I have a great, personal love for the people of Afghanistan. Because I’m a GIA Colored Stones graduate, my hobby is creating beautiful gemstone necklaces, earrings and bracelets for my worldwide clientele. Every year I go to the Tucson Gem Show in Tucson, Arizona. It’s the world’s largest gem show! Nearly every country in the world flies in their lapidary items that are indigenous to their country to be sold to buyers like myself. There are thousands of buyers who flock to this stellar event. The Tucson Gem Show is so big that it’s not held in just one place. Rather, it is scattered all over Tucson at different venues, tents, motel/hotels. It’s the dim sum plate of the lapidary world. I love Lapis Lazuli, a dark blue stone that is indigenous to Afghanistan. Over the years, I have made friends with our dealers who come from that war torn country. These men are hospitable, kind and always offer to feed us when we come into their hotel room where they have their lapis on display. Afghans are some of the greatest ‘horse traders’ in the world, and I mean that as a compliment. This is a very poor country…

I’m delighted to be at Fresh Fiction today and I look forward to chatting with readers. People who’ve read my books won’t be surprised to hear me say that, for me, it’s all about the characters. My plots only exist to send my characters on challenging emotional journeys where they confront deep insecurities and fears. If they’re to win love, they have to find the courage to do some growing. We writers call that “character arc.” Jenna, the heroine of my February release (chosen by Publishers Weekly as one of the Top 10 Romances of Spring 2011!), is a woman I’ve known for a while. That’s because HIS, UNEXPECTEDLY is the third book in my sexy “planes, trains, automobiles, and a cruise ship” Wild Ride to Love series about the four Fallon sisters. I knew from the first book that Jenna, the third sister, is viewed by her family as a flaky eccentric, and that she sees herself as a free spirited butterfly who flits from place to place, job to job, and man to man as the mood strikes her. I knew that Jenna would need a very special kind of guy to make her consider commitment, and so…

Tell us a little bit about your newest novel, A LIGHT AT WINTER’S END. This is the third book set in Cedar Springs, following SUMMER OF TWO WISHES and ONE SEASON OF SUNSHINE. In this book, Hannah Drake has always done everything right: getting married, having a baby, caring for her mother in her final days, all the while performing impeccably in a high-level job. Her sister Holly Fisher is the college dropout, the one who works at a coffee shop and wants to be a songwriter. Then one day perfect Hannah suddenly—without explanation—leaves her baby with Holly and disappears. Holly takes little Mason to the empty family homestead, where she can stay while she figures out how to take care of a baby and what to do with this sudden change in her life. It is there she meets Wyatt Clark, a close-mouthed, handsome cowboy who is mysteriously good with babies. And then, just as Holly can no longer imagine her life without either Mason or Wyatt, Hannah returns for her son. Wyatt Clark was first introduced in SUMMER OF TWO WISHES, where his wife’s soldier husband literally came back from the dead, and she was forced to choose…

I don’t know about the rest of you but I am tired of reading stories about vampires, werewolves and fairies. I realize the paranormal craze has reached new heights since the release of Meyer’s TWILIGHT series but I have to ask, how much is too much? Don’t get me wrong, I have purchased and enjoyed several new paranormal reads (Twilight being amongst them) but lately it seems I can’t walk into a bookstore or library without seeing an elaborate table display for books about vampires. It reminds me of when the Sex and the City HBO series first aired and everyone fell in love with Carrie’s fabulous lifestyle. Before you knew it, new TV shows were popping up on every major network about a single white female who lives in a thriving metropolis. When she is not on the search for true love, she manages to squeeze in enough time to write an article for the trendy magazine she freelances for. I’m sure you can think of a few shows that easily fit this criteria. My point is, when ‘the power that be’ see a formula that works, they will beat it into the ground. Thus … the flood of…

Ask ten different scholars of rhetoric to define the word, and you’ll get ten different answers. Dictionary definitions usually say something along the lines of “the skill or study of using language as persuasion” (the one I give to my students gets even more specific: The art and skill of using language to communicate and/or persuade”). I suppose the key words in these definitions are “language” and “persuade”. Analyze any piece of writing—be it fiction or non-fiction, a bumper sticker or a political speech, a text message or a tweet, a lab report or a love letter—and you’ll find that each one is designed to move the reader in some way: to thought, to action, to response. The language may make an emotional appeal, a logical appeal, or an ethical appeal. What’s more, each one of these aforementioned texts tends to be in response to something else and is part of an ongoing conversation. Moreover, when we write, be it a novel or a blog post or a marketing analysis or a resume, we write with purpose and an audience in mind—even if we keep a private diary, we write “Dear Diary,” implying an intended reader, even if that reader…

I’ve lost count of how many romantic comedies I’ve seen over the years. Dozens, at least. Most of the classics and pretty much every major motion romantic comedy since like 1985. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m still firmly camp Action Movie. But what is it about romantic comedies that just draws me to the screen? Dissecting this love affair has made me see a few similarities in what I like to read. And write. So let’s explore. First up, heroes. Have you ever noticed the heroes in romantic comedies? Of course you have! You’re supposed to. They’re these perfectly imperfect men. Good looking. Often funny, boy next door kinds of men. Even the wealthy ones are fairly approachable and yet, flawed.  I’m thinking of Hugh Grant’s character in Two Weeks Notice. Poor man. Handsome. Wealthy. And he didn’t know what he had until she was gone. The heroines. The gal we’d all like to be. Or be friends with. An underdog. Perhaps not the prettiest girl in the room (yet.) Just an all around likable person.  Kate Winslet in The Holiday, anyone? Of course, she is the prettiest girl in the room but she’s so conflicted all while being…

That’s me.  Evil Overlord of my characters. It’s kind of just like that. Evil Overlord: Plans to interfere with his targets’ lives. Me: Plan to interfere with my characters’ lives. Evil Overlord: Is constantly thinking, “What can I do to cause trouble for these people?” Me: “What can I do next to cause trouble for these characters? Evil Overlord: “In fact, what can I do to tear them to shreds?” Me: In fact, what can I do to make things as difficult as possible? Evil Overlord: “HOW SHALL I KILL THEM?” Me: HOW SHALL I– No, no no.  Wait a minute.  Here’s where we part ways. For me, it’s How will they get out of it? What new depths of themselves will they plumb to climb out of this personal disaster I’ve created, possibly while also saving the world? (Possibly.) Because the thing is, as the author, I don’t usually have any idea how they’re going to get out of what I put them into.  I’m so focused on getting them to the point of ultimate internal and external disaster (because, you know, that’s just the way I am) that when I reach it, I often go… Me: Uh, durrrr……

I have love on the brain. Not sure why… Maybe it’s because my kids are still ruining their teeth on leftover Valentine’s Day candy. Maybe it’s because I just wrote a short scene depicting my protagonist’s first crush. Maybe it’s because I’m going through an Ingrid Michaelson stage–and especially adoring “The Hat,” a sweet and soulful song about first love. Anyway, all this talk about first love has me thinking about my own. My first love was the first boy who I found attractive on a million different levels. Of course I had found boys “cute” before, but my first love was funny, charming, intelligent, talented in so very many ways, and attractive on top of it all. I got to know him as a friend over the course of two and a half years, all the while loving him in secret and mourning every time he fell for another girl–and tripped over himself to race to my side so he could tell me all about it. Sigh. Anyway, when he finally woke up and realized that he just might love me, too, I had already found the strength to let go of him. It was too little, too late….

OUTCAST MINE is a departure for Jaime Craig in more ways than one. As you may or may not know, Jamie Craig is actually a pseudonym for the collaborative works between myself and Vivien Dean. Usually we write books a paragraph at a time. And by “usually” I mean “we always do that.” But when we started OUTCAST MINE, we wanted to try something new and challenge ourselves. We began by discussing the sort of book we wanted to write. I had just seen a movie Leonard Nimoy made in 1966 called “Deathwatch.” It’s based on a play and it’s very much an existentialistic nightmare. Nimoy’s character is a thief, and he’s in a cell with two other men. The other two men do have sex, and there’s a great deal of sexual tension between all three of them, as well as an impending sense of doom, and an ever-present claustrophobia. Leonard Nimoy is amazing and beautiful, and I was so inspired by this movie that I told Vivien we MUST write a prison story full of sexual tension, violence, and claustrophobia. Once that was decided, we gave each other a list of short prompts. Lines we liked from songs…

Why are do we get hooked on fiction? What in us supports the reading habit and the huge industry that feeds it? Escapism of course. Escapism has a bad rep. Undeservedly, in my (possibly self-serving) opinion. I think that far from being a sign of mental deterioration, it is a hallmark of adaptation. Animals, humans included, evolve in response to stress of one kind or another. Not going deep into Darwinism here, but survival of the fittest is the basic rule. Early on, this meant those who had the skills to get food, to run off competitors, to ward off threats and to abundantly procreate won the day. (Sound familiar? The romantic hero/heroine is a prototype for successful biological adaptation.) These days we have come up with group solutions to most of the stressors: we no longer have to chase down our food, we have laws to define our turf, police to deal with threats to life and limb, and procreation in vast numbers—no longer necessary to the survival of the species—is now frowned upon. Along the way, we’ve collected a host of other stressors: various health woes because we don’t have to chase down our food, annoying neighbors we…