Hi, Julie! Thanks for stopping by Fresh Fiction. Please tell us about yourself and your new book, THE LAST FLIGHT. Thanks for having me! THE LAST FLIGHT is the story of two women, both desperate to escape their lives. A chance encounter in an airport bar presents the two women with a crazy solution: switch plane tickets, then drop off the grid when they land. But one woman will never reach her destination. On the surface, both Claire and Eva have led inspired lives. Claire is a socialite and married into a powerful pollical family, but there are painful secrets she’s tired of hiding. Eva was raised in the foster system, and had a pretty good life going until she met the wrong guy. Even though their lives are different, they are quite similar in many aspects. . . How did you develop these two women while writing THE LAST FLIGHT? It took a lot of brainstorming, drafting, and revising to fully flesh these two women out. I wanted to make sure they were fundamentally different, and yet I wanted the core of them to be the same–two women, each fighting to get the life she wants. It took me about two years…

1–What’s the name of your latest release?  Stranger in the Lake 2–What is it about?  Stranger in the Lake is a story about Charlotte, a woman who’s left her trailer-park past behind to marry Paul, an older, wealthier man with a gorgeous house on an Appalachian lake in North Carolina. Their relationship is the focus of much small-town gossip, but Charlotte is able to ignore it until a woman’s body washes up under their dock—in the exact same spot where Paul’s first wife drowned. At first, the woman’s death seems like a horrific coincidence, but the stranger in the lake is no stranger. Charlotte saw Paul talking to her the day before, even though Paul tells the police he’s never met the woman. His lie exposes cracks in their fragile new marriage and dark secrets that have been simmering under the lake’s waters for years. 3–What word best describes your main character(s)?  Rags-to-riches 4–What makes your story relatable?  All my stories tend to focus on familial relationships. Parent-child, husband-wife, siblings. I love exploring the emotions that come along with these types of bonds, mostly because they’re so universally recognizable. Toss in the suspense angle—a lying spouse, a child gone missing,…

Jennifer: What inspired you to write The Wife Stalker? Liv (Lynne & Valerie): The ideas always start with a common trope that we try to turn on its head. When the idea for The Wife Stalker came to us, it presented a challenge in terms of how exactly we could transfer that idea to the page, and that became the propelling motivation as we wrote. What draws Piper Reynard to Westport, Connecticut? Piper wants to leave California and put as much distance as possible between her past and her new life. Moving almost 3,000 miles away, to the other side of the country, is the best way to do that. The draw of Westport is its cosmopolitan yet small-town atmosphere and the fact that it’s on the water. Piper is passionate about sailing, and so she wants to find a place on the coast. Because many of the residents aren’t natives of Westport, no one is particularly interested in anyone’s family history. It’s a place she can re-invent herself and become “Piper”. How does her life change when she meets the handsome Leo Drakos? Piper feels both excitement and a tiny (very tiny) bit of trepidation when she meets Leo….

1–What’s the name of your latest release?  The Silence 2–What is it about?  Isla returns home to Sydney after 10 years living in London, to support her dad who is under suspicion in the case of a missing neighbor. Her home country, and her family, are more troubled than she expected. Her loyalty to her dad starts to waver when family secrets come to light. And it seems her community has been holding on to an older secret that goes to the heart of Australia’s colonial past. 3–What word best describes your main character? At the start of The Silence I would describe Isla as lost. She is hiding from life, at the beginning of a process of recovery but scared of the uncomfortable truths she really needs to face up to. I’d probably also say she’s tough, but she doesn’t know that about herself until later on. 4–What makes your story relatable?  The Silence is about people trying to figure out who they are, coming to terms with the things they regret and taking responsibility for those things. Some characters are doing better than others at the taking responsibility part, but they are all faced with that challenge and…

Jen: What inspired you to write The Closer You Get? Mary: A friend told me about a single woman we knew who was having an affair with a married man. He left his wife and went to live with her, but the relationship didn’t last long and he went straight back to his wife. It made me wonder what would happen if both affair partners were married to other people and decided to be together; who would dare to take that first step towards their new life? How could you trust anyone enough to do that? If you were in that position and left your marriage and the other person didn’t leave, you would have burned all your bridges. So that became the start of the idea, that a married woman leaves home to be with a married man, but he doesn’t show up. What draws coworkers Ruby and Harry into having an extramarital affair? I think Ruby is a classic case of a woman who’s very unhappy at home and falls for the first person to show her some kindness and interest. On the other hand, Harry’s actually always been happy at home. His reasons for having an affair…

1) What’s the name of your latest release?  Losing You.   2) What is it about?  A teenage girl goes missing and her mother has one short and terrifying day to find her. 3) What word best describes your heroine?  Unstoppable. 4) What makes your hero irresistible?  There is no hero. The heroine has to save her daughter by herself. That’s what makes her irresistible: she is like a tigress. 5) Who are the people your main characters turn to when they need help?  Nina turns to the police but the police don’t believe her. One of the themes that repeats in our novels is that people have to save themselves… 6) What do you love about the setting of your book?  Sandling Island is inspired by an island near where we live in South East England. It’s swept by the wind off the north Sea, it’s linked to the mainland by a causeway that is covered by the tide once a day and it produces the best oysters in the world. 7) Are you a plotter (follow an outline) or a pantster (write by the seat of your pants)? Every book is a bit different. But this book is…