Here at Fresh Fiction, we love book chat, and we have a lot of reviewers with fierce opinions about the authors, characters, and books they love (and about the things that drive them crazy). This is the first in a series of reviewer profiles. Hopefully, these will give other readers ideas about what books to add to their TBR lists, as well as spark some conversations. What qualities make a book super satisfying for you – characters, dialogue, setting, mood? Does it depend on what genre the book is? Any examples? Debbie Wiley: World building and character development are the biggest factors for me in whether I thoroughly enjoy a book or not. My favorite genres are urban fantasy and cozy mysteries, and both of those elements are crucial to the genre. Most of my favorite urban fantasy characters tend to be heroic in nature, even when it goes against their own best interests. For instance, Harry Dresden – the protagonist in the Dresden Files series by Jim Butcher, makes numerous choices that put his own life at risk in order to save others- that’s my kind of urban fantasy hero! For cozy mysteries, I want main characters who are the kind of person I…

Fact meets fiction in The MAD GIRLS OF NEW YORK, my novel inspired by the true story of Nellie Bly, the famous stunt girl reporter of the Gilded Age.  As a young woman in 1887, she took off for New York City to make it as a journalist. The only assignment she could get was quite the stunt: feign insanity, get herself committed to an insane asylum and write about it. That was just the beginning of her legendary career. Nellie Bly is such a fascinating, daredevil, rebellious person—and character—it’s a challenge to limit to ten fun facts about her. It’s certainly a delight to write a novel about her. Nellie Bly is real person—but Nellie Bly wasn’t her real name. She was born Elizabeth Cochran (she later added an “e” at the end to be fancy) but her mother called her Pink, after all the frilly pink clothes she dressed her in. She adopted the pseudonym Nellie Bly when she started publishing for the local newspaper, The Pittsburgh Dispatch. The name came from a popular tune at the time. My favorite detail: a typesetter’s typo changed the spelling from Nelly to Nellie. Include the picture of Nellie   The…

They were alone. They were away from prying eyes and the cutting comments about her, which she’d had enough of for one evening, thank you very much. They were alone and there was no need to maintain any ruse. “Daisy, I don’t know what to say, other than that I’m sorry.” “It’s not your fault. You didn’t say any of those things.” He remained silent, a confession of sorts, and she understood. “You didn’t say any of those things within earshot,” she corrected. “Tonight.” “I am so sorry. It is unkind for anyone to say such things in any circumstances. And with you, it’s also just plain wrong. For one thing, if you are old then so am I.” Daisy couldn’t care less about being considered old, not when she was counting the minutes until she was officially On the Shelf and an Unredeemable Spinster. But she wasn’t so hurt or stuck up that she couldn’t recognize his offering of peace. Funny that, coming from him. But she wasn’t so hardened that she didn’t appreciate the overture. Even if she didn’t know what to do with it. In fact, it left her speechless. They stood there in the dim light,…

Writing any book—let alone a series—is always adventure. Even for a die-hard plotter like myself, there are twists, turns and surprises in every story. My Keeping Up With The Cavendishes series is no exception. Here’s a few things I learned while writing the four books in this series, including the newest (and final) one, IT’S HARD OUT HERE FOR A DUKE: Writing sibling banter is my favorite thing The Cavendish series is about an American family who unexpectedly inherits a dukedom in Regency England. As one does. The duke and his three sisters travel to London to…be ducal or something. As they attempt to navigate London high society, they lean on each other and tease each other, which made for some very fun scenes to write. Writing four novels that take place at the same time is…hard It’s true: the events of each of the four books in the series take place approximately at the same time as the others, so a reader might “attend” the same event in different books and experience it from multiple points of view. The hard part was making four different love stories intersect and connect…without spoiling it for any readers! That was the fun…