Ach! I’ve always loved cowboys! Growing up, I have vivid memories of my father watching endless Clint Eastwood westerns. Clint was my kind of cowboy-strong, silent, handsome. In romances, the cowboy is a long-standing beloved hero archetype. Here’s my top ten list for must-have character traits for any cowboy hero I write (in no particular order): Hardworking Strong Loyal Brave A Protector Stubborn Rugged Confident Loving Tender Obviously he can’t be all those things with all people, but those are integral to the man that he is. In my new release, THE RANCHER’S SECOND CHANCE, Cole Forrester is a strong man with a very tender side. He’s a widower and he’s closed himself off to finding love again. In comes Melanie Simms, city girl and good friend to his little sister. Melanie is a woman who has it all together on the outside, but she’s running from a past that continues to haunt her. She’s been hurt before and has a hard time with trust. She unknowingly brings out Cole’s protective, caring side and soon they are unable to fight the pull they feel. Both these characters are so real and are dealing with the kind of pain that many…

Laney Holt is the ultimate good girl. As the preacher’s daughter, she has lived a sheltered lifestyle, but that doesn’t mean she hasn’t ever been tempted once or twice to be bad. Jake Theopolis is as bad as they come, and he enjoys tempting the good girl in ways he knows she likes. A few stolen kisses show that Laney Holt isn’t immune to his charm, and he uses that to his advantage. What he doesn’t know is that Laney has been betrayed by the two closest people she trusted and still hasn’t gotten over it. In a story about gaining trust, Jake and Laney travel the bumpy journey of what it means to fully give their heart to someone else. M. Leighton’s second installment of The Wild Ones series is the perfect summer beach read. With its simple, yet eloquent writing and engaging characters, readers can lounge around in the sun, enjoying a sexy story while sipping a drink. Striking a balance between sexy and sweet, Laney’s character turned out to be quite wonderful. Though she is hurting and is often restricted on what she can and cannot do, she didn’t come across as stupidly rash or impulsive whenever…

Is there one event in your childhood that changed who you became as a grownup? One interaction with someone that changed the way you saw the world? One mistake that opened your eyes to new possibilities? One moment in time that shifted your path left or right? Mine came by way of my sister who took time out of her busy teenaged life for her snot-nosed little sister. Sitting on the porch of our old farm house on a summer day, she began reading a chapter book to me that changed the way I dream. Not the night kind of dreams that are random and weird, but those that dominate my mind in every quiet moment and eventually led me to put those dreams down on paper to entertain others. The book was FOLK OF THE FARAWAY TREE by Enid Blyton. Although I’d watched television and gone to the movies once or twice, I hadn’t understood just how far away from reality a person’s imagination could take them until I met Moon face, Dame Washalot, Mr. Watizisname, and Saucepan Man. Other worlds that appear at random at the top of a tree? And each of those worlds was full of…

My younger sister, Katy had dated a guy named Steve Walton when she was in college. I remembered him as a skinny beer-drinking kid. So you can imagine my surprise when I found out Steve was Lieutenant Steve Walton in charge Detroit Police Homicide Squads Three and Four, now a buttoned-up, experienced professional. I called him, reintroduced myself and asked if I could spend some time with homicide and observe how murders were investigated and solved. After getting clearance from the top brass I was in business. I was assigned to the afternoon shift: four till midnight. I would arrive and talk to detectives for a while and then read old case files. I would study the often grisly crime scene photos, the lifeless body of a man or woman, shot and laying in a pool of blood. I would read the investigator’s report. I would look at photos of the body taken by the medical examiner, close up detail of the entrance and exit wounds. I would study the ballistics information, lab tests done on shell casings and bullet fragments to determine what kind of weapon fired the fatal shot or shots. It was a fascinating glimpse into the…

I am writing this note to you before everything is set to happen. You know, just in case I don’t make it out of here alive. I really appreciate you taking the time to read my manuscript, and if I’m still around by the time you’re done… hey. I’d love to hear what you think. Sincerely, Zacchaeus Miller That’s me. I’m the protagonist in Dennis Nehamen‘s MISTAKEN ENEMY, the first in a series of Zach Miller Thrillers. Revealing that I did live to tell my story gives away little—there were lots of shocking, mysterious and terrifying moments along the journey that I’ll refrain from revealing. Most important, besides my survival, is that I grew as a person from the experiences I was forced to endure. Looking back at myself when I left for Israel, I’d have to say I was an early thirties young man needing to find a purpose. I wrote but was never inspired from the deeper well of my soul. Then I met Jivin, a mystic Mescalero Indian boy…and everything changed. It was toward the end of the adventure when we had a discussion I’d like to share. “So what you’re saying is our lives are beyond…

Thanks so much for having me here today, so I can shout about the fact that Free Falling’s getting a re-release with Riptide! I’m so excited about this, you have no idea. For me, this is the book that started the Hell or High Water series (see below for more on that). Free Falling originally came out in December of 2012—it was the first book I self-published, and I worked with Sarah Frantz as my editor (and she’s now my Riptide editor as well) and the entire experience was simply awesome. This would also be the second book Prophet inserted himself into (the first was Bound For Keeps). It was then I realized that the man needed his own series or else he would show up in every single book I wrote. But for FREE FALLING, it certainly cemented the bond between Blue and Prophet. I’ve brought Blue and Mick back in Long Time Gone (Hell or High Water 2) and yes, I’m totally planning a Free Falling sequel, which would happen sometime post DIRTY LOVE (Dirty Deeds 3). Because I can’t get enough of Blue, my favorite thief, and Mick, the man who’ll chase him every single time. The…

Entangled Publishing is so excited for their new release, MUSTANG SASSY as it deals with something we all dread and hate… break ups. On the one hand, it can be good to dump all that unwanted weight of a cheating boyfriend. But being the dumpee? *Shudders* That’s when things sometimes go bad. It got us to thinking. Everyone has a worst break up story, and so we are challenging you to share that story. The worse the better, hold no punches… Although it may be tough to beat Sass’s story, so good luck! Share your worst break up story in the comments below! Entries will get 10 extra points in the giveaway below for a kindle paperwhite. In the meantime, we’ve got a story of our own from Casey. She’s kicking things off with her worst break up story. It’s the story of how she broke up with her high school boyfriend… “My senior year of high school, I started dating my friend’s older brother. (Yeah, I was the cool high school student dating a college boy.) He was so sweet and attentive, never pressured me to do anything – basically, he was perfect and I was content. I wasn’t…

“No! It’s not time—you gotta go back!” I wanted to wrap my hands around the tender green, pointed tops of the crocuses and daffodils poking through last year’s mulch, intent on emerging despite the six inches of show that fell on them last week. They’re not the only ones impatient for flip-flop and jacket weather, for planting pansies in pots on our front door stoops, for dogs and kids to fill the streets with laughter after this unusually severe and relentless Midwest winter. A recent reader of my debut novel, HOW SWEET THE SOUND, commented on how she felt like one of the more prominent themes of the book is about emergence, and indeed, the characters in my novel have a lot to say about emerging: emerging from pain, emerging from the past, emerging from strongholds and insecurities and long untended soul wounds. For many, discarding woolen socks for flip-flops is the bravest sort of emergence manageable when we’ve been hurt and betrayed. Stretching toward the warmth of the spring sun feels more like yanking too hard on swollen, arthritic joints when grief causes us to hunker down in dark isolation for too long. In spite of all they go…

Let’s talk honestly about a major fiction turnoff: using a story as an excuse to preach, moralize or convince others of the author’s opinion. But we all have opinions, don’t we? (You know what they say about opinions, right? Something about we all have them just like that lower gastrointestinal sphincter and well…I just won’t go there). Our opinions are likely to ooze through what we write whether we want them to or not. So how do authors avoid being preachy? 1-Keep story as your first priority. Make the craft of telling a great story come way ahead of any message. 2-As the author, stay off stage. Let your characters interact and if you find yourself straying out of your point of view character’s head, make sure the opinion being expressed is your characters, not yours. If the author intrudes, it takes the reader out of the story. 3-Watch dialogue for clues that you might be “speechifying.” Any time a character has more than three sentences in a row is a yellow flag that should alert you during revisions to be sure the character isn’t getting preachy. 4-Articulate good arguments for the position opposite the one you hold. If you’re…

Several weeks back, my best friend sent me a picture of this fantastic bookstore sign: “It’s OK. You have our permission. These books are from our Young Adult Section. But it’s OK to read them even if you are no longer, by any stretch of the imagination, young. In fact, you’ll find they often have provocative themes and complex characters that are the equal of most of the books you’ll find on the ‘adult’ fiction shelves these days. So don’t sheepishly tell us it’s for your kids. We’ve read them, and you can too.” The sign-maker hit the nail on the head. In today’s fiction market, more and more adults are buying (and enjoying) Young Adult novels. According to Publishers Weekly, in 2013, “84% of YA books were purchased by consumers 18 or older” and a full 80% of these adults reported that they weren’t purchasing a gift, but “bought the book for themselves.” And yet there’s still that small percentage of readers asking, “Why in the heck would I ever want to read a book about teenagers?” Here are the answers I usually give: many popular movies are based on YA novels many bestsellers come from this genre YA…