1–What is the title of your latest release? FORGIVE ME 2–What is it about? Restorative justice and the very great challenges of forgiveness. 3–What do you love about the setting of your book?  I have a fictitious coastal town that I use for many books – I love being there as it feels like home. 4–How did your main character(s) surprise you?  Through anger, courage, and an extraordinary level of forgiveness. 5–Why will readers relate to your characters?  Anyone who’s ever felt fear, experienced crime, insecurity, or love will feel a bond with one or two or more of the characters. 6–What was one of your biggest challenges while writing this book (spoiler-free, of course!)?  The medical research. 7–Do you look forward to or do you dread the revision process?  Always dread it – but the book invariably improves for it.  8–What’s your favorite snack to have on hand while writing?  No snacks, just coffee early in the day and tea in the afternoon.  In the evening, a glass of wine and some olives as I review the day’s work. 9–Where would you go for an ideal writer’s retreat?  Anywhere that doesn’t involve research or writing – I view a retreat…

You’ve had it, just as I have–that delicious moment when you read something that shatters you.  “I didn’t know you could do that with words,” you think, your relationship with literature forever changed. There’s a great scene in The NeverEnding Story when the bookseller tells Bastian how certain stories aren’t safe, that they won’t simply release you on your own terms. Here are five pieces that still haven’t let me go, and that’ve shaped my life as a writer of crime fiction. Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? by Joyce Carol Oates I was in 9th grade when our English teacher assigned this out of our thumping short story anthology. Oates begins her tale in the most unassuming way: Connie–fifteen, and with all the drama that entails–decides to stay home while her parents and sister go to a most uncool family barbeque. Sometime into the afternoon, two men show up in a convertible and honk the horn. Connie goes out to see what they want, and the terror begins to unspool. This story was a revelation. The idea that the most hideous things could happen in the middle of a blue day, and right where you lived, cut…

Have you ever wondered who writes all of the reviews posted on Fresh Fiction? You’re in luck! Throughout December and January, we’re introducing you to some of our favorite people: OUR REVIEWERS! We may be biased, but we think they’re the best.  Your Name Courtney Blanton How long have you been a Fresh Fiction reviewer?  A few months What are your favorite genres to read and review? Memoirs, thrillers, true-crime What are your TOP 3-5 Books of 2020? The Night Swim by Megan Megan Goldin The Wife Who Knew Too Much by Michele Campbell Bright Side by Kim Holden This Is How I Lied by Heather Gudenkauf What do you like to do outside of reading? Listen to music, stream television shows/movies, and play my Switch Lite What are some of your holiday traditions?  Decorating the Christmas tree, opening a present a few days before Christmas, opening all the presents late Christmas Eve night, having big dinners with the family (this year, my birthday falls on Thanksgiving!). What are your reading resolutions/intentions/goals for 2021?  Read books from different genres more What do you love about being a Fresh Fiction Book Reviewer? I love being able to share my opinions on books on a…

Unless you’re a certified saint, you’ve done things that weren’t very nice. Maybe you pulled your sister’s hair as a kid or shoplifted a Mars bar or two. Cut people off in traffic? You might have done worse. But why do most of us keep our antisocial urges more or less under control, while others go on to rob, destroy, and even kill?  I’ve always been fascinated by what motivates nasty characters, both real and fictional. My latest novel, KILLER COIN, explores the dark impulse of greed. I’m not talking about an extra slice of cake but greed so greedy it kills. Worst of all, that sort of greed often involves the people we trust most – relatives, lovers, and spouses. I’ve rounded up five of my favorite true crime podcasts about greed:  1) Criminal – The Money Tree At just 26 minutes long it’s a quick listen and involves no deaths but is guaranteed to shock you. Who can you trust? No one, after hearing this podcast! Bonus: you might feel better about your family. 2) Dateline – The House on the Hill  If you thought things couldn’t get worse after listening to the previous podcast, you were wrong….

Jen: What was your inspiration behind Girls of Brackenhill? Kate: When I was a kid, we didn’t take big fancy vacations. Our only trip to Disney World lasted two days: we drove down in a rented car and stayed an hour away with my great grandparents in July. Instead of hotels and airplane trips, we went camping. Up and down the East Coast, to whatever state park was drivable. When I was about fourteen, we camped in the Catskills and drove through a town called Roscoe NY. My dad parked the car and led us up a steep incline to Dundas Castle. At the time, it was marked as private property, but it was abandoned and not monitored in any way. The doors were all unlocked and we spent (to my memory) hours there, exploring every square inch of this abandoned castle. Memory is a fickle thing but I do remember the basement being a series of very small rooms. I remember this day with more clarity and fondness than either of the two days I spent at Disney World. When I had to plan my next book, I really wanted to write a ghost-like story. The memory of the…

1–What’s the name of your latest release?  The Man in the Microwave Oven 2–What is it about? Theo Bogart is hiding out in San Francisco to escape the tabloid press after a family tragedy in her native England. For the past year she’s lived a secret life, concealing her identity from her new friends and neighbors.  Dangerous family secrets follow her and when the woman who threatens to expose her is murdered, Theo is plunged into the kind of danger she fled 5,000 miles to escape. 3–What word best describes your main character(s)?  Conflicted. 4–What makes your story relatable? Theo thinks she’s alone but finds good friends and even love where she least expects it. 5–Who are the people your main characters turn to when they need help?  Theo relies on her gruff and secretive grandfather and her best friend, Nat, who owns a neighborhood coffee shop. 6–What do you love about the setting of your book?  Are you kidding?  It’s San Francisco! I love everything about the city, lived there for years, and enjoy revisiting it through Theo’s adventures. 7–Are you a plotter (follow an outline) or a pantster (write by the seat of your pants)? Definitely a pantster–even…

Ethan was staring at the moon. He sat up, gasping and choking. He rolled off the padding and clawed at the raw planks of the floor. Then he heard the water. A soft summer breeze blew up tiny waves. They splashed like cymbals against the pilings that rose to either side of where he lay. He gripped the nearest strut and forced himself to his feet. The night was utterly dark. He was dressed in a pair of raggedy cutoffs and a T-shirt. On his feet were leather sandals curled and cracked by salt and hard days. He was completely alone. Ethan cried out, a choking sound wrenched from the terror and confusion that filled him. He knew where he was. What was more, he knew when. The summer before his final year at the university, when he and his best friend had wrangled jobs at the Holiday Marina. The long pier ran back to the shore, every plank in place, the pilings straight as arrows. The marina’s unmistakable form was silhouetted by yellow streetlights. Four A-frames housed the sailing classes, the repair shop, the store, and the stockrooms. An old canvas inflatable raft lay on the pier, with a…

The screaming started at three in the morning. Tabitha had never heard a human being howl in that way before. It was like the screeching of an animal caught in a trap and it was answered by shouts, distant, echoing. Tabitha couldn’t tell whether they were cries of comfort or anger or mockery. The screams subsided into sobs but even these were amplified by the metal, the doors, the stairs and floors. Tabitha felt they were echoing inside her head. She sensed a movement from the bunk above her. The other woman must be awake. “Someone’s in trouble.” There was silence. Tabitha wondered if the woman was ignoring her or really was asleep, but then a voice came out of the darkness. She was speaking slowly, as if she were talking to herself. Her voice was low and gravelly, a smoker’s morning voice. “Everyone’s in trouble,” she said. “That’s why they’re here. That’s why they’re crying, when they think about their children or what they did. Or what they did to their children. When there’s real trouble, you don’t hear any screams. You just hear the screws running along the corridors. When it’s really bad you hear a helicopter landing…

Jen: What inspired you to write In The Deep? Loreth: Thanks for hosting me, Jen. In The Deep was inspired by a visit to my brother who lives in a small oceanside town in New South Wales, Australia. He’s a big wave surfer, and a man of the sea in every way, so of course we went out deep sea fishing in his tiny boat. When we were ten miles off the coast, heaving about on the white-veined swells of the deep blue waters of the Tasman Sea, with the Australian coastline just a distant purple haze, I got to thinking: Anything could happen out here, and there would be no one to witness it, and what if someone did go overboard, and maybe not by mistake. Later, while eating dinner outside under a vermillion sky, and listening to the flying foxes squabble overhead and the lorikeets and ‘cockies’ fighting in the gum trees, my brother regaled us with tales of some of his adventures, like the time he got a treble hook stuck in his neck. And he told us how the flying foxes–giant bats–can swarm in groups along the highway as they migrate, and more . . ….

Mid-century American realist painter Edward Hopper is celebrated for Nighthawks, his 1947 work in which customers in an all-night diner are viewed through a plate glass window lit by a neon light, and his 1927 Automat, where a girl in a cloche and fur-trimmed coat gazes pensively into a coffee cup in a lonely cafeteria. Hopper returned to that enigmatic woman again and again. He painted her throughout his career. In AUTOMAT, Denver Art Museum Conservator of Paintings Lily Sparks pursues a killer who targets actresses who bring Hopper’s works to life. Lily’s perfect eye tells her the man in Hopper’s paintings also holds clues to the killer’s identity. And just as the famous artist kept painting the same iconic woman, the killer must keep killing her. Five top Hopper paintings convince Lily she’s on the right track. Hopper started out illustrating trade magazine covers. In 1906, on his first trip to Paris, he painted the watercolor Couple near Poplars. In the style of the day, a Gibson girl with upswept hair and a pinafore over her corseted waist stands with a beanstalk of a man with a pencil moustache and a beret. He’s trying to draw her closer, but…