1–What is the title of your latest release? THE BURNING PAGES 2–What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book? When bookseller Delaney Nichols is invited to a Burns Night dinner, little does she know that her and her coworker Hamlet’s lives are about to be turned upside down. The dinner leads to a real fire and a murder for which Hamlet becomes a suspect. Delaney will have to work hard to douse the flames of suspicion and help find the real killer. 3–How did you decide where your book was going to take place? Back when I started the series, I knew I wanted to write something that took place in Scotland. I wanted to go to Scotland (and I was lucky enough to go back then), and I wanted to “create” a bookshop. I didn’t know a thing about Edinburgh, but somehow, we booked our room right in Grassmarket. Once there, I knew I’d found the perfect spot for The Cracked Spine. 4–Would you hang out with your sleuth in real life? Absolutely! I kind of do. She’s in my head all the time. 5–What are three words that describe your sleuth? Curious, grateful, bookish. 6–What’s something you learned…

1–What is the title of your latest release? MURDER AT PRIMROSE COTTAGE 2–What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book? When Flora Steele sets off for a peaceful vacation, the last thing she expects to find is a body in her cottage garden, or to feel her safety threatened as she uncovers long-hidden secrets from the wartime past. 3–How did you decide where your book was going to take place? Flora owns a bookshop in a small Sussex village called Abbeymead in the south of England, and most of her adventures take place in that area. In this third book in the mystery series, though, she is on holiday in Cornwall, a county I know well. It’s a magical place, with magnificent landscape and a stunning coastline. 4–Would you hang out with your heroine in real life? I would! Flora is a feisty girl, courageous and hardworking, who confronts the barriers facing women in the 1950s with energy and humor. 5–What are three words that describe your hero? Lanky, laconic, caring. 6–What’s something you learned while writing this book? How involved Cornwall was in the Second World War, particularly in preparations for the D-Day invasion. 7–Do you edit as you draft or wait…

1–What is the title of your latest release? WITCH IN RETROGRADE released January 2022. 2–What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book? 49-year-old Police Detective and witch, Sarah Jane Prentice, navigates life without her husband as she faces a serial killer in her town, a nosy spirit guide, and the loss of her magic. 3–How did you decide where your book was going to take place? Originally, I had the book set in Atlanta, but quickly realized its been more than 25 years since I lived there, and cities change so much. Placing it in California, specifically Silicon Valley gave me a great opportunity to share what I’ve learned living here for the past 10 years. I’ve really grown to love the area and setting is a character unto itself, so I’m excited about presenting it that way. 4–Would you hang out with your heroine in real life? Absolutely. I like her a lot. Which is important to me as a writer because I intend to spend a lot of time with her in the future. 5–What are three words that describe your hero? Smart, determined, no nonsense and loving. I know, I know that’s four. LOL 6–What’s something you…

This summer, the 9th Bones book, GREEDY BONES, will be released by St. Martin’s Minotaur. I’m hard at work on the 10th book. People often ask me if I grow weary of the characters in Zinnia. After all, I’ve been in relationship with them for ten years or better, which is longer than many marriages. I never get tired of the Zinnia gang. They’re old friends to me. Trusted friends who share wisdom, laughter, shenanigans, and a zest for life that I often find in my real life friends and in the letters of many readers who’ve written to me. Sarah Booth, Jitty, Tinkie, Cece and Millie bring out the best in me, I think. One of the most interesting things is how much these characters have grown and changed over the books, exactly as real people do. Click to read the rest of Carolyn’s blog and to leave a comment. Visit FreshFiction.com to learn more about books and authors.

Thank you, Fresh Fiction for inviting me to blog today! I’m Dianne Emley, author of the L.A. Times bestselling Detective Nan Vining “thrillogy”: THE FIRST CUT, CUT TO THE QUICK, and, just out, THE DEEPEST CUT. These three are a thrillogy because they have an overarching storyline in which Nan Vining obsessively pursues the man who attacked her and left her for dead, the creep who Vining and her teenage daughter call T.B. Mann—The Bad Man. The Nan Vining series continues! I’m working on the fourth which will be out in 2010. I’ve learned a lot about the art and business of writing since the first book hit the shelves. I’ve become not just smarter, but wiser. I’ve developed a few rules that I strive to follow when I’m writing and editing a book and some that govern my behavior when the book is out. I’d like to share these with you. Herewith: Dianne Emley’s Ten Commandments of Fiction Writing1. I shall heed good editorial advice, shun bad advice, and learn how to tell the difference. Click to read the rest of Dianne’s Commandments! Visit FreshFiction.com to learn more about books and authors.

As a kid, I couldn’t wait to grow up and get away from home. I thought my brothers and sisters were annoying. I thought my parents were straight from the Stone Age. After high school, I went to college, got married, then I was off and running. I lived in Texas, Japan, South Dakota, Colorado, moved back to Japan, then back to Colorado. Finally, twenty-two years later, I moved home to Cheyenne, Wyo. which is full of my relatives. After all those years and all those places, you’d think I’d sit down and write a book about my travels. Somehow I became fascinated by the dynamics of the home folks; the ups, the downs—everything. So I wrote a book about an off-the-wall family in the small, fictional town of Moose Creek Wyoming. I focused particularly on sisters Lexie Lightfoot and Lucy Parnell. In my book, The Saucy Lucy Murders and its sequel, Paws-itively Guilty, Lexie has moved back home after a divorce. She finds that with age, she and Lucy have mellowed. Nevertheless, the sisters still manage to backslide into the roles of bossy, older sibling and younger, rebellious sibling. After several mysterious murders occur in town, Lexie decides the…

My fourth Annie Seymour mystery, SHOT GIRL, came out on Election Day. So far, reviews and comments from readers have been good. All are saying it’s the best in the series. It was the hardest one to write. I decided to do something different with SHOT GIRL. With each book, I embrace a different style. My first book was a traditional mystery, the second is what I call my Mafia book, and the third is much more fast paced and thriller like. In SHOT GIRL, Annie is an unreliable narrator. I had a friend express surprise that I would do this in the fourth — and last — book in the series. Wasn’t it a risk? she asked. Sure it was, but I wanted to see if I could do it, if I could pull it off. When I’d started writing the book, I’d just finished reading Scott Turow‘s PRESUMED INNOCENT, in which he masterfully portrayed an unreliable narrator. Could I do that with Annie? I thought. It was worth a shot. My goal was to have the reader ask throughout the book: Is Annie telling me the truth? What is she keeping secret? I know she’s not telling me…

What goes into writing a good mystery? While it’s critical to have a compelling plot filled with twists and turns, I’ve always believed that the book’s heroine – and the development of her “real life” – was at least as important. When I started writing the Reigning Cats & Dogs mystery series, I wanted the focus to be my protagonist, Jessica Popper. Jessie is a veterinarian with a mobile services unit, essentially a clinic on wheels. I chose to make her practice mobile instead of based in a regular office because she needed an excuse to go out into the community every day, talking to suspects and ferreting out clues. But since I love to incorporate humor in all my books, I wanted her to be sassy, independent, and strong-headed, as well as someone who was battling a few demons. The main one is her conflict over commitment, which provides the ups and downs she experiences with her boyfriend Nick. (I tried to model their relationship after the sparkling repartee in those wonderful old Katherine Hepburn-Spencer Tracy flicks – or one of my favorite movies of all times, It Happened One Night.) The Reigning Cats & Dogs series was already…

“She flowed into his arms and they stood silently for a moment: two middle-aged people, much encumbered by heavy winter outerwear and vintage emotional baggage, but, for the moment, in perfect harmony.” So, I get the invitation to blog on Fresh Fiction and I accept joyfully, especially since the kind folks here have named my recent release In a Dark Season “Pick of the Day” (5/25/08). I start checking out some past blogs and then I see the covers of featured books. Hmmm. Flowing hair, heaving bosoms, and more six-packs than a convenience store. Oh dear! This isn’t what I write – do they really want me? Mind you, I have nothing against tempestuous heroines and hunky heroes – I’ve drooled my way through a Judith Krantz title or two before this. But when I began to write in 2000 – at the age of fifty seven – I’d already spent about ten years, looking around for role models — older women who were aging in the way I hoped to. It seemed as if the media was crawling with gorgeous twenty-somethings and the occasional cute, feisty old lady and in real life there was a great middle ground of…

I’ve heard that a lot since the debut of my of the Finley Anderson Tanner series. I can’t attest to how much she and I are alike. Yes, Finley and I share the same sense of humor and I suppose her moral code mirrors my own. That’s pretty much where the similarities end. Well, excluding the fact that she’s blonde and short. That’s a function of practicality. Being blonde and short myself, I know how to dress Finley (fairly high heels are important) and the physicality of the character’s actions reflect the fact that unless she started dating Michael J. Fox, she’d never know what it felt like to dance with her head resting on a guy’s shoulder. In all other aspects, Finley and I couldn’t be less alike. She’s a shopper, something I personally loathe. I’d rather remove a kidney than go to a mall. The whole idea of window-shopping makes me want to stick pencils in my eyes. Finley’s also heavily in debt, another personal taboo of mine. But the biggest difference is that she’s an underachiever by choice. I’m so much of an overachiever that I probably could benefit from lengthy therapy. Crafting a character is never…