Fresh FIction Box Not To Miss
Kerry Adrienne | Best Fish Tacos, perfect for Bears and Lions!
Author Guest / August 17, 2017

Thanks so much for hosting me for the release of the third book in my Shifter Wars series, TAMING THE LION. At this point in the series, we’ve got enemies thrust together with decisions to make. Alicia is a bear shifter/healer, and Marco is a lion/heir to the leadership of the pride. He’s been hurt in battle and she’s got to figure out whether she will go with her healer’s oath and help him, or let her enemy die. If she helps him, she risks angering her den. If she doesn’t, her grandmother is going to be upset with her for breaking her oath. Since these two are like oil and water, I thought it would be fun to have a recipe that combines things you might not think go together well but in reality, really do! I’ve picked something I personally thought I’d never try because…well, it doesn’t seem to go together! What am I talking about? Fish tacos! Yeah! How many of you, like me, just went, “yuck”? I kept seeing Fish Tacos on the menu and did finally try them. You know what? They are good! Surprisingly so. Granted, I tried them at a Tapas place (I’m…

Jen Gilroy: The top 5 challenges of writing small town romantic women’s fiction
Author Guest / August 17, 2017

I write in the area between romance and women’s fiction. I’ve been a romance reader since my teens, and most of my favorite stories are set in small communities or rural areas like those from where I draw my roots. When I hit my thirties, though, I also began reading uplifting women’s fiction—stories that focus on women’s life experiences and relationships that often include, but extend beyond, a central romance. Now as an author, I’ve found my happy place writing the kind of feel-good books I like to read—about women’s lives, loves and family and community relationships, all set in a heartwarming small-town world much like the one I call home. However, and as with any writing, there are challenges (and sometimes surprises) in writing this type of fiction. Here are my top five. A balancing act Between creating a believable small-town world, developing a central (and sometimes secondary) romance with related character growth, and then mixing in relationships with children, friends and extended family across generations, one of the biggest challenges in writing this type of fiction is keeping all the strands balanced and going in the right direction, at the right time. One strand can’t overwhelm the other…

Hayson Manning | Home is where the heart is.
Author Guest / August 15, 2017

I’m originally from New Zealand. Head toward Australia then head left. If you hit Antarctica, you’ve gone too far. Back up and listen for sheep. There are sixty-six million of them to four million people. Kiwi’s are intrepid travelers. We check out our own county, head to Australia, then bounce around the world. I’ve bounced to the United Kingdom, and Australia. I am now fortunate to call America home. I love it here. OMG. Southern California rocks. Beautiful weather, beaches, super friendly people who can’t understand a word I say. A case in point. Our super cute street has wine and cheese night on the last Friday of every month in summer. We rock up to someone’s yard with said wine and cheese and get to know our neighbors. I thought I was chatting to a lovely elderly man, who gently put his hand on my arm. Lovely Elderly man: “I have no idea what you’re saying.” Me – going red. “Oh, that we live in a beautiful part of the world.” He gently shook her head and ambled away. I proceeded to eat my bodyweight in cheese. That’s a lot of cheese just quietly. In TEN DAYS WITH THE…

Cindy Kirk | Author/Reader Match
Author Guest , MatchMaker / August 15, 2017

I’m Cindy Kirk and I write Contemporary Small-Town Romance. The latest release in my popular Good Hope series is FOREVER IN GOOD HOPE. I’m a Leo, so my strengths are that I’m creative, passionate, generous, warm-hearted, cheerful and humorous. Since we don’t have much time, we’ll skip the weaknesses. I love to read (hard to meet a writer who doesn’t love books) and I adore animals. Traveling is another passion. In short, put me in the passenger seat with a book in my hands and a dog or cat on my lap and I’m happy. What I’m looking for in my ideal reader match: You read the end of a book first because you want to make sure it ends happily You feel stressed when the romance hits rough waters. Your first question when a friend recommends a book is “does it have a happy ending?” Television takes second place to a good book. You bookmark your favorite parts so you can go back and re-read them You’ve read your favorite books numerous times What to expect if we’re compatible: We’ll discuss favorite scenes that tug at our heartstrings. We’ll speculate on why a secondary character (like Steve) wasted so…

Kate Meader | Five Things You Don’t Know About Chicago
Author Guest / August 15, 2017

Millennium Park’s Hidden Garden is a hidden gem. Separated from the city bustle by a 15-foot-high hedge of conifers and trees, the Lurie Garden is the perfect spot for sneaking in a few chapters of your favorite book or meeting your summertime fling. The best cupcakes are from Sweet Mandy B’s. This is a fact. (And in 1930, the Twinkie was invented in Chicago. This is also a fact.) The Chicago River flows backwards. In the late 19th century, the river was reversed to empty into the Mississippi River instead of Lake Michigan, so all the garbage wouldn’t contaminate the lake—source of the city’s drinking water. Chicago banned paying public toilets in 1973. So all public restrooms are free – now good luck finding one! theWit has a Rooftop bar and it’s amazing. You can check it out in winter (curl up by the fireplace) or summer (look at those views!). Hanging out here one night with author Abby Green, I was struck by an idea: two people have a sexy dalliance on adjoining hotel balconies in the dark. No names, no faces, no touching—each other. And so IN SKATES TROUBLE, the Chicago Rebels prequel novella was born. IRRESISTIBLE YOU…

Kat Colmer | The Loveliest Trick of the Devil
Author Guest / August 14, 2017

Thank you so much for having me on Fresh Fiction today to chat about my young adult paranormal romance, THE THIRD KISS. For most people, paranormal fiction means vampires, werewolves, angels, and demons. Many novels in this genre borrow their mythology from Eastern European tales of blood sucking rulers, Ancient Greek stories of shape shifters, or fallen heavenly creatures from the Apocrypha. It’s unusual, however, to see a paranormal story drawing on Old Testament mythology, yet THE THIRD KISS does exactly that. THE THIRD KISS is set in present day Sydney, Australia, and follows high school graduates Jonas and Cora as they fight hell-sent demons along with their attraction for one another. This modern story is woven around a fictional curse that first reared its devious head three thousand years ago in the Old Testament tale of Amnon and Tamar. Theirs is a scandalous story in which King David’s beautiful daughter Tamar is shamed and cast out of her father’s palace, all because of the misogynistic actions of her half brotherAmnon. Like that’s not enough of a slap in the face by fate, Tamar also eventually goes mad. Here’s where I got to thinking – a bit of an occupational…

Aden Polydoros | On Writing Anti-Heroes
Author Guest / August 14, 2017

“The rifle was comfortable in his hands. Familiar. Less like a complex weapon than like an extension of his arms and eye, a part of him. It made him feel complete, filling the emptiness that lived inside of him.” Hades is one of the four main characters in my YA thriller, Project Pandora. Unlike the other brainwashed teenagers in the Project, Hades is conscious during his kills. He doesn’t hesitate to pull the trigger, because that is exactly what he has spent his entire life being trained to do. When I first began writing about Hades, I didn’t intend for him to be a sympathetic character. He was supposed to be a villain with no redeeming qualities, who would eventually get exactly what was coming to him. However, as I delved into his viewpoint, I realized that in his own way, Hades is not a villain, at least not in the traditional sense. His situation is even more tragic than the rest of the characters’ situations. He did not begin life as a monster—he was reshaped into one. And even as he tries to convince himself that he is the one in control, he has close to no control over…

Elizabeth Heiter | What If the People Closest to You Were a Threat to Your Life?
Author Guest / August 14, 2017

When seventeen-year-old Haley Cooke goes missing out of her high school, leaving behind only a chilling note that says “if you’re reading this, I’m already dead,” FBI Profiler Evelyn Baine is put on the case. Initially, police thought Haley was grabbed by a stranger, but as Evelyn digs deeper, it seems that the people closest to her are all hiding something. There’s Haley’s mom, Linda. On the surface, she seems to be the devastated parent of a missing child, doing everything she can to bring Haley home. But is Linda more interested in being on the news than finding her daughter? And could there be any truth to her ex-husband’s claims that Haley was so unhappy at home she ran away? Then there’s Haley’s dad, Bill. He seems completely unconcerned about Haley’s disappearance, and Evelyn has to wonder: is it because he really believes Haley is safe on her own, or is he calm because he knows exactly where Haley is for a much more sinister reason? There’s also Haley’s step-father, Pete, a new addition to Haley’s life she didn’t seem to like. Haley’s father claims he’s abusive, but there’s no shortage of bad blood between the new husband and…

Rosie Somers | Living a Million Lifetimes
Author Guest / August 11, 2017

From the moment I learned to read, I was in love. Not necessarily with words, but with stories. I lived in the pages of the books that I read. I could be a thousand different versions of me all without leaving the comfort of my own bedroom. I was an addict from the very beginning. In fact, I once got in trouble for reading in class. Who gets in trouble for reading in class? If anyone could do it, eight-year-old me could. You see, the teacher was reading a different book to the class, one written specifically for eight-year-olds. But that’s not what I wanted. I craved action, adventure, excitement. The kind of thrilling ride that could only be found in the pages of adult thrillers pilfered from my mother’s well-stocked bookshelves. Once I became an adult, and started experimenting with writing my own novels, I realized there was entire world of adventure I had missed in my leap from young chapter books to adult fiction. Teen fiction. I’m a pre-Twilight-era millennial. In fact, by some scales, I’m almost Gen-X. And when I was growing up, YA/teen fiction wasn’t really a thing, at least not a well-known thing. So, the…

Pam Hillman | Is It Nature or Nurture?
Author Guest / August 11, 2017

What makes us as readers gravitate to a particular genre when we start reading? What makes one child fall in love with cowboys and Indians, and another devour every fantasy or science fiction novel she can get her hands on? Then some of us realize that not only do we love to read, we want to create stories for others to read. And that same passion kicks in and we naturally write the same kinds of stories we’ve always loved to read. I was born and raised on a farm in Mississippi, and from an early age I loved horses and all things western. I was a bit of a tomboy and cut my teeth on Louis L’Amour westerns and John Wayne movies. My mother is at a loss to where I inherited this passion to create. Surely there was somebody in my family tree who made up stories in their heads. But so far we haven’t made a connection with anybody. But wherever it came from, I got it bad, and I got it early, as early as first grade. Our neighbor’s husband worked in the oil fields of Alaska and was gone months at a time. She’d invite…