I have come to realize perfection is overrated. If the world became filled with beautiful people who never did anything wrong, managed their daily lives efficiently without stress and still managed to get everything done, how boring would that be? Actually, I think I would hate every one of those people. The nerve of them being so perfect when the rest of us are scrambling. Maybe that’s why I like when people screw up. Well, not so much the screwing up, but the part that comes immediately after. That’s when the good stuff happens. It’s sort of like peeking behind the curtain into their character. Will that person become humbled? Will they feverishly try to correct their mistake?  Will they apologize? For me, the person’s reaction to the mistake makes them interesting. As a reader, I gravitate to flawed characters. I like to imagine what event in the character’s history made them that way. What emotional wound do they have that hasn’t been healed over the years? What makes them act the way they do or fear the things they fear? As a child, I slept with a blanket. One night my father told me I had to try sleeping…

If I dropped you in the middle of nowhere with nothing but fifty dollars, a beat-up muscle car, and an ugly stray dog, would you able to build yourself a new life? That’s what happens to former trophy wife Lacey Bradford in TALL, DARK AND COWBOY. Lacey’s been raised to riches, but her privileged life is whipped out from under her when she discovers her ex-husband is a con man. She’s left with few survival skills and fewer resources when she swears off his ill-gotten gains and hits the road. Hundreds of miles and one hunky cowboy later, she has to  rebuild her life in a world that’s as foreign to her as another planet. My romances are almost always fish-out-of-water stories, where a hero or heroine finds herself in an unfamiliar world and has to make the best of it. And since I started writing that kind of story, I can’t pass through a small town in the West without looking around and wondering what I’d do if I had to live there. Could I get a job at that little café? How tough would it be to tend bar at that tough-looking whiskey joint on the edge of…

Owen is the kind of a man any one of us would love to call our own. He is everything that is wonderful: warm and giving with a mischievous sense of fun and an almost child-like sweet tooth. Here is a man who takes delight in Lucky Charms and ice cream, who is a tiger in the sack, and whose number one priority is not to hurt Megan. Truly, I could eat him up with a spoon. ~From the Book Wenches Review Given the awesome reception NORTH OF NEED‘s hero, Owen Winters, is receiving, I thought I’d share what I think makes him so lovable and compelling. As a basic description, Owen is a long-exiled snow god who is the adopted son and destined successor of the Boreas, the Supreme God of the North Wind and Winter. And here’s why I and the heroine Megan love him, and hopefully YOU will, too: Godly Handsome. What else would you expect in a Greek god? LOL Let’s just say that cover does Owen all kinds of justice. Here’s Megan’s first impression: Even asleep, unconscious, whatever, the guy was ruggedly handsome. Mop of shiny black hair, strong brow, square jaw, fair skin, full…

Meet the hero, Devon Audley, Duke of March of my new release, ENGAGED IN SIN.  In this scene, Devon has just been woken from a nightmare by the heroine, Anne Beddington… “I mean what did you do to me that made me leap up and slam you onto the ground?” “I—I brushed your hair out of your eyes.” “Exactly.  It was an inconsequential touch, but it set me off like a flame reaching a keg of gunpowder.  I’m mad.  The war, the battles, the blindness, the killing and the grief—I wasn’t strong enough to let it all just glance off me.  I’m no war hero—all throughout the damned thing, I was filled with pain and fury and grief and doubts.  A hero is a man who is filled with confidence, who takes action and doesn’t waste time on remorse.  He doesn’t hide in the blasted dark.  He gets a damned grip on himself.  But I can’t.  I’ve gone out of my wits, and I’m going madder by the day.  I’m not getting better, I’m getting worse.  That’s why I have Treadwell to scare people away.” “You are drinking too much,” she said firmly.  “That is probably why you are getting…

My grandkids are getting to the age where we feel comfortable taking them on excursions without their parents. In August, hubby and I decided we would pick up the two boys (ages 6 and 3) on a Thursday night and have them sleep and take them to a water park nearby. The boys sleep together at home, so naturally, they wanted to do that here…with me. Have you ever slept with a 3 and a 6 year old in one bed? Legs and arms go flying, bodies somehow get upside down, and both boys are jammed as close to me as they can get. I get about 8 inches on the edge of the bed, and even then, I usually have squatters. That’s a whole other story, though. Anyway, the six-year old (Grayson) fell asleep watching some cartoon, but the three year-old (Caden) was not about to give up without a fight. After all, he’s at Nana’s house, and all rules go out the window. What happens at Nana’s …stays at Nana’s. After the cartoon ended, I shut off the TV and of course, he fussed. Cuddling him close, I told him the story of Goldilocks. When I was finished,…

Merry Christmas to everyone at Fresh Fiction! Okay, so Halloween is barely over and Thanksgiving is the next holiday but at the Brown house in Davis, Oklahoma it’s Christmas because my holiday cowboy book, DARN GOOD COWBOY CHRISTMAS is now on the bookshelves. The Spikes & Spurs series is surrounded by one big extended family down in Ringgold, Texas that takes in friends as well as family. This Christmas they’re all rooting for Raylen and Liz to get past all the speed bumps that life keeps throwing in their way and figure out what everyone else already knows. And that is that they belong together. Liz was raised in a traveling carnival that left the panhandle of Texas every March and didn’t return back until after Thanksgiving. She was home schooled by her mother and aunt in the carnival and traveling was her way of life. She had wings but she craved roots so every year she sat on Santa’s lap and asked for one thing—a house with no wheels. Then when she got older, she added one more item to her short list. She wanted a sexy cowboy of her very own. Her Uncle Haskell left her the house,…

It seemed like such a good idea at the time. I started with this concept of a historical romantic adventure trilogy, which would have taxed me enough. I mean, I’ve never written a series before. I’ve always thought I wasn’t organized enough. And mostly, I wasn’t. But I had tested my wings on my faery trilogy as Kathleen Korbel for Nocturne. I ended up having a great  time flinging characters around and intermixing story lines. I even realized that my muse was still working, because I would write something in the first book without knowing what it meant, and voila! In the third book it played out(I can’t tell you how comforting that was.) So, I thought. Easy peasy. I can do another trilogy. But then, as I was writing BARELY A LADY, all of these extra people started showing up. And most of them were manly spies. Okay, I thought. That’s fun. But focus on the trilogy. You have enough people you’re playing traffic cop for to get distracted. Nah. Right in the middle of NEVER A GENTLEMAN, the other men started to really separate themselves into different personalities; they each had a different task. They had backgrounds I…

It’s axiomatic that protagonists in romantic fiction are going to have to face their worst fears. They’ll be forced by fate (or the author) into the one corner they most desperately want to avoid, and they’ll have to do the one thing they never, ever wanted to do–only to emerge worthy of a happily ever after. When I started writing the Windham sibling books, playing the role of fate was great fun: The Earl of Westhaven started off as an orderly fellow who liked think his way through problems and take care of all in his ambit. He eschewed (other people would say avoid, but this guy is a ducal heir so he eschews) emotional situations, and regarded it as his lot to bear up manfully under His Grace’s queer starts and unreasonable expectations. Oh, what fun it is to write… by the end of THE HEIR, Westhaven was getting tipsy with his brothers, had shouted his father into a heart seizure, been confounded by problems he could not solve, and frustrated by the one woman who would not allow him to take care of her. He was also a man capable of loving and worth loving. His brothers fared…

Who doesn’t love a good scare around Halloween? But I think most of us prefer an episode of Ghost Hunters or monsters in a scary movie. The warriors in my Scottish paranormal series are well acquainted with monsters. Part of a secret society created by Michael the Archangel, these warriors are all that stand between humans and the demons who hide among them, sometimes disguised as neighbors and friends as they plot to destroy the world. There are many orders of demons, from Halflings, lesser and full demons, to Demons of Old, who are so powerful they can’t be destroyed or suspended in a time vault, unless it’s by a warrior who has been matched to the demon’s strength. And these warriors are strong. With above average senses and skills, they’re well equipped to fight. There’s Faelan, the most powerful of the warriors, the only warrior who’s ever been assigned two ancient demons. Born in the 19th century, Faelan was trapped in a time vault and slept for 150 years, waking to a strange world filled with modern technology and even stranger, modern day females. He came from a time when females were to be cherished and protected, not fight…

Hi everyone, This is Rayka Mennen, and I’m here to talk to you about my new book–ENCHANTED DESTINY from Entangled Publishing. I’m so excited about the great reviews this books is getting. As I make the rounds of blogs and websites, I’ve talked a lot about this book. But it occurred to me that I haven’t done it from the perspective of Jake and Kat – my primary characters. So I contacted Jake Taggert and asked if he would do a quick interview with me. Here’s how it went: RM: Jake, thanks for taking my call. Sounds like you’re pretty busy this week. JT: Sure. Yeah, got another contract with the city. RM: Hey, that’s great news. You’ve gotten quite a few from the City of Chicago recently. Do you think they feel guilty about your almost accident? JT: Could be. I mean I could have gotten killed because some moron didn’t know how to secure storm pipes in a truck. RM <shuddering>: I know, but hey, it all worked out. JT: And thanks for that, Rayka. It was worth it since I met Kat. RM: Anytime. So, I thought our readers might like hear about your journey getting together…