The screaming started at three in the morning. Tabitha had never heard a human being howl in that way before. It was like the screeching of an animal caught in a trap and it was answered by shouts, distant, echoing. Tabitha couldn’t tell whether they were cries of comfort or anger or mockery. The screams subsided into sobs but even these were amplified by the metal, the doors, the stairs and floors. Tabitha felt they were echoing inside her head. She sensed a movement from the bunk above her. The other woman must be awake. “Someone’s in trouble.” There was silence. Tabitha wondered if the woman was ignoring her or really was asleep, but then a voice came out of the darkness. She was speaking slowly, as if she were talking to herself. Her voice was low and gravelly, a smoker’s morning voice. “Everyone’s in trouble,” she said. “That’s why they’re here. That’s why they’re crying, when they think about their children or what they did. Or what they did to their children. When there’s real trouble, you don’t hear any screams. You just hear the screws running along the corridors. When it’s really bad you hear a helicopter landing…

1—What’s the name of your latest release?  Softly Blows the Bugle is the third book in my Amish of Weaver’s Creek series. 2–What is it about? When Elizabeth Kaufman received the news of her husband’s death at the Battle of Vicksburg in 1863, she felt only relief. She determined that she would never be at the mercy of any man again, even if it meant she would never have a family of her own. Then Aaron Zook comes home with her brother when the war ends two years later. Despite the severity of his injuries, Aaron resolves to move West and leave the pain of the past behind him. He never imagined that the Amish way of life his grandfather had rejected long ago would be so enticing. That, and a certain widow he can’t get out of his mind. Yet, even in a simple community, life has a way of getting complicated. Aaron soon finds that while he may have left the battlefield behind, there is another fight he must win–the one for the heart of the woman he loves.  3–What word best describes your main character(s)?  Elizabeth is determined, but fragile. Aaron is steadfast. 4–What makes your story…

Jen: What inspired you to write In The Deep? Loreth: Thanks for hosting me, Jen. In The Deep was inspired by a visit to my brother who lives in a small oceanside town in New South Wales, Australia. He’s a big wave surfer, and a man of the sea in every way, so of course we went out deep sea fishing in his tiny boat. When we were ten miles off the coast, heaving about on the white-veined swells of the deep blue waters of the Tasman Sea, with the Australian coastline just a distant purple haze, I got to thinking: Anything could happen out here, and there would be no one to witness it, and what if someone did go overboard, and maybe not by mistake. Later, while eating dinner outside under a vermillion sky, and listening to the flying foxes squabble overhead and the lorikeets and ‘cockies’ fighting in the gum trees, my brother regaled us with tales of some of his adventures, like the time he got a treble hook stuck in his neck. And he told us how the flying foxes–giant bats–can swarm in groups along the highway as they migrate, and more . . ….

T is for truth, the heroine’s strength and downfall as well. In romance, in her medical career, even in prickly family matters, she cannot help but spout out the truth the moment it comes into her head. H is for happy endings, something that nearly everyone at Crestwicke lacks, and only a few will find by the end. E is for epic love story, the sort that has blossomed out of the dry stones of Crestwicke, between two unknown people connected by an old love letter. * L is for lost chances, which happened when a letter admitting to a secret love was dropped—or hidden—in the crack of a desk without ever being opened. When the heroine finds it, she is determined to reunite the secret lovers—if the chance is not already lost completely. O is for obsessed, which the lonely maid at Crestwicke becomes when she stumbles on the letter, believing she now has a secret admirer. V is for Vanish, which is what the letter does over and over, landing in different people’s hands and causing chaos below the surface that will eventually explode out into the open. E is for enduring, which is exactly what our hero…

Hi, Lyssa Kay! Welcome to Fresh Fiction. Please tell us about yourself and your new book, CRAZY STUPID BROMANCE: Thank you so much for having me! I’m sitting in my home office in Michigan, where I write full-time with a very spoiled Maltese at my feet (when he’s not sleeping ON MY DESK). He has been at my side through every Bromance book, including this one. I’m so excited for readers to get their hands on Noah and Alexis’s story in CRAZY STUPID BROMANCE. Both are characters that readers have met in previous Bromance books, and now they will really get to know them on a deeper level. Both are very wounded characters from things that happened in their pasts, but they have helped each other heal as friends. But when Alexis is confronted by a woman claiming to be her long-lost sister, her friendship with Noah begins to blossom into something more as she leans on him to navigate this touchy family situation. There is a subplot in the book about a kidney donation among family members, which is very personal to me. My husband donated a kidney to his sister shortly after we got married, and I poured…

THE THORNE CHRONICLES started out on a hot strip of the 405 in traffic, where heat-induced frustration made me blurt out, “I want to write a feminist Sleeping Beauty story with a mohawked punk 13th fairy! In a spiked leather jacket! And what if she gives the princess a bullshit detector?” It’s fair to observe that I was already planning to break a few genre conventions. There are punk fairies in a pre-industrial, pseudo-European medieval setting. Also, there is…okay, no, there is a lot of bullshit in that setting, and in fairytales in general, but that made me think about Princess Leia’s no-bullshit attitude in, well, all the films. Which pretty much settled me on the setting. Fiction set in space (space opera, SF, however one decides to parse out the definitions) deals with tech that looks like magic to most people anyway (FTL, wormholes, jump-gates, laser-beams, sentient machines, cybernetics). Also, aliens! Which at their heart, is what fairies are. As my fairies became xenos, and once upon a time started on a distant planet, I soon realized the difficulty would be to preserve the feel of the fairy tale. I needed magic (even if no one says oh, this…

1–What’s the name of your latest release?  The Highlander’s Unexpected Proposal  2–What is it about?  Adam Macquarie needs a bride to re-establish his dying clan, and Lark Montgomerie needs an escape from her horrible life, but they are both hiding secrets that could ruin everything for them and Wolf Isle. 3–What word best describes your heroine?  Determined 4–What makes your hero irresistible?  Sense of honor (not to mention his biceps!) 5–Who are the people your main characters turn to when they need help?  Lark finds a friend in Lady Ava Maclean. Adam has four brothers, but the second oldest, Beck, is the one he turns to first. 6–What do you love about the setting of your book?  The western isles of Scotland are rugged and beautiful with mountains, lush valleys, and stormy, dramatic seas. I love it all! 7–Are you a plotter (follow an outline) or a pantster (write by the seat of your pants)? Definitely a pantser. I’m trying to plot more, but even when I do, my characters decide where we will be going each day when I sit down to write. 8–What is an ideal writing day for you?  Waking up early before everyone else. Sitting down…

Like many, I’ve posted ironic images on my Facebook pages comparing the 2020 Year of COVID to many things–a hula hoop made of barbed wire, a pinata that’s actually a hornet’s nest, a time clock that sent us in March from Standard Time not to Daylight Savings Time, but into the Twilight Zone. So perhaps more than in “normal” times, we can identify with protagonists who are attempting to reconstruct their lives in the aftermath of unprecedented upheaval. And aside from a world-wide pandemic, nothing uproots people and disturbs lives like war. We begin with a novel by three of the most talented writers penning historical fiction today, Beatriz Williams, Lauren Willig, and Karen White.  The trio collaborated to create ALL THE WAYS WE SAID GOODBYE, using an iconic Parisian hotel as a locus for their stories.  Aurelie de Courcelles is devastated when, at the outbreak of World War I, her home is taken over as a German headquarters.  The dilemma is made more difficult when she discovers the commander’s aide de camp is the handsome young man who charmed her during her debut season in Paris.  Despite their opposing loyalties, friendship deepens into love…until betrayal drives Aurelie back to…

Miranda Owen: As somebody who has read and enjoyed your historical romances, I was surprised to find you wrote a contemporary romance. What inspired you to write a contemporary? Is HIRING MR. DARCY part of a series? If so, what is it called? Valerie Bowman: I had the idea for HIRING MR. DARCY for a while and it just wouldn’t leave me alone. I was really nervous to write it and even more nervous to publish it. But I’d always wanted to *try* to write a contemporary rom com. The best part was being able to use any word I wanted without having to look it up to ensure it was in use by the early 1800’s. Ha ha ha HIRING MR. DARCY is part of a trilogy that I’m calling Austen Hunks. (waggles eyebrows) I have two more books planned: KISSING MR. KNIGHTLEY and MARRYING MR. WENTWORTH. As your hero points out (and I totally agree), the heroine is actually much more a “Mr. Darcy” than he is. If anything, I think he’s more of a Henry Tilney (my favorite Austen hero). Is Mr. Darcy your favorite Austen hero? What about your fav hero you’ve written? That you’ve read…

Hi Regina! Thank you for joining us on Fresh Fiction today. Please introduce yourself and tell us about your new book, NOTHING SHORT OF WONDROUS.   Delighted to be here! I’m the author of more than 50 warm and witty historical romances, set from the Regency to the Old West, England to the shores of the Pacific Ocean. I’m excited to have the second book in my American Wonders Collection coming out. NOTHING SHORT OF WONDROUS tells the story of when the U.S. Cavalry rode to the rescue to protect Yellowstone National Park from poachers and vandals. Turns out the Army needed a little help learning how to get around the vast lands, which is where my widowed innkeeper comes in. Kate Tremaine knows Yellowstone like the back of her hand, and she has a personal stake in protecting its wonders. But spending time with Lieutenant Will Prescott makes her question her decision never to marry again. What was something interesting or surprising that you learned while researching this time period in history?  Just the fact that the Army was given control of Yellowstone surprised me. But Yellowstone was our very first national park, and there was no park service….