1–What is the title of your latest release? KIT MCBRIDE GETS A WIFE 2–What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book? Without telling him, Junebug McBride decides to order up a mail order wife for her backwoodsman of an older brother. But she’s not going to sell some poor woman a false bill of goods – in her ad, she’s going to tell the TRUTH (poor Kit!) 3–How did you decide where your book was going to take place? KIT MCBRIDE is set in the Elkhorn Mountains of Montana in 1886. I knew I wanted somewhere remote and somewhere starkly beautiful. Bucks Creek is a town consisting entirely of McBrides. It’s a small and extremely isolated place. When the heroine, Maddy, arrives, she’s the only woman for miles around. 4–Would you hang out with your heroine in real life? I wouldn’t just hang out with her; I’d drag her off to have some fun! She’s been a housemaid since she was twelve and hasn’t had enough fun in her life! 5–What are three words that describe your hero? Big. Brawny. Sweet. 6–What’s something you learned while writing this book? I learned a lot of new words – not least of…

One of my favorite parts of writing fiction is dreaming up the world my characters inhabit. I’ll often send them on adventures far and wide, whether it’s a bachelorette party in Las Vegas or a solo trip to Hong Kong. This gives them an opportunity to explore new terrain, take bold risks, and in so doing, learn a little (or a lot) about themselves. It also gives me an opportunity to do one of my favorite activities: research travel destinations. Sometimes I think if I wasn’t a writer, then I’d be a travel agent. I love learning about new-to-me locales and planning itineraries down to the hour. (I’m particularly fond of cruise travel, so much so that I recently started my own blog about it, Cruise Obsessed.) So naturally, it thrills me to act as a travel agent for my characters. My new book, Smart Girl Summer, features the most exciting virtual trip I’ve ever planned: a cruise across the Mediterranean. But not just any cruise. The main character, Abby Atkinson, sets sail on the superyacht of her billionaire boss, Richard Vale. She spends her summer as a traveling math tutor for Richard’s tween daughter, Bijou, but she also uses…

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 you may fall in love with. It’s our great pleasure to present Bianca Marais!   Writes: In Bianca Marais’ THE WITCHES OF MOONSHYNE MANOR, picture Practical Magic meets a witchy ‘The Golden Girls’ in this rollicking story of six witches who are in their eighties, taking names, kicking butt. and bringing down the patriarchy (along with the help of a 15-year-old TikToker, Persephone) as they fight to save their beloved Moonshyne Manor and Distillery.   About: Bianca Marais likes long walks on the beach (while thinking about her next book), curling up next to a roaring fire that she has made (because she might have been an arsonist in a previous life), sipping crisp Chenin Blanc from South Africa (the country of her birth) and savoring romantic dinners (while wiping Muggle’s drool off her leg as her golden retriever mooches for food under the table). Bianca used to be much more adventurous in her younger years (throwing herself from airplanes, bungee jumping from cliffs, and white-water rafting on the Zambezi). But now she’s quite likely to…

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 you may fall in love with. It’s our great pleasure to present Megan Bannen! Writes: I enjoy crafting fantasy fiction with a love story at its center. My young adult tragedies have earned me a reputation as an author who is happy to rip out a reader’s heart and stomp all over it, but my adult debut, THE UNDERTAKING OF HART AND MERCY, is a fantastical, joke-filled romantic comedy (that will also rip out readers’ hearts, but in a has-a-happy-ending kind of way). About: ​I’m a former children’s librarian with the ukulele chops to show for it (thanks, story time). I’ve taught college and secondary English at home and abroad, but my true love for storytelling comes from my theater nerd roots; I once won the Irene Ryan Acting Scholarship, endowed by the actress who played Granny Clampett on The Beverly Hillbillies. When I’m not writing RomComs with zombies in them (ZomRomComs?) I’m hanging out with my husband and our two teenage sons in the Kansas City area.   What I’m looking for in my ideal reader match:…

Whenever an author names a piece of art in a novel, I must look it up. I have to know if it’s just a fictitious name from the author’s imagination, or if this piece truly inspired the author. I know better with Deanna Raybourn. She shows her inspiration in the written word as if you were looking at the piece yourself. So when she described, The Shepherdess of the Sphinxes by Lenor Fini from 1941 in her latest release KILLERS OF A CERTAIN AGE as having:   “Lavish ’80s hair, rising up tawny and tousled. She was wearing a sort of  armored piece over her genitals, a metallic bathing suit if you squinted while you studied it…Their expressions were serene as they surveyed their gentle  pasture dotted with flowers and the bones of the dead men they’d eaten. It  was ghoulish and beautiful, a perfect representation of the terrible feminine  power of life and death.”   I had to see it. Because I left out the best part of her description, and seriously I was picturing a Def Leppard album cover. It turns out, that the real painting is a little over 18×15 inches, not much bigger than an album…

1–What is the title of your latest release? FIRESTORM 2–What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book? A DEA agent is called to action when his CIA officer friend is kidnapped by a ruthless band of Russian mercenaries. 3–How did you decide where your book was going to take place? FIRESTORM is the second in a series, all of which take place on the Texas High Plains, near the ranch where my protagonist lives. 4–Would you hang out with your protagonist in real life? Absolutely! My protagonist is a composite character of friends I’ve had throughout my life while growing up on a ranch, working in the CIA, and doing contract assignments with the military. 5–What are three words that describe your protagonist? Resourceful, Easygoing, and Deadly 6–What’s something you learned while writing this book? I learned that you never want to get caught in the middle of a raging wildfire. There are few deaths more terrifying or gruesome. 7–Do you edit as you draft or wait until you are totally done? I guess it’s somewhere in between. I typically divide up my novels into four parts and edit by section. Sometimes I forget what I’ve already written, so this…

1–What is the title of your latest release? LINE OF DARKNESS 2–What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book? San Francisco, 1979 When ex-con PI Colleen Hayes is hired to find a missing person, she discovers a World War II banknote and a 1942 SS ID of a German officer long thought dead. An international vigilante group hunting down ex-Nazis unleashes a wave in violence that leads her to Italy where she uncovers a secret project hatched in a WWII concentration camp. Colleen has no choice but to push ahead if the killing is to stop and justice prevail. 3–How did you decide where your book was going to take place? Ex-con Colleen Hayes resides in 1970s San Francisco where she is attempting to reunite with her daughter. The European locations reflet historical events to WWII. 4–Would you hang out with your sleuth in real life? Of course – although I’d keep my eyes peeled! Colleen is known to cross paths with people who are dangerous—she’s a little damaged due to her time in prison for killing her husband 5–What are three words that describe your sleuth? Cool, brave, and relentless. 6–What’s something you learned while writing this book? The…

To celebrate Elizabeth Rose’s new book BEWITCHED – the second book in her Portals of Destiny series, we here at Fresh Fiction thought it would be a fun way for readers to get to know her characters better (from her many many fab books) to play a little game we call “The Character Most Likely”. If you’re new to her Portals of Destiny series – It’s a mix of fantasy and historical romance. Elizabeth Rose is free to select her answers from any series. Most likely to hold a grudge longer than anybody else? That would have to be Reed Douglas, my hero from Reckless Highlander, Book 3 of my Legendary Bastards of the Crown. He is a triplet and also the last of the brothers to forgive his father – the king – for wanting them killed as babies, among other things.   Most likely to figure out a way to use an enemy’s strength against him? This, I think would be Medea, my heroine from Bewitched. She is a witch sired from good and evil. Most of the time, she is her worst enemy. Medea was first seen in Lady in the Tower (Rapunzel) from my Tangled Tales…

You write some of my favorite heroes and in LOVE IN 3D, Xavier is another example of your strong and sexy yet sweet heroes. What makes a good hero for you? He must be someone I’d want to date in real life. – grin – Emotionally mature but not perfect by any means. Handsome—if not traditionally, then at least appealing to the heroine—and funny. And he’s typically a part of a group, a family or band of brothers. I find the hero’s family almost as appealing as the hero!   Justine, the heroine in LOVE IN 3D, has complicated family relationships. These is a theme often repeated in your novels. What do you like about using this as a source of conflict in your books? When writing contemporary romance, a lot of the conflict has to be with relationship dynamics, as the heroine isn’t running from a killer (not a romantic suspense book) or fleeing vampires (not paranormal.) And if there is no obstacle to the protagonists’ happily ever after, the book will be done in a few pages. And boring, to be frank. We need to see them hurdle obstacles and succeed! Family makes for the juiciest conflict, and…

1–What is the title of your latest release? THE MANHATTAN GIRLS 2–What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book? Sex in the City set in the 1920s, as Dorothy Parker and three friends navigate life, love and careers in a city of jazz clubs, speakeasies and badly behaved men 3–How did you decide where your book was going to take place? I write about real women in history and had long wanted to make Dorothy Parker a subject, especially covering the early, very vulnerable period in her life. I had also always wanted to write about Prohibition-era Manhattan, so the two came together. 4–Would you hang out with your protagonist in real life? Definitely! Dorothy was the wittiest woman in the world ever. I’d love to go out on the town with her, drinking hooch, gossiping, and sharing secrets. She was notoriously indiscreet but so funny I’d forgive her anything. 5–What are three words that describe your protagonist? Genius, chaotic, fragile. 6–What’s something you learned while writing this book? Just how corrupt Prohibition was. Banning law-abiding citizens from buying alcohol turned them into white-collar criminals. Many crime bosses made their fortunes through bootlegging in the 1920s, and they offered protection…