My idea way to spend a Saturday? Is that a trick question? You’re asking a writer who works at home and whose kids are grown up and aren’t going to school any more. If I don’t look at the date up at the top of my computer screen, I rarely know what day of the week it is. And I only look at the date to see how much time I have before the next deadline. Even so, there is something special about Saturdays that goes back to childhood. When I think about Saturdays, memory transports me back to a time then I was about twelve years old. Saturdays were magical back then. School was over for the week, you could wear blue jeans instead of school clothes, and Sunday stood there as a buffer between Now and Monday. I don’t know if my Saturdays all had a sameness about them then, but I remember them all following the same pattern. My friends and I went to the movies. First we gathered at somebody’s house to decide which movie to go to. There were three movie theaters in our neighborhood, the Earle on 74th Street, the Colony on 82nd Street,…

There’s a fine line between love and hate. So it’s no surprise that “Enemies to Lovers” is one of the most popular tropes in all of storytelling. From Jane Austen to Julie James, from Shakespeare to soap operas, the push/pull between a hero and heroine as they go from “I hate you” to “I love you” can be entertaining to watch. Instalove, or love at first sight, definitely has no place here. Hollywood has certainly made a buck or two producing romantic comedies that put the hero and heroine at odds from the very beginning: The Proposal, Sweet Home Alabama, You’ve Got Mail. Kate Moseley, the heroine in The Cutting Edge described the trope perfectly: “Did you ever play with magnets? You know how you used to have to push them around and they’d push away. You’d push them around the table when all you really had to do was flip them over. And then suddenly… Don’t you see? That’s why everything has been so awful. All we needed was a little flip.” Aaah… the flip. Isn’t it glorious? That’s what has us all waiting on the edge of our seats. Or in the case of romance novels, turning the…

Hi! I write the Cookbook Nook Mysteries, which means I spend a lot of time researching cookbooks and recipes. Poor me! Also, because I include recipes in my mysteries, I do a lot of taste testing. Feeling sorry for me yet? Probably not. You would if I was a lousy cook, but I’ve been cooking all my life. I catered during high school, and I ran a restaurant in my twenties. However, my protagonist, Jenna Hart, a former advertising executive who moved home to the seaside town of Crystal Cove, California to help her aunt open the Cookbook Nook, a delightful bookstore packed with cookbooks and cooking items, is not a cook. She needs simple recipes, i.e., 5-ingredient recipes. To help Jenna, I include a simple recipe that she could whip up in each book. FYI, she’s determined to become a better cook. In fact, in GRILLING THE SUBJECT, she has advanced to ten-ingredient recipes. How? Because Katie, the chef at the Nook Café, is teaching Jena to think of dry ingredients as one “recipe” and the liquid ingredients as another “recipe.” Then she can combine the two recipes into one. Two fives add up to ten. Does that make…

David Misch was born in a humble log cabin in 1946, then again in a split-level thatched roof cottage in 1950. Growing a remarkable twelve inches a day (though, unfortunately, entirely in his shins), David was recruited by both the Boston Celtics and AAA Ceiling Repair before his fourth birthday, but opted instead for a career as a professional snitch. After ratting out literally dozen of ne’er-do-wells to the FIB, Mr. Misch realized he should have been dealing with the FBI, not Fellas In Basements, a special-interest group devoted to the study of La-Z-Boy armchairs. He then retired to an underwater colony of scuba gear scavengers who, unable to find scuba gear, drowned. He will be missed. Wait, he’s back!, this time with something roughly approximating the truth. And in the first-person yet. Quote… Though I’m now an internationally-recognized author (if you count one interview with Radio Ireland as international recognition), I began my career as a funny folksinger, back when such a description was accepted by the IRS. My big break was being clueless enough to think drunk college friends thinking I could write songs meant I could write songs. I sustained this delusion for five years before dropping…

I’ve had more changes in my life in the past few months, than the past several years. Small or large, change can be difficult and wreak havoc on your soul. Small changes can be easily shrugged off. Like after 25 years we decided to switch insurance companies. We had to cut down a huge tree in our yard. Then we switched the providers for our wireless cell phones. Then, (gasp) we disconnected our land line telephone. Obviously, these changes may cause some minor inconvenience, you might have to pay more, or you might save some money, but all in all you get through these changes unscathed. However, when a beloved pet dies, your youngest graduates from high school, and you part ways with a close friend; these changes are a little more difficult to get through without some pain. At the grocery store, I ran into a friend I hadn’t seen in years. We were talking about all the changes in our lives. I was feeling especially melancholy about it and probably had my sad face going when she said, “But you know, I love change.” I must have stared at her for a good five seconds with my mouth…

We found this store a few years ago. A surplus store where they sell discounted groceries – cans that are dented, food items that are almost-to-slightly expired, chicken nuggets that aren’t shaped exactly right. We love that place. We are really busy during the week and sometimes being able to pull out a huge bag of chicken strips to fry up really quick is a lifesaver. Plus everything is surplus or slightly irregular so it’s cheap. Cheap is pretty much my favorite thing ever. It’s also a handy place as it’s right across the street from the drive-in. So it’s a great place to stop in for big bags of popcorn and candy. Especially chocolate. I may or may not have a slight chocolate problem. If it’s in the house, I’m going to eat it. Oh, I try not to. But it calls to me…especially when I’m up until the wee hours either working or staring into space and pretending I’m working. My husband once said we should coat really important things in chocolate. That way if they ever get lost I’d be sure to find them. I’m not quite that bad. But…well honestly, probably not far off. So at…

John Wayne, Randolph Scott, Clint Eastwood, Alan Ladd…I am a sucker for a cowboy hero, and I am not alone. Since the days of Owen Wister and the Virginian, readers have been drawn to cowboy heroes. But what makes them so appealing? Here are a few ideas I have: The “Code of the West.” True cowboy heroes have a code of honor they live by that make them true hero-material. Things like: Your word is your bond. Ride for the brand. Don’t ask questions about a man’s past. Never miss an opportunity to keep your mouth shut. Don’t squat with your spurs on. Cowboys are men of action. Readers like heroes who DO things, and there’s not a much more physical job than that of a cowboy. Heroes look good on horses. J A man who can ride even better than he can walk? Yes, please! Cowboys are known for being chivalrous. Their code of honor extends to treating ladies like ladies. Cowboys give the impression of self-reliance, true loners who don’t need anyone…but every woman in the world knows this isn’t true. A real cowboy needs a good woman to look past the rough, tough exterior and reach the…

Hi, I’m Sami and I write romance novels set in Australia. Not surprising since I live in Australia and have all my life. They say ‘write what you know’ and I know a lot, a LOT, about Aussie men. I didn’t mean that to sound like I’ve had a LOT of personal experience…more that I’ve been a life-long observer J. One of the best things about the new publishing paradigm is the freedom it allows me to write my Aussie blokes, the way I see them. Years ago when I first began reading romance—long before the e reading revolution when I could only get those little Harlequins from the library or my local K-Mart—there were very few Australian men in romance novels. The ones that existed were the uber rich type who lived in a posh part of Sydney, travelled a lot and spoke like British aristocrats. In the end these guys came off looking very cosmopolitan, and very unreal to me. The men I actually knew were nothing like that. They were big and loud and uncouth, sometimes volatile and often inappropriate. They were also protective and strong, hardworking optimists, decent salt-of-the earth individuals who laughed loudly and made…

Hi. My name is Candice Gilmer, and I write contemporary and paranormal romance. And I used to write fan fiction. I wrote a lot of fan fiction. I had a fangirl love for Obi-Wan Kenobi and Star Wars, and wrote about my adoration of the character quite often. If he had as many girlfriends as I wrote about him having, well that Jedi would have never gotten anything done. I even wrote ongoing stories with him and an OC I made, (Original Character), a serial before serials were popular. And I loved it. I loved the world, I loved the rules of the world, and I loved Star Wars. (Still do.) Sure, I branched out and wrote some Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan fiction (my latest release, FANTASY GIRL, the main character, Lynn, writes Buffy fan fiction) and a few other genres. It was fun to delve deeper into these worlds that I loved, and create more stories and explore the nuance of every scene or episode, weaving my own stories in among the cannon ones. Besides being fun, I learned how to do a lot of specific things writing fan fiction, too. Like dialog. Pacing. (Two simple things, but…

As an author who’s fortunate enough to write historical romance, which also includes throwing in time travel every now and then, I have to say there is nothing better than sitting down and reading a book that has juicy scandal throughout it, or characters who skate on very thin ice that could possibly throw them toward ruin. I tend to write outside the box, which will probably never make me a household name, but then I don’t write to the market, I write books that I’d love to read, and hopefully others will as well. My new series which debuts with Entangled Publishing’s Select Historical imprint To Marry a Rogue certainly has scandal, sex and a villain who’s seriously in need of a good wallop. ONLY AN EARL WILL DO opens with the words, “You’re ruined!” Which should set you up for a read that will hopefully keep you turning the pages? It’s a tale of two people, ripped apart by financial status, and the devious plans of others with their own alternative motive. Of course when two people are separated by time, life happens, it certainly doesn’t stop for anyone, and things happen… needless to say, when my hero…