With special guests Eileen Dreyer, Brenda Stanley, and Kari Lee Townsend VIDEO EDITION (Text edition below. Book & Author links in are there.) TEXT EDITION Get some coffee or tea, and a lovely snack and settle in for a chat with the ladies. Authors Brenda Stanley, Kari Lee Townsend, and Eileen Dreyer stopped by to offer their input on the topic of the day, magic and ritual ways we approach our writing. Storytellers are magical people, I think. We make marks upon pages that ca

Book Signings! Here I was in 1996, a chubby-faced baby author who looked bored, but was NOT, with the late Garda Parker on my left, and the late Carolyn Andrews on my right. We were doing a Valentine's Day book signing together, I don't remember where. I really miss these two ladies, great writers both of them, colleagues and friends. VIDEO EDITION ( Scroll down for the text edition.) TEXT EDITION Ahh, book signings! I'm doing my first book signing in quite a long time this

Insider secrets of WINGS IN THE NIGHT VIDEO VERSION OF THIS POST TEXT VERSION BELOW First the backstory *When I was a little girl my parents would go to these auctions and come home with huge boxes of comic books. I always took out all the horror comics and let my little siblings have the rest. Okay, sometimes, I got into Archie and even Sabrina, but mostly, I was about the horror. This might've been a clue. *For my entire childhood, as far as I recall, every Sunday afternoon

Video Edition of this post above this line. Text Edition below. How it started: "Okay, I'll write one western romance." How it's going: "I just started my 25th western romance." Here's how that began, how it spawned, and how it's still going! These are the 9 books of the original Texas Brand series Each book in each series is a complete romance with a satisfying conclusion. Each book features a different couple. While the books within each series are best read in order, the s

WATCH THE VIDEO VERSION OF THIS POST ABOVE ⬆️ READ THE TEXT VERSION BELOW ⬇️ Picture it, a hamlet called Beaver Meadow in the town of Otselic NY, population about 1000. That's the whole town, not the hamlet. There I was, a young mother with five little girls each one a little smaller than the one before. I was a young, stay-at-home mom with a dream. I wanted to be a writer. I thought I was pretty good. I'd found a local group of writers, the Central New York Romance Writers w

This is stuff I'm not supposed to discuss with my readers. I'm discussing it with you anyway. I don't want to just tell you where to find my books, I want to tell you why, because it impacts you directly as a reader. This is stuff you need to know, I think. I've been making my living writing fiction since 1993, and that's a very rare and fortunate thing. I'm deeply appreciative of this. But there are all sorts of pitfalls one doesn't see from the outside, and I thought you mi

VIDEO POST ABOVE Text Post Below *All the links mentioned in the video are included the text version, plus a sidebar about my favorite deck if you're interested. TRIGGER WARNING: This post mentions on childhood sexual abuse. This is not a political post. When I say "my nation" I am not meaning its government, but its heart, its people, all of us. That said, I hope you enjoy going a little woo-woo with me. (I figure you must, or you wouldn't be here.) 2026 Predictions Based on

Watch the video version of this post right here, or read it below the video. Holly Loves Christmas When she was a kid, Holly's family died at Christmastime and she went to live with her aunt. Her mom had been the most Christmassy Christmasser ever, always going over the top, alwys making the holidays magical and special. Holly keeps Christmas the same way, to honor her mom's memory. She's loves Christmas like her mother before her, and she makes the most of it every year. Mat

NURSES When someone I loved almost died, nurses took them from my arms into their own. They scrambled and they were flat out pros. They knew exactly what to do do and how to do it, and they saved that precious life. When I was a fifteen-year-old, pregnant child in labor, told I’d have to have a C-section, I was terrified. But there were were nurses who took care of me. There was one nurse, an older woman, who would give me a back rub with Jergens Lotion every night. She'd tap

A chapter-a-day for 10 days! Your Halloween Treat from Maggie Shayne Sara had never felt anything like what she was feeling with every...

A chapter-a-day for 10 days! Your Halloween Treat from Maggie Shayne Sara wasn’t surprised that David knew which trailer lot belonged to...

A chapter-a-day for 10 days! Your Halloween Treat from Maggie Shayne It was, Sara thought, ridiculous that with her life falling apart at...

A chapter-a-day for 10 days! Your Halloween Treat from Maggie Shayne David stared at her as emotions he hadn’t even known he could feel...

A chapter-a-day for 10 days! Your Halloween Treat from Maggie Shayne “All right, all right,” Nikki said. “You’ve had a day to recover while I found out what was what, and now you’re showered, you’re sitting, and you have some of that chamomile tea Mom keeps in the teddy bear cannister?” “I’m clean, I’m sitting, I’m sipping. What have you found out, Nikki? Is that poor man dead?” “I’ve talked to Mom, who phoned the town gossip, Nellie Camaroon, who is also the organist at the

A chapter-a-day for 10 days! Your Halloween Treat from Maggie Shayne Sara didn’t keep the promise she’d made to her roommate. She tried, she really did. She put her things in Nikki’s old bedroom, which was right where Nikki had told her it would be. But not exactly the way  Nikki had told her it would be. She’d said it would be exactly as she had left it. Purple paint on the walls. Cheerleading uniform hanging on the outside of the closet door, amid pom-poms, boy band posters

A chapter-a-day for 10 days! Your Halloween Treat from Maggie Shayne A Few Days Earlier Denton, New Hampshire Her eyes burned. Her lungs burned. Her skin  was starting to burn. She struggled to breathe, but sucked only searing-hot smoke into her lungs. She couldn’t see anymore, and her eyes stung as if they’d been irrigated with battery acid. She squeezed them tight as she staggered from the bedroom into the hallway, feeling her way, groping with her hands and moving forward

A chapter-a-day for 10 days! Your Halloween Treat from Maggie Shayne David didn’t end up getting his bag from the Jeep until much later that night. When they left the hospital, the four men drove down to Potter’s Grocery, Mark’s store, parked the SUV in front, and looked sadly at the “Closed Until Further Notice” sign that had been taped to the front door. “Look, let’s talk to people, ask if anyone saw anything that could give us a clue what really happened yesterday,” Randy

A chapter-a-day for 10 days! Your Halloween Treat from Maggie Shayne David drove his Jeep Wrangler past the big wooden “Welcome to Port Lucinda, The Town Where Time Stands Still” sign, and shook his head at how appropriate the nickname was. He’d never realized how stuck in time his hometown was, until he’d grown up and done some traveling. The storefronts hadn’t changed. They had green-and-white striped awnings, and old-fashioned lettering, and the drugstore still served foun

A chapter-a-day for 10 days! Your Halloween Treat from Maggie Shayne Present Day Boston, Massachusetts David Nichols lifted the visor of...

And the daring woman who writes about them This post is the kickoff of our October celebration! We start with an interview with author Gayle Callen on this, the release day for her newest novel. Then tomorrow, Love Me to Death, Chapter 1. You'll get all ten chapters of this novella in ten days culminating on Halloween! Also on Halloween, we'll draw the winner of all 19 volumes of the Wings in the Night series from amongst newsletter subscribers. Sign up to enter Enjoy my ch