What is the title of your latest release?THE BARN IDENTITY. It was fun to spoof the movie title “The Bourne Identity.” What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book?Carpenter Whitney Whitaker Flynn is ecstatic to renovate an antebellum barn that once served as a livery stable and a station on the Underground Railroad, but when a local journalist reporting on the renovation is found dead on the property, she’ll also have to nail a killer. How did you decide where your book was going to take place?I lived in Nashville from 2014 – 2016 and felt so at home there. The people are friendly, the rolling hills are gorgeous, and the region offers four seasons to enjoy. I loved it so much I knew I had to write a series set there. Would you hang out with your heroine in real life?Definitely! I would love to help her scout potential flip properties and work on the renovations. She’d have a lot to teach me. What are three words that describe your hero?Creative. Tenacious. Down-to-earth. What’s something you learned while writing this book?I learned that prior to the Civil War, people would hang quilts outside ostensibly to air out, but that…

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. Be sure to check back Friday for a list of the Top 25 Bestselling Indie Ebooks.

I once wrote and recorded an NPR piece on South Beach novels. I featured Caridad Pineiro, Barbara Parker and Brian Antoni; it was one of the most downloaded pieces on the NPR website. Why was it so popular? There’s something magical about the Florida vibe; the lush, tropical settings, the dizzying excitement of sultry nights, the glitzy hotels and resorts. And of course, an assortment of fascinating characters. Roberta Isleib (writing as Lucy Burdette) has captured all the Florida magic in her entertaining mystery series, A Key West Food Critic Mysteries. I read the first book, AN APPETITE FOR MURDER and was hooked. The series has since snowballed into sixteen books, building on the exploits of Hayley Snow, the endearing heroine.I sat down with Roberta to find out more about how she developed the series and her plans for the future. The Key West Food Critic Mysteries capture the Key West vibe and I wonder how you came to choose that terrific setting. I felt like I was back there – the sights, the sounds, the excitement.What you’ve described is exactly what appeals to many people about our island. When I was searching for something new to write about 15…

Each Friday the Smashwords store reports the bestselling indie fiction titles based on the previous week’s sales. If an author has more than one title eligible for the list, only the highest performing title will be included. This ensures high-performing titles receive the accolades they deserve, while providing up-and-coming authors the visibility they have earned. Don’t miss Monday’s Top 10 Hot Preorders List, where Smashwords will provide a list of the most highly anticipated ebook preorders.

What is the title of your latest release?RECIPE FOR JOY What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book?RECIPE FOR JOY is about a book of cherished family recipes, a series of letters sent by a mysterious hand, and two sisters who need directions back to one another. How did you decide where your book was going to take place?This came organically while I was writing the book. At the time we were living in Gates Mills, Ohio, which is the loveliest town on the east side of Cleveland. I knew this was the town I wanted to nestle my story in. The charming village, the memories, and meaningful time spent there…it’s all layered into my novel along with so much love. Would you hang out with your heroine in real life?Absolutely. She’s a good soul who appreciates delicious food, so at the very least, we’d eat well. But I suspect we’d have some really connective conversations as well. What are three words that describe your hero?Loving, searching, tender What’s something you learned while writing this book?I learned the importance of writing longhand. It was actually my way into this novel. Since then, I’ve incorporated writing longhand into everything, even if…

This week, I’m chatting with Adriane Leigh about her gripping new release, SOCIETY WOMEN. If you love smart, twisty psychological thrillers, this one belongs on your TBR. Set in the glittering world of New York City high society and centered around an elite women’s club, SOCIETY WOMEN unravels a web of ambition, privilege, and dangerous secrets. Dark, layered, and impossible to put down, it’s a must-read for thriller fans. LIGHTNING ROUND • In three words, describe the vibe of your book. Elegant. Unsettling. Ruthless. • Plotter, pantser, or organized mess? I’m an organized mess! I work off an outline but always leave room for surprises as I go! • If your book had a theme song, what would it be? Look What You Made Me Do by Taylor Swift. Not because it’s about revenge in a literal sense – but because of the tone. The sense that someone has been underestimated… and is done playing nice. THE DEEP DIVE  • Every book has an origin story. What was the “lightning strike” moment that made you say, “I have to write this”? The lightning strike wasn’t a single headline. It was a pattern. It was watching, over and over again, powerful…

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 Olesya Salnikova Gilmore! Writes:Speculative gothic suspense and other dark fiction where magic and reality intersect, and that have: lush and swoon-worthy atmospheric settings in a different time and place, flawed female characters with major family issues but who still somehow manage to tug at your heartstrings, a mystery at the root of everything, romance as a subplot and not the whole thing, and all the gothic feels, with a dash of whimsy and a splash of blood here and there, of course! The newest book, THE FORTUNE TELLERS OF RUE DARU, is set in Jazz-Age Paris and follows a spunky young fortune teller named Zina, who must use her powers to divine who she can trust when an exiled Romanov princess and her brother come to her seeking answers about a decades-long mystery at the heart of the tearoom she owns with her grandmother . . . before she summons a vengeful spirit who knows something sinister about her mother’s untimely death and dark…

Excerpt from DAUGHTER OF CROWS by Mark Lawrence: 1 Molly Plight The calm before this particular storm had lasted ten years, much of which Molly Plight had spent knitting. Trouble had arrived in the shape of a man of no great height, road-dirty and weather-beaten. Save for the cruel curve of the knife at his hip and the dull glint of mail beneath his fleece, there would have been nothing to mark him. But when he paused in the inn’s doorway and smiled that smile, Molly knew that the peace she’d thought would claim her final days was over. She knew what a predator’s hunger looked like. “That bull the Millers have won’t last another season.” Jayne Clay, the tiny old woman on Molly’s left, was given to predicting the death of prized livestock. That topic and regaling anyone who so much as paused in her vicinity with the doings of her two dozen towheaded grandchildren constituted the majority of her conversation. Molly’s needles and ball of yarn lay on the table before her, abandoned in favour of a pipe and a drink. The village children said the pipe smelled like a burning midden heap, perhaps not unfairly, but good…

My novel probably could not avoid some comparison to the song, Yellow, by Coldplay. And once my main character decides to name the slime mold just that, the song worked its way onto my Yellow playlist, of course! Here are a few others that I found influential, inspirational, or just kept me writing pages. My main character Eliza discovers Yellow, the slime mold of the title, on a fallen log in her backyard one steamy Louisiana summer in 1973. She’s 12 and as she watches its growth, the organism attracts her in a very mystically moody way (as artistic pre-teens are geared to be). It just so happens that I’d been deep into the music of composer Ludovico Einaudi—having chanced upon his album Time Lapse by way of some algorithm or other–and so three of the albums’ songs  “Walk,” “Run,” and “Discovery at Night” (ironic, since this is what happens to Yellow) set the pace as I  imagined one fantastical night when Eliza feels an ineffable connection with the slime mold. The orchestral weave of these songs, for me, imitates the prose style of Yellow. Our lives are woven with historical context, our parents’ burdens, lovers’ expectations as well as…

Music has always been an important part of my storytelling. While I mostly listen to instrumental movie soundtracks when I am writing, my novels reference a wide range of pop songs. Since I always have a song in my head, it’s only fair for my characters to do the same. Stella Stark is a private investigator-turned-dispenser of poetic justice, a.k.a. Little Miss Petty. Malone is her hot neighbor who’s impervious to her attempts. Here are six very different songs you’ll find in LITTLE MISS PETTY: “Man in Finance” – Girl on Couch, Billen Ted, David GuettaWhen Stella bumps into Malone, he’s wearing an expensive suit. He’s also tall. She quips “Are you that man in finance I ordered? That was a fast delivery.” When Megan Boni aka Girl on Couch created these lyrics, she was poking fun at unrealistic expectations. Don’t worry. Malone may not be 6’5″ with blue eyes, but he’s really the kind of guy we’re all looking for. Also, you’ll have that song stuck in your head for a while. Oops. “All Too Well”- Taylor SwiftStella’s upstairs tween neighbor is prone to melodramatically playing the ten-minute version of this song on repeat. Stella’s concerned about her well-being….