When I first read the description for your book REMEMBER ME GONE, I was immediately fascinated. It seemed very Stephen King or David Lynch-ish. What inspired you to write REMEMBER ME GONE? It’s funny that you mention Stephen King. Growing up, he was my mom’s favorite author and she often left his books lying around the house. When she wasn’t looking, I would sneak-read as many pages as I could cram in, or until I scared myself so badly I’d have to stop. So I guess you could say he’s had a big influence on my writing and even my desire to be a writer from a young age. He’s also the reason I still look behind me whenever I walk down a hotel hallway. But the inspiration for REMEMBER ME GONE came from an episode of True Blood, the HBO series based on The Sookie Stackhouse novels by Charlaine Harris. In the episode, someone hires a vampire to erase her husband’s memories in the hopes of curing his PTSD. I started wondering what it might be like to run a memory-taking business and, boom, the idea was born. Sans vampires.   Did you always plan on having Lucy, your…

Instead of trying to find your perfect match in a dating app, we bring you the “Author-Reader Match,” where we introduce you to authors as a reader you may fall in love with. It’s our great pleasure to present Laura Kennedy! Writes: Young Adult/New Adult and Chick Lit, my latest release from Melange Publishing being Suddenly Singapore, the third YA in my Coral Cove series. About:  Author reluctant to admit her age seeking adventurous teens and twenty-somethings who love adventure, romance and intrigue in faraway places.  Join irrepressible seventeen-year-old Floridian Brooke Bentley who is forced to navigate the beautiful but repressive city/state Singapore when her father is transferred to Malaysia for a year.  Enrolled in tony Marlborough Academy, Brooke is immediately forced to contend with the infamous Chameleons (aka Cammies), the snottiest, wealthiest girls in her Senior Class. Brooke finds friendship in Mu and Tai (Toy), which helps her survive.  Giving her additional will to live is her tentative romance with Raffie Desai, the hottest, yan dao guy at Marlborough. What I’m looking for in my ideal reader match: .  Readers who identify with someone like Brooke who tries to do the right thing but sometimes finds herself making less…

TO WHATEVER END is a contemporary love story with a small paranormal twist: What happens when you’ve found the one only for the future to show he dies in your arms? Quinn Easterly is cursed. With one touch, she can see the end to someone’s life. Everyday deaths, and ones that haunt her in her daydreams. Ones that have always proven impossible to prevent. She has finally learned to go about life as usual until she meets Griffin. With one touch, she sees a death she simply cannot ignore. Not this time. Not when, dying in her arms, he whispers three simple words that change everything. Even if Quinn can’t change the future, can’t save him, she at least has to try. Even if it means taking the bullet meant for him. T is for time: something that is quickly running out for Griffin and Quinn. O is for Ohio: the story is set in Dayton, Ohio. * W is for who: who’s behind Griffin’s fated death? H is for how: how will Quinn break her unbreakable family curse? A is for arrows: on a whimsical outing, Griffin has Quinn draw chalk arrows on the sidewalk, leading to… (You’ll have…

Welcome to Fresh Fiction, Leslie and congrats on your debut! Please tell us about yourself and your new book, FRACTURED TIDE. Thanks for having me! FRACTURED TIDE is the story of an ill-fated scuba charter that lands the protagonist–master diver Sia–on a mysterious, time-bending island. The situation is complicated by one of the other survivors, her seven-year-old brother, a kid who needs a lot of hand-holding. Then there’s the hot guy who’s marooned there with her. . . and his ex-girlfriend. Yeah, it gets complicated. When they find a flooded sinkhole in the middle of the island, Sia realizes she has to go down into the darkness to help them discover the secrets of the island and find a way home. When I started this story, I was inspired by my diving trips, but I also dug into my experiences as a volunteer teacher at the Atlanta Women’s prison. On my first day in the classroom, I was holding onto a lot of stereotypes about prisoners (they’re pretty much all wrong). TV and movies paint the incarcerated parent as either totally evil or completely innocent. I wanted to tell a more realistic story, so I gave Sia a positive but…

1. Travel! I spent two years between high school and college seeing the world. I helped bathe orphans in Mexico, saw the wall come down in Germany, rode a bike in snowy Denmark, slept in too many airports to count, sang on a stage in Poland, and so much more. Since then I’ve sailed to the Bahamas, climbed a lighthouse in Bermuda, hiked the Na Pali coast in Hawaii, canoed in Venezuela, zip lined a forest, crawled through caves in Ireland, and the list goes on… Travel! It’ll open your mind and soul to this incredible earth we live on. 2. Be open to change. When your heart and gut tell you to take a less comforting choice, consider listening. 9 times out of 10 your heart and gut are right. 3. Learn a language. Be it Spanish, French, Farsi, or whatever, dig in and learn it. Be willing to travel to a country that speaks your chosen language and do total immersion. Be willing to take more classes than are required for a high school diploma. Knowing another language is an irreplaceable skill. 4. It’s okay to break up with someone you’re dating. What’s it’s not okay to do…