Isis Blake’s Five Rules For Winning Wars Against Pretty Boys And Other Vital Protips For Surviving High School Never trust them: When girls turn 13, there’s this crazy phenomenon I like to call ‘the grownup syndrome’ that happens to them. All of a sudden, dudes think it’s okay to snap bras, call girls whores, and sexualize their bods without their consent. It’s a tragic product of the patriarchy! And idiocy. But mostly patriarchy. There’s only one way to deal with teenage boys, and that’s to never trust them ever. They’re programmed to see girls as objects for their gratification and that is kind of extremely gross! Teenage boys don’t know how to kiss: Sure, the movies like to pretend they do, but outside of sparkling not-real vampire stalkers, kissing is a foreign concept to most boys. Except Jack Hunter. Don’t ask me how I know that – I might die from embarrassment. Or punch his face all over again. Regardless, they’ll try to suck your face like a lemon and it’ll be a very wet, and very scarring, experience. Let them mack on some other girl and get a bit of experience before they worm their way over to you….

When I was in the 8th grade I had to do a project that covered the decade of The Great Depression which was, of course, depressing. Hoovervilles, Dust Bowls, The Grapes of Wrath. Gah. The details of this project are mostly forgotten except for one thing—my introduction to the movies of the Golden Era of Hollywood. I saw Gone With the Wind for the first time and was enthralled. I’m fairly certain I was the only 13 year old who had her mother take her to find an A-line, ankle-length skirt and practiced walking pigeon-toed to make it sway the way Scarlett made her hoops go side-to-side. After my Technicolor romance with the Old South, I moved on to the exotic, smoke-filled Rick’s Café of Casablanca, then screwball comedies, the epic battle of the sexes, and, of course, the sentimental romances. At the time I was probably more enamored with the debonair leading men of the 1940s than those I was paying to see at the theater with my friends. My grandmother and I had a running argument over who had been more handsome: she said Gary Cooper, I said Cary Grant. I think we both won. In my new…

Every year Red Door Reads tries to lessen the sting of Tax Day by giving our readers something special. In the past we’ve asked you Who’s Been Skrewd and gave you Fifty Ways to Kill Your Larry. This year we asked our readers what they’d like to read. We held a contest last fall and received many suggestions for character traits and story settings. The winners were chosen by bestselling authors Sabrina Jeffries and Carly Phillips. Now the authors of Red Door Reads have taken the top four elements and crafted one amazing story from the winning suggestions. “The Road Home“ is truly a group effort. Each chapter was written by a different Red Door author. It is vibrant, unpredictable, and full of twists and turns. On April 15, Tax Day, each author made their chapter available on their webpage–completely FREE! Just follow the links to read the story. This is our treat to you, so just sit back and enjoy. And when you are finished, you can enter the Doing It Your Way Contest. Just answer a few questions about the story for a chance to win a Kindle Fire or a fabulous Red Door Reads Prize Pack. Matthew…

Top Five Activities for Your Inner Daredevil – It’s all about baby steps! Aubrey led a very sheltered life and is just now starting to go out and experience all the things she was always too scared to try. I have to admit, I am not a daredevil either, but these are all on my 2016 list of things to do! Zip-line. There are zip line parks all over the place and have lines for beginners as well as true thrill seekers. You don’t have to zip over the Grand Canyon to get your feet wet here! Indoor sky diving. This one looks like so much fun! Indoor Skydiving can give you the experience of flying without the fear of jumping from a plane or falling out of the sky. By stepping into a vertical wind tunnel, you can break the bonds of gravity and body fly. And you’re only maybe eight feet off the ground! Join the circus! No, not literally, but sign up for aerial trapeze or yoga classes! Who hasn’t watched a trapeze artist and thought…wow! Now you can learn how to do it (with the added benefit of safety harnesses!) and in no time you’ll be…

In my new novel HOME ON APPLE BLOSSOM ROAD my character Justine Wright has decided to play matchmaker. This is not an easy thing to do considering the fact that the matchmaking has to do with a treasure hunt … a treasure hunt she’s put in her will. Justine, the patriarch of the Wright family, makes her presence known even after she’s gone. It’s a sweet presence (if I do say so myself), and I enjoyed unfolding her life in a series of letters. I do believe that a life well lived ripples out, not only when that person is here with us, but, if she’s spoken into the lives of others, after she’s gone as well. As I wrote this book I couldn’t help wondering if there isn’t a lot of Justine in me. Not that I’m such a noble creature, but, like Justine, I love my family and friends and want them to all live happy, fulfilled lives, and I’m not above a little interfering to make sure that happens. I’ve been known to encourage (not manipulate – honest!) friendships between teenagers, to march out onto the Little League ball field and try to get my son to…

As an author and a reader I love the fierce flavor of non-traditional characters and non-traditional settings. What really makes my day is finding a book with both! Who wouldn’t want to be an archeologist like Indiana Jones or a super spy like James Bond? What about a showgirl? A genius math professor? Or, an ex-car thief? When I’m writing a book, I like writing non traditional characters (male or female) who are ready to take on the world starting with their careers. Even when I write a character with a job you’ve seen before like a cop (as a romantic suspense author I’ve written more than a few law enforcement characters) I like to write undercover agents or police officers with dark pasts (and I’m always taking suggestions as to jobs people want to see!). In the case of the WILD CARD, that means writing a former priest turned cop who’s still struggling with the issues of his previous career and a showgirl who… heart of gold aside… has no regrets about her chosen profession. Loud and flashy fit Gina Malloy to a T while broody Finn is perfect as the conflicted detective. Separately their characters are full of…

When I first started writing I had two big obstacles to overcome—finding the time to write and writing in the midst of chaos. It all began twenty-four years ago. I had four young children who needed to be driven to practice and school. They also needed attention and help with their homework. I had four sisters, too, and we enjoyed getting together every once in a while. I had a mother who liked to talk on the phone and a mother-in-law who threatened to move back to New Jersey if I couldn’t find the time to visit. And then there was the husband who liked to think he was more important than the characters I wrote about. Let’s not forget about the teachers who could use help in the classroom, and fundraisers and visiting relatives and friends and neighbors and graduations and bills to be paid and laundry and a dog, a fish, and a cat meowing at the door. Phew! The list goes on There’s always something, isn’t there? Every year the kids got older and stayed in a school a little longer, but it was always a struggle to find time to write. The first lesson I learned,…

I love history. Yes, that’s #nerdy. This was not always the case. As a kid, my father, a then-history teacher, used to revel at dragging me to every historical monument across the United States—which in my child’s mind was resembled, “Look kids! Big Ben! Parliament!” The history seed was planted, and grew into an odd twisted bush of an interest. As a writer, I try to visit each locale I write about, as nothing imbues setting into a book like photo’s and being immersed in the real setting. My mother related to me how, as a young teen, she and her brother were sent to stay with their aunt and uncle…at an asylum. My mother’s aunt and uncle were caretaker’s, and while visiting, she and her brother attended an asylum ball. She related several hair-raising stories, and a few even made it into REQUIEM RED. *If you figure out that pun and email me, I have a special prize for any who decipher my comment/hint. I visited Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in West Virginia twice—first for a photo day, and the second for a historical tour. This is a picture of a child from the asylum—they wards were separated into men,…

When I was in high school I wanted a pair of Justin Ropers, a type of boots that were very popular in a town where many of the teenagers knew how to ride a horse. I wasn’t one of those teenagers, but I still wanted boots. I did live out in the country and considered myself to have a tomboy side, so having a pair of country-looking boots seemed pretty normal to me. Unfortunately, on the first day I wore them to school, I felt extremely out of place. I remember feeling like a fraud as I walked past a group of girls who it seemed had earned the right to wear their boots, because they had horses and I didn’t. Sadly, I knew I wasn’t the real thing, like those other girls, and everybody else probably knew it. It wasn’t until my real, cowgirl friend, Amy, stopped me in the hall to say she liked my pair of boots that I began to feel like I belonged in them. After that, I wore them as much as I wanted to. The only thing I would change about that story is the part about my needing someone else to make…

“Love is a striking example of how little reality means to us.” -Marcel Proust As an author, I read a lot. As a reader, I think a lot. As a romance reader, I think about love a lot – an unfortunate amount, my friends might say. What is it made of? Hormones? Pheromones? Something less tangible? How reliable is it? Does it fade over time? There’s no limit to the number of questions a love-addled brain can produce in a single episode of insomnia, and no end of disastrous love stories that have failed to answer them correctly. So, why do we keep trying? C.S. Lewis wrote about four different types of love and how they intersect and fluctuate across the human life cycle. His essential conclusion was that familial love is defining, spiritual/religious love is necessary, passionate love (aka lust) is powerful yet fleeting, and companionship is forever. Thus, since companionship is the one that lasts, we should all marry our best friends, right? Admittedly, if we did, the divorce rate might go down. The birth rate might also go down since many of us, myself included, have exactly zero desire to see our BFFs naked. What’s the answer,…