Danielle: Welcome to Fresh Fiction, Kerry! Congrats on the release of your debut novel, THE WEDDING RINGER! I’d love to know more about your publishing journey.   Kerry: Thanks so much, Danielle! THE WEDDING RINGER is actually the third novel I’ve written. I wrote my first manuscript in 2015, and it lives in a desk drawer that shall never see the light of day. In 2017, I wrote a women’s fiction manuscript and entered the mentorship program Pitch Wars, where I was selected as a mentee and spent a few months working with romance author Melissa West. After Pitch Wars, I queried that manuscript but didn’t land an agent. I did, however, learn a great deal about plotting, story structure, and pacing. In 2019, I wrote the manuscript that would become THE WEDDING RINGER and entered Pitch Wars again. This time, I was mentored by women’s fiction author Susan Bishop Crispell, who helped me expand on the book’s emotional depth by adding more of the protagonist Willa’s internal reactions and using characters’ physical actions to convey emotion.  After the Pitch Wars agent round, I found myself with multiple offers of agent representation. I’d dreamed for years of an agent requesting a…

I tell Eric I’m reorganizing the closet in the spare bedroom, which has the desired effect of getting rid of him. As soon as he’s gone to his “office,” the alcove downstairs where he keeps his computer, I start tearing through photo albums. I’m not looking for memories. I already have those. I recognize faces in the pictures, remember where and when most of them were taken. Prom, Senior Skip Day, the first years of college, before we stopped printing out snapshots. A few from our courthouse wedding. But those memories feel as though they belong to someone else. What I’m searching for is some emotional connection to the life I find myself living. But even with my entire history laid out in front of me, I’m unable to feel that it’s mine. I have the bed covered with memorabilia, photos and old birthday cards and handouts from college we kept for some reason, when Eric opens the door. I jump, my hands twitching with the compulsion to push everything into a single pile to hide what I’ve been doing. “I see you’ve made a lot of progress,” he says dryly. I laugh, the sound high-pitched and unnatural. “I got…

Hi all! My Name is Libby Hubscher and I’m excited to share a bit about my debut novel, MEET ME IN PARADISE, with you. The Cole sisters couldn’t be closer, or more different. After their mother died tragically when they were teenagers, they’ve only had each other. Sadie travels the world, while Marin waits at home, worrying and letting the world pass her by. Intent on showing Marin what she’s missing, Sadie tricks her into a solo vacation in paradise. What was supposed to be a sisters’ spa weekend turns into the trip of a lifetime when Marin is forced outside of her comfort zone, exploring the island of Saba with Lucas Tsai, a stranger who ended up in Sadie’s seat on the plane. Suddenly, Marin finds herself feeling more alive than ever, falling in love…and realizing that Sadie has been keeping a devastating secret from her—one that will change everything. M is for Meddling. It takes her zany, wonderful younger sister to hatch a scheme to get anxious homebody Marin Cole out of her comfort zone and onto an island in the middle of the Caribbean. E is for Enigmatic. Lucas Tsai isn’t who Marin expected to be sitting next to…

1–What’s the name of your latest release?  To Have and to Hoax. 2–What is it about? It’s a Regency rom-com about an estranged married couple who have barely spoken in years, who get immersed in a battle of wits & one-upsmanship as they attempt to get even (and, of course, fall back in love in the process). A fake case of consumption may or may not be involved. 3–What word best describes your heroine?  Stubborn. 4–What makes your hero irresistible?  He’s a really fundamentally good, considerate person who is so unable to trust that it damages his ability to have relationships with others – and watching my heroine slowly change this in him is, I think, pretty swoony. 5–Who are the people your main characters turn to when they need help?  They each have two best friends – Violet, my heroine, has Diana and Emily, and James, my hero, has Jeremy and Penvale. These friends are super meddling – and also really quick to call out Violet and James when they’re being ridiculous, which is key in any friendship. (Spoiler alert: they have to do a lot of calling out in To Have and to Hoax.) 6–What do you love…

Welcome to Fresh Fiction, Nghi! Please tell us about yourself and your debut novella, THE EMPRESS OF SALT AND FORTUNE. So I spent a good many years thinking I couldn’t write novels, and that I would always love writing short stories best. Then the Tor call came for novellas, and it suddenly struck me, hey, 20,000 to 40,000 words, I know what that looks like! I can do that!  With respectable parameters and a deadline, I wrote The Empress of Salt and Fortune in about a month. I feel like this says something about me, and I’m still not sure if it’s good or bad. The Empress of Salt and Fortune is a story about memory and love. There’s a lot of fear and fury in it, a lot of terrible things that happen to the people who least deserve them, and there is a victory at the end, but yeah, mostly it’s about the people we remember, how we love them while they’re here, and how we love them after they’re gone. It’s also got talking birds, fried morel mushrooms, war mammoths, and a ton of fortunetelling, as well! The Empress In-yo has gone through great lengths to keep…