Hello everyone!  My name is Jessica Peterson, and book two of my debut Regency-set trilogy, THE MILLIONAIRE ROGUE, hits shelves TODAY!  I describe it as The Thomas Crown Affair meets a sassy Jane Austen: a famous fifty carat diamond is stolen in the midst of a crowded ballroom, and all sorts of deliciousness ensues! MILLIONAIRE was so fun to write.  I wouldn’t say it was easy – writing is never, ever, ever easy, at least not for me – but I fell in love with my characters pretty quickly, which always makes the daydreaming necessary for plotting a bit easier. I absolutely ADORE Thomas and Sophia, my witty hero and heroine, and hope you will, too.  I think one of the main reasons I had fun writing their story was how much kissing these two do.  They kiss and they kiss and I was all too happy to explore their wonderfully excessive kissing mojo. One of my favorite scenes in MILLIONAIRE is when Sophia asks Thomas to kiss her – for the second time that night: Sophia let out a breath.  If Hope wasn’t holding her up with his weight, her knees would have definitely buckled.  Good God, never did a…

First, let me explain that wild title above.  My series for Penguin/Obsidian Books are all cozy mysteries, and each one has a comfort food theme. You might ask, “Hey, Chris, what is comfort food? “  Well, dear reader, I think of it as food or sweets that grandma used to make, or mom used to make, or dad always made, or Joe at the diner makes.  It’s your favorite go-to food when you are feeling low and need some comfort.  It’s the way mom makes that sweet potato casserole.  It’s that meatloaf you grew up on.  It’s grandma’s apple pie and that you now make every Thanksgiving for your kids.  And, hopefully, one of your kids will make it for their kids. You might also ask, “Hey, Chris, what’s the setting for your comfort food series?”  Well, dear reader, I picked the perfect setting for my series: a diner!  My character Trixie Matkowski’s Silver Bullet Diner, located in small town Sandy Harbor, New York, is on the shore of Lake Ontario. Trixie Matkowski has the same first name as my favorite childhood sleuth, Trixie Belden.  When I was a kid, you could always find me lying on my bed, reading…

We’re in the season of winter and I live in Minnesota, the Land of 10,000 Frozen Lakes. Christmas 2014 is now part of our memory banks, but I know there are people of all ages who were given a snow globe as a gift and are this very minute picking them up, giving them a shaking, and watching the snow settle over a wide variety of scenes. From little on, I have been drawn to the seeming magic of snow globes. I loved giving them as gifts for my children because they always appreciated them. Even now, when I see one on display in a store, I can’t resist flipping it over then back again to see how the scene looks in a snow fall. When the opportunity arose to write a series set in a shop that specializes in snow globes, it was a natural fit. The catch is that Camryn Brooks, the one running Curio Finds, never planned to do anything like that in her lifetime. She had a successful career as a senator’s legislative affairs director in Washington D.C., and thought she’d be working there forever. But a scandal changed her career path and she returned to…

The eighth White House Chef mystery, ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MENUS, debuts January 6, 2015, and I can truthfully say that if it weren’t for my amazing and fabulous readers, she wouldn’t still be at work feeding the First Family and saving the world in her spare time. When my most recent Manor House Mystery, GRACE AGAINST THE CLOCK, came out in July, I came up with a fun quiz about the series. It went over so well with readers that I decided to try it again. It doesn’t matter whether you’ve read one, four, seven, or none of the prior titles¾this is just for kicks and a chance for me to share a little behind-the-book trivia with you: 1. The first White House Chef mystery, STATE OF THE ONION, opens with an intruder racing across the front lawn of the White House. How does Ollie stop him? a) She alerts the Secret Service b) She trips him c) She smacks him in the head with a frying pan d) She full-body tackles him 2. In one of the early scenes in HAIL TO THE CHEF the First Lady attempts to make a love connection between her nephew, Sean, and our…

Most Wednesday mornings, I have breakfast with my bestie who is NOT a writer. She’s a finance professor and we used to live across the street from one another. Guess what we talked about this morning: A. Aliens in my backyard who pooped oil. Or maybe it was an oil-like disgusting substance that is now all over my yard. B. How her son and my daughter look great together in pictures but would be disastrous together in a relationship. Or maybe not… C. My daughter’s cat vs. mouse adventures. Or was that how do you get a mouse away from the cat who caught it? D. How to corner the commodities futures market in…er…something. Answer: All of the above — but mostly D! Our conversation wanders wildly all over the place, but the bulk of our conversation this morning was on the commodities futures market. Seriously. She had to explain it to me (about three times) before I understood. And then we developed a bad guy conspiracy to corner the market on something. So what market will be threatened by my bad guy? A. A true to life story from the headlines: treasury bonds B. A sexier true to life…

At the start of my career as a romantic comedy author, I vowed I would never write a TSTL heroine. For those unfamiliar with the lingo, TSTL is not some sort of bondage-related acronym (though for the record, I’d cheerfully write a heroine with those proclivities). TSTL stands for “too stupid to live,” and trademarks of a TSTL heroine include stamping her pretty little foot in anger, tiptoeing alone in a negligee into a dark basement to find a serial killer, and bumping uglies with her new beau after forgetting to wrap the kielbasa. I’m committed to portraying safe sex in all my books, but the fact that my characters sometimes get busy in unpredictable places forces me to be creative with my placement of love gloves. My first book in the Front and Center series with Entangled Publishing was MARINE FOR HIRE, and the initial sex scene took place in a shower after the hero rescued the heroine from a shrapnel attack that turned out to be a kitchen mishap with a blender and steamed beets. Because says “romance” like beet puree. At any rate, I initially wrote the shower sex scene with the heroine explaining she’d gotten an…

He glanced at her over his shoulder. “I keep thinking it will go away, that I will wake up and be better, but that’s not going to happen. My greatest fear is that I will be this way for the rest of my life and that people will pity me.” Grace gave in to her desire and hugged him from behind, wrapping her arms around him and holding him tight, pressing her cheek to the tight muscles in his back and closing her eyes. She wanted to fix everything. To make it all go away. For Michael’s sake more than hers. He turned within her embrace and wrapped his arms around her. His hug was nearly crushing, but she didn’t mind. She’d learned not to take moments like these—any moment, really—for granted. “No matter what happens,” she whispered, “we will make it. I promise you that, Michael.” – HIS SAVING GRACE By their very nature, romance stories always have a happily ever after. It’s why I love reading them and why I love writing them. I adore experiencing the journey that two people travel to find each other and to find love. I like knowing before I even open the…

Eighteen years ago, FBI profiler Evelyn Baine’s best friend disappeared.  Now, the Nursery Rhyme Killer is back – and if Evelyn doesn’t catch him, she may be the next to disappear. When the heroine of my Profiler series, Evelyn Baine, was twelve years old, her best friend disappeared, the final victim of the Nursery Rhyme Killer.  A note was left behind, the only clue to why Evelyn’s friend Cassie was taken – and the note said Evelyn was also an intended victim.  For almost two decades, Evelyn has carried her survivor’s guilt, never knowing if Cassie had been killed or was still living under the mercy of the Nursery Rhyme Killer. All her life, Evelyn has wanted to seek closure for Cassie.  It’s the reason she joined the FBI, the reason she became a profiler for the elite Behavioral Analysis Unit. Now, the Nursery Rhyme Killer has returned after eighteen years of silence, and nothing will keep Evelyn from returning to her hometown in Rose Bay, South Carolina.  It’s a tightly knit community, yet many of the locals have old prejudices that simmer into violence when more local girls are abducted.   Evelyn already has strikes against her, because the townspeople…

When I’m not working my day job as attorney and writing my books, you can always find me performing lead vocals for a band. Yep- for a fee and a meal of rubber reception chicken, you can have us entertain you and your guests at the best day of your life.  And writing PLAYING WITH THE DRUMMER (about a celebrity wedding) got me thinking about all of the weddings I’ve done over the years. We get lots of special requests and we bend over backwards to accommodate the couple but there have been some weird ones that live on in my memory. Here are the top five: 5. All My Exes Live in Texas by George Strait: The father of the bride was a huge fan of the King of Country but I think I could have picked any of his dozens of number one love songs before this one. 4. Gold Digger by Kanye West:  Not my favorite by any stretch of the imagination and really weird to sing when you watch the realization of what they lyrics are about dawn on the faces of the older guests –even though we change some of the words to ones less…

What a great team of reviewers we have Our review team, led by Pat Richardson and Sandi Shilhanek, has published more reviews this year than ever before. This year we have published more than 2,400 reviews and we have more to go. In the ten years Fresh Fiction has been reviewing books, we have reviewed 13,462 books. Thank you authors and publishers for sending us so many books over the years, we could not have accomplished this without you. Keep your books coming! Our Reviewers Penny B Elizabeth Bailey Melissa Beck Lee Erin Berryhill Rosie Bindra Joanne Bozik Laura Brusuelas Ashleigh Compton Betty Cox Teresa Cross Samantha Cudworth Lynn Cunningham Monique Daoust Leanne Davis Dot Dittman Jessica Dunn Susan Dyer Christina Fashant Viki Ferrell Susan Gorman Linda Green Angela Haley Sarah Horwath Min Jung Melissa Kammer Make Kay Amber Keller Audrey Lawrence Crystal Leach Gabrielle Lee Auriette Lindsey Sherri M Clare O’Beara Miranda Owen Pat Pascale Katherine Petersen Kay Quintin Samantha Randolph Meredith Richardson Bonnie Rose Mav` S Sharon Salituro Alexandra Sereni-Brown Stephanie Shaw Laurie Simpson Shellie Surles Annetta Sweetko Annie Tegelan Allan Tennent Diana Troldahl L Walker Jim Welke Debbie Wiley Rachel Williams Patricia Woodside Sandra Wurman Jessica Zylinski…