My new book is released! I love this story so much. In this third book in The Dream Factory series, Cassie Mark, the teenager who shows up in Alice's costume shop in Book One, has an adventure to discover who she wants to be. Not everyone is cut out for living in a small town. I sure wasn't and neither was my co-author Shea. We both wanted to share a story about a young woman who had to leave the village of Gold Coast, Illinois for Rome, Italy. There is something liberating about being in a big city with a rich history. Visiting these places puts your issues in perspective and gives you endless inspiration. Writing this book gave us a chance to armchair travel to one of the most beautiful cities in the world. Also, you can buy signed copies of all three books over at my website. This is the perfect book for when you want to cuddle up with a warm beverage and a darn good read.   Buy Links: My Web Site Amazon Barnes and Noble Kobo Apple Books

A Dream of Words is available for pre-order!

  Hello, beautiful people. I stopped engaging so much here and on social media because, first, it's been a gothic novel of a year, and second, I wanted to spend my energy on actually writing books. This turned out to be an absolutely winning strategy.

 

As a result, I have THREE new projects up for pre-sale now. The one I want to talk about today is my latest collaboration with my incredible co-author, Shea MacLeod.

Please welcome our newest book baby, A Dream of Words!

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Everyone knows each other in Gold Coast, a friendly place where dreams bloom. Once a depressed flyspeck on the map, the village has grown in warmth and love.

Welcome back to the magical town in Southern Illinois, where everyone glows with hope.

Alas, life in a small town is not for everyone.

Cassie Mack hated living in Gold Coast. Everybody knew each other’s business, her toxic family tried to use her as a workhorse, and there was no way romance would ever come for her. She dreamed of making a world of words, sumptuous words that described food, love, and flavor.

When the luscious words of her secret blog catch the eye of a flailing bakery in Rome, she jumped at their offer to come help them revitalize their presence.

Cassie can run from her family and create herself into who she wants to be. But the wounds still linger. If she wants a chance at a future that suits her, she will have to grow and become the embodiment of her Dream of Words.


Preorder today for the October 3rd release. This will be the perfect book for autumn, full of amazing food descriptions and learning to adore oneself.  We hope it will inspire to dig into your dreams and create them even further.

Watch for the newsletters on the rest of my projects - a book and deck of affirmations based on the Cafe of Hopes and Dreams and another writing reference book.  It's going to be a wonderful end to 2022.

Buy Links:
My Web Site
Amazon
Barnes and Noble
Kobo
Apple Books

 

Have you met Bec McMaster?

 Let me introduce you to one of my favorite authors, the brilliant Bec McMaster. I met Bec at the Romance Writers of America conference in San Diego, then she graciously allowed me to hang with her at the Romance Writers of Australia conference in Melbourne in 2019. I'm nuts for her books...and I think you should be too.

Want to know a little bit about Bec? Here is my interview with her.

 

1.     Tell me a little about your writing - what are your favorite themes, what keeps you coming back to the page?

Hey Linda. I write epic fantasy romances with a dark and sexy twist, and I’m addicted to anti-heroes and villains-turned-heroes. I love trying to work out what makes such a hero tick, and anything with a marriage-of-convenience, enemies-to-lovers, villain-turned-hero trope is like catnip for me. Combined? Utter perfection. They’re the stories that pour out of me. 

2. Who are your writing influences? 

Ooh, interesting. I think a lot of my writing was influenced during my teen years when all I read was fantasy. I adored the strong female characters in Robin Hobb’s and Melanie Rawn’s books, but there was often something missing in the majority of fantasy that I read…. I binge read Katharine Kerr’s Deverry series for any glimpses of Rhodry and Jill, and I am still desperate to know about the ending of Melanie Rawn’s Ruins of Ambrai series for more Sarra/Collan moments. I cried buckets over the lack of HEA’s in fantasy (and basically rewrote the endings in my head). But it was probably me finding Anne Bishop’s Black Jewels series that really influenced me. 

Daemon Sadi, Lucivar Yaslana and Saetan Sa’Diablo? The sex appeal was off the charts, and combined with strong female characters like Surreal, I was in bliss. This. This was what I wanted more of. Unfortunately, paranormal romance and fantasy romance was still a ways off, so I had to start creating my own, but Anne Bishop was a massive formative influence. 

3. You just released Thief of Dreams (loved it!) in the Court of Dreams series.  What was the seed of inspiration for this amazing, creative series?

I’d been asked to write a novella for an anthology back in 2019, and I was watching The Bachelor, running ideas through my head, when some of the bachelorettes were playing games with each other. And I was thinking: Wouldn’t it be interesting if one of the bachelorettes was killing off the competition? I laughed under my breath, and then this fully fleshed idea dropped into my head. A fae prince. A bride summons. Competing fae princesses all desperate for his hand. Someone killing off her rivals. And my heroine, using the opportunity to sneak into his court to steal a powerful relic.
 
The cream on the cake? Zemira doesn’t WANT to capture Keir’s attention. So of course, he wants the one girl he can’t have. It was one of the most enjoyable stories I’ve ever written. 

4. What is the hardest part of creating? 

I read something just recently about how your brain always wants to go flirt with the shiny, new idea beckoning just out of distance, when no, you actually need to finish THIS book. Jennifer Probst likened writing a book to being in a marriage—it was a fun affair when it was a new idea, but now you actually have to put in the work, go through the nitty gritty, maybe work through the not-so-fun stuff…. And this really hit me, because I think all writers suffer a little bit from this. So for me, the hardest part is definitely forcing myself to focus on one WIP, and not go off cheating with one or three others. 

I tend to use it as a reward now. If I hit my daily word goal, then I can go delve into that shiny, new idea. 

5. What is the best advice you have ever received? 

This is life advice from my mum: If you hit a brick wall in your life, then you need to figure out a way to go through it, around it, over it, under it, but don’t let it stop you when you really want something. 

6. And what is the best compliment you have received? 

I had a woman email me to say that her mother was dying of stage four cancer, and while she was in the palliative ward, she read one of my books out loud to her mother. It was a way to escape what she was going through, a way to bond with her mother, to bring some moments of happiness (that HEA) into both their lives. That really hit me, because this is why I write fantasy romance. I want to provide an escape for my readers. I want to deliver that HEA at the end, so it puts a smile on their faces. 

4. Tell me some of your current projects- Your works in progress, ideas, or any crazy, off the wall things.

I’m currently working on book three of my Dark Court Rising series. It’s a fae twist on the Hades/Persephone myth, in which my heroine is bartered away by her mother to an enemy prince for three months as part of a peace treaty. Her mother wants her to kill him, but the more Vi sees of Thiago, the more she can’t help falling for him…. And of course, there is a lot more to the story that she doesn’t realize….

 

Where *can* you find my books?

 

Links? 

You bet!

Amazon

Barnes & Noble 

Kobo 

Apple Books 

Scribd 

Vivlio

 

The Cafe of Hopes and Dreams: The Dream Factory series, #2

I just released a BRAND NEW BOOK! 

Shea and I finished the sequel to The Dream Factory and it is now live on all ebook retailers. We are dancing all over the place and drinking champagne to celebrate. We love this book so much. 

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Katrina Kennedy McPherson used to have dreams. Her ambition was to become an attorney and prosecute deadbeat dads. But Life had other plans for her; like a withdrawn husband and a less-than-exciting accounting career.

Always practical, Katrina never questioned how her life turned out. That is, until the night she arrived in the small town of Gold Coast, Illinois, to drag her sister Alice back home.

Confronted by her own unhappiness, Katrina chooses to search for her joy instead. Problem is, her old life will come calling, determined to drag her back under, just as she tried to drag away her sister. Fortunately, she’s got her sister, a ghost, a town full of quirky characters, and an obsession with cake to help her untangle her true calling.

Escape into the magic of The Café of Hopes and Dreams in this heart-warming, feel-good story of a woman meant to change not just her life, but the lives of everyone around her.