When I decided to write a cozy mystery involving a chocolate maker, I knew that a lot of it would involve second chances.  After all, I started writing the books after meeting real world chocolate makers while researching and publicizing my chocolate related science fiction.  Not one of them had grown up wanting to be a chocolate maker.  Craft chocolate wasn’t even a thing most people knew about ten years ago.  They’d all started out as engineers who liked to tinker with machines, or chefs who wanted a deeper understanding of ingredients, or people who’d gone to a chocolate tasting event and gotten hooked, turning a hobby into a passion into a career. In addition to giving my character, Felicity, a second chance at a career, I wanted to give her a second chance at love.  It really reinforces the theme of the books and forces her into deliberately choosing the life she wants, instead of just focusing on one aspect of it. That’s one thing I enjoy about cozy mysteries.  Readers expect a continuing series surrounding a single sleuth, and the community she is a part of.  They want to see her have a well-rounded life (even if parts…

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 Victoria Lilienthal!   Writes: Victoria Lilienthal writes modern romance. If you love a hoot of a hero, enjoy single mom Vera West’s wild ride. Watch her dress up and mess up as she mixes business with pleasure in Northern California’s world of alternative healing. Laugh at her antics as Vera struggles to set boundaries that are impossible to keep. Fast paced and funny, it’s easy to lose yourself in this raucous, entertaining, New Age erotic yarn.   About: Debut author Victoria Lilienthal loves a fast and furious plot, writing about mystical goddesses especially Tara, symbol of radical compassion, and a heroine equal parts smart ass and wounded healer. Other hats include wife, mom, humorist, symbol geek, spiritual fun factory, devoted dog person.   My ideal reader match must love: An intuitive yet flawed hero, who makes mistakes and still charts her way to wisdom A hot and modern romance with plenty of costuming and chemistry Hilarious sex positive female mentorship from San Francisco aristocratic…

1–What is the title of your latest release? THE SWELL 2–What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book? Point Break meets The Beach meets Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, with a bit of Survivor thrown in, on a remote Australian beach. 3–How did you decide where your book was going to take place? I wanted a totally different setting to my debut SHIVER. A remote beach backed by lush rainforest seemed about as different as you can get. I was writing THE SWELL during a time when travel was impossible due to the very strict Covid restrictions here in Australia, so it made sense to write a setting I was familiar with. 4–Would you hang out with your protagonist in real life? Yes, totally. Kenna is a kind and thoughtful character who feels everything deeply. She says what she thinks, and we have a lot in common. 5–What are three words that describe your protagonist? Emotional, caring, dare-devil. 6–What’s something you learned while writing this book? That every book is different. I thought I was the ultimate planner after writing SHIVER and sticking to the plan as I wrote it. With THE SWELL, I kept deviating from the…

1–What is the title of your latest release? THE GODPARENT TRAP 2–What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book? When tragedy strikes their friend group and family, two sworn enemies are forced to live together and parent two small children. 3–How did you decide where your book was going to take place? I typically choose places that I’ve been, for this book specifically, a lot of the book takes place in the suburbs, which makes sense considering the content. 4–Would you hang out with your heroine in real life? ABSOLUTELY, she’s a hot mess, but also a travel blogger so she gets to eat all the food and stay at all the cool places, plus she’s fun. 5–What are three words that describe your hero? Rigid, Sexy, Funny 6–What’s something you learned while writing this book? I feel like I learned a lot about family not always being blood, that family is what you make it, a home is what you make it, and as long as you have love, you have family. 7–Do you edit as you draft or wait until you are totally done? Oh no, if I edit then I end up fixing too much and can…

Hey everyone! I’m Tee O’Fallon, a romantic suspense author hailing from New York. I’d love to share a bit about my latest release in the Federal K-9 series, HONOR ’N’ DUTY.   Kade Sampson is a Department of Homeland Security K-9 officer. Sadly, for Kade, his brother married the woman of his dreams, Laia Velez. Kade’s never forgotten the forty minutes he spent in an elevator with Laia. That was before he knew she was engaged to his brother. Laia Velez was not only more beautiful now than ever, but the mystical, magnetic effect she had on him was still imprinted on every cell in his body. If only he hadn’t ghosted her for the last two years.   Six years ago, Laia Velez made the difficult decision to marry Kade’s brother. She never forgot those forty minutes either. Now she’s in trouble. A drug cartel is after her and her young daughter, Rosa. The only person who can help her is the one man she swore never to call. Laia’s hands trembled, whether from rage or the thrill of seeing Kade again she couldn’t be sure, but her heart thumped wildly nonetheless.   And lest I not leave out…

1–What is the title of your latest release? THINGS WE DO IN THE DARK 2–What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book? When Paris Peralta wakes up to discover her much-older celebrity husband dead in the bathtub – with the straight razor that killed him in her hand – it’s not the murder charge that worries her the most. Paris has worked hard to hide her past, and with the media frenzy now surrounding her, she’s terrified that someone from her old life will reveal who she used to be… and expose all the things she did in the dark. 3–How did you decide where your book was going to take place? All my books are set in Seattle, which is where I lived for about eight years. This being my seventh novel, I thought it was finally time to set a book in Canada. Since the story has dual timelines, the present-day storyline is set in Seattle, and the past storyline is set in Toronto, which is my hometown (and where I live now). 4–Would you hang out with your protagonist in real life? Honestly, I’m not sure. Paris is very guarded and secretive, and I think I might…

1–What is the title of your latest release? PEPPERMINT BARKED, Spice Shop Mysteries #6, out July 19, 2022 2–What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book? Just a pinch of murder . . . When her life fell apart at age 40, Pepper Reece never expected to find solace in bay leaves. But her impulsive purchase of the Spice Shop in Seattle’s famed Pike Place Market turned out to be one of the best decisions she ever made. Between selling spice and juggling her personal life, she also discovers another unexpected talent—for solving murder. A Dickens of a Christmas turns deadly . . . In Peppermint Barked, the 6th Spice Shop mystery, Pepper investigates when a young woman working the Christmas rush in her friend Vinny’s wine shop is brutally attacked, on the busiest shopping day of the year. 3–How did you decide where your book was going to take place? I fell in love with Seattle’s Pike Place Market as a college freshman, eons ago, and made it my life’s mission to eat my way through it. Best part, it’s constantly changing, so I’ll never finish! When I decided, a book or two into my Food Lovers’ Village mysteries,…

Since my new book, THE LAST MILE, the second book in my Blood Ties Series, Gage Logan’s story, is set in Arizona, I thought it might be fun to talk about a place I’m only just getting to know. Most of the year, I spend my time in the mountains of Montana.  I’ve never been much of a desert person, but on a drive from California back to our Montana home, we took a detour that led us to Northern Arizona.  It’s far different from the rest of Arizona, over 5,000 feet in altitude, with mountains and pine trees all around.  So I felt a connection right away. We ended up buying a winter home there and as I grew to love the area, I decided I wanted to write a story set in that location.  Since I hadn’t written a treasure hunt book in years, one idea morphed into another and eventually became my new novel, THE LAST MILE. One of the most famous missing treasures, not just in Arizona, but the world, is the Lost Dutchman Mine.  The legend says it’s located in the harsh and dangerous Superstition Mountains of Arizona. But no matter how much I researched;…

Hi, I’m Kacy Cross, here with a fun way to tell you about THE COWBOY’S SWEET REDEMPTION. It’s a cute, sometimes funny, sometimes heart-breaking story about a dog trainer named Delilah who has never trained a dog and a grumpy ex-soldier cowboy who goes by the unlikely name of Zero, which is also exactly how many cows he owns (at first). They need each other but don’t know it yet. Fortunately, the dogs are pretty smart and spend a lot of time helping our hero and heroine get together. I’ve been tasked with making an acrostic with the letters from the title to tease you some about this amazing story.   T is for The Flying Pig, the name of Zero’s ranch. H is for Hunter, the name of Zero’s fatherless nephew, who needs a dog to be his friend. E is for eating, which something the Renshaw family does together, an oddity to Delilah, but she loves it.   C is for cows. Three, to be exact, which is how many Zero buys + one steer. The Stetson will now coming handy. O is for o’clock, a measurement of time and a specific allergy of Delilah’s. W is for…

Some might think there’s no life in the house, but I know otherwise. I’ve made friends with the mighty black snakes who take up winter residence. One has grown from a thin, stringy, mean-looking fellow to a thick band almost six feet long and round as my wrist. He enters the house when the days shorten by climbing the gnarled, vine-covered tree hovering over the back porch. Dropping from a low-leaning branch, he traverses the roof and stretches upward along the wood siding to enter the attic window, triangular snout tap-tapping, seeking entry. Hail has splintered the windowpanes, and he slides over the edge into the attic to hibernate. Sometimes he noses his way through the lime and horse-hair mortar on the central fireplace chimney and drops into the rooms below in search of mice. His compulsion is uncomfortably familiar, though in my case the brown river rat was my prey. Prisoners’ fare. So much time has passed, yet those months in a miserable Union prison camp are as real to me today as then. Famished, I slit my quarry from ear to naked tail, tossed aside the oozing hide, and punctured the pink, shiny body with a stick. Twisting…