Fresh FIction Box Not To Miss
Sophie Jordan | Exclusive Interview: THIS SCOT OF MINE
Author Guest / March 13, 2019

Enjoy this fun interview between bestselling author SOPHIE JORDAN and Fresh Fiction Editorial Manager, Danielle Dresser! For readers who aren’t caught up, can you tell us a bit about the Rogue Files series, and your latest release, This Scot of Mine? Well, believe it or not, This Scot of Mine is the fourth book in the Rogue Files series. They’re all connected through characters often family members. By book four it’s a little challenging to relate how they are all connected. Book five, possibly the last in the series, is coming this October. Hmm. Maybe it’s time for a family tree!?   This Scot of Mine is a crazypants idea I came up with while on a writers retreat …. I pitched it to some of my other fabulous writer friends and we all brainstormed until I arrived at the final idea of a girl who PRETENDS to be ruined and pregnant (all lies for good reason) and gets paired up with the hero who needs to get married but has this curse hanging over his head.  I’ve read about secret babies before, but not so much about made-up pregnancies in historicals! Clara was such a fun heroine. What was your favorite part about writing her…

Catherine Bybee | Exclusive Excerpt: FAKING FOREVER
Author Guest / March 12, 2019

Shannon moved up the beach by half a mile and settled into one of only two second-story suites the boutique hotel offered. With the uninterrupted views of the ocean and a private patio that had its own plunge pool, this hotel was exactly what she envisioned while staying in Tulum for a vacation. She was on the balcony when she heard Avery enter the room. Shannon stood from the shady spot she’d propped herself up on to greet her friend. Avery held her welcome drink in one hand and her purse in the other. “Eeeeek. This place is awesome,” Avery said, tossing her purse aside and offering Shannon a one-arm hug. “Beautiful, isn’t it?” The bellhop placed Avery’s bag in the room and asked if there was anything else he could assist with. Shannon tipped the man and closed the door behind him. “Check out the balcony.” Avery didn’t need to be asked twice. She wandered outside and tossed her arms wide. “A private pool?” More like an oversize hot tub, but yeah. “A great place to wash the salt water off after a day in the ocean.” “This is fabulous.” They talked briefly about her flight and drive from…

Kirsten Weiss | Author-Reader Match
Author Guest / March 11, 2019

Instead of trying to find your perfect match in a dating app, we bring you the “Author-Reader Match” where we introduce you to authors as a reader you may fall in love with. It’s our great pleasure to present Kirsten Weiss!  Writes: I write cozy mystery in its various forms, including paranormal. My latest release is the cozy mystery CHOCOLATE A LA MURDER, book four in my Perfectly Proper Paranormal Museum series. I call this series “paranormal light.” There may be something supernatural happening at the San Benedetto Paranormal Museum (it is, after all, a paranormal museum), but that’s up to the reader to decide. The real defining elements of my books are love and humor. The main characters love and care about each other, and the quirky humor reflects that. About my heroine: Maddie Kosloski returned to California after a decade overseas and discovered she had a lot of rebuilding to do. CHOCOLATE A LA MURDER is the fourth book in the cozy mystery series, and at this stage, Maddie’s finally ready to settle into her new life with her new love, police detective Jason Slate. But the universe has some zany curveballs (and murder) in store. Plus chocolate. Lots…

Jolina Petersheim | Author-Reader Match
Author Guest / March 8, 2019

Instead of trying to find your perfect match in a dating app, we bring you the “Author-Reader Match,” where we introduce readers to authors you may fall in love with. It’s our great pleasure to present Jolina Petersheim! Writes: My father was raised Mennonite in Lancaster, Pennsylvania; my mother Brethren, and I grew up as a caretaker’s daughter on a sprawling Civil War–era farm/camp in western Tennessee. This combination allowed me to see the intricacies—and complications—of community, so I love placing my characters inside morally twisting novels and then watching how they find their way out. (My newest novel, How the Light Gets In, might be the most morally twisting to date.) About: I am happily married to a “strong, quiet type” mountain man and mother to our three fluffy-haired little girls, ages six, four, and one. We’ve lived in five different homes in ten years of marriage (one a solar-powered farmhouse in Wisconsin, where How the Light Gets In is set). My husband—who also has a Mennonite/Amish background—is busy building our sixth house in the foothills of the Cumberland Plateau in Tennessee. We strive to live with the same simplistic, family-oriented mindset as our ancestors, but due to our…

Valerie Fraser Luesse | Dodging the Dreaded Coin
Author Guest / March 8, 2019

Spoiler alert: I’m about to seriously date myself. When I was in college, all my girlfriends were crazy about the movie Somewhere in Time, starring Jane Seymour and the late Christopher Reeve. In case that film was before your time, it’s about a modern-day playwright named Richard Collins, who travels back in time to meet, court, and win the heart of Elise McKenna, a turn-of-the-century actress whose image and mysterious story have captivated him. Just as it appears that love will win the day, Richard reaches into his pocket and pulls out a forgotten 1979 penny, which immediately yanks him out of the past, away from his soul mate, and literally “back to the future.” My own stories are set in my native South, and I feel as if I spend a big chunk of my writing time dodging The Dreaded Coin, working as hard as I can to skirt my way around anything and everything that might yank a reader out of the story. It doesn’t take much. One factual inaccuracy (like putting the Brazos River in Mississippi) or one line of dialogue that sounds nothing like authentic Southern speech (“I’m mad about you! Mad I say!”), and the…

Shana Galen | Top Five Reasons You Should Read a Book Set During the French Revolution
Author Guest / March 7, 2019

I’ve written over thirty romances set during the Regency period in England. I love the Regency, but lately, I’ve wanted to explore a different time period—the French Revolution. I get varied reactions to this announcement. Some of my readers are excited. Others are not interested in reading a book set during that time period. I hear, “Guillotines are not sexy” and “I like my British dukes, thank you very much.” You know the great thing about my books? As Marie Antoinette said, “You get your cake and can eat it too!” Okay, she didn’t say that, but she never said “Let them eat cake either.” But you will get everything you love in a Regency in one of my French Revolution-set books, especially To Tempt a Rebel, which releases March 12. 1. Page-turning Suspense The guillotine may not be sexy, but when my hero and heroine face the National Razor if they are caught out after curfew, it certainly makes those midnight rendezvous a little more tense and meaningful. With all the turmoil and unrest during the revolution, Alex and Tristan are always just one step ahead of the guards, and I promise you’ll keep turning pages to see if…

Danielle Dresser | What is it about Post-WWII Fiction?
Author Guest / March 6, 2019

Today, thoughts on historical fiction from Fresh Fiction Editorial Manager Danielle Dresser… Once upon a time, I was a publicist for a wonderful publisher (shout out to Sourcebooks!) and I spent a lot of time paying attention to publishing trends – what was working in the industry? What were editors acquiring? What was selling, aka what were people reading?  On top of my job, I was also a member of a book club and we went through a period of about a year or so where just about all we read was World War II fiction… was it because people really loved reading about this time period, or was it because that’s what the publishing industry decided to publish? To be fair, our book club instituted an unofficial rule to not read WWII fiction (until very recently, LOL!) and now that I’m back in the publishing industry, I’ve noticed something else… Post-World War II fiction. Set well after the war, usually in the 50s and 60s, these novels still have WWII looming over its narrative. Perhaps it’s a family member dealing with PTSD before there was a word for it, as a community dealing with tragedy grapples with in Judy Blume’s…

Rebecca Yarros | Writing the Perfect Love Letter + Excerpt from THE LAST LETTER
Author Guest / March 5, 2019

Being a military wife of seventeen years, I know a thing or two about writing a love letter. Between my husband’s five deployments, we have thousands of them stored in our basement, our own little time capsule from days where pen and paper were our only means of communication. Those letters have saved our marriage more times than I can count. The beautiful thing about love letters is that just like love, they come in all sorts of different varieties. Some are poetic, some romantic, some erotic, and some don’t even look like love letters at all. What all good love letters have in common is heartfelt emotion. In The Last Letter, Ella regrets writing in pen when her awkward nature gets the best of her during her first letters with Beckett. But that sincerity is what first draws Beckett to her in their letters. Start with your feelings, and you can’t go wrong. Some of my favorites didn’t read like love letters at all. They came from the front lines, scrawled on scrap pieces of paper between missions, the letters blurring from the touch of Jason’s fingers. They were short, and often held two distinct paragraphs—one updating me on…

Kym Roberts | Cozy Corner: March to Meet New Mysteries
Author Guest , Cozy Corner / March 4, 2019

It’s almost time for spring, right? Well, don’t put up those sweaters and galoshes anytime soon, and keep those shorts stored for now. I think that groundhog fooled us all last month. Instead, embrace the cold, or snow, or the rain and dig into a good mystery this month. I’ve got a few I didn’t feature last month you don’t want to miss, and some great mysteries releasing in March that will take up those last few (hopefully) chilly days Mother Nature has decided we can’t do without. After all, Mother does know best. Father Time is just making the season seem dramatically long 😉 LIVING THE VIDA LOLA by Melissa Bourbon A Lola Cruz Mystery Meet Lola Cruz. After paying her dues as an intern, she’s now a full-fledged detective at Camacho and Associates. Her boss is Manny Camacho, a muy caliente former cop with a mysterious ex-wife, a Lara Croft look-alike girlfriend, and a sudden personal interest in Lola. Her first big case? A missing mother who may not want to be found. And to make her already busy life even more complicated, Lola’s helping her cousin plan her quinceañera and battling her family and their old-fashioned views…

Susan Stoker | DEFENDING MORGAN Exclusive Excerpt
Author Guest / March 4, 2019

Clearing his throat, Arrow said, “I came in here to see if you wanted to try to get those mats out of your hair. The guys found conditioner.” He held up a white bottle. Morgan brought a hand up to her head self-consciously. She knew how bad her hair was, had seen it firsthand in the mirror. She hadn’t wanted to take a pair of scissors to it, but was afraid it was going to be inevitable. “Sure. But I don’t know if it’ll do much good,” she told him honestly. Arrow stood and held out a hand to her. “We can try.” She liked that. We. She felt his fingers brush over her cheek in a barely there caress before he tugged on her hand, urging her to walk toward the bathroom. Maybe it was her time in captivity that made her appreciate the little things more. Arrow grabbed the ice bucket on the way into the bathroom. Morgan stood there feeling awkward as Arrow set the conditioner on the edge of the bathtub, then put his hands on his hips, surveying the room. He turned to her and gestured toward the tub. “Go on and have a seat…