As part of our countdown to Readers & ‘ritas 2018, our Meet the Author interviews help you get to know the authors joining us in Texas on November 9-11. Read on to get acquainted with Guest of Honor and USA Today bestselling author Nancy Naigle, and purchase your ticket to meet her in person at Readers & ‘ritas! Pitch us your newest book in one sentence. Two people in a small coastal town meet through a Dear Santa letter and begin a pen pal relationship before they realize they are business rivals. In short, it’s You’ve Got Mail meets Santa Claus Is Coming to Town in a beach town. DEAR SANTA releases on October 16 in trade paperback, digital, and audio. If you could meet one of your characters in real life, who would you choose and what would you do? That’s easy: Cody Tuggle from OUT OF FOCUS and the follow-up novel PECAN PIE AND DEADLY LIES. He is kind, talented, generous, and good-looking to boot. I’d invite him to a cookout at my house with my closest friends, and ask him to play acoustic guitar as we all sing along for a relaxing evening under the stars. Oh…

As part of our countdown to Readers & ‘ritas 2018, our Meet the Author interviews help you get to know the authors joining us in Texas on November 9-11. Read on to get acquainted with Allison B. Collins, and purchase your ticket to meet her in person at Readers & ‘ritas! Pitch us your newest book in one sentence. In FALLING FOR THE REBEL COWBOY, Wyatt Sullivan falls big time for New York heiress Francine Wentworth and her adorable four-year-old son, and finds that a family might just be possible after all. If you could meet one of your characters in real life, who would you choose and what would you do? Hunter Sullivan, from my Cowboys to Grooms series. He has been the most fun to write. He’s a charmer, a jokester, and loves his family. Oh, and the fact that he looks just like Jensen Ackles (Dean on Supernatural!) doesn’t hurt. Hunter loves pie, so I’d bake him his favorite, cherry pie, then just sit and talk with him under the Montana stars. What gets your creative juices flowing when you’re brainstorming a new story? The possibilities, getting to try out the best way to torture my characters…and then…

Angie Thomas – THE HATE U GIVE is probably the best YA written in the last ten years. First, let me say straight up, I’m a white woman who’s never experienced racism. I’ve experienced sexism. But the closest I’ve come to experiencing real racism was listening to someone call Italians “dirty” while at a book fair. No one has ever called the police on me for sitting in a Starbucks or working out a gym. My first response to “Black lives matter” was “All lives matter.” Then I read this book and it changed my mind. It opened my eyes to the kind of fear people of color face on a daily basis. I’ve never feared the police. They’re heroes, right? But sometimes, they get it wrong. And when they get it wrong, people die. Only nobody punishes them. Nobody stops it or does anything to prevent it from happening again. Instead, they put blame on the dead. They shouldn’t have been where they were, worn what they wore, said what they said. Angie does an incredible job of presenting all the ugly sides to racism in this novel. Main character Star has a cop in her family – in…

Ever hear of Rejection Therapy? Guess what it is: You eat lots of weird foods to find out what your body rejects most violently. You say “no” to at least one person a day. You go through your own closet and “reject” clothing by throwing it out. At least 28 pieces a day. Once there’s nothing left in your closet, you start on your things. It’s a quick way to a minimalist lifestyle. You do something daily where you know you’ll get turned down. Eventually getting told “no” won’t scare you, and you can start living life boldly. Answer: D – It is indeed a way to make yourself casual with being told “no.” The whole closet thing is a different technique where you discard 28 things a day for 10 days. It’s actually quite liberating, but that’s not where the idea for this book came from. In Sliding Home by Kathy Lyons—August 13, 2018 Brazen release—my good girl heroine is putting herself through rejection therapy as a way to get bolder. She realized she’s become too timid in her life and this is her way of forcing herself to embrace life. Of course, she expects to get rejected by…

Desperate Girls is here! I’m so thrilled by the book reviews coming in, including a starred review in Publishers Weekly. “Intensely suspenseful…. Griffin pulls out all the stops in a phenomenal twist ending that will leave readers stunned.” — Publishers Weekly, STARRED review “DESPERATE GIRLS by Laura Griffin is a keeper; I know because I carried it everywhere with me until I’d finished it. It has chills, thrills, action, and romance.”  — New York Times bestselling author Linda Howard Desperate Girls is the first book in my new Wolfe Security series. It is a spinoff off my Tracers series, so longtime readers will see some familiar faces. I had so much fun writing Brynn & Erik’s story, and I hope you’ll enjoy it! To celebrate Desperate Girls, I’m giving away a $50 Amazon gift card, so please drop by my contest page to enter: http://lauragriffin.com/contest/ Happy reading! Laura   Buy DESPERATE GIRLS: Amazon.com | Kindle | BN.com | iTunes/iBooks | Kobo | Google Play | Powell’s Books | Books-A-Million | Indiebound | Ripped Bodice | Amazon CA | Amazon UK | Amazon DE | Amazon FR From DESPERATE GIRLS Defense attorney Brynn Holloran is right at home among cops, criminals,…

MY OXFORD YEAR, by JULIE WHELAN If you’re a poetry fan Why I loved it: The novel starts off going right down the old troupe: young student, Ella, sleeps with handsome professor, Jamie, both want to keep it casual since Ella is going back to the united states at the end of one year to pursue her life-long dream of working in politics. But as the novel progresses, Ella starts falling for Jamie and things are revealed that takes the novel in a new direction. It’s smart, fun, romantic, and poetry and humor are sprinkled throughout the novel. Fun fact: Ella, just like Megan in Love, Across the Divide, is faced with a seemingly impossible decision: turn her back on the man she’s falling in love with to follow her political dreams or choose love. ONE PLUS ONE, by JOJO MOYES What if your knight-in-shining-armor was a geek in a BMW? Why I loved it: This contemporary opposite attract story is the perfect trifecta of hilarious, sad and sweet. I loved the messy lives of the main characters, Jesse is a single mom struggling financially to survive and raise her two children, Ed is a wealthy tech geek who’s life…

I love a book filled with adventure, passion, and humor—with a mandatory HEA, of course. Add a medieval setting—preferably in the Highlands of Scotland—and I’ll stay up way too late finishing the story!! But I can only imagine how tough it must have been to actually live there in the 1450s: danger from brigands and other clans, blustery cold in the winter months, the very real possibility of starvation, not to mention plague and pestilence. And if that wasn’t bad enough, women and infants had a much higher mortality rate during childbirth than they do now—some estimates are as high as 4% (and that sounds conservative to me). So Highlanders had to be a hearty bunch to survive, which got me thinking…what are some of the essentials all Highlanders need to not only survive, but to thrive? Here are my top five! A warm plaid to snuggle under—with a brawny Highland Laird, of course! A strong clan to call your own, and a warm castle to live in—preferably as Lady to that Highlander! A sturdy horse to flee your enemy, while sharing a saddle with your hot Scot. A sharp wit to outmaneuver other clans and the hated, bluidy Grit…

It has taken twelve books but I think Georgie is finally learning to stand up for herself. When we first met her in HER ROYAL SPYNESS she was stuck in dreary Scottish Castle Rannoch, supposed to make a good match with one of those “half-lunatic, buck-toothed, chinless, spineless and utterly awful princes who still seem to litter Europe.” The family had singled out Prince Siegfried of Rumania as a potential spouse. It is this that pushes Georgie into her first real rebellion. She bolts from Castle Rannoch down to London to make her own way in life. There is no way she is going to marry a man she and her friends call Fish-face. And how lucky that decision was. At later meetings he makes it clear to her that if they marry she only has to produce the heir and he will never trouble her again. No thank you, Georgie says. And as the books progress it seems she has a chap of her own in mind. Not royal, not even English. An Irish rogue, living a shady life. But irresistibly handsome and oh so naughty. Then it turns out he is the son of a lord, and his…

I am the first to put my hand up when I see a new cowboy romance hit the shelves, which is probably why I love to write cowboys. It’s a dirty job, but somebody’s gotta do it. 😉 But what is it about the idea of a cowboy that we love? What’s the draw? Just for fun (my husband is sitting here rolling his eyes as I giggle away) here are my top 10 reasons to love a cowboy…. The Boots & the Buckle & the Hat I grew up in the suburbs of Austin but far enough out that ranching kids attended my school. After that was Texas A&M. And I can tell you, the look—fitted shirt with the sleeves rolled up, jeans that show off…err…everything, the boots, the buckle, the hat. Especially if its roughed up a bit and has a bit of wear to it—because it’s not for show then. All if it looks good on a man. Tough Cowboys are raised tough. They learn a strong work ethic early on. They learn to suck it up when they get kicked by a horse or cut. Someone that hard, that self-sufficient, but then the thought of how…

So you are the infamous Gray Rogers — former Navy SEAL, current “Mountain Mercenary”. What can you tell us about this group you belong to and how is it different from when you were in the military? We don’t exactly advertise our services. For the most part the Mountain Mercenaries are kept on the “down low” but we are allowed to talk about our group on an as needed basis. We all have regular “day” jobs for anyone who decides to dig into our background. The men on our team are all retired Special Forces soldiers from all branches of the military. In many ways, being a part of the Mountain Mercenaries is better than being in the military because of the lack of bureaucracy, our handler, Rex, deals with all that, we are left alone to get the job done. And we always get the job done. Your last assignment was suppose to be an information seeking assignment to gather intel on a kidnapping ring. But it turned a bit different. Give us a rundown of your mission. Right. Black and I were to intercept a boat in the Pacific and get information about a well-known human trafficker. Imagine…