It’s safe to say that most if not all of my traditions revolve around my family and food. My earliest memories are of sitting in the kitchen at my grandmother’s house with my mom and her talking, laughing and eating. I like to linger at the kitchen table when I have friends and family over. There is something that just feels so right about it. I can still remember the sadness and sense of loss I felt the year my grandmother died. My mom and sisters and I helped pack up her house and we were drawn to the kitchen and her pots and pans and her cookbooks. We split the cookbooks up and I found that the cookbooks were a link to her. She’d written all sort of notes on recipes and left her own variations on pieces of paper in the books. Whenever I use one of her recipes I feel like she’s right there in the kitchen with us, giving us kisses and telling us how wonderful we are. One of those recipes is a traditional Italian Christmas cookie. They are called struffoli. They are little bits of fried dough coated in honey and sprinkles. Now my…

After publishing 43 adult contemporary romances in 10 years, the question I’ve been asked most often recently is ‘why have you ventured into the world of young adult fiction?’ One word: Twilight. I’m a voracious reader, so when the Twilight phenomenon hit a few years ago, I was curious. I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. I hadn’t read YA in years…yet there was something about those sparkly vamps that got me hooked all over again. For twelve months after the Twilight series, I rarely read anything other than YA. And for a reader who normally wouldn’t pick up a paranormal book, I couldn’t get enough! I devoured series by Richelle Mead, Melissa Marr, P.C. Cast, Cassandra Clare and more, and discovered fabulous authors like Jeri Smith-Ready and Amber Kizer. I became absolutely addicted to YA novels, to the point where I had to write my own! The first line for SCION OF THE SUN popped into my head when I was drifting off to sleep one day. “I always thought cults were for crazies. Until I joined one.” From there, I developed the Solar Snatcher series, which kicks off with 16 year-old Holly Burton entering C.U.L.T.,…

I’d like to thank Fresh Fiction for hosting me. Years ago, while vacationing with my family, an idea popped into my head that stayed on my mind for the remainder of the trip. I couldn’t wait to get home to write out my thoughts. The story was about a powerful family (One sister and five brothers) named The Tuckers. To the outside world they appeared perfect, but in reality they were all still hurting and devastated due to an incident that had destroyed their childhoods. I wrote the first book and had no intention of writing about them after that, but the characters continued speaking and before I realized it, I had a story for each family member. SENT FROM HEAVEN is a romantic suspense series that will consist of five books, each featuring a Tucker family member on the rocky road to finding love and healing from the past. With each story I hope you’ll laugh, cry and learn about healing and forgiveness as well as fall in love with this family. SENT FROM HEAVEN (book 1) Best-selling romance author Maya Smith’s life is far different from the characters she creates in her novels. Left to raise a baby…

DEAR READER COURSE OF ACTION was created by myself and Merline Lovelace for Harlequin Romantic Suspense. There will be three books, one coming out each year, 2013, 2014 and 2015, with connected stories (novellas). She is a sister military vet and been a long-time friend. I came up with a concept of us doing a novella each (35,000 words in length) on the black ops community. She was an Air Force Colonel and was the first woman to run an Air Force Base (and showed the boys how to do it). I was in the US Navy. I had a secret clearance and Merline a top secret clearance. Both of us dealt in the black ops of the secretive military side that civilians don’t get to see. We wanted to do a sort of show-and-tell on the different black ops communities because each is different in their own, unique way. For example, if it’s got to do with ocean, the the SEALs are called from the US Navy. There will be stories about an Air Force combat controller, US Navy SEAL, Ranger, Army Special Forces, Marine Force Recon and Delta Force. We chose to do six novellas, two stories about…

Believe it or not, Christmas is breathing down our necks and I have the good fortune to be writing a Christmas story right now. It’s always nice to be living the season you’re writing about. My current release, THE CHRISTMAS COOKIE COLLECTION, is an anthology of Christmas tales set in Twilight, Texas. In the spirit of getting ready for the holidays, I’m including one of my all time favorite cookie recipes. Growing up, these cookies were always in our holiday cookie jar. I’m not sure where my mom got the original recipe, but I make them every year. Thumbprint Cookies Ingredients: 1 ½ cups of all-purpose flour ¾ cup granulated sugar, plus ½ cup for rolling ½ cups unsweetened Dutch cocoa powder 1 teaspoon baking powder ½ teaspoon salt. ½ cup butter 2 large eggs, whisked ½ cup confectioners’ sugar 1 jar maraschino cherries Directions: Stir together ¾ cup of granulated sugar, cocoa powder, baking powder and salt in a medium bowl. Add melted butter and eggs and combine. Cover and refrigerator dough for 30 minutes. While dough is chilling, preheat oven to 325 degrees and line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper. Place confectioners’ sugar and the remaining ½…

Hi everyone – Happy Halloween everyone! This is my favorite time of year. All the movies and decorations feature some of my favorite creatures… Vampires and Werewolves! This Halloween has been extra exciting because I also have a new release in my werewolf series, HUNTER’S MOON! The Moon Series centers around a werewolf pack in Reno, Nevada whose fate is on a collision course with the Nero Corporation, a top secret government contractor with a fanatical desire to develop the world’s most deadly assassins. Each wolf in the pack will get his own book as we unravel the mystery behind the Nero Organization, and Hunter’s Moon focuses on the Alpha’s twin brother, Aren. Aren’s mate is also the woman who shot him with a taser before shattering his ankle with a single bullet while she was working for Nero. Sasha is on the run in Hunter’s Moon and Aren is struggling between his loyalty to the Pack and his animal instincts to protect the only woman he will ever love. Since Halloween is right around the corner, how about sharing what are your favorite Paranormal romance heroes… vampires, werewolves, zombies, wizards, you name it! I can’t wait to hear! Three…

Although October is typically quiet for me as I work on Dragon #7, November 5th will see the release of my latest Dragon Kin novella, “A Tale of Two Dragons” and the re-release of DRAGON ACTUALLY. Now just as a reminder, the DRAGON ACTUALLY PRINT re-release is an expanded edition with the PRINT version of “A Tale of Two Dragons” included. There is no other way to get the newest novella IN PRINT unless you buy theDRAGON ACTUALLY re-release with that story included (there’s a new cool cover so you can tell the difference in the store if old copies of DRAGON ACTUALLY are lying around). But, you may say, I already have the original release of DRAGON ACTUALLYand don’t want to buy it again. No problem! You can get the e-edition of “A Tale of Two Dragons” for your reading pleasure. Please please PLEASE keep in mind that the e-version of DRAGON ACTUALLYis not a re-release, will NOT be expanded, and will NOT have the newest novella included. That e-version is put out by another publisher. So please remember that when you go a-searching in November. To help, here’s some links to send you to the right place:   DRAGON ACTUALLY re-release from Amazon. DRAGON ACTUALLY re-release from Barnes…

Dear Reader, When the weather starts to turn colder here in the Northeast, I always reach for my knitting needles or my crochet hook. I learned to knit when I was in my early twenties. I didn’t actually want to learn, but a determined aunt ignored my protests, sat me down, and said “you’re going to knit and you’re going to like it.” Sure enough, she was right! Now, a decade later, my favorite part about knitting or crocheting is giving away what I make to the people I love. I always send some prayers and good energy in the direction of the recipient. Its feels so natural to do this–I believe that handmade gifts are, in and of themselves, wishes for blessings. It wasn’t a far leap from there to, “Wouldn’t it be cool if a person could knit magic spells?” And that’s how my novel THE WISHING THREAD was born. In the story, three estranged sisters in the historic village of Tarrytown, New York, must come together to save their family legacy: a yarn shop called The Stitchery that’s rumored to be magical. There, generations of Van Ripper women, going back to the Revolutionary War, have been knitting…

Deciding what to write is always a problem. A blank piece of paper has traditionally been a writer’s nightmare. And a blank computer screen with all of its polite little prompts is, if anything, even more intimidating. But what to write isn’t the only problem-what not to write is even a bigger issue. Even a short thriller – say, one that begins and ends in a week – requires that the writer think carefully about what to say and what to leave out. If each minute in a story covering one-week gets a ten-word sentence, you’d have a book of over 100,000 words and an undifferentiated pile of mush. Writers typically focus on a series of key scenes and leave everything in between to be filled in by the reader’s imagination. If they need more, they usually have the characters recount earlier events and then reflect on them a bit, as they try to tie those prior events into the story. The trick is to shoe-horn the earlier events – the back story – into the story at hand without slowing down the narrative. Sometimes that’s not so easy. The main story line of THE CIRCLE OF THIRTEEN is written…

That Wallflower Moment…when the hot guy doesn’t see you Why do the hot guys fall for the mean girls (like Lady Katherine Abernathy, whose acquaintance in the second stop on The Wallflower Moments Blog Tour?) Perhaps it’s because all too often they don’t even see the wallflowers. Lady Emma, heroine of THE WICKED WALLFLOWER, learns this lesson at the worst possible moment: when she’s finally waltzing with a handsome beaux and in the midst of falling in love with him when she’s accidentally interrupted by none other than the Duke of Ashbrooke, who is the most charming, scandalous, gorgeous rake the haute ton has ever seen. Check out today’s excerpt below, in which the hot guy doesn’t see my wallflower and and then join me on the rest of The Wallflower Moments Blog Tour! Excerpt: THE WICKED WALLFLOWER and the disastrous encounter with the duke Lady Emma’s perfect moment waltzing with Benedict Chase came to an abrupt end when a large, hulking masculine body stepped backwards and bumped into her. The force of their collision sent her sprawling to her knees on the parquet floor of the ballroom. Emma peered up at the horrible, inconsiderate brute and found herself looking…