What is the title of your latest release?SUCH A CLEVER GIRL What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book?Fifteen years ago, a family went missing. Now, the daughter is back and not talking. She has a plan that has everyone in town panicked, including the three women who know more about what happened that day years ago than they’ve ever admitted. How did you decide where your book was going to take place?I wanted a beautiful town in upstate New York with a bit of a creepy vibe. Sleepy Hollow was an obvious choice. Would you hang out with your heroine in real life?Definitely. There’s something compelling and relatable about a flawed woman who doesn’t always make the best choices. My first question to her would be: what were you thinking??? What are three words that describe your hero?This is a thriller and, honestly, the men aren’t that heroic, so I’d say cunning, mysterious, and oddly interesting. What’s something you learned while writing this book?The book is filled with women who have made questionable choices that fit the moment but might not be best for them. And they don’t trust each other. It was fun to bring their lives together…

What is the title of your latest release?CRY HAVOC What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book?When disgraced 16-year-old Ida Campbell arrives at a crumbling girls’ school on England’s remote coast, she hopes for a fresh start. Instead, she finds a dangerous roommate, a teacher with a secret, and a mysterious sickness spreading through the pupils. As Cold War paranoia closes in, Ida must uncover what’s really happening at St Anne’s—before she becomes its next victim. How did you decide where your book was going to take place?It needed to be somewhere remote, and I wanted to set it in the early 1980s so I could exploit the cold war backdrop; and the 80s also worked well for the school setting, as it was before much meaningful safeguarding or oversight was introduced, especially in private schools. Total chaos. Would you hang out with your heroine in real life?Definitely! Ida is quite self-contained, so I think Louise would be the most fun. But I would also be terrified of her. What are three words that describe your hero?There isn’t one! What’s something you learned while writing this book?I learned a huge amount about neurology. Do you edit as you draft or…

There’s something irresistible about a second chance at love. Maybe it’s because most of us have a “what if” tucked away somewhere, whether it was the guy who got away or a relationship that ended for the wrong reasons. In romance novels, the reunited lovers trope takes those regrets and gives the lovers a second chance to make things right. These two people have already walked through the fire, made mistakes, lived a little, and are brave enough to risk their hearts again. One of the reasons I love this trope so much is that the characters hit the ground running. They already share a history, so that launches the story with some emotional heft from the first page. There’s no need to build chemistry from scratch; it’s already there, simmering beneath every glance and every line of dialogue. What’s left is the hard work: facing the choices that tore them apart and deciding if they’ve grown enough to build something stronger. The tone of reunited-lovers stories can range from funny to heartbreaking. Think of the movie Sweet Home Alabama (2002, starring Reese Witherspoon and Josh Lucas), where high school sweethearts who married too young reunite years later when the…

Music plays a large part in SUCH SHELTERED LIVES—music the characters make, hear, and overhear; songs they love and hate.  So it was inevitable that some of my favorite music and musicians would be a major piece of inspiration for the story.  I rarely listen to music while I write—the musicians’ voices inevitably get stuck in my head, when I need to keep my characters’ voices in my head.  But I made an exception as I worked on some of the chapters in SUCH SHELTERED LIVES. Here’s a peek at a few of the songs that played in the background as I worked on SUCH SHELTERED LIVES. 90’s Era Classic Rock 90s-era hits loom large in the novel: one of the main characters, Amelia Blue Harris, is the daughter of a GenX rockstar, and another, Florence Bloom, still idealizes the music of the 1990s.  Florence and Amelia’s favorite songs include: Violet by Hole, Little Earthquakes by Tori Amos, Heart Shaped Box by Nirvana, I’m Only Happy When it Rains by Garbage, Criminal by Fiona Apple. Taylor Swift I’m a big Taylor Swift fan, so I can’t possibly make a playlist for SUCH SHELTERED LIVES without including some of her music. …

What is the title of your latest release? CROSS YOUR HEART AND HOPE HE DIES What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book? Fierce marketing manager Juliette Winters is trying to save her publisher from ruin by making the book deal of the century – when the author drops dead at the announcement party and the manuscript goes missing. Now she’s got to enlist hot doc Charlie Hawkins to help prove the death was no accident so she can recover the stolen manuscript and save the day. How did you decide where your book was going to take place? CROSS YOUR HEART AND HOPE HE DIES is a standalone companion novel to my debut adult murder mystery rom-com, SHE DOESN’T HAVE A CLUE, so I knew it would be set in the Pacific Northwest same as my first book. But while CLUE took place on an island out in the ocean, I wanted somewhere new and fun and interesting to explore for the next book. And because these books are about the rich behaving badly, I knew it needed to be somewhere lavish and over the top. So of course a luxury yacht belonging to an exclusive country club was…

I always imagined myself as Anne Shirley. Partly because of my name. I’m Anne (with an E) Gallagher. And my hair is red, thanks to a box of Red Hot hair color I found under the bathroom sink. Plus, I grew up on an island—Mackinac Island, Michigan, which has its own tiny school and horse-drawn carriages and streets lined with Victorian houses. Total nostalgic charm vibes. It’s like living in a storybook. Like, literally. Like, ANNE OF GREEN GABLES. photo credit rboed, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons Honestly, I loved growing up here. They passed some law back in the 1890s banning automobiles, so there are no cars. I rode my bike everywhere. In winter, we rode snowmobiles to school and played hockey in the middle of the frozen Main Street.  When I was a kid, sometimes Dad would take me to the Mustang Lounge after he finished work. I’d suck pop through a straw, my legs dangling from a bar stool, feeling grown-up and special, while he ordered a beer he never finished.  photo credit https://www.mustanglounge.online/gallery The island library’s kind of small, but there’s a long table in the middle where you can read and chairs pulled…

What is the title of your latest release? DEAD FAKE What is the elevator pitch for your new book? A mysterious new website, Swipe to Die, allows people to view their own ‘death’ – an AI-generated version of their final slasher-movie moments. When some of the deepfakes are replicated in real life, Ava Wilson can either catch the killer…or be the next victim. How did you decide where the book was going to take place? As my first horror series, I wanted to ensure the setting was as important as the characters. When I came up with the cursed town of Bleak Haven, I knew it was the perfect place for these terrible things to happen. Would you hang out with your main character in real life? Definitely. Ava is the ideal champion to have in your corner. What are three words that describe your main character? Headstrong, determined, loyal. What’s something you learned while writing this book? I’ve learned that working to shorter word counts can focus the story and ensure stronger pacing throughout. It’s also been great creating the start of a series where I can world-build, having only previously written standalone novels. Do you edit as you…

What is the title of your latest release? THE LIES WE TRADE What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book? Meredith Hansel is Wall Street’s rising star, poised to celebrate her team’s massive success, and yet she struggles to balance the demands of her job with the challenges at home. Her marriage strains under the weight of long hours and unspoken resentments, while her teenage daughter refuses to engage. When a mysterious envelope arrives containing sensitive data and a cryptic note from her former colleague, Betsey. Meredith must decide who she can trust, because the message threatens not just Meredith’s career, but the very foundation of her family. To protect everything and everyone she loves, Meredith must untangle Betsey’s demand before the secrets detonate and blow her life apart. How did you decide where your book was going to take place? I worked in and around Wall Street for over twenty years. I wanted to explore the familiar power imbalances, impossible demands, and dynamic characters for a fresh, new thriller.  Would you hang out with your heroine in real life? Absolutely. Meredith may not have a lot of free time, but she sure knows how to throw a party.  What…

Excerpt – ROBERT LUDLUM’S THE BOURNE REVENGE by Brian Freeman: Bourne sat behind the wheel of the Camry and waited. Four o’clock passed. Then five. Then five thirty. The after-work drinkers began to arrive. At six o’clock, he spotted a white F-150 pickup pulling into the lot near the rear of the building. The man who climbed down from the truck was short and stocky, with an almost completely round face. His hair had thinned to a black crown at the back of his head, and he kept a bushy salt-and-pepper mustache. His large wire-rimmed glasses would have been in style back in the 1970s. Despite the Miami heat, he wore a weathered leather bomber jacket over worn blue jeans. He was smoking a cigarette, which he crushed on the pavement before disappearing into the bar. Bourne checked the area for other surveillance and saw none. He left the shadows of the overpass and crossed the street. Inside the bar, most of the tables were already full, and a stage was being set up for evening music. He spotted Kodak sitting by himself at the counter, pawing at a bowl of mixed nuts and chatting up the attractive bartender, who…

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.