Hello, my friends. It’s been a long time since I chatted with you here. Did you miss me? Laughing, probably not since we’ve had many many authors stop by and be our guest at Fresh Fiction, more interesting than what I usually rambled about. And so, here we are and I’m not quite sure what to say. Well, today is book club tea day in Texas. It’s a late one because the tea room holds it at 3:30pm to 5:00pm. That’s the strange thing about teas I’ve found over the years, the ‘proper’ time ranges from noon to 6pm. Each venue has their own idea of what is right. Most believe that a tea was a snack between luncheon and dinner so the ladies wouldn’t faint. I guess I’ve always thought of it as similar to feeding your kids when they came home from school before the family dinner. Give them a quick sandwich or snack and they won’t tear the kitchen apart rummaging for food. But whenever tea is held there is always someone who expresses that it’s too early, too late but never just right. Ah, well, life goes on. From experience I am certain the Chocolate Angel…

Fresh Fiction. I like this website’s name and theme. Everyone likes things fresh–fresh air, fresh fruit…and a fresh start. I’m author Linda Hubalek and many of my historical fiction books have characters longing for fresh starts for their families. I write about ancestors that moved to Kansas for a reason–to homestead land to start a new life for their families. For example Deborah and John Pieratt, featured in the first book of the Trail of Thread series) left Kentucky in 1854 when the Territory of Kansas was formed. They were part of the thousands of families that packed wagons and headed east for the promise of a new life. The thought of owning land must have seemed like the perfect fresh start for their six young children. THIMBLE OF SOIL, the second book in the series, features Margaret Ralston Kennedy. She was a widow who moved with eight of her thirteen children from Ohio to the Territory Kansas in 1855. (Margaret and two of her daughters are standing in front of their house in the photo with this post.) She was dedicated to the cause of the North, and helped with the Underground Railroad in both Ohio and Kansas. She…

“How do you say goodbye to a piece of your heart? If you’re a quilter, you have a time-honored way to express yourself. “A quilt is an object of peculiar intimacy. By virtue of the way it is created, every inch of the fabric is touched. Each scrap absorbs the quilter’s scent and the invisible oils of her skin, the smell of her household and, thanks to the constant pinning and stitching, her blood in the tiniest of quantities. And tears, though she might be loath to admit it….” That’s a quote from the beginning of THE GOODBYE QUILT, a story about letting go, leaving home, and obviously, quilting. I am not a quilter, but I’m a quilt-appreciator. The background of the author photo for this book is a family heirloom quilt, which is about a century old, yet just as sturdy now as when it was stitched. A really good quilter knows how to make things that last. When my own daughter was leaving home, I made her a scrapbook. However, The Goodbye Scrapbook doesn’t resonate in quite the same ways as THE GOODBYE QUILT. In the novel, the narrator, Linda, creates her quilt from the bits and pieces…

Susan Mallery has entertained millions of readers with her witty and emotional stories of women and the relationships that move them. In her latest novel, ALREADY HOME, Jenna Stevens, still reeling from a recent divorce, is unpleasantly surprised by the arrival of her birth parents, who seem to want her to feel a family bond immediately. She was perfectly happy with the loving, traditional parents who raised her. Can she learn to love a second mother without damaging her relationship with the woman who raised her? Join Susan’s Members Only area at www.susanmallery.com for exclusive sneak peeks, short stories, and more. Recently, a friend recommended a cookbook to me. She said the chocolate chip cookie recipe in her favorite cookbook was to die for. Thick, soft, chewy, chocolatey goodness. I’m a sucker for chocolate chip cookies, so I ordered the book. This is a cookbook for someone who loves cooking. The thing is, though – and I’m letting you in on a big secret here – I don’t love cooking. I understand my friend’s mistake. After all, the heroine of my latest book, ALREADY HOME, is a chef. During the course of the book, she reconnects with her creativity in…

In the pictures I have of my mother she looks like the Duchess of Windsor. My husband, who didn’t like her, would say, “Uh oh, here comes the Duchess,” when he heard her car in the driveway. Raised in an orphanage, how did my mother come by that royal presence? How could she have been so fragile, and yet accomplish so much in her young widowhood, raising my brother and me? How can she exist so powerfully after she is dead? She seems to have left tracks in my brain like indelible markers that are more than memory, leaking into my present. She died while I was downstairs in the hospital coffee shop drinking a milkshake and leafing through Newsweek. I found her on the floor after her last desperate moment of pride trying to get to the bathroom alone. She was crumpled at the foot of the bed, a terrifying stranger in a hospital gown. I screamed for the nurse who came running. It took the two of us to get her back in the bed where she lay, dignified once again, even in this unbelievable death. In life she didn’t look like anyone’s mother. She was too young-looking,…

Pia Giovanni is the heroine for my new book DRAGON BOUND, the first in the Elder Races series released May 3rd.  Pia is all too well aware that she is problematic.  She is half-human and half-Wyr, with a deep sense that she doesn’t fully belong anywhere, so she has to work twice as hard to pretend to fit in.  So she tends bar and listens to other people’s problems.  It pays the bills and it gives her the sense of community she needs. But let’s face it:  she’s just getting by, she isn’t really rooted anywhere, and bar tending only pays the bills because she doesn’t have that much of a life.  Then she makes a mistake.  She trusts the wrong guy, the relationship doesn’t last, and he blackmails her.  She thought she had problems before but then her life really goes to hell. That’s when she wakes up.  Call it whatever you like, boredom, depression, loneliness.  She realizes she’s been coasting on a lot of things and not really paying attention to what really matters.  The blackmail kicks her out of the rut she has fallen into, and the melting pot of the Elder Races world turns into her…

There are probably some people who wonder why I decided the world needed another vampire novel, let alone one about a bloodsucker who works for the president. But to me, changing the War on Terror to the War on Horror didn’t seem like that much of a leap. My vampire Nathaniel Cade even has his birth in U.S. history. I got the idea when reading a weird factoid about a sailor pardoned by President Andrew Johnson after being accused of killing two men and drinking their blood. I wondered: What would a man sitting in the Oval Office do with a vampire? Then it hit me. That was the wrong question. The right question is: What wouldn’t the president do with a vampire? Since 9/11, it seems that the United States has struggled with one nightmare after another. There’s a feeling that the ground isn’t stable under our feet; that it might crumble at any moment and the graves will open and all kinds of nasty, hungry things will spring out. You can see how we’re handling it in our hunger for stories of zombies and vampires and conspiracies. John Connolly‘s Charlie Parker is a detective constantly fighting ghosts and…

When a woman’s father dies on his way to the cabin he visited every month, she discovers a secret that threatens everything she’s always held to be true . . . Several years ago, I read an article about a man who’d kept a secret family for years without anyone’s knowledge.I was fascinated that someone could and would actually do this.That one small article lived in my subconscious for years, emerging occasionally as I considered how a person might achieve this, the effects on the primary family as well as the other family, the pain, the grief, the anger, the emotional, financial and psychological entanglements between the two, and the ultimate question; which was the real family? I became so engrossed with the emotion of the situation that I knew I had to create my own characters and my own story and so emerged A FAMILY AFFAIR. No matter how much you love them, families can be complicated and challenging – no doubt about it. As I wrote A FAMILY AFFAIR, I explored the dynamics of a less than ideal family and the more I wrote, the more I understood how people get trapped in situations or circumstances that force…

Romance novels are often accused of being formulaic.  Of being the same story, told often.  After all, how many different ways can you tell the story of a girl and a guy (or a guy and a guy, or a were-beast and a girl, depending on the genre you prefer) falling in love and working there way to a happily ever after?  My general response to that is, how many different ways are there to make a dress? The answer of course, is TONS.  From choice of fabrics, line, length, cut, style, and level of sophistication, there are a million different ways to make a dress.  And is a dress going to be the same old dress, sewn often?  No, of course not.  Any dress Michael Kors makes is going to be different from Christian Dior, from Jessica McKlintock, from the Gap. Similarly, there are millions of different ways to tell a love story, because a love story is unique to each individual couple.  That said, much like with clothing, there are certain patterns that romance writers follow, called tropes.  These tropes are not meant to make the stories the same – but they are recognizable – just as a…

Hi y’all! And how is everyone at Fresh Fiction today? In southern Oklahoma things are hopping right along. Spring has sprung. Summer is well into coming into its own and the flowers are blooming. And I have a new book on my bookcase! LOVE DRUNK COWBOY just hit the stands today and I’m so excited I could just dance a jig with a peg legged pirate, or maybe do some line dancin’ with a tall, dark sexy cowboy! Yes, indeedy, that does sound better. LOVE DRUNK COWBOY is the debut book in the new Spikes & Spurs series which has grown into four books already with the possibility of more on the horizon. Red’s Hot Cowboy will be out in September; Darn Good Cowboy Christmas in October and an untitled fourth book in the spring of 2012. What happens in Vegas is supposed to stay in Vegas. Right? That’s what Jasmine and Ace thought when they had a secret wedding but then it was broadcast on national television and the secret was out of the bag. We haven’t come up with a name for it yet but believe me, my fabulous editor Deb Werksman will find a perfect fit for…