Fresh FIction Box Not To Miss
Davis Bunn | Exclusive Interview: UNSCRIPTED
Author Guest / October 14, 2019

Welcome to Fresh Fiction! Please tell us a little about yourself and your latest novel, UNSCRIPTED. These past several years have been a time of transition for me.  After writing with Janette Oke for going on a decade, she retired.  I decided this was my last-best opportunity to do what I had always dreamed of ‘someday’ – writing for the screen as well as novels.  So I obtained a degree in screenwriting and got to work. UNSCRIPTED is the outcome of these first experiences within the film world. Both of the main characters are trying to prove something about themselves – Danny, that he wasn’t at fault for what landed him in jail and restart his career, and Megan, to show she can do things on her terms and still be successful. Talk a little bit about what their struggles tell readers about them as people.  There is a saying you often hear in the film world:  ‘Hollywood likes to bury their dead while they are still breathing.’  I think Clark Gable was the first to say this, but I’m not sure.  Anyway, what they mean by this is, many people are looking for an excuse to write you off.  To be…

Pam Webber | Exclusive Interview: MOON WATER + GIVEAWAY!
Author Guest / August 21, 2019

Welcome back to Fresh Fiction! Can you tell us a little bit about yourself, and your book, MOON WATER?  Hi! Many thanks to Fresh Fiction for the warm welcome. Career-wise, I’m a family nurse practitioner and a long-time nursing educator. In 2015, I switched from writing nursing research articles and texts to writing novels. Creating meaningful historical fiction is the more difficult yet most rewarding writing I’ve ever done. It is an art form that requires a significant amount of time and skill to develop, especially if you want to write literary fiction. While completing my first novel, The Wiregrass, I knew I had a good story, but needed help with designing the infrastructure supporting the story. Consequently, I began taking creative writing classes with a New York Times bestselling author. The classes were difficult but incredibly valuable.  Hopefully, what I learned is evident in Moon Water, a stand-alone sequel to The Wiregrass. Interestingly, the classes also made me a more astute reader of fiction as well. In Moon Water, the protagonist, sixteen-year-old Nettie, comes home to the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia and gets hit with sucker punches coming from all directions. Her boyfriend since grade school wants to…

Carrie Turansky | Who Were the British Home Children?
Author Guest / June 28, 2019

Many readers are familiar with the Orphan Trains that took impoverished children from large cities in the East to live with families in small towns and on farms in the Midwest. But did you know during that same time period more than 100,000 poor and orphaned British children were sent from England to Canada as British Home Children? This child emigration scheme was started by those who had good intentions and who hoped to clear the streets, children’s homes, and workhouses of orphaned and abandoned children in England’s overcrowded cities and towns. The children were promised a better life in Canada, but sadly that was not the case for all of them. Most of these children were not adopted and welcomed into families. Instead, the boys were taken in as indentured farm laborers and the girls worked as household servants called domestics, even at very young ages. Those who took them in simply filled out a form and paid a small fee. There was little screening and often no follow up. Because of this, and prevailing attitudes of the time, many of these children suffered neglect and mistreatment. Many slept in barns or other outbuildings and were not given adequate…

Lori Benton | Stalking Story Landscapes
Author Guest / June 7, 2019

Tucked into the interstices of the writing life, I’ve cultivated a creative hobby—landscape photography. This requires me to travel around the Pacific Northwest visiting rugged coastlines, mountain lakes reflecting snowy peaks, cascading waterfalls, and most recently the wildflowers blooming along the Columbia River that divides the states of Oregon and Washington. On this most recent venture I hunted for previously unexplored hillsides splashed with the vivid yellows and purples of Balsam Root and Lupine, as well as searching out new vistas in a few places I’ve visited before. No matter if the setting I’ve driven hours to see and shoot is new to me or a favorite spot, I’ll often prowl around and observe how the light, weather conditions, and my movement through the terrain changes the landscape, thus the potential composition of a photograph. When I find a composition that feels strong and balanced (two years of art college put to use!), I’ll stop and set up my tripod and camera. More than once I’ve found myself wishing that a novel, a chapter, or a scene could be a three-dimensional landscape I could physically move through with the same ease. Whether I’m engaged in photography or writing, the process…

Rachel Hauck | Exclusive Interview: THE MEMORY HOUSE
Author Guest / April 26, 2019

Here’s a chat between award-winning author Rachel Hauck and Fresh Fiction Editorial Manager Danielle Dresser! A dual timeline novel is always so interesting – how the two time periods both juxtapose and complement the other. How did you come up with the connection between these two different women? The connection is always the most difficult and most important part of a dual time novel. Since I can’t always have the connection be a grandmother or an aunt, or some other family member, I imagined two women being connected by a family friendship. The heroines also share a common experience of tragically losing people they love. New York City cop Beck Holiday is having a rough go of it – after a mistake at work she’s suspended and she’s not sure what to do next. Then she finds out she’s inherited a mysterious Victorian house in Florida. Why was it important for Beck to have the experience at this point in her life? Beck is lost and bitter. She can’t remember large portions of her childhood. She’s trying to make a career for herself, trying to be tough, but when her own actions return to her with a demand, she’s forced…