Welcome to Fresh Fiction, Susie! Please introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your new book, STORIES THAT BIND US. Thanks for having me! Oh, where to start. I live in West Michigan with my husband and our three super cool kids (not to mention the cat, Flannery). I am so excited for readers to get their hands on Stories That Bind Us! It’s a novel about Betty Sweet and her nephew Hugo and how story brings them together.  Set in the 1960s in the Midwest, STORIES THAT BIND US offers a unique perspective about a changing society. What made you want to explore this time period in American history? What do you think will surprise readers about this setting and time? I’ve always been fascinated by the 1960s. I think, in part, it’s because that was the decade in which my parents came of age. They’ve always shared stories of what it was like for them and, as I researched for this book and All Manner of Things (set in 1967) it was really great to connect with them even more about their teen years.   I think it might surprise readers to know that in the 1960s…

Meet the Sisters in Jamie Beck’s If You Must Know Your newest series, Potomac Point, releases this week with If You Must Know. Please tell us about the sisters that are at the center of your novel.  Amanda is the middle child. She’s diligent, earnest, hard-working, and generous. She wants the people she loves to be happy and feel her love. Her weakness is a deep-seated insecurity—a sense that she is not interesting enough to be lovable. This leads her to overlook when she is being taken for granted because her need to be pleasing is omnipresent. Erin is the baby of the family and her late-father’s pet. She is outgoing, fun-loving, and views her average intelligence as a blessing (rather than lamenting that her siblings are smarter). She is willful and has her own way of moving through the world. The big weakness she has is her impulsiveness, whether with jobs or relationships. As she approaches her 30th birthday, she’s looking to mature and create a more stable life for herself. Arguably, Amanda has led a pretty charmed life – no real worries about money, no problems in her relationships, a big house, doting husband… Then her world comes crashing…

Welcome to Fresh Fiction, Jill! Please tell us about yourself and your new book, IT STARTED WITH A SECRET. Hello, hello, I’m Jill Mansell, this is my 32nd novel and I’ve now sold over 13 million copies of my books worldwide. This one will hopefully make readers laugh and cry and is set in Cornwall in the UK, so it’s a nice sunny seasidey read full of fun characters you’ll enjoy spending time with. Oh, and they all have secrets! You’ve been writing romantic comedies for a long time – what has changed the most since you started writing? The internet! Smartphones! My older books tend to have plots that revolve around not being able to find out details about people or to be able to make contact with them. Nowadays these problems can be solved in a split second, and it’s a complete nightmare for all authors of contemporary fiction. Plotting is far more tricky than it used to be. There’s such a thing as having access to too much information! One of my favorite things about your books is the huge cast of characters, each one with a distinct personality. How do you manage all of them? I…

Welcome to Fresh Fiction, Kennedy! We are so excited to have you here. Please tell us about yourself and your new book, QUEEN MOVE. Thank you for having me! I’m so glad to be here. I write contemporary romance that goes straight for your heart, sometimes with a sucker punch. LOL! My new book Queen Move is a reunion romance. The hero and heroine know each other literally from the time they’re babies. It’s a bit of a soul mate story. Their parents are best friends, and Kimba and Ezra are separated just as they’re entering high school. When they meet again years later, they’re both adults with very complicated lives. Negotiating their HEA is complex and kinda messy, but I hope, rewarding. QUEEN MOVE is loosely related to the All the King’s Men Duet. What do you love about this setting and world you’ve built? Yes! We first meet Kimba, Queen Move’s heroine, in The Kingmaker, book 1 of the All the King’s Men duet. Queen Move is written to completely stand on its own (Seriously! Not just saying that! LOL!), but Kimba’s best friend and business partner is Lennix, the heroine of the duet. I think of SCANDAL…

Welcome to Fresh Fiction, Eloisa! We’re thrilled to have you here. Can you tell us a bit about your Wildes of Lindow Castle series and where SAY YES TO THE DUKE fits in?  The Wildes of Lindow Castle series follows a huge family living on the edge of a bog, and Say Yes is the story of an adopted Wilde, Viola. Her half-siblings are gorgeous, vivid, and dramatic—but Viola is a shy wallflower. As she describes it, she has no more in common with His Grace’s offspring than a donkey to a dragon.  SAY YES TO THE DUKE is pure escapist fun: the wallflower attracts the attention of a duke, but she doesn’t want him because she thinks she’s in love with a vicar. They end up married, and then he has to work hard to change her mind! Family is an important factor in SAY YES TO THE DUKE, as well as the other books in this series, and I enjoyed catching up with the Wildes from previous books. What do you love about creating a tight-knit family like the Wildes?  It’s wonderful to be able to deepen and grow characters over several books. I became so fond of the duke and duchess, for example, that I have a prequel of their romance coming…

Hi Bethany – welcome to Fresh Fiction! Please tell us about yourself and your new book: Hadley Beckett’s Next Dish.  Hi! I’m excited to be here! A little bit about me. . . I’m the wife of a radio broadcaster who I met in an online chat room in the late 90s, the mom of two boys who really are the best teenagers on the planet–even if they can’t keep their rooms clean to save their lives–and I’m the most three of all threes on the Enneagram. As for Hadley Beckett’s Next Dish. . . it’s the story of two polar-opposite celebrity chefs, Hadley Beckett and Max Cavanagh, who are forced to work together months after an on-air altercation between the two of them that brought Max’s career crashing down and helped shoot Hadley to stardom. Hadley Beckett is a successful TV chef who goes out on a limb to participate in a cooking competition show. The culinary world is notoriously male-dominated, but Hadley can hold her own against the best of the best! What inspired the character of Hadley? What does her chosen profession as a chef add to her story arch? When I first began thinking about this story,…

Welcome back to Fresh Fiction, Amanda! Can you tell us a little bit about yourself, and catch our readers up to speed on what’s been going on so far in the Endeavor series? Thank you for inviting me! I’m a romance author living in Paris, France and an avid reader of novels with high stakes, steamy romance, engaging characters, and tons of emotion. That’s also what I love to write–and what you’ll find in Nightchaser and Starbreaker! The Endeavor series is a futuristic fantasy that introduces readers to Captain Tess Bailey and her crew of Robin Hood-like rebels who race across the galaxy stealing from the privileged to provide for those in need. They get into a sticky situation with a damaged ship and turn to Shade Ganavan for help, not realizing that he could be a danger to Tess–but also so much more. The risks, action, danger, and romance escalate in Starbreaker, the second book in the trilogy. To see how Tess, Shade, and the crew of rebel Nightchasers handle new threats and evolving relationships, you’ll have to try the books! STARBREAKER is the second book in your sci-fi romance series. What do you love most about the world…

by Fresh Fiction Reviewer Jessica Grogan Welcome to Fresh Fiction! Please tell us about yourself and your new book! Hi and thanks so much for having me on the Fresh Fiction blog! A little about me–I’m an Aussie author who’s happily married to her very own romantic hero. My hubby and I have recently become empty-nesters; our two daughters are currently studying at university, so I have lots of writing time. Yay! Aside from penning historical romance novels, I love to cook. And given the current situation around the world, I’ve been doing a lot of baking, particularly bread making. I find the whole process quite therapeutic and comforting. My new book, How to Catch an Errant Earl, is the second title in my Disreputable Debutantes series with Berkley Romance. It follows the fortunes of my practical bluestocking Scots heroine with a tarnished reputation, Miss Arabella Jardine, and unrepentant rakehell, Gabriel Holmes-Fitzgerald, the Earl of Langdale. At the beginning of the story, the reader discovers that Arabella has been forced to accompany her family on a Grand Tour of the Continent when she’d much rather be in London making plans to raise money for an orphanage. Gabriel is also abroad….

Welcome back to Fresh Fiction, Jane! Please tell us a little about yourself and the fourth book in The Way to the Lord’s Heart series, A DUKE TOO FAR. I’ve been writing Regencies for quite a while now. I love spending time in that world. The Way to A Lord’s Heart series is a sweeter saga than The Duke’s Sons, and A Duke Too Far focuses on the youngest couple in the group. The heroine hasn’t even made her bow to society as yet. Peter Rathbone, the impoverished Duke of Compton, has lost his beloved sister Delia and is at a loss as to what to do next. The crumbling family estate is in ruins, his finances are in disarray, and he didn’t have the usual upbringing expected of an aristocrat. How do these hardships and unique personality traits shape the man Peter has become?  I think they made him both more resourceful about practical matters (like carpentry) and more reticent in society. He knows he’s not the rich aristocrat people expect on hearing “duke.” When we meet Ada Grandison soon after the death of Delia, one of her closest friends, and she believes Delia may have left a clue…

Welcome to Fresh Fiction, Julia! Please tell us about yourself and a little bit about your latest book, FIRST COMES SCANDAL. Hi, Fresh Fiction! Thanks for the opportunity to introduce myself. I’ve been writing historical romance since 1995, primarily set in late 1700s/early 1800s Great Britain. First Comes Scandal is the final book in my Rokesby/Bridgerton prequel series, and it opens with Nicholas Rokesby being basically ordered by his father to marry his neighbor and girl-next-door Georgiana Bridgerton after her reputation is ruined by an overzealous suitor. This is the final book in your prequel series to the Bridgertons series. What have you loved about writing this expanded world? I first conceived of this series as a way to show some of our favorite characters (namely Edmund and Violet Bridgerton) when they were younger. But then due to the way the series was structured, they didn’t really show up in a meaningful way until this final book. It was incredibly fun to visit with them, and especially to show Anthony and Benedict Bridgerton as young boys. (And Colin as a baby!) But beyond that, the Rokesby books have enabled me to visit new locales. The Girl With the Make-Believe Husband…