Everyone deserves a happy ending. We all have our own tragedies to survive, large and small, so we all need the reminder that hope and love are all around us. I believe this so deeply that I built two entirely separate—and surprisingly successful—writing careers so I could make that happen for all my characters and all my readers. Twelve years ago, in one of the darkest periods of my life, I desperately needed hope. My daughter was born very ill, and in her first few years of life, she faced so many crisis-level medical problems that I held her life in my hands more times than I want to remember. At some point, a nurse handed me a romance novel: KISS AND TELL by Cherry Adair. That novel—with its message of hope fulfilled and of happy endings emerging from the darkness and chaos—saved my life. It, and other romances like it, were my escape, my antidepressant, my hope during hopeless times. So when I started thinking that maybe I could write one of these books that had saved my life, my only goal was to help someone else the same way I’d been helped. If I could do that for…

I love October. The summer heat is mostly gone. I no longer have to be up by 6:00am to take the dogs for a walk. The new TV season has started. I’ve been back at work for about 6 weeks, so everything has settled into a routine. I work in academia so I get to take some time off in the summer, something for which I am very appreciative. I must say, though, the transition back can be a little rough. “Meetings? I have to go to meetings? Really?” fades to “So, when’s the next meeting?” by October. The resentment I feel over the fact that work seriously cuts into my reading time has also eased by now. In the summer I like to beat the heat by lying in bed and reading. By October, I’ve relearned how to prioritize my reading, since I’m lucky to get time to read over lunch or before going to sleep. I made a point to take a sneak peak at two of this month’s new releases. THE 2nd LIE is the second book in The Chapman Files by Tara Taylor Quinn. The lynch pin of the series is psychologist Kelly Chapman, whose cases…

Hey Everyone! Great to be invited back to the Fresh Fiction blog. I was always an avid reader – in school, for pleasure, the backs of cereal boxes if nothing else was available, I would read anything and everything I could get my hands on. This included a biography of Linda Lovelace that I was much to young to read – and thankfully, to comprehend – plus many historical romances that had quite a number of sex scenes. Oh, and the VC Andrews books, which I really think are a rite of passage. But I digress. Anyway, whenever I’d get to a point in a book where there was a word I couldn’t figure out in context, I’d ask my mother, what does this mean? Inevitably, she would say, look it up To read the rest of LOOK IT UP! and to comment for a chance to win please click here. Visit FreshFiction.com to learn more about books and authors.

Thanks to Fresh Fiction for the invite to blog! It’s great to be here. This month marks the publication of my fourth and fifth books – one under Stephanie Tyler called Beyond His Control and the other called Unleashing The Storm under Sydney Croft, the pen-name I co-write under with Larissa Ione. And I’ve learned a few things since getting the call. For one thing, every book is harder to write than the one before it. I recently had an aspiring writer – a solider working on his memoirs from Iraq – ask me if writing ever got any easier. My words of wisdom were – you get better but it never gets easier. Or, at least it shouldn’t. And by that, I mean, you have to try to grow with every book you write. I’ll admit that writing Unleashing The Storm with Larissa was the easiest book writing experience ever. Beyond His Control, my 3rd Harlequin Blaze, was the hardest book I’d ever written to that point. I say that because, having written 3 books and a novella since then, my current book is currently kicking my ass. I know I’ll look back and see that it was a…