Usually, the books I love make me laugh. But…the books I love most make me cry. Anyone else out there love a good cry? I still tear up just thinking about the on-page death of Snape and how Harry names a child after him in the Harry Potter series. Or when they have to put the dog down in Marley and Me (especially since my dog was exactly that crazy). Actually, now that I think on it, it’s true of movies as well. I can’t stand cheating stories, but the scene in The English Patient where he carries her body out of the cave still makes me sob. Or (SPOILER ALERT) Hodor holding the door in Game of Thrones. I can tell you right now that writing a scene with that kind of emotional gut punch is difficult. I have one in my new release, The Rookie that took a lot out of me to do. My editor said, “I don’t want to see tears on page. Make the reader cry all the tears.” What I did with that advice was reach into moments I usually prefer not to visit. I’ve been to my fair share of funerals over the…

From Chapter 1 of TIGHTROPE:  “There is no need to fear robots,” Dr. Pickwell declared. It was clear that the suggestion that robots would displace workers annoyed him. He raised his voice to be heard above the murmurs of the crowd. “I urge you to consider that these machines could take the place of soldiers. Wars of the future will be fought with robots, not human beings. Think of the lives that will be saved.” “You’re mad,” someone else shouted. “You want to create robots that can kill? What if these machines of yours decide to turn on their creators and try to destroy us?” “Don’t be ridiculous,” Pickwell snapped. “Robots are nothing more than mechanical devices. Fundamentally, they are no different than the cars we drive or the radios that we use to get our news.” “Futuro looks mighty dangerous to me,” the man in the front row called. “Nonsense,” Pickwell said. “Allow me to demonstrate how useful Futuro can be. Futuro, what is the forecast for tomorrow?” The robot answered in a scratchy, hollow voice. “There will be fog in the morning but by noon the day will turn warm and sunny. No rain is expected.” Pickwell faced his…

Hello, hello! My new release, Boyfriend Maintenance, might not be about hot gamer boys, but it stays true to my tagline, Nerdy and Flirty. I wanted to highlight a few things I totally nerded out to in the book. There are few definitions for the word nerd, but I like “a single-minded expert in a particular technical field” the best. With that being said, the following topics that are absolutely nerd-worthy from Boyfriend Maintenance… 1) Skee-Ball The popular arcade game is so much fun I have to play it whenever I’m someplace that has it. The carnival, any arcade, the bowling ally (yeah I know, but honestly, I’d rather Skee-Ball than bowl). I don’t remember how my love for Skee-Ball came up in a group chat between myself and the other 425 Madison authors, but somehow I was challenged to write Skee-Ball into my story. Challenge accepted. The whole premise of Boyfriend Maintenance starts and ends with Skee-Ball. 2) Grilled Cheese I love giving my characters a favorite food. The only downfall to this is because I write about the food obsession I end up obsessing about it as well. In this case, Emmy King was utterly in love with…

We’ve all met those couples who met, fell in love, and are living happily ever after, right? I think it’s awesome when it happens and while I love hearing about it – briefly – their story isn’t one you could make a romance novel out of. I mean, you could, but why? Angst and beating the odds in one way or another make for an emotional story and that’s what keeps you turning the pages. For those of you who’ve read my books, you know I tend to be fairly light on the angst, but that doesn’t mean my couples have it easy. I’ve had things as easy as couples having to deal with living far apart and figuring out logistically how they can be together, to couples where fertility is an issue and the heroine sacrifices her chance of a future with the hero because he desperately wants a large family. Opposites attract, dating the best friend’s older brother, office romances, enemies to lovers – all of these tropes bring conflict into a story and if we’re honest, we love it! We want the struggle, we want our couple to have to fight for their happily ever after! I…

Wow – the final book in your long-running and beloved Playful Brides series is finally here with NO OTHER DUKE BUT YOU! What has this series meant to you over the years? Oh, it’s meant so much. As I say in the dedication, the series began as the stories of three friends, but the love that readers showed for them and the books enabled me to write eight more books and two novellas! I’ve been so close to the characters for so long, it’s definitely difficult to let them go.       Delilah is a perfect historical romance heroine – headstrong, self-assured, a little quirky, and completely oblivious that the perfect man is literally right in front of her. Tell us more about her character development over the course of this series and this book in particular. Delilah was introduced in book four of the series, the Irresistible Rogue. That book was inspired by The Philadelphia Story, in which the heroine’s quirky, self-assured little sister, Dinah, steals a lot of scenes. Delilah was based on Dinah and it was an absolute joy to write her. I think I knew by the end of writing that book that she would be the heroine…

Gosh, it’s hard to choose just five books. I love reading romantic suspense, but I’m voracious when it comes to romantic thrillers. Give me an edge-of-your-seat plot, pulse-pounding action with a love story thrown into the mix any day. There’s nothing wrong with a straight romance either, but the right romantic thriller is like a cheese plate paired with a glass of big, bold red wine—irresistible. I will devour it. Out of Control by Suzanne Brockmann The Troubleshooters series is addictive. Brockmann always manages to give the reader an entertaining roller-coaster ride while tugging on heartstrings. When Savannah van Hopf decides to pay the ransom for her kidnapped uncle, she turns to Navy SEAL Ken “Wildcard” Karmody, a man she’s had a crush on for years. He’s nicknamed Wildcard for his ability to come up with unconventional solutions and his reputation for saying the unexpected. The two set off for Jakarta, but the simple ransom exchange goes horribly wrong. Ken and Savannah race through the jungle of a hostile country, struggle to evade terrorists as well as friendly fire from other American operatives sent by Savannah’s grandmother. In the process, they learn to trust each other and to see beyond…

Today, Senior Reviewer Miranda Owen brings us a fascinating chat with G.A. McKevett! The latest book in her long-running Savannah Reid mystery series, BITTER BREW, is available now. About a million years ago, one of your Savannah Reid books caught my eye at my local library. Naturally, I raved about it to my grandmother (fellow cozy mystery junkie) and got her hooked on the series too. Why write a cozy mystery series? What do you like about writing (or reading) cozies? First, let me say, “Thank you,” for passing the addiction along to your grandma. Families that read together…keep us authors in business. 🙂 Why write cozy mysteries? I’ll be honest with you; that’s what my publisher asked for. I agreed a tad reluctantly. I don’t know if this was true 25 years ago, or if I was ignorant of the genre, but I held the opinion that cozy mysteries, back in the day, made light of the horror of murder. Like homicide was some sort of fun puzzle. Like I said, I could’ve just been ill-informed. I’m sure there were many cozies, even back then, that treated the subject with sensitivity. I just hadn’t read them. My children and I…

As soon as I round the bend from Chicago to Michigan, I see a wall of clouds over Lake Michigan. Half of the sky is bright blue, the other half is steel gray, as if Mother Nature has hung a banner announcing, Nightmare Ahead! Lake-effect snow. My hands immediately tighten around the wheel. I see a Pure Michigan billboard, touting the beauty and landmarks of the state, and laugh. Lake-effect snow is Pure Michigan, I think, my former ad exec coming out, but I don’t see any billboards touting that. Without warning, the world goes from clear skies to total blizzard. I slow the car, tighten my grip even more and turn on my headlights. Lake-effect snow is not just snow, it’s as if the winter skies have opened up and are weeping centuries of frozen tears upon the earth. Within moments, the highway is covered and slick, and trucks and cars are moving at a snail’s pace. My heart is thumping like a jackhammer, and I immediately lament my life change. How could I have forgotten that winter lasts longer than summer, fall and spring in Michigan? Combined! What have I done? My earnings season will be shorter than…

Here’s a chat between award-winning author Rachel Hauck and Fresh Fiction Editorial Manager Danielle Dresser! A dual timeline novel is always so interesting – how the two time periods both juxtapose and complement the other. How did you come up with the connection between these two different women? The connection is always the most difficult and most important part of a dual time novel. Since I can’t always have the connection be a grandmother or an aunt, or some other family member, I imagined two women being connected by a family friendship. The heroines also share a common experience of tragically losing people they love. New York City cop Beck Holiday is having a rough go of it – after a mistake at work she’s suspended and she’s not sure what to do next. Then she finds out she’s inherited a mysterious Victorian house in Florida. Why was it important for Beck to have the experience at this point in her life? Beck is lost and bitter. She can’t remember large portions of her childhood. She’s trying to make a career for herself, trying to be tough, but when her own actions return to her with a demand, she’s forced…

Many of us are familiar with the story of Lady Diana Spencer, the beautiful daughter of an Earl who married a prince at the age of nineteen only for the marriage to founder and end in a well-publicised divorce. What is less known is that Diana Spencer was not the first aristocrat of that name and that an ancestor of hers, Lady Diana Spencer, daughter of the Duke of Marlborough, had a life that has some uncanny echoes of her own. It was this earlier Diana Spencer who was the inspiration for the central character of my latest book, The Woman in the Lake. She was born in 1735, the daughter of Charles Spencer, 3rd Duke of Marlborough.  At the age of 23 she married Frederick St John, 2nd Viscount Bolingbroke. They had two sons. Friends and family were taken aback by the match as Fred was a known to be an extravagant womaniser with a bad reputation – not for nothing was his nickname at Eton “Bully.” After the marriage he maintained exactly the same lifestyle that he had had before, keeping a string of mistresses, drinking heavily and spending even more extravagantly. There were rumours that he was…