I’m originally from New Zealand. Head toward Australia then head left. If you hit Antarctica, you’ve gone too far. Back up and listen for sheep. There are sixty-six million of them to four million people. Kiwi’s are intrepid travelers. We check out our own county, head to Australia, then bounce around the world. I’ve bounced to the United Kingdom, and Australia. I am now fortunate to call America home. I love it here. OMG. Southern California rocks. Beautiful weather, beaches, super friendly people who can’t understand a word I say. A case in point. Our super cute street has wine and cheese night on the last Friday of every month in summer. We rock up to someone’s yard with said wine and cheese and get to know our neighbors. I thought I was chatting to a lovely elderly man, who gently put his hand on my arm. Lovely Elderly man: “I have no idea what you’re saying.” Me – going red. “Oh, that we live in a beautiful part of the world.” He gently shook her head and ambled away. I proceeded to eat my bodyweight in cheese. That’s a lot of cheese just quietly. In TEN DAYS WITH THE…

I’m Cindy Kirk and I write Contemporary Small-Town Romance. The latest release in my popular Good Hope series is FOREVER IN GOOD HOPE. I’m a Leo, so my strengths are that I’m creative, passionate, generous, warm-hearted, cheerful and humorous. Since we don’t have much time, we’ll skip the weaknesses. I love to read (hard to meet a writer who doesn’t love books) and I adore animals. Traveling is another passion. In short, put me in the passenger seat with a book in my hands and a dog or cat on my lap and I’m happy. What I’m looking for in my ideal reader match: You read the end of a book first because you want to make sure it ends happily You feel stressed when the romance hits rough waters. Your first question when a friend recommends a book is “does it have a happy ending?” Television takes second place to a good book. You bookmark your favorite parts so you can go back and re-read them You’ve read your favorite books numerous times What to expect if we’re compatible: We’ll discuss favorite scenes that tug at our heartstrings. We’ll speculate on why a secondary character (like Steve) wasted so…

Millennium Park’s Hidden Garden is a hidden gem. Separated from the city bustle by a 15-foot-high hedge of conifers and trees, the Lurie Garden is the perfect spot for sneaking in a few chapters of your favorite book or meeting your summertime fling. The best cupcakes are from Sweet Mandy B’s. This is a fact. (And in 1930, the Twinkie was invented in Chicago. This is also a fact.) The Chicago River flows backwards. In the late 19th century, the river was reversed to empty into the Mississippi River instead of Lake Michigan, so all the garbage wouldn’t contaminate the lake—source of the city’s drinking water. Chicago banned paying public toilets in 1973. So all public restrooms are free – now good luck finding one! theWit has a Rooftop bar and it’s amazing. You can check it out in winter (curl up by the fireplace) or summer (look at those views!). Hanging out here one night with author Abby Green, I was struck by an idea: two people have a sexy dalliance on adjoining hotel balconies in the dark. No names, no faces, no touching—each other. And so IN SKATES TROUBLE, the Chicago Rebels prequel novella was born. IRRESISTIBLE YOU…

Thank you so much for having me on Fresh Fiction today to chat about my young adult paranormal romance, THE THIRD KISS. For most people, paranormal fiction means vampires, werewolves, angels, and demons. Many novels in this genre borrow their mythology from Eastern European tales of blood sucking rulers, Ancient Greek stories of shape shifters, or fallen heavenly creatures from the Apocrypha. It’s unusual, however, to see a paranormal story drawing on Old Testament mythology, yet THE THIRD KISS does exactly that. THE THIRD KISS is set in present day Sydney, Australia, and follows high school graduates Jonas and Cora as they fight hell-sent demons along with their attraction for one another. This modern story is woven around a fictional curse that first reared its devious head three thousand years ago in the Old Testament tale of Amnon and Tamar. Theirs is a scandalous story in which King David’s beautiful daughter Tamar is shamed and cast out of her father’s palace, all because of the misogynistic actions of her half brotherAmnon. Like that’s not enough of a slap in the face by fate, Tamar also eventually goes mad. Here’s where I got to thinking – a bit of an occupational…

“The rifle was comfortable in his hands. Familiar. Less like a complex weapon than like an extension of his arms and eye, a part of him. It made him feel complete, filling the emptiness that lived inside of him.” Hades is one of the four main characters in my YA thriller, Project Pandora. Unlike the other brainwashed teenagers in the Project, Hades is conscious during his kills. He doesn’t hesitate to pull the trigger, because that is exactly what he has spent his entire life being trained to do. When I first began writing about Hades, I didn’t intend for him to be a sympathetic character. He was supposed to be a villain with no redeeming qualities, who would eventually get exactly what was coming to him. However, as I delved into his viewpoint, I realized that in his own way, Hades is not a villain, at least not in the traditional sense. His situation is even more tragic than the rest of the characters’ situations. He did not begin life as a monster—he was reshaped into one. And even as he tries to convince himself that he is the one in control, he has close to no control over…

When seventeen-year-old Haley Cooke goes missing out of her high school, leaving behind only a chilling note that says “if you’re reading this, I’m already dead,” FBI Profiler Evelyn Baine is put on the case. Initially, police thought Haley was grabbed by a stranger, but as Evelyn digs deeper, it seems that the people closest to her are all hiding something. There’s Haley’s mom, Linda. On the surface, she seems to be the devastated parent of a missing child, doing everything she can to bring Haley home. But is Linda more interested in being on the news than finding her daughter? And could there be any truth to her ex-husband’s claims that Haley was so unhappy at home she ran away? Then there’s Haley’s dad, Bill. He seems completely unconcerned about Haley’s disappearance, and Evelyn has to wonder: is it because he really believes Haley is safe on her own, or is he calm because he knows exactly where Haley is for a much more sinister reason? There’s also Haley’s step-father, Pete, a new addition to Haley’s life she didn’t seem to like. Haley’s father claims he’s abusive, but there’s no shortage of bad blood between the new husband and…

From the moment I learned to read, I was in love. Not necessarily with words, but with stories. I lived in the pages of the books that I read. I could be a thousand different versions of me all without leaving the comfort of my own bedroom. I was an addict from the very beginning. In fact, I once got in trouble for reading in class. Who gets in trouble for reading in class? If anyone could do it, eight-year-old me could. You see, the teacher was reading a different book to the class, one written specifically for eight-year-olds. But that’s not what I wanted. I craved action, adventure, excitement. The kind of thrilling ride that could only be found in the pages of adult thrillers pilfered from my mother’s well-stocked bookshelves. Once I became an adult, and started experimenting with writing my own novels, I realized there was entire world of adventure I had missed in my leap from young chapter books to adult fiction. Teen fiction. I’m a pre-Twilight-era millennial. In fact, by some scales, I’m almost Gen-X. And when I was growing up, YA/teen fiction wasn’t really a thing, at least not a well-known thing. So, the…

What makes us as readers gravitate to a particular genre when we start reading? What makes one child fall in love with cowboys and Indians, and another devour every fantasy or science fiction novel she can get her hands on? Then some of us realize that not only do we love to read, we want to create stories for others to read. And that same passion kicks in and we naturally write the same kinds of stories we’ve always loved to read. I was born and raised on a farm in Mississippi, and from an early age I loved horses and all things western. I was a bit of a tomboy and cut my teeth on Louis L’Amour westerns and John Wayne movies. My mother is at a loss to where I inherited this passion to create. Surely there was somebody in my family tree who made up stories in their heads. But so far we haven’t made a connection with anybody. But wherever it came from, I got it bad, and I got it early, as early as first grade. Our neighbor’s husband worked in the oil fields of Alaska and was gone months at a time. She’d invite…

I’m so excited to share the gorgeous cover of my upcoming release SHINING THROUGH, the fifth and final book in my Red Hot Russians sports romance series. It’s Dirty Dancing meets Olympic figure skating as Russian bad boy Daniil Andreev, and American ice princess Tabitha Turner try to keep their eyes on the gold in the midst of all kinds of sexy distractions. Helping out along the way are PAIRING OFF‘s Red Hot Russian hero Anton Belikov, who is now Daniil’s coach; and some other familiar faces from the series. But don’t worry if you’re not familiar with the previous books. Each story works as a standalone. My cover designer Dani Barclay created a beautiful scene of the book’s Winter Games host city, Grenoble France, and her depiction of the Olympic torch figures into one of my favorite scenes! With the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyongChang South Korea coming up in February, now is a great time for a romance that follows two top level figure skaters through the season that leads up to the Games! SHINING THROUGH by Elizabeth Harmon Red Hot Russians The Biggest Season of her Career… America’s sweetheart Tabitha Turner is on track to win figure-skating…

For about an hour, he chased the wolf through the underbrush of the misty forest, the birds diving for cover in the Douglas fir and western hemlocks as soon as they saw him coming. Vaughn wondered where the wolf was going. He’d been looping around as if trying to reach a location, but then moving in another direction, most likely fearing Vaughn would catch up to him. Then somewhere in the deep forest ahead, the wolf suddenly howled. Calling for help? Out there? That meant he’d stopped long enough to howl. Vaughn raced forward to close the gap, trying to reach him before he ran off again. Or before reinforcements arrived. Why else would the wolf howl? Other members of his pack must be out there. Maybe he thought he could scare Vaughn off, making him think a wolf shifter pack was out there and would back him up any minute. Vaughn had even used that ploy himself a time or two. He wasn’t giving up on his prey no matter what. He had to learn the truth. Had the wolf standing next to the bloody mess on the cabin floor been the same wolf who had torn into Douglas?…