I’ve been hearing a lot from readers about the secondary story in my latest contemporary romance, CRUSH ON YOU. Gil Marino and Clare Knowles are best friends and have been so since childhood. Unlikely friends, on the face of it, as he was the school jock and she was the geeky girl who was treasurer of the Science Fiction Society. But he attended every one of her birthday parties, starting when the invitations came with Barbie on front through her Sweet Sixteen when he was the shy girl’s support and escort. When she gets engaged and asks him to be the “Man of Honor,” what’s a buddy to do? Except Gil doesn’t feel like her buddy anymore. Some time in the last year his feelings for his BFF have changed–and he doesn’t know what to do about them. A friends-to-lovers romantic theme is one of my very favorites (and is the subject of two fun movies, “Made of Honor” and “Some Kind of Wonderful”). It’s delicious to watch the couple struggle with emotions that appear to come out of the blue. For his part, Gil can pinpoint the exact time when Everything Changed (on a road trip, three nights they…

Junior! Don’t chain your uncle in his coffin again! The Dark Forgotten series is about a lot of things: passion, adventure, mystery, and learning to live with a world that’s gone in an utterly unexpected direction. It’s also about families, whether we’re talking blood relatives, vampire clans, or a pile of hellhound puppies. At the centre of the stories is the Carver family. They’re witches who have served the people of Fairview for hundreds of years, but tragedy has scattered the current generation. One of the themes of the series is how the Carvers reunite and heal. Of course, every family member does this on their own unique terms, and you wouldn’t believe who some of them bring home to dinner. Kids these days! At the beginning of Ravenous, Holly Carver is the one left running the family ghostbusting agency. Her parents were killed in a car accident, and her sister, Ashe, has gone to live in Spain. Holly’s grandmother, though still full of spit and vinegar, is in a seniors’ residence. It’s up to Holly—and her scrumptious vampire partner, Alessandro Caravelli—to save the day when a portal to another dimension starts spewing demons, hellhounds, and other surprises into their…

Hi Fresh Fiction readers, this is my first time here… People ask me why I wrote dogs as central characters in both my romantic comedies for Berkley Sensation: my debut book LOVE IS A FOUR-LEGGED WORD and its follow-on title HOME IS WHERE THE BARK IS (to be released on July 6). I didn’t actually set out to be a “doggy” writer. But animals are such an important part of my life, I guess it was inevitable that they would also be important in the life of my fictional characters. Besides, writing dogs is such fun. And I get to have cute dogs on my covers! In LOVE IS A FOUR-LEGGED WORD, Brutus the millionaire mutt is a very greedy, naughty little dog who inherits a lot of money. He is as important a character as the hero and heroine, feisty chef Maddy and lawyer Tom O’Brien who are thrown together because of Brutus. In HOME IS WHERE THE BARK IS, the “cover” dogs Mack, a sad-eyed black mutt, and Bessie, a purse-sized Yorki-poo, play an important role in bringing together lovely dog nut Serena Oakley and hunky PI Nick Whalen. (Serena is Maddy’s best friend in the first book.)…

I’m so thrilled to be here today, talking about my first book as Tessa Adams, Dark Embers. The first novel in the Dragon’s Heat series, Dark Embers tells the story of Dylan MacLeod and Phoebe Quillum. He’s King of the Dragonstar clan, desperately searching for a way to save his people and she’s a human biochemist with a dark past who is frantically looking for funding for her own research into curing Lupus. To introduce you to DARK EMBERS, and the world I’ve created for these modern day dragons, I thought I’d interview Phoebe, so you can see this strange world through her eyes. 1. Phoebe, if you had to use three words to describe what its like being in love with a dragon, what words would you use? Fascinating, Dangerous, and Sexy—of course, those words could apply to Dylan himself, as well 😉 2. What’s the hardest thing about being part of Dylan’s world? At first, the hardest thing was simply accepting that shapeshifters exist. I’m a scientist and I’ve spent my whole life dealing only with facts, so when Dylan showed up at my lab, I had a hard time buying into what he was selling. Of course,…

What if…? Those two words are a writer’s best tool, and have been the impetus for many a great book. What if… the world was flat (and was carried through space on the backs of four elephants standing on the shell of a giant turtle)? What if… the South had won the Civil War? What if… Sherlock Holmes didn’t really die that day at Reichenbach Falls? What if… magic’s real and there are witches and wizards living among us, but we’re just too stupid to realize it? What if… I walked into this empty house and found a dead body? That last question was the ‘what if’ that started me on the journey of writing the first book in the Savannah Martin Southern Real Estate series. Savannah is a newly licensed Realtor in Nashville, and the idea for her story came about when I was a newly licensed Realtor in Nashville, walking into empty houses a lot. There was another ‘what if’ involved, too: What if this guy who called me out of the blue and asked me to meet him here, is really a dangerous murderer? What if I never walk out of here again? I put those two…

I just love having a new book on the shelves. Especially when it’s also the beginning of a brand new series. This series is a bit different for me. When I was young, I had a thing for stories that might have come straight out of the Arabian Nights. I watched all the Sinbad and Ali Baba movies and loved the adventure stories where a warrior hero rode in on a white horse to rescue the independent heroine from an evil sultan. But then, I also watched I Dream of Jennie on television and loved their blending of modern with the old fantasy. Wasn’t that series fun? I gave in to my old love of sheiks this year. My new series for Silhouette Romantic Suspense is called Desert Sons. HER SHEIK PROTECTOR(July 2010) is the first book in the series. It’s a little unconventional as far as sheik stories go. I think it’s more of an international romantic thriller. The series revolves around a modern family of Bedouins who find themselves embroiled in a bitter war of revenge with an ancient enemy. With an old-timey Hollywood noir feeling, HER SHEIK PROTECTOR is the story of an independent woman who ends…

Hello again to all the Fresh Fiction readers! It sure is a pleasure to be back here, and I’m looking forward to hearing from all the kind people that I remember! I put together a simple cheat-sheet for writers about eighteenth century clothing, and I thought it might not only be a good guide for writers researching the era, but also a bit of fun for readers who love history (although you may want to note the changes I made because of the fantasy aspect of my world). So without further ado, here’s how you might go about undressing my hero, General Dominic Raikes, from my upcoming release The Fire Lord’s Lover 1. Shoes: First, let’s get Dominic comfortable be removing his shoes or boots. Like the women, men wore heeled shoes similar to our modern day clogs where you slip your foot in, but mostly of black with large buckles. The toes started out square, and went round by 1740. Pumps had low heels. I prefer my hero to wear boots, however, and many a military man wore them to a ball. I prefer the half jackboots, which ended below the knee in a turned-down top, made of leather….

The fourth book in my Feral Warrior shape-shifter series, RAPTURE UNTAMED, hits shelves today! Meanwhile, book five is off to the copyeditor and book six is staring back at me like a wide blank screen. Actually…it’s not. Which is one of the best things about writing a connected series of books. If I were simply starting a new book, an unconnected book, the sky would be the limit. And I very well might be staring at a blank screen, trying to decide what to write about, who to write about, the time period, the place, the people. But I’m writing book six. I already know most of the characters, I know the setting, the place and time, the secondary characters, the over-arching conflict. All that has been set-up in previous books. The Feral Warriors series isn’t simply a collection of romances set in the same world. It’s one big story with a beginning, a middle, and (eventually) an end. As I start working on each new book, I first look at where the story ended in the previous book. I’m not writing a new story so much as a new chapter of an on-going story. A chapter with a new…

Women who accept nontraditional roles and succeed with dynamic outcomes are the heroines in my novels. These are Glock-totin‘ gals with southern charm who understand grits aren’t just for breakfast. These women embrace their femininity with an added boost–they aren’t afraid to go after the bad guys or say they love Jesus. This style of heroine understands her peace can be more about the caliber of the piece in her purse than the state of her spiritual life. What makes a contemporary woman choose a career that has the potential of ending her life? Experts often point to personality differences or a “risk-gene” as an explanation why some are risk takers and others are content in less stressful lifestyles. I prefer courageous heroines who’ve been wired with a few more endorphins to balance the adrenaline, and they thrive on it. If my heroine races down a dirt road on a Harley in the dead of night, or scales a cliff while someone is shooting at her, or stuffs a weapon into the waistband of her jeans, it’s to get the edge on the bad guys. My heroines are not satisfied unless they are placing their lives on the line to…