You can’t swing a dead cat without hitting someone reading a cozy mystery these days. What gives? Not all that long ago grandma’s and aging aunties were the only ones with their nose stuck in a cozy but not any more. I think the BBC’s new Sherlock Holmes had something to do with it. That Sherlock is young and sexy and Dr. Watson is to die for. Then again I have a crush on Sherlock so I give him credit for everything mystery. The cozy craze might be a backlash to the dark vampire blood-sucking reads. With titles like LAST WOOL AND TESTAMENT, BEEF STOLEN-OFF, DEAD AS A SCONE and DUE OR DIE, what’s not to like. No whack ‘em and hack ‘em stories with blood guts and gore everywhere but some fun. Remember that? When was the last time you laughed out loud over a book? And then there’s the cozy characters. The ones who solve the mystery are just like you and me. They’re tooting along and then something happens to a friend or family member and they’re sucked into the finding the killer…just like you and I would. Friends don’t leave friends hanging. In cozies the main…

I’m thrilled to be back at Fresh Fiction again, this time to celebrate the brand-new release of my contemporary romance, ONE NIGHT WITH A HERO, the sequel to HER FORBIDDEN HERO. ONE NIGHT is about two people damaged by childhood experiences who, deep down, believe they’re not worthy of love, and manage to find everything they never let themselves imagine they could have. Brady Scott is the hero, and he’s active duty Army Special Forces, recently sent stateside for a tour at Army Staff Pentagon. I absolutely love reading about military heroes, and now I’m really enjoying writing them, too. Today, I thought I’d share ten reasons I particularly love reading and writing military heroes: 10. They’re heroes. This seems sorta obvious, but here’s what I mean: the fact that they’ve sacrificed to devote their lives to defense of country paints them in a heroic light before you know anything else about them. As a reader and a writer, that usually earns them my respect and sympathy pretty quickly. 9. They know how to commit. Special Forces soldiers sign on for four-to-eight-year terms of service, and many of them become career military. These are guys who know how to stick,…

Hi everyone – I’m excited to be back on the Fresh Fiction Blog! 🙂 Since NIGHT WALKER, the first book in my Night Series, was published, I have received many emails from readers asking if the historical flashbacks in the novel were accurate.  I’m always happy to answer that they are. As a writer, it’s challenging and fun to blend true history into my paranormal worlds.  It makes the characters and the conflict feel more real, like they could actually have happened. My latest addition to the Night Series, NIGHT THIEF, is a prequel and it takes place in 1840 in Paris. Here’s the blurb: After the fall of the Mayan civilization, Kane, an immortal Night Walker, has taken refuge in France for over 800 years. The modern world holds little interest for him until the night he meets the Golden Thief and is robbed of much more than his pocket watch. Marguerite Rousseau is living a double life. By day she is the assistant to an eccentric French artist, Antoine Berjon, and by night she dons elegant evening gowns to woo French dignitaries before lifting their wallets. Sparks ignite when Kane captures the thief, but Marguerite harbors a dark…

Many readers love to follow linked stories. I’m partial to connected books that explore various members of a family. So when I planned my first series for Harlequin Desire, I invented a powerful dynasty with three very different brothers – then I threw in a “baby” kick-ass sister for good measure. Enter Cole, Dex, Wynn and Teagan Hunter. Cole bears the weight of being firstborn. Not only has his father become the target of an assassin, corporate decisions made by brothers Dex in Los Angeles and Wynn in New York have put strains on Hunter Enterprises, the family’s world-wide media-based company. Then there’s the huge make-or-break football contract he needs to seal, like, yesterday. To top it off, his Dad has it in his head that Hunter Broadcasting in Australia should produce a television program that is bound to bite the ratings dust as soon as it airs. Should be easy to convince his father to get out of the crosshairs and take a vacation, leaving Cole to get on with business, including cancelling that new producer’s contract. But nothing’s never easy, particularly when instant physical attraction is involved. When producer Taryn Quinn promises to give Cole everything he wants…

There’s a fine line between an alpha male and a complete, controlling jerk. With the alpha male, you pretty much want to jump his bones and with the jerk, you want to throw your book in his face. There is a difference between the two and nowadays you’d be hard pressed to find an adult book that didn’t feature an alpha male. Young adult is a bit different, but as one blogger coined, “baby alpha males” are started to make an appearance. So why are they so popular? An alpha male does tend to be controlling, but usually when it comes to keeping the heroine safe or when it involves the smexy stuff. They know what they like and aren’t afraid to be very descriptive about it. They tend to be dominant in the bedroom. In Tempting the Player, Chad Gamble is this kind of alpha male. He’s uber protective and likes to be in control when it gets down to the fun stuff, but that’s the extent of what he seeks to control. Otherwise, he’s playful. He’s not the brooding alpha male. He’s the ‘let’s have some fun’ alpha male. Alpha males tend to be territorial, which Chad shows…

I guess it’s not surprising that a vampire series would claw its way out of the grave. Lucky for me! This February, 2013, the new second book in the Kismet Knight, Vampire Psychologist series, BLOOD THERAPY will be released in the USA. The UK print and e-book versions came out September 13, 2012. I’ve heard a rumor that the USA Kindle edition might be out in time for Halloween! The first book THE VAMPIRE SHRINK and a novel that will now be the rewritten/expanded book #3, CRIMSON PSYCHE were first released in 2007 and 2008 by a small publisher. After those two books came out, that company and I parted ways. I flailed around for a year, trying to figure out how to remove the stake from the heart of my series, and then in early 2010 I self-published the e-book versions myself [I had retained the digital rights] at Amazon and other digital outlets. Within a month, my two books were best sellers. Nobody was more surprised than me! That situation caused me to come to the attention of my current agent, who arranged for my bloodsuckers to be published all over the world. So, thanks to a union…

I thought I’d blog today on a subject many writers think about and readers want to know about—What got me interested in writing? My interest in writing began when I was in high school. I had a superb English teacher who made poetry come alive. By reading it, I learned the poets expressed their feelings about any and all subjects, and I liked that. I was an only child from a traditional Italian Catholic family, and feelings weren’t communicated through words. Food maybe, but not words. So in high school I began expressing myself in poems. I submitted one to the high school literary magazine and it was published! That was my first taste of seeing my words in print. I also wrote for the school paper, but found I definitely liked writing essays much more than “who,” “what,” “where,” and “how” accounts. When I went to college, I began my first novel, loosely based on the Beatles (Paul as the hero was in my head). I took my first creative writing class and learned the technique of mastering the form of a short story. But, by far, my greatest adventure into writing started as a lark. My cousin and…

It’s fascinating how an idea can be transformed into a story.  I always enjoy learning what inspires an author’s work. For instance, Stephenie Meyer had a dream that inspired her to write TWILIGHT, and Margaret Mitchell modeled Pansie O’Hara (who later became Scarlett O’Hara) in GONE WITH THE WIND after herself, and her experience of falling in love with the wrong man. One of my favorite movies is Finding Neverland. In it, we see how Scottish dramatist J.M. Barrie, through imagination and his real experience of befriending three boys (and their evil Captain Hook like grandmother) came up with the idea for the stage play Peter Pan. “With a wee bit of imagination,” Barrie says, “anything is possible.” For a writer, truer words were never spoken! I am very excited about the release of my new novel, ESCAPE: Book One of the Unchained Trilogy. I came up with the idea for this story when I thought how sad it would have been if my husband and I had met 150 years earlier. We were living in North Carolina at the time, and being an interracial couple, we wouldn’t have been allowed to marry a century and a half earlier. The…

Bad breakups. Ugh. We’ve all suffered through them. Whether you’re the breaker-upper or the breaker-uppee, the end of a relationship can be painful, humiliating, and heartbreaking. Bad breakups can take many forms. Maybe we’ve lost interest in the person we’ve been seeing. We try to gently break it our boyfriend or girlfriend that we want to move on and the person responds with anger, spreading vicious rumors about us or disclosing embarrassing secrets once shared in confidence. Or maybe the person we’ve been seeing, the one who seemed so nice and sweet and committed, has been unfaithful, ripping out our heart and stomping on it. Or perhaps the breakup has been building for some time like the pressure in a volcano and ends in a screaming and swearing match, each person doing their best to rip the other to emotional shreds. Dating isn’t for wimps, huh? Back in high school, a guy I was dating showed up at my house with a hickey on his neck . . . a hickey some other girl had put there. Did he really think I wouldn’t notice a purple bruise the size of a silver dollar on his neck? Sheesh! I vowed then…

Lori Foster dropped by to talk about her new series Love Undercover and the first book: RUN THE RISK. The new series will feature heroes who are “undercover” to solve a mystery and on the way find true love. Tell us some background and how you came up with the idea for your new series Love Undercover. It’s pretty weird how the process works for me. I almost always see a scene first, and in this case, the scene was a hunky male neighbor putting the moves on a female neighbor because she had a secret that he needed to know. When I started writing, I was unsure what the secret might be, why the heroine was keeping the secret, and why the hero needed it. See, very weird! I’ve always been drawn to those stories where the male protagonist gets himself into deep trouble – under the best of intentions – and then has to find a way to regain the heroine’s trust. Good examples are LOVING EVANGELINE, by Linda Howard, or SCANDAL, by Amanda Quick. Most of the wonderful books by Kresley Cole, too. I love it when the characters are honorable, but are forced to do dishonorable…