication of IN SUNSHINE OR IN SHADOW, which is book 20. TWENTY books in a series is something of an achievement in the cut throat world of book publishing. To keep a series fresh and new and attract new readers all this time is an achievement. We are patting ourselves on the back! In 2001 the first Molly Murphy book was published. It was called MURPHY’S LAW and if you check on Amazon it is still selling remarkably well. It also came out with a bang, winning the Agatha award plus three others and being nominated for the Mary Higgins Clark award. Molly was an Irish immigrant who had to flee from Ireland in fear for her life, arrived on Ellis Island using another woman’s name only to find herself, under that name, accused of murder. So her arrival was not auspicious and through the first books in the series her life…

1–What is the title of your latest release? TAKE TWO, BIRDIE MAXWELL 2–What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book? America’s Sweetheart gets canceled and retreats to her childhood hometown and discovers an anonymous love letter sent from one of her exes, then decides to stage her own real life romcom to discover who wrote it and win back the adoration of the public! 3–How did you decide where your book was going to take place? Once I knew that it was going to be a road trip book, California – my home state – made the most sense. It’s such a huge stretch of land that they could log a lot of miles without even crossing a state border! 4–Would you hang out with your protagonist in real life? Absolutely! I adore Birdie. I think if you’re writing a romcom heroine, the first rule has to be that you want to be their friend! 5–What are three words that describe your protagonist? Plucky, ambitious, determined 6–What’s something you learned while writing this book? Probably that road-tripping in an RV is not for me. I did it once with my family in middle school, and this was a reminder that…

1–What is the title of your latest release? CAN’T WE BE FRIENDS 2–What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book? We teamed up to collaborate on an exciting novel that uncovers the boundary-breaking, genuine friendship between Ella Fitzgerald, the Queen of Jazz, and iconic movie star Marilyn Monroe. 3–How did you decide where your book was going to take place? We started to research the idea in 2019. On a Friday afternoon in 2019, we were together for one of our monthly write-ins, having some lunch and contemplating Hollywood, actors, musicians, and all the drama that has unfolded throughout history. Something sparked that day, and as we leapt down research rabbit hole in search of an idea, we stumbled on the friendship between Ella Fitzgerald and Marilyn Monroe, a story we felt compelled to write. From the moment we learned about these two women, the friendship they forged, and how much people didn’t know about it, there was no stopping us! And for about two years, we were reading and digging into their story while we worked on our solo projects. Then, in 2021, we decided it was time to buckle down. Over the next year, we worked on plots,…

1–What is the title of your latest release? ONLY THE BEAUTIFUL 2–What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book? The lives of two women—a teenaged orphan with a rare sensory anomaly and an American expat working as a nanny to a disabled child in Nazi-occupied Vienna—converge at the height of the eugenics movement. 3–How did you decide where your book was going to take place? One of the primary locations, idyllic wine country in northern California in the late 1930s, was a natural choice; not just because California is my home state but because a staggering number of state-authorized sterilizations—without a person’s knowledge or consent—took place at a certain institution in Sonoma County. California led the way, sadly, with more forced sterilizations during the eugenics movement than any other state in the US. The second location, Vienna, Austria, was also an apropos setting as once Austria had been annexed to Germany at the beginning of World War 2, everything that was happening in Germany was now happening in Austria, including the “euthanizing” of disabled children—one of the first acts of the Third Reich in its unimaginably cruel scheme to create a master race. 4–Would you hang out with your protagonist…