Good mornin’ to all y’all folks at Fresh Fiction and thank you so much for inviting me back to your site to talk about THE STRAWBERRY HEARTS DINER. I’d always wanted to set a book in a cozy little 50’s style diner somewhat like the character Leroy Jethro Gibbs visits in the television show, NCIS. So it was exciting to get the opportunity to get to spend time in the Strawberry Hearts Diner with Jancy, Vicky, Nettie and Emily. Jancy wasn’t planning on being in Pick, Texas any longer than it took for her to visit her grandmother’s grave and then drive away. But fate stepped in and she found herself sitting in the Strawberry Hearts Diner parking lot watching her car burning to a crisp. With very little money and a driver’s license that was only good for a few more months in her purse, she would’ve rather had a job somewhere else than the diner. But there she was, taking the HELP WANTED sign out of the window. Things could have been worse but even with room and board plus a salary and tips, she’d have rather been working anywhere else. After all the sweetheart of Pick would…

“History is a gallery of pictures in which there are few originals and many copies.” Alexis de Tocqueville I love reading historical romance and have since I cracked open the cover of GONE WITH THE WIND as a teenager. Unlike my boring history classes, here was history worth reading. At first I skimmed over the battles, but then as I continued on with the book, I read more and more of the actual history contained in the story. This book was about people. Those who lost loved ones, those who waited at home for a letter, for some indication that their husband, brother, father or son was still alive. Fiction? Yes. GONE WITH THE WIND is a work of fiction, but what happened to Scarlett O’Hara, et al, was based on real life events. Babies were born during the height of battle. Plantations were burned to the ground, and thousands, both black and white, were left homeless, adrift in a world turned completely upside down. I closed that book with a sigh of pleasure, and then followed up with the story of Henry VIII’s last wife, Katherine Parr. That led me to read the stories of the other five wives….

Sometimes a story sits in the back of a writer’s head, waiting its turn to come out. INDIGO LAKE was like that. The two main characters came from two different worlds. Blade had no family who cares about him and Dakota was sometimes smothered in her responsibilities. Both were looking for someone, the right person, to fill the longing, but neither would admit it. Blade Hamilton had inherited a house he cared nothing about. After driving all day to look at it, he’d decided to sell it all, land, house and heritage. He hadn’t known about his father and he didn’t need an old crippled house with wild roses growing almost to the roof. Dakota Davis had heard her grandmother’s dark stories about the Hamilton house all her life. When she turned off the county road heading toward home, she thought she was seeing a ghost standing knee-deep in Indigo Lake. As they get to know one another they begin to care and the love they share seems to cut their problems in half. I love writing stories about people who become so real to me that I wake up nights worrying about them. That’s how it was with Blade…

Romantic Suspense ALL THE DEAD GIRLS by Rita Herron Montlake Publishing Alison Dasho, editor ALL THE DEAD GIRLS by Rita Herron Graveyard Falls #3 When a violent storm hits Graveyard Falls, it unearths the unimaginable: skeletons of teenage girls, each dressed in white and holding a candle. It’s clear to FBI agent Beth Fields that this is the work of a long-standing killer—but could it be the one she escaped years ago? She has no memory of the man who held her captive and murdered her friend. But even though someone was jailed for the crime, she’s always feared that the real killer is still out there…waiting and watching. Ian Kimball never believed his stepfather was guilty of Beth’s kidnapping or the slaying of two local girls. Now Graveyard Falls’s sheriff, he’s determined to catch the true perpetrator. And when more young women go missing, he realizes he needs Beth’s help. She is nothing like Ian expected, and everything he desires. But if they have any hope of finally ending the killer’s reign of terror, Beth and Ian will need to put everything aside, including their past, their mistrust, and their growing attraction… Romance Suspense [Montlake Romance, On Sale: November…

Fireworks and Fun for you in July! My favorite time of year down the Jersey Shore is the 4th of July! I love seeing the parades and sitting on the beach watching the fireworks. It’s such a lovely time of year to be able to just hang out, enjoy the weather and friends, and of course, read a good book while sitting on the beach. Here’s a photo for you from this year as we all sit and wait to see the fireworks in Asbury Park, New Jersey. Good news! I am so excited that Publishers Weekly picked One Summer Night as a Top 10 Romance! One Summer Night is the first book in the At the Shore series which is very near and dear to my heart as I get to share one of my very favorite places – the Jersey Shore – and show you how it’s nothing like that show that shall not be named. LOL! If you’d like to get a sneak peek at One Summer Night and the At the Shore series, I’ve been doing some Behind the Scenes you can see by clicking here. Beach Bag Beach Read Contest Starting on July 14, please…

Thanks for hosting me on Fresh Fiction today! Describe SCANDALOUS EVER AFTER in 6 words. Friends to lovers, secrets, horse-racing, HEA. (I might have fudged those 6 words a little.) Favorite thing to munch on while you write? I always have a glass of water and usually have a big mug of coffee by me too. I’ve been known to eat lunch while I write—soup is quite an adventure while you’re typing—and if there’s candy around, it’ll find its way to my desk too. My favorites are Jelly Bellys and gummy candies. Tell us something interesting about Kate and Evan that we won’t find out in the book. I could see those two becoming lovingly competitive after the end of the book. Kate is a crack shot, Evan is resourceful, and they’re both excellent riders. They’d push each other to become better and tease each other a lot along the way. If you had to pick ONE line from SCANDALOUS EVER AFTER as your favorite, what would it be and why? “And beneath the blue sky, they banished the gray.” The hero of SCANDALOUS EVER AFTER, Evan Rhys, has depression—though since he lives in the 1810s, he only knows to…

Some books are more personal than others, drawing bits and pieces of my life and interests into the story. That’s exactly what happened with DRAKON’S PLUNDER, book 3 in my Blood of the Drakon series. What’s in a name? Well, a lot. And for me it all started with the heroine. Sometimes I know right away what my character’s name will be. Sometimes it takes a while for me to discover it. This book is set off the coast of Maine and I knew it would involve salvaging a wreck from the 1800s. Even though the ship in my book went down in bad weather, it got me thinking about pirates. I did some online research and discovered Samuel Bellamy, also known as “Black Sam” Bellamy, the “Prince of Pirates.” He was an interesting character who lived large and died young. I thought it fitting my heroine be named Sam Bellamy, since her father wanted a son and claimed they could be related to the pirate, even though that is never substantiated. Which leads me to my own history. No, I’m not related to any pirates…that I know of. But I did grow up hearing about one named Peter Easton….

Describe A NEW LEASH ON LOVE in 6 words: Second chance love and cuddly canines. Favorite thing to munch on while you write: Dark chocolate is a favorite pick-me up if words are flowing and I’m late for a meal. Mostly at my desk, I savor mugs of good tea and a scented candle or my essential oil diffuser, and save the munchies for my writing breaks. Something you won’t find out about characters from reading the book: Craig had a petless childhood. Early in the story, he isn’t sure he wants to or would be good at connecting with animals. However, when he was nine, he bottle-fed an orphaned young squirrel. After nursing it back to health and releasing it into the woods behind his parents’ house, he spent that summer drawing sketches of the squirrels that visited his mother’s birdfeeder. The first dog Megan ever rescued was long before she worked for the High Grove Animal Shelter. When she was just seven, she and her mom came across a shy little beagle that had lost its way. Megan’s hand-drawn “found” signs helped him find his way home. If you had to pick ONE line from A New Leash…

Angst, the A word. I’m not a big angsty person. I’m low-key, don’t like a lot of drama, and tend to shy from entertainment where my emotions are being tugged up and down and making me want to hurl as if on a roller coaster. I’m more the fun and sexy storygoer, the one who likes her romances to end in a happily ever after and for the main characters to be likeable. So, yeah, okay, that’s not always realistic, and not always possible. A lack of conflict, I learned early on in my writing career, is BORING. Why am I even invested in lukewarm happy people? What obstacle must they overcome to get to blissful love ever after? Because that’s where the magic is. In watching two flawed characters grow and develop throughout a story into characters you root for. In JUST THE THING, I wanted to deal with grief. The book is still uplifting and funny, but it’s got an undertone of real vulnerability in the main characters who both deal with loss in different ways. Zoe, the heroine, has lost her twin, and it’s deeply affected her. She faces her grief head-on, accepts her crying jags, and…

Once upon a time, in a high school hallway likely far, far away from where you are now, two young, vibrant, gorgeous, wonderful, amazing, clearly narcissistic (we’re kidding, by the way), women decided they could write a romance novel. One had the idea, another had the plot. We mapped it all out and were excited to get started. However, there was an obvious concern we had when we went into this: what if our writing didn’t mesh well together? What if it was clear we were two writers because we couldn’t blend the narrative cohesively? What if we tried, and we failed? The prospect of failure was terrifying, as it often is. This was something we both secretly dreamed of doing but had never had enough of a push to make it happen. Now we had the push: each other. But we still had to actually write the damn thing. The stakes felt much larger than they really were. Like if we weren’t able to finish this one project, all hope of ever finishing another would be gone. So we did the only thing we could do. We wrote. We tried. We succeeded. Kinda. That first book was a blur….