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….

He’s clueless about clothes and probably won’t care if you want to buy him your own and dress him how you like. And then you get to see him go from nerdy sheik to hot damn! He’s not a ladies’ man, so you probably won’t find his eyes wandering. Since he may not date as much as the big man on campus, he will likely love you for who you are and appreciate you…especially when you wear that cute miniskirt. You can geek out with him and have an excuse to go see all the Star Wars and Star Trek movies you want without your cool factor being put in question. He’ll be able to keep up with you intellectually. He’s definite marriage material, what with the super brain power and all. He’s guaranteed to land a great job (if he doesn’t already have one). So you know you’ll never have to support him. He can fix your laptop when it goes dead. He won’t care about sports, so you’ll get to pick the games you want to watch on Saturdays and Sundays. And maybe you can teach him a thing or two about football and basketball. You finally have…

Josie, the main character of my YA romantic scifi duology – ANOMALY and ENIGMA – is a nerd. She’s an unapologetic Star Wars lovin’, Trekkie to the core, bookworming, Marvel fangirling, doesn’t always fit in, quantum physics nerd. And that seemed to be the thing readers enjoyed most about Josie in ANOMALY. The duology isn’t specifically about Josie being a nerd, but it is an important aspect of Josie and Reid’s story. The nerdery is something I talk about when speaking to groups of readers, specifically teens. I point out that Josie is nerdy, but she’s also tough and feminine. Just because she’s nerdy doesn’t mean she’s not attractive or “less than” in any way. But there’s so much more to the nerdiness. Like any main character, Josie has flaws and does plenty of things wrong, but she never apologizes for being a scifi and academic nerd. That was intentional. See, we’re all nerds in our own way. I believe the word nerd is synonymous with passionate. There are music nerds, science nerds, dance nerds, sports nerd, gaming nerds, comic book nerds, writing nerds, band nerds, book nerds, theater nerds, art nerds, fashion nerds, history nerds, math nerds, and everything…

Have you ever wondered what it’s like for someone that can’t hear, or see, or speak? Or how terrible it would be to be unable to talk to someone – if you could speak – for fear of what your voice might do to anyone who heard it? Worse, what if you knew that your voice had the power to draw people – people that once they heard your voice, couldn’t control the need to ‘have’ you. This is how I work out my paranormal stories. My characters, although fictional, are created from my ideas about these myths. Maybe vampires were said to be vulnerable to holy water because the church was very powerful. Death was everywhere. It was a part of life, a sad part, but a part nonetheless. People may have created ‘vampires’ to explain what couldn’t be explained by anything else. Perhaps they counted on the church to protect them, and that’s why ‘vampires’ can’t go into a church and are vulnerable to holy water. But maybe the stories had it wrong. Maybe Vampires cry holy water? Maybe the church caught and collected the holy water they cried then killed them. Thus, the vampires were vulnerable to…

Marcos Costa is used to being alone. Tossed into foster care as an infant, he learned from an early age how to survive using his wits. When he was seven, he met two older foster brothers (Cole Walker and Andre Diaz) who he would call his brothers forever. But just five years later, the house caught fire (with Marcos inside) and burned to the ground. On his own again, he bounced around more foster homes until he hit eighteen and was reunited with Cole and Andre. The person he never saw again was the girl who showed up at the foster home a few months before it burned down: Brenna Hartwell. She was his very first crush, and he’s never forgotten her. But he has moved on. As an adult, Marcos still has a close bond with Cole and Andre, but everyone else, he keeps at a distance. It’s worked for him all his life, and it works especially well in his job, as a DEA agent who goes undercover on dangerous operations on a regular basis. His latest assignment is his most dangerous yet. He’s going for a meet – alone – to a drug lord’s hideaway deep in…

Hi everyone! Julie Ann Walker here celebrating summer with my newest release, FUEL FOR FIRE With the sun high in the sky, your toes in the sand (hopefully), and a cold drink in your hand (naturally), it’s time to kick back and enjoy some rockin’ romantic suspense. Have I got just the thing. FUEL FOR FIRE has it all. Sass, snark, suspense, steamy hot lovin’, and all the sexy shenanigans that fans have come to know and love about my bestselling Black Knights Inc. series. Don’t believe me? Read on for a taste of FUEL FOR FIRE and the whirlwind that is CIA agent Chelsea Duvall and BKI bada$$ Dagan Zoelner! “There must be a better way to get this job done.” Dagan Zoelner noted his own thunderous expression in the mirror hanging on the wall near the front door before returning his attention to Chelsea, sullenly eyeing her when she leaned close to her reflection to apply lipstick in a shade that could only be described as take-me-big-boy pink. When she blew a kiss at him in the mirror, a coiling awareness tightened his gut. Then she turned and gifted him with a look that would have made a…

Excerpt of LORD OF LIES She pivoted in place and strode toward Dell as he stood leaning against the back of the sofa, his ankles crossed in front of him in a deceptively casual stance. His muscles tensed when she stopped all too close for his peace of mind to stare at him with her sharp, fixed gaze. “I need to be certain she is not still in some sort of trouble. I must be assured she is safe.” Instinct urged him to refuse. One thing he had learned was that when people spied on loved ones, they often discovered things they were better off not knowing. Still, there were only a couple of things he would never agree to do regardless of the profit. Outright murder was one. Harming a child was the other. Beyond those two rules, he was willing to do anything as long as it paid right. He had spied, stolen, threat­ened vile consequences to get what he needed, and infiltrated gangs and crime rings. He had used physical force to make a point and to save his own hide, and had occasionally been forced to do things he was not particularly proud of. But it…

Excerpt from THE OUTLAW Arizona Territory, Spring 1883 Amanda Porterfield gazed out the window of her bedroom at the endless landscape where cattle grazed and wildflowers were in full bloom and where she had spent the entire twenty years of her life so far. Even with all this natural beauty surrounding her, she was quite sure she would go stark raving mad unless something exciting happened to break the sheer monotony of her days here on the ranch. Practically everyone else in her family had found love or at least adventure, but here she sat with no prospects—either romantic, adventurous, or preferably both—in sight. She heard her mother and the family’s housekeeper, Juanita, talking as they sat in the courtyard and she decided to join them.  “I think I’ll go into town,” she announced after pouring herself a cup of coffee and flopping into a high-backed chair. “That’s a good idea,” her mother replied, setting aside her mending. “I’ll come with you.” Amanda swallowed a sigh. The point had been for her to be off on her own. If adventure did not find her, then perhaps she needed to go seeking it. But with her mother along for the ride,…

I’ve seen your eyebrows quirk when I tell you I write fantasy. That little twitch of the brow is enough to alert me to your inner-realist. You want books that you can relate to, you think. Not a bunch of dragons and wizards and faeries. That stuff is for kids. You require grown up fiction. Happily, I’ve converted quite a few nonbelievers like yourself. From grandparents that have never picked up a fantasy book, to hard-core historical romance buffs, The Tethered World Chronicles have made some unexpected fans. Fantasy themes, you see, are not so different from our everyday issues. In fact, they often bring the bottom line into sharper focus due to the larger-than-life contrasts of the characters and setting. For your consideration, I’ve collected my top five reasons to read fantasy. I hope you’ll test my assertions for yourself! I’d love to know if you ever read fantasy (and if so, what’s your favorite book?). If you don’t read fantasy, what’s holding you back? One lucky commenter will receive an ebook of THE TETHERED WORLD to jump into right away. Fantasy reflects our own flawed humanity on a grander scale. Some fantasy books include humans, others have entirely…