Since the  Lamaze class  I  scheduled was in  Jersey,  my sister insisted I stay the night at her place. My phone buzzed with an incoming text just as Sapphire pulled into the parking lot of the hospital. Max: I’m in my apartment and ready to go! “Speak of the devil?” Sapphire asked as she parked the car “Yeah.”  I  got out of the car and could feel her eyes drilling into my back as I texted him. Me: Heading in now. Call you in a few minutes. Avoiding  Sapphire’s scrutiny,  I  walked purposefully toward the main entrance. Unsurprisingly,  my sister followed close behind me.  “Jade.” “What?” “You know how  I  feel about your work and having no life. I want you to be happy. You really can’t blame me for being your voice of reason.” “No,  I  can’t  blame  you  for  being  you.”  When she grinned,  I  leaned in and kissed her cheek. My sister had always been extremely protective of me and brutally honest with her opinions, and clearly she was #TeamMax. A  few minutes later,  Nurse  Gail addressed the class.  Introductions were made, and we were all given name tags to wear.  I  waited until our instructor said, …

Instead of trying to find your perfect match in a dating app, we bring you the “Author-ReaderMatch” where we introduce you to authors as a reader you may fall in love with. It’s our great pleasure to present USA Today bestselling author Christi Barth! Writes: I’ve written over thirty smart & sassy rom-coms. What do they all have in common? They’re heavy on friendships, bromance, banter, flirting and swoony, big romantic gestures. My Sexy Misadventures of Royals series kicked off with an average American woman who discovered she was a missing European princess. Kelsey didn’t want to be a princess and leave her life behind. Fitting in to a new country—and a new family—was only survivable by, well, falling for her bodyguard. Ruling The Princess is the next book in the series (stand-alone, I promise!). Princess Genevieve is blindsided when her royal purse strings are cut. Lord Theo is thrilled with the opportunity to get revenge on the royally spoiled princess. They only stop fighting when he kisses her… About: Ridiculously happily married author seeks a reader who enjoys snappy banter that’ll make you snort-laugh your wine, over-the-top romance that makes your heart flutter, and doesn’t mind staying up waaaaay past bedtime to finish binging a…

The world needs more female leaders, that’s for sure. But bringing a strong female leader to life in my latest book Echoes from the Veil wasn’t always easy for me. In this book my half-Fae main character Elizabeth Tanner has to learn how to trust herself and her abilities to lead a Fae rebellion. I didn’t want to write a cliché “kickass female heroine,” though. I wanted readers to see her development, her struggles, and her insecurities. I’ve recently finished Brené Brown’s book Dare to Lead and she says that one of the most defining factors of a good leader is being able to lean into vulnerability. It seems a bit counterintuitive in our hyper-competitive, “show no fear” kind of leadership culture, but for Brené Brown, true leadership comes from understanding one’s values, strengths, and weaknesses. It means coming to terms with fundamental truths about who we are, and in order to do that, we must make ourselves vulnerable. In Echoes from the Veil, I wanted readers to experience that journey with my heroine as she struggles to carry the heavy mantle of leader of a resistance movement in the Faerie realm. Because she doubts herself and her abilities, she…

My Dark Desires series takes place around a thousand years from now, in the year 3048, in a distant star system, and follows the adventures, romantic and otherwise, of the crew of the space cruiser, the Blood Hunter. It was my favorite series to write, so when my publisher asked if I would be interested in writing a Dark Desires Origins series, I jumped at the chance. The new series takes place five hundred years before the original Dark Desires books, when the fleet of ships carrying the last of humanity, first reach their new home. What most of the fleet don’t realize is that it’s not only humans who escaped the destruction of Earth. One of the ships carries a cargo of supernatural beings, captained by a thousand year old vampire. (Ricardo Sanchez, hero of Break Out, book 1 in my Dark Desires series.) Malfunction, book one in the new series tells the story of Katia, a werecat, and Logan, a human, as they fall in love while investigating a series of murders and trying to stay alive. Both series are a blend of science fiction and fantasy—which have been favorite genres of mine for many years. So I…

Hi Everyone, my name is Maddison Michaels and I’m thrilled to be doing a blog post for Fresh Fiction! First off, just to tell you a little about myself, I write historical romances that incorporate sexy history with a dash of mystery. My debut novel THE DEVILISH DUKE won the Romance Writers of Australia Romantic Book of the Year in 2019 for best historical romance! It is book one in my ‘Saints and Scoundrels’ series, and book two is THE ELUSIVE EARL, with my current up and coming new release THE SINFUL SCOT being the third book in the series (they are all stand-alone, though the characters do make appearances in the other books). One of the things I love about writing historical romances is researching the era and the setting that the book is set in. And I had such fun researching the Scottish Highlands which is where THE SINFUL SCOT is set in. I’ve never travelled there myself (though it’s on my bucket list) so I immersed myself online as much as possible to get a feel for the country-side. During my research, I spent some fun times looking at all of the castles in the regions, and…

Perfect people are boring. Also, kind of annoying. I’ll admit to occasionally pretending perfection but the ruse never lasts long. I don’t enjoy reading about perfect characters and I don’t really enjoy writing them either. Real people are flawed, sometimes hopelessly so. Characters in books need to have flaws too. Human foibles bring book characters to life. Visible “flaws” are limited by the eye of the beholder. I found The Emotional Wound Thesaurus (Angela Ackerman & Becca Puglisi) to be an invaluable resource for writing flawed characters. Emotional wounds and internal flaws are the salt & pepper of romance authors. Sprinkle that stuff liberally or risk a bland story. In my historical romance series, What Happens in the Ballroom, I purposely gave my characters a little more emotional baggage than they could successfully bear. And then I poked them with a sharp stick before writing their happily-ever-after. For book 2 of the series, ABOUT AN EARL, Oliver Chalford, the new Earl of Winchcombe, has scars he can hide and one he cannot. Unable to erase his physical scar, he struggles with the scars within that threaten to destroy his chance at happiness.  The son of an abusive alcoholic, Oliver wishes…

When I was pregnant with my daughter about fourteen (fourteen?!?) years ago, I read everything I could get my hands on about how to be the best parent and how to raise a loving, healthy child. One piece of advice I came across over and over again was this: if you read to your child every day–before they can read themselves before they can even tell you they’re enjoying the story before they’re even born–you will instill a love of reading in your child that will last a lifetime. Parents, I’m here to tell you, it’s all lies. As a toddler, sure, my daughter loved having me sit in her room reading story after story to her at bedtime. We’d snuggle as we made our way through three, four, ten books at a time. Winnie the Pooh, the Berenstain Bears, If You Give a Cat a Cupcake. I would use different voices and she’d laugh along, scolding me if I used the wrong voice or slipped out of character. Finally, I would tell her, “That’s enough for tonight. It’s time to go to sleep.” And I would tuck her in, kiss her goodnight, and tiptoe out of her room with…

Drake and Cami have met before as an Enforcer for dragon shifters, it’s his job to put out and hide evidence of fires caused by dragons. In this role, he saved her life but had to wipe her memory of it. What brings them back together is the very thing that will keep them apart. Drake is dying. . . *** “How are you feeling?” she asked. That sultry voice, no longer scratchy with smoke, filled the room, caressing his skin. Drake battled with his body. It would not do to shock her with a raging erection that was sure to be evident given the flimsy sheet covering him. At least he was still in his utility pants and shirt. She doesn’t remember you anyway, asshole. When he didn’t answer she narrowed her eyes. “My name is Camilla Carrillo,” she tried again. “Do you remember anything?” When he didn’t answer again, she lifted a single unimpressed eyebrow, and he couldn’t help a stirring of curiosity. Women tended to run from him, not hold their ground and regard him with a mixture of blasé pseudo-concern. “You yelled at two of the other women who tried to take care of you,” she…

1–What’s the name of your latest release?  The Viking’s Captive 2–What is it about?  A hot hunk-o-Viking gorgeousness steals a foreign princess for his jarl…only to fall in love with her himself. And when he finds out she betrayed him by failing to tell him that she’s not actually the princess. . . 3–What word best describes your heroine?  Brave 4–What makes your hero irresistible?  He’s a Viking, but a strong protector and–although he’d never have thought of himself in these terms–nothing less than the perfect gentleman where the heroine is concerned. He makes an unfortunate number of mistakes, building up to a pretty decent grovel when he has to come to terms with what he’s done to the woman he loves. 5–Who are the people your main characters turn to when they need help?  The heroine and hero alike turn to the hero’s aunt, for different reasons. The hero cares about his aunt’s opinion and burns with shame when he knows he’s done wrong in her eyes. The heroine needs protection and his aunt becomes her unexpected ally. 6–What do you love about the setting of your book?  Everything! I romanticized it heavily–it’s fiction–so I made the best possible…

One of the most frequently asked questions of authors is where do you get your ideas? I hate to be the one to break it to you, but. . . there’s no such thing as a magic idea tree. However, every once in a while, we can backpedal to the moment that inspiration sparked. So today I get to tell you exactly how I got the idea for my Unexpectedly Royal series. I’m a huge musical theatre fan. After all, I performed in shows for more than a decade, from Guys & Dolls to Phantom. So for my birthday a couple of years ago, we did a theatre trip to NYC. We saw The Play That Goes Wrong – hilarious! – and Anastasia. Originally we had tickets for Bandstand, but sadly it closed two weeks before we went. (Don’t worry, I get to see it in March!) I frantically had to scrape up replacement tickets and landed on Anastasia. No, I wasn’t a crazed fan of the original Disney movie. But I am a sucker for the Anastasia Romanov legend, as well as all things royalty-related. And Disney has proven that they know how to throw money at a Broadway…