In THE MISTLETOE TRAP, Julie’s fairly certain she can convince her best friend Gavin to watch chick flicks with her. Convincing him to join her and his sister doing facemasks proves to be more of a challenge. So, she simply swipes some on his face and tells him he might as well let her do the rest. There are some movies that practically require fuzzy socks and a warm blanket. Here are my top five movies to cuddle up with this holiday season. 1–Just Friends – Ryan Reynolds, friends who start to fall, and a wild yet loveable Rockstar. This movie is full of lots of hijinks and laughter and is one of the movies I can’t wait to snuggle up next to my husband and watch. 2–The Holiday – This is one of those amazing movies with not just one romance, but two! And not to spoil it if you haven’t seen it, but just wait till you see Mr. Napkin Head. Talk about swoon (which is something I never thought I’d say about something involving napkins. LOL) 3–While You Were Sleeping – Not only does this movie have a lot of quotable lines, it’s one of Sandra Bullock’s…

1–What’s the name of your latest release?  My latest release is called Little Wishes. 2–What is it about?  Little Wishes is about a young couple in 1960’s England in a small coastal town in Cornwall who fall in love, but for whom life conspires to keep them apart. Fifty years later they reconnect. Little Wishes is about taking all of those lost chances from the years they weren’t together, and making them come true. It’s about a love that lasted fifty years, despite life getting in the way. Ultimately it’s about my characters reconnecting both with people they had lost, but also with parts of themselves that needed reawakening. 3–What word best describes your main character(s)?  Tom is stubborn, loyal, but occasionally cowardly. Elizabeth is both brave, romantic, and sorry. 4–What makes your story relatable?  I think we all have moments in our histories when we can look back and think things could have gone either way. Choices about work, where we live, which relationships we will fight for, and which relationships we let go. Hopefully, for most of us, we take the right decision, follow the path that makes us happiest. But part of us perhaps will always wonder,…

Hoping to escape the mother-­daughter conflict that was about to escalate to a new level, Emma hurried outside. Pausing on the snow-­covered path to the driveway, she allowed fat snowflakes to fall on her, even catching a couple with her tongue. Snow couldn’t hurt you. She looked all around, taking in the other large homes, beautifully blanketed in snow, and the mountains behind them. This place was truly magical! As she walked up the driveway, she spotted what looked like a caretaker’s cottage and slowly approached it. Hopefully the ol’ grump wasn’t as bad as Gillian had described. Holding her breath, she tentatively knocked on the door, expecting a gray, grisly old man to answer. To her surprise, a younger man opened the door. Dressed in jeans and a plaid flannel shirt, he stared at her with a puzzled expression. She suddenly wondered if she’d knocked on the wrong door. She smiled stiffly. “Sorry to bother you. I—I was looking for the caretaker, and I thought this was the right—” “Yeah, yeah.” He studied her with a furrowed brow. “This is, uh, the caretaker’s cottage.” She blinked. “Oh, so . . . are you the caretaker?” For some reason this guy didn’t…

“I’ve never known why he did it,” Sharine said, and right then, she was magnificent in her cold anger. “If I ever see him again, I will ask him—if I can stop myself from first stabbing out his eyes.” Titus approved of her bloodthirsty need for vengeance. “I think at times, that I should release the anger,” she said, “that my vengeance should be to erase him from my thoughts.” “You can erase his face and his eyes instead,” Titus muttered. “And release your anger in his flesh.” It would still not be enough. An unexpected burst of that astonishing laughter that was sunshine falling in a rain over him. He clenched his gut against the glory of it. If he’d thought her beautiful before. . . well, if the Hummingbird was beautiful, Sharine with her blade of a tongue and golden laughter was extraordinary. Fighting the urge to touch her, this being beyond his reach, he said, “Am I to take it that you have no more feelings for the blue-green donkey?” He had to break the moment, break his entrancement. “If you are pining for him, admit it now so that I can smite you for bad taste.” “Smite me?”…

1–What’s the name of your latest release?  Wolf Untamed 2–What is it about?  Wolf Untamed is the 11th book in the Special Wolf Alpha Team series. In this story, Officer Diego Miguel Martinez and his SWAT team of werewolves have been dealing with a city gone mad. People are behaving strangely, committing violent crimes out of the blue, without even remembering it. Is it delirium–a new drug supposedly flooding the streets–or is it something much more terrifying? Bree Harlow is dealing with issues of her own. Her ex-husband was sent to prison and her son, Brandon, has been struggling. He’s been acting out and getting into more and more trouble, and Bree has no clue what to do next. When she takes him out for breakfast at their favorite diner, hoping to get him to open up about what’s wrong, the situation takes a drastic turn after someone walks into the place with a gun. As Diego and some of the other members of the SWAT team show up to help, Bree’s life is sent careening down a completely unexpected path. Bree’s son is definitely dealing with some big issues, just not the issues she assumed. 3–What word best describes…

As we approach the (much different this COVID year) Thanksgiving holidays, traditionally a time of fetes and family gatherings, this month’s selection of novels explores families and family-like relationships that can be either blessing or curse. We begin with THE WRIGHT SISTER by Patty Dann.  While everyone is familiar with the famous brothers who made the first flight at Kitty Hawk, few know about the sister who supported and took care of her famous brothers for most of her life.  After Wilbur’s death, at age 52, Katherine married a widowed friend of the family, Harry Haskell.  Furious and feeling betrayed, Orville remained with a housekeeper in Dayton, Ohio, while his married sister began a new life in Kansas City.  The story is told via her (unanswered) letters to the brother who never forgave her for “abandoning” him and her “marriage diary,” detailing her joy in her new life, her enthusiastic support for the suffragette cause, and her never-realized hopes to reconcile with her brother. A vivid portrait of a woman who was long restrained from becoming all she could be by the demands of her restrictive family. We continue with a better-known woman in LEARNING TO SEE: A NOVEL OF…

Okay, I’ll admit it. I love fairytales. The whole Prince (or Princess) Charming thing is super enticing. But, it’s not just that. Pretty much everything about fairytales draws me in. I love the wonder and magic and escapism they bring, and I’ve rarely been disappointed in an adaptation or retelling. In fact, the edgier the reimagining is, the better. Oh, and if it’s pure bangtastic brain-candy fodder, the much, much better. Anyway, when I was writing my newest release, EVER AFTER, I knew without a doubt that it had to be Cinderella-inspired. It was an easy choice. Of all the fairytales, Cinderella is one of my favs. It was the first Disney movie I ever saw as a young girl at a movie theater, and although my mom told me I watched the whole movie while sitting upside down in the chair in the cinema, it still made an impression. I just loved the happy ever after. The notion that no matter what, no matter how bad things seemed, everything will work out in the end. However, as an erotica writer, I quickly came to terms with the fact that EVER AFTER wasn’t going to be a straight adaptation. It…

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 Victoria James! Writes: Snowed in with the Firefighter: When Melanie travels to her sister’s remote cabin in Montana to escape the holidays, she doesn’t expect to walk in on her brother-in-law who is also escaping family. They figure out their families are trying to play matchmaker, they decide they’ll play along. Except these two opposites find themselves falling for each other for real! About:  Holiday-movie-loving, sweet romance author looking for readers who love escaping the big city for heartwarming stories featuring wounded characters with big hearts, and happily-ever-afters, guaranteed. What I’m looking for in my ideal reader match: Must love warm and cozy cabins in the middle of the nowhere Must be okay with roads not getting ploughed for days after a big blizzard Must love opposites attract with two very stubborn characters Must love a heroine who’s a perfectionist on the outside and vulnerable on the inside-but who figures out the hero is worth the risk-in the nick of time! Must love a hero who’s wounded…

Unless you’re a certified saint, you’ve done things that weren’t very nice. Maybe you pulled your sister’s hair as a kid or shoplifted a Mars bar or two. Cut people off in traffic? You might have done worse. But why do most of us keep our antisocial urges more or less under control, while others go on to rob, destroy, and even kill?  I’ve always been fascinated by what motivates nasty characters, both real and fictional. My latest novel, KILLER COIN, explores the dark impulse of greed. I’m not talking about an extra slice of cake but greed so greedy it kills. Worst of all, that sort of greed often involves the people we trust most – relatives, lovers, and spouses. I’ve rounded up five of my favorite true crime podcasts about greed:  1) Criminal – The Money Tree At just 26 minutes long it’s a quick listen and involves no deaths but is guaranteed to shock you. Who can you trust? No one, after hearing this podcast! Bonus: you might feel better about your family. 2) Dateline – The House on the Hill  If you thought things couldn’t get worse after listening to the previous podcast, you were wrong….

1–What’s the name of your latest release?  The Star-Crossed Sisters of Tuscany 2–What is it about?  The book, set in Italy, chronicles a life-changing journey of three second-born daughters who, according to centuries-old family lore, are believed to be cursed, never to find lasting love. But eccentric Aunt Poppy never believed in the curse. She invites her great nieces–and fellow second-born daughters–to accompany her to their homeland of Italy, where Poppy vows she’ll meet the love of her life on the steps of the Ravello Cathedral on her 80th birthday, and break the supposed curse once and for all. As the trio traverses the Italian countryside, hearts are lost, memories are found, and secrets are revealed. . . secrets that could threaten the Fontana family far more than a centuries-old curse.  3–What word best describes your heroine(s)?  Independent 4–What inspired you to write about this group of women? When I worked as a high school guidance counselor, it wasn’t unusual for my young female students to come to me, heartbroken over some doomed teenaged romance. I tried to assure them they were young and had decades ahead of them, that if I had a crystal ball, we’d see that one day…