On Being Unique
My debut fantasy novel HEARTS FORGED IN DRAGON FIRE is set in a world where magic is an accepted fact of life, some family heirlooms come with an enchantment attached, and dragons lurk in all corners of the globe. Developing the world was one of my favorite parts of the writing process, but as I dove… Read More
The Power of ‘What If?’
Not everyone can pinpoint an exact date, time, and comment that saved their life. I can. One cold, wet, February day in 2020, I drove myself to the ER with a sharp, hot, pain in my chest. A septal infarct survivor, I didn’t mess around with chest pain. The good news was that it wasn’t… Read More
Redeeming the Characters We Love to Hate
By Lisa Kessler The Captain’s Curse releases today! This book features the immortal pirate captain, Ian Flynn. It’s the final book in the Sentinels of Savannah series, and if you’ve read the series, you already know that Flynn has made some questionable choices throughout his 250 years on this earth. But here’s my confession…He’s captivated… Read More
DIGGING DEEP
PLAYING FOR KEEPS was a tough book for me to write. I’d always had the meet cute in mind – a security guard is called to investigate a woman who is disturbing the peace, by eating ice cream while wearing beaver slippers – but it took me a while to really get to excavate the… Read More
Writing vs Re-Writing
What I love about being a writer is that no matter how long you do it, you will always be learning. And I enjoy that I get to continually learn things that help me improve my craft or open me up to things I hadn’t considered before. One thing I recently learned about myself was… Read More
Cruising for a Setting
A setting can sometimes make or break a story, or an author trying to create a story. Settings can be a silent background member, adding ambiance and subtle support. Or settings can be larger than life, a character with their own agenda. In A Cruise Fling, my next romcom, the cruise ship setting is very… Read More
Sports Romance – a favorite of mine to write and read
Hello and good morning! Thanks for hanging out with me today. I love writing sports romance. To me there’s something touching about the sports player, male or female, who is used to getting pretty much anything and everything they want because of their ‘star’ status having to work for the one thing I feel all… Read More
What Do a Scientist and a Spy See in Each Other?
I had an author friend once tell me that your hero and heroine should be the absolute worst people in the world for each other. Anything less just wouldn’t be compelling enough to keep readers turning pages. My personal feeling is that’s a tad, well, overboard. But the basic idea definitely creates conflict. Which is… Read More
Writing What You Know When You Write Fantasy
The advice to “Write what you know” always seems to fall apart if you’re a fantasy writer like me. I don’t know how to do magic, and I’ve never been to the world in my book The Moonlight Blade, because so much of it came from my imagination. But nothing comes from nothing. There were… Read More
Alien Science Fiction Romance – Yes or No?
I’m often asked what attracts me to writing science fiction romance. To me, it’s the endless possibilities, the idea that other life forms besides humans exist in the universe. Aliens who may or may not look just like us, and how many of those new species might be compatible with us. Now entice those aliens… Read More
The Future of Dystopian Fiction in a Post-Dystopian World
A lot of things have changed since I was a kid. Personal computers and the internet are the first mega-changes to spring to mind, and, indeed, they changed everything. The world is now so interconnected that it no longer feels vast, interacting with people from other countries is commonplace and even blasé, and traveling to… Read More
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