Welcome to Fresh Fiction, Adriana! Please tell us about yourself and your latest novel, AMERICAN LOVE STORY. I am an Afro-Dominicana author writing contemporary romance. I like to say that I write romance full of people who look and sound like my people. American Love Story is the third installment in the Dreamers series and it’s a story about love, racial justice, activism, privilege and navigating a world that sometimes feels like it wants to pull us all apart. Patrice Denis is an ivy-league professor and a Black Lives Matter activist and Easton Archer is a prosecutor who is everything he wants in a lover, but represents some of the things that he’s actively fighting against. Patrice Denis is an interesting character – he works tirelessly both in his job as a professor and in his work as an activist, but this intense work ethic denies him a personal life. What does Patrice’s need for perfection in all aspects of his life, aside from personal relationships, show readers about his personality? With this series I wanted to render the immigrant experience, as I understand it. As a black man and an immigrant Patrice is a man that has a lot…

Hi! I’m so delighted to be here today with an exclusive excerpt from ARCTIC HEAT, my newest release in the Frozen Hearts series set in Alaska. As with the other two books in the series, this one stands alone well–there’s only the briefest of mentions of the prior books’ couples and no spoilers. This is my opposites-attract, odd couple roommates, snowbound romance as a seasoned ranger finds himself paired with a newbie volunteer for the winter season where they’ll be snowed in together at a remote Alaska state park. One thing I loved about writing this one was showing the progression of them from unwilling partners to reluctant roommates to something more. For this excerpt, I wanted to show you a look at the moment when the ranger, Quill, realizes that the winter partnership with Owen, for whom he already had a bit of an awkward encounter with the night before, is inevitable. **** Quill had no hope of this thing working well for anyone, but he’d already done what he could. No sense in upsetting Hattie, who was simply trying to do her job. He saved his ire, heading to the coffee table where Owen was still fussing with…

Have you ever opened a book and found yourself walking the streets of your favorite city? I have. I’ve been transported to real-life places like New York, Atlanta, and Miami, and found myself yearning for imaginary worlds like the dangerous island cliffs of Thisby. It’s my favorite part of writing and reading—watching a setting become alive. Books, where setting and atmosphere created a significant dynamic between characters, is what inspired me to become a more atmospheric writer. Thankfully, my co-writer, Jude Sierra, is well known for using personal backdrops to amplify her characters, especially in her critically acclaimed Idlewild and well-loved new release A Tiny Piece of Something Greater. A love for setting and mood was one of the core concepts Jude and I used for building Shadows You Left. Gray, storm soaked skies, Seattle’s height, and sea-side scents, and the forest spanning the outskirts of the city were all used as parallels to mimic emotions and conflict between our two leads, Erik and River. As challenging as it might be, creating a character out of your setting is an intimate and poignant way to inject personality into the fringes of your story. We used this technique as we navigated…