I’m Marlene Perez and I’m here to give you a little hint of my new book, I’M WITH THE BANNED, the second book in my teen vampire trilogy with Entangled Teen.  I love a good title challenge! I is for intense. Tansy and Vaughn have always been friends, but there’s some intense relationship stuff Tansy has to figure out when Vaughn disappears for a month. M is for Mariotti. Tansy’s Granny Mariotti is a librarian-witch you don’t want to mess with. She’ll find you the perfect book and put a spell on you. * W is for werewolves. Tansy and her friends have to figure out who is killing werewolves before a vampire-werewolf war breaks out. I is for intimidating. T is for Tansy. The main character in I’m with the Banned is Tansy, a high school senior and the newly crowned queen of the vampires. She’s got a lot on her plate: a new boyfriend, a new title, and a new enemy. Or maybe it’s an old enemy. H is for Hecate, Tansy’s new and unusual pet. Hecate smells like burned marshmallows and brimstone. * T is for Travis, the lead singer of The Drainers and the vampire everyone…

Instead of trying to find your perfect match in a dating app, we bring you the “Author-Reader Match” where we introduce you to authors as a reader you may fall in love with. It’s our great pleasure to present KD Casey! Writes: Steamy, poignant queer romance usually set in the world of sports. In my debut, UNWRITTEN RULES, professional baseball player Zach Glasser reunites with Eugenio Morales, his ex-teammate—who’s also his ex-boyfriend—for a second chance. About: Nice Jewish author from Washington, DC, seeks readers. Likes: spending time with family (often), sports (when it’s going well), and reading (constantly). Convinced her fourth-grade teacher to let the class watch A League Of Their Own because, quote, it was women’s history month. Reply if you also enjoy thunderstorms, cat-herding, improvisational cooking, baseball on the radio, and tea. What I’m looking for in my ideal reader match: My ideal reader: Is looking for high heat romance with a slow emotional burn Likes stories about family, including families of choice Enjoys flawed characters who (I hope!) you want to root for Loving sports is a plus but not required What to expect if we’re compatible: #OwnVoices Jewish characters of a variety of observance levels Second…

FROM CHAPTER EIGHT: Real or Surreal Nicolas grabbed a glass of sparkling wine off one of the servers’ trays, the movement bringing me back to the present. At over six feet tall, he towered over me, intimidating. His perfectly disheveled chestnut hair blew in the breeze, as if he’d just rolled out of the sack with the blond. His eyes bored into mine, dark blue with a devilish twinkle. His trimmed beard highlighted a chiseled jawline. By the way his chin lifted, he knew he was good-looking and he appreciated being looked at. But I didn’t like the way he was looking at me—like a meal he wanted to devour. He raised his glass and said, “I’m thoroughly enchanted to meet the world’s most beautiful cooking face.” Wrong thing to say. My spine went rigid. “Believe me, I can carry my own pots and pans. Merci beaucoup.” “But you look so sweet and delicate,” he said, eyeing me up and down. I don’t know if it was my imagination working in overdrive, but his eyes seemed to hold a certain lascivious quality. Whether it was rude or not, I turned on my heel to walk away. “It was lovely to…

I would be willing to bet that everything you think you know about queer history is wrong. Actually, I would be willing to bet that you were never taught queer history to begin with, especially not in school. So how is it possible that there is an entire, emerging and thriving sub-genre of Historical Romance about a part of History that never existed? Because love has always been love, no matter what a small handful of historians writing in the mid-20th-century might have wanted people to believe. What’s this? Historians are biased in the way they interpret and report History? They’ve swept a bunch of details under the carpet to advance a particular narrative that denigrates an entire demographic? No! Say it ain’t so! In fact, it’s true. The notion that, prior to the Stonewall Riots of 1969, all gay men were closeted, ashamed of themselves, isolated, and that they would be instantly put to death if they came out is a deliberate distortion, sold to the public by people with an agenda. The truth is that homosexuality in all its forms has been much more widely accepted throughout history than most of us were taught. Actual, academic historians like…

Instead of trying to find your perfect match in a dating app, we bring you the “Author-Reader Match” where we introduce you to authors you may fall in love with. It’s our great pleasure to present Tracy Broemmer! Writes Women’s Fiction and Contemporary Romance. My latest women’s fiction release is The Valentine Suite, which came out on August 20, 2021. My latest contemporary romance is the small-town romance in the Blue Collar Romance series called Hold Onto the Stars. About I live in Midwestern Illinois with my happily-ever-after husband of 28 years. We have two adult children, a rowdy miniature dachshund puppy, and two equally rowdy grand puppies. My husband and I enjoy travel, music, wine, and bourbon tasting. As a reader, I look for the covers that speak to me and then find the biggest of those books, and then read the blurb. I read a variety of genres, including romance, historical fiction, women’s fiction, and thrillers. I want characters that suck me in and make me live their lives right there with them. As a writer, I want to create those characters, the ones readers will fall in love with. What I’m looking for in an ideal reader match:…

Instead of trying to find your perfect match in a dating app, we bring you the “Author-Reader Match” where we introduce you to authors as a reader you may fall in love with. It’s our great pleasure to present Suleena Bibra! Writes: Hi! I write contemporary Rom-Coms with Indian-American characters who love banter and avoiding their feelings. My debut novel, TWO HOUSES, is about auctioneers from rival auction houses in New York City. Priya and Gavin have been in competition since preschool, because of their families’ businesses, and their feud has only intensified since they began working at their respective companies. The rivalry heats up even more when they go head-to-head to win the rights to sell a big collector’s art, wooing him at his week-long country house party in a historic Long Island mansion. Forced together, feelings arise that neither can deny. Now they both have to decide if they can work together for a relationship, or if their life-long competition will prove too big a barrier to overcome. About: I’m from Southern California, but currently live in Virginia (I am not handling weather, particularly humidity, well—I was very spoiled in California). I love travelling and learning about art…

In SLEIGH BELLS RING, Amber Evans is the maid of honor for her best friend Samantha Darling, and Kip Covington is the best man for Nathan Snow. Amber and Kip have been at odds for a year, trying to outdo each other in every aspect of wedding plans. Now that it is their job to plan the bachelor and bachelorette parties, they can’t agree on a theme. Kip oversteps his bounds and invites them all to a joined party at his couples’ ski resort in Vermont. The bride and groom and thrilled, so Amber has no choice but to go along with the plans. That got me thinking about bachelor and bachelorette parties. I’ve been married for thirty-two years, so I haven’t been to a bachelorette party or thought about one in quite some time. In doing research for this book, I was amazed at the themes that are out there now, from wild to flat-out crazy. Here are my top ten favorite ones: A Friends-Themed Bachelorette Party You can arrange your very own Central Perk inside your bachelorette pad with a Friends-themed bachelorette. You can send the coffee mugs home with guests as favors, after your Instagram shoot. You…

You know the scene. That one where the hero races through the airport to catch his sweetheart before she boards the plane and soars out of his life forever. It’s a moment in countless stories, both in print and in cinema, where we cheer for the couple and maybe even become a little misty-eyed. But really, what would you do if you were faced with the potential of losing the best thing in your life? Many great love stories feature an airport or airplane scene, often in those final moments of the story when all hope seems lost. That’s when one of the characters realizes the depth of their feelings and risks everything to declare their love. Here are my top five favorite airport/airplane scenes from movies and television: Love Actually: This movie is unique in that it starts and ends in Heathrow airport. As the movie opens, we see various couples and families happily hugging their loved ones at the arrival gate. At the end of the movie, we watch as a dad, played by Liam Neeson, rushes his son through the airport so that the young boy can express his feelings to a classmate who is moving away….

The Sheriff and the Cowgirl is the story of a romance that’s been a long time coming. What happens when a tenacious sheriff takes on a determined cowgirl and a champion bull? It’s never easy to make it in a man’s world, and cowgirl Tori Tremayne has chased the same dream most of her life—producing a champion bucking bull on the pro rodeo circuit. With her prize bull Maximus, she’s so close to winning top prize in the finals this year she can taste it. She can’t afford any distractions, especially not the tall, dark and swoony sheriff she’s admired forever. Sheriff Gray Dalton has been in love with Tori since they were kids. He doesn’t want to change Tori or derail her goals, but he does want to combine their dreams—build a life and family with her while she continues to pursue her career and passion. Gray knows he has to shake Tori up so he can step out of the friend zone she’s so determined to keep him in. Can Gray prove to Tori that with him she can have it all—career, love and a family? T – Tori Tremayne, a strong woman working in the man’s world…

I think it’s safe to say that a swoon-worthy hero, the ever-elusive book boyfriend, is what makes a good book great.  As a reader, I’m always chasing this man. To me, he’s like the unicorn of the contemporary romance world. They come in many forms. We have the nice guys, alpaholes, daddies, and Dominants, mob bosses, to name just a few. What’s swoon-worthy for one reader might not cut it for another. For example, I tend to prefer the nice guy to the alphahole, but nice guys and alphaholes can share many things in common. All the heroes in every single book I’ve written are different, but they each possess some of the same attributes that make me swoon. I’ve been reading romance way before I started writing, and it’s all about the hero for me. Yes, I love a strong, feisty heroine, but I read to find a book boyfriend, and now that I’m a writer, I can mold and shape my hero to meet my book boyfriend criteria. Here are the five things that make me fall in love with a fictional character, whether a nice guy or not. POSSESSIVENESS – A hero who knows what he wants…