There are three things I really love: baseball season, a good book, and a swoon-worthy love story. So, writing the Suttonville Sentinels series has been a dream come true in a way. The second book SWINGING AT LOVE, features a couple I fell in love with right away. Alyssa is practical, because she has to be, but dreams of a little magic in her life. Tristan is driven, but gets lost and needs an anchor to keep him from drifting. Putting a sassy ballerina together with a “lost his swagger” ball player turned out to be its own kind of magic. These two need each other, even though they don’t know it. Anyone who participates in an activity that requires high skill—whether that’s sports, or dance, music, or art—knows that losing your swing/step/sense of rhythm is one of the most difficult things you’ll face. Finding a muse to bring your skills back online? Priceless. When you think of some of the best sports romances, the muse tends to be regular trope. Take one of my favorites: TIN CUP. If you haven’t seen it, it’s hilarious. Kevin Costner is a washed up golf pro with the skills to make the tour,…

When new adult books exploded a handful of years ago, writers jumped at the chance to explore this new category. Most of these authors self-published and became extremely well known. Then as other authors jumped on the bandwagon, many did so thinking it might be a “get rich quick” scheme. Because of this, the quality of new adult books went down. Readers became disappointed with the overused plot lines that exist in a lot of NA. Even I’ve reduced the amount of NA I read. It’s gotten a bad reputation, which is why almost no agents want these stories and most publishers don’t either. I’ve also heard readers say they don’t read NA because the stories are all the same: predictable contemporary romance with lots of sex. I might agree with the predictability of many NA plots. But I disagree when it comes to claiming the NA category was created simply as a way to add more sex into young adult books and ‘get away with it’. First of all, there’s sex in YA, too. And not all NA stories include sex. (Imagine that!) I’ve read tons of new adult books. (Most of them straight romance.) And yes, I’ve grown…

In SECRETS OF A RELUCTANT PRINCESS, Andy finds her escape from her embarrassing life through live action role-playing. Hidden from the cameras and away from the pressure at school, she feels like she can be herself and get closer to her crush, Kevin. Only she can’t totally be herself. She’s too afraid to take off her mask in case he doesn’t like who he sees: the Porcelain Princess. But what could possibly be wrong with that (famous last words—you’ll have to read it to find out…)? What’s the trouble with pretending to be something you’re not in a relationship? It’s exhausting. It drains you, mentally and emotionally. It can be physically exhausting too—Andy’s hidden secret comes with a lot of wardrobe changes. You could be pretending that you’re more outgoing than you are, funnier, smarter, or maybe you’re trying to hide a secret like Andy. But it’s not normal for you. It doesn’t come naturally, so you feel like you’re always “switched on” like an actor on the stage, constantly planning your next move, your next line. It makes me tired just thinking about it. There’s a wall between you I think people can tell when you’re not being real…

Words are funny and powerful things. Put enough of them together and you have the ability to make some laugh, cry, or play them over in their head on repeat. When I think of the word ‘bad’, I don’t think of any of my characters really. So I started to question, what makes a bad boy, bad? As is true for many questions, there are a LOT of answers in this one little query. To try and figure out how my BAD BOY NEXT DOOR fits in with those fictional men we love to hate and can’t help but like, I’ve made a list of some ‘bad boys’ I love to see where Wyatt Daniels fits in among them. Raylan Givens from JUSTIFIED United States Marshall Raylan Givens is one of the good guys, but he often makes choices just on the boundary lines of good and bad. In essence, he does what needs to be done to achieve his end goal. Though he makes the ladies swoon, he’s not exactly long term commitment material. But there are times when it seems like he wants to be. Damon Salvatore from THE VAMPIRE DIARIES The ultimate bad boy who falls for…

Enjoy an excerpt from AVALANCHE where the hero and heroine meet! First meetings are the best! Excerpt Fireworks exploded across the dark sky, but Jenny Snowfeather hardly noticed. The news about the cabin break-in had cast a shadow over her brother’s Fourth of July barbecue. She’d suspected a bear at first, until she learned two hunting rifles and ammo had been stolen, along with food and blankets. A bright flash startled her. “Watch out!” a man cried as the stray spark zoomed toward her like a small meteor. She spun around to escape, slamming right into the man and his plate of barbecued chicken. He grabbed her, stumbled, and pulled her with him to the ground. A second later, the blazing miniature rocket whizzed over their heads and crashed into the lawn only a few feet away. She squeezed her eyes shut at the near miss. When she opened them, Jenny found herself face-to-face with the handsome stranger. His large, brown eyes stared back in surprise. Her gaze traveled to his arm, sheltering her body. Quickly, he withdrew it and rolled over, raising himself to his elbows. “That was a close one. Are you okay?” She sat up and lightly…

Hello, everyone! Victoria Blue and Angel Payne here, saying hello once more! We’re the team behind the SECRETS OF STONE romance series, with Book 4, NO MAGIC MOMENT, newly released! In all of our books, but especially with Michael and Margaux’s journey, we love to explore all the “unique” details of our characters’ lives, including the day-to-day personality traits that make them tick. A lot of our readers ask where we come up with such interesting quirks for the Stones and their friends–and we often say we draw on a lot of the weirdness from our own lives. Over the years, as friends, we’ve learned a lot of these things about each other, and we thought you’d might have fun taking a peek at our weirder sides, as well. We like to call this… “Guilty Pleasures with Victoria and Angel”. We hope you enjoy! How many do you agree with? What are your own guilty pleasures? Pop Star: Victoria: Taylor Swift Angel: twenty one pilots Broadway Musical Song: Victoria: Seasons of Love from Rent, of course Angel: Unexpected Song from Song and Dance “Calories Aren’t a Problem” Dessert: Victoria: Apple pie a la mode Angel: A Farrell’s Tin Roof Sundae…or…

Hello All! For those who don’t know me, I’m A.M. Griffin and I write smexy stories of alien abductions, vanilla stories about invasions and teenage love and I’ve just added sexy paranormal wolf shifters to my repertoire. I’m so excited about this new series and I’m happy that the readers can take this adventure with me into my new paranormal world. LOVER CLAIMED is the second book in the Dark Wolf Enterprises series. The first book in the series is titled SHIFTER CLAIMED. Dark Wolf Enterprises is a multi-million dollar investment company owned and operated by a family of wolf shifters, the Farkas. Unfortunately for the brothers and owners; Andras, Kristof and Lajos Farkas, someone is embezzling millions of dollars from their company. LOVER CLAIMED picks up where Lajos has separated from Kristof at Trudy’s house. Lajos has a simple task, to take Trudy’s dog to her best friend Meisha’s house and then to go to Trudy’s business to look for any clues left behind by the other shifters who attacked her. The problem? Meisha Komano doesn’t take kindly to coming home to find a stranger in her kitchen. The stranger could be one of the drug fiends from her…

For more than twenty years, America has been obsessed with reality TV. Something about watching “real” people engage in a variety of activities calls to our inner voyeurs. Producers love reality TV because it costs less to produce than a scripted series. Americans love getting a peek at outrageous activities and cutthroat competitions. Let’s take a look at some of the good and bad things reality has to offer. The Good: Anyone can be on a reality show, claiming their fifteen minutes of fame, even if they aren’t an actor. All you need is a sense of adventure, the willingness to try something that seems a bit wild, and the ability to not go to work for the duration of filming. When Jen gets laid off at the same time her apartment converts to condos, she doesn’t know what to do with her life. Going on the show gives her a chance to decompress and figure things out while competing to earn enough money to help her pay off her debts. It’s a win-win situation. The Bad: Reality TV also tends to bring out the worst in people. From Puck on the Real World to Omarosa on The Apprentice to…

My grandmother was an Edwardian. Whenever I say or think that it makes me realize just how close the first decade of the twentieth century actually was and at the same time what a colossal difference there is between my life in America now and the Edwardian attitudes to class, social conventions and the formality that existed between parents and their children in England when my granny was a girl. Florence Violet Williams was born in 1895, she was nineteen at the start of World War I. When her fiancé, Raymond, was killed in the Battle of Somme in 1916 Florence never thought she would marry. But she did. She married my fun-loving grandfather – George Dudley who survived the war in Mesopotamia to sweep her off her feet at a dance held in the house of a neighbor. The grandmother I knew had a cloud of white hair and large, dark eyes. Like many women of her age she never raised her voice, but she was a huge stickler for the rules. I never saw her in pants, and she always wore a hat when she went out and if you wore a hat you had to wear gloves…

When I’m strolling Riverwalk in New Orleans, with thick fog rolling in and the mournful toot of a tugboat off in the distance, I have every confidence that I can convincingly capture this ethereal moody image on paper – even though I don’t actually live there. I’m one of those authors who buzz in and out of cities to snatch a quick whiff of atmosphere and head-spinning locale. And I really love it that way. Because when I visit New Orleans, I’m dashing around that grand old city at breakneck speed, tasting oysters, downing an Ibita Beer while listening to zydeco music, sneaking into above-ground cemeteries, and buying potions and spells at French Quarter voodoo shops. These are all fabulous elements that come together and form a kind of author’s gumbo that I can sprinkle like zesty herbs throughout my Scrapbook Mysteries. The same goes for Charleston, South Carolina, the setting for my Tea Shop Mysteries. Charleston is another old-world city that’s filled with history and mystery. They’ve got narrow alleys where duels were fought, Revolutionary War-era graveyards, spooky old plantations, the pounding surf of the Atlantic, and historic grande dame homes along with old Huguenot families with plenty of…