2 Writing Must-Haves

By Kerri Carpenter In my new book, Come What Maybe, my heroine Lauren returns to her hometown of Seaside Cove, Maine, post-Covid, to check in on her sister and grandmother. Since Lauren is a successful social media strategist, she can work from anywhere. In fact, throughout the story, we find her working from her Grams’s… Read More

A SORTA FAIRYTALE by Lydia Drake

I’m by no means the first person to ask this question, but I think it’s a question worth asking over and over again: why do we as writers keep going back to the fairy tale well when we want to tell a story? (As it’s a fairy tale, you should probably imagine the well as… Read More

2 Strong Heroines

 By Connie Mann  I love reading stories with strong heroines. Especially when the author gives enough backstory to help me understand and sympathize with the circumstances that produced that tough outer shell. Nine times out of ten, these tough ladies are warm and loving underneath, and it takes an equally strong hero to convince them… Read More

7 Ho, ho, ho!

I started my holiday celebrating really early this year with a trip to Candy Cane Lane. No, not a real one. Nobody was into candy canes and Christmas in September. This was to a fictional Candy Cane Lane, the setting for the new movie, Christmas on Candy Cane Lane, due out on the Great American… Read More

2 When Characters Don’t Do What the Author Planned by Lyn Cote

What’s the author to do? To think? Well, usually I smile because that means that my characters have become REAL. Once a reader said to me, “You act like these characters are real.” And I said, “Within the pages of the book, they are!” If my characters do not behave like real people with minds… Read More

1 Tripwrecked

If you were to spontaneously uphaul your life, and go anywhere in the world––where would it be? That was the question I asked myself before embarking on Tripwrecked. To paint a vivid picture, this was at the start of lockdown in Ireland during the Pandemic. I was back at home, living with my parents that… Read More

10 When a hero comes along…do you swipe left or right?

I love classic romance heroes, and after writing No Rescue Required, the latest in my matchmaking series, Smart Cupid, I wondered which classic hero would make the best modern-day book boyfriend. Is a contemporary heroine more compatible with the broody guy whose passionate depths know no limits? Or the sexy, devoted guy with a big… Read More

28 Writing Fantasy Festivals and Celebrations

Thanks so much for having me back on the auspicious book birthday for Curse of Shadows (Amassia #2)! To mark the celebrations, I’m giving away a signed copy (plus signed bookplates) of the first two books in this YA Fantasy series including (Crown of Bones, book #1 and Curse of Shadows, book #2. If you… Read More

2 Miles and Miles of Adventure

by Jennifer Bonds It’s that time of year when so many of us will be hitting the road to visit loved ones, celebrate the holidays, and make memories with a warm hug and a bright smile! I don’t know about you, but I’ve always loved road trips. Give me all the snacks, the loud music,… Read More

1 It’s almost November. So of course, we are heading to northern Minnesota!

Yes—jackets are being packed, LOL.   But I can hardly wait to get up to Lake Superior’s North Shore this week.  There’s nothing quite like the beautiful hiking trails and glittering 10,000 (plus) lakes of summer, the outrageously gorgeous colors of autumn, or the pristine silence of the cross country ski trails of winter in northern… Read More

1 Why I Screamed!

Last month I wrote about my new kitties and the mixup at the animal shelter. If you missed it, you might want to read it here. But I also said that this month I would tell you what we had named the kitties. I named one Lovey because he’s my lapcat and my husband named… Read More

ROAD TRIPS WITH WEREWOLVES by Marlene Perez

Thanks so much for having me back to talk about my latest release A Sucker for You (Afterlife #3)! Who doesn’t love a road trip story? From famous literary road trips like Jack Kerouac’s On the Road to movies like the fan-favorite Vacation, road trips are an essential part of pop culture. Because of where… Read More