Today I have the honor of introducing all of you to a very busy and talented author, Ms. Liv James.  Please help me give her a very warm welcome to the CMash blog!!!

diet, where everything you eat and drink is grown within 100 miles of your house.

So then I thought, what if an interesting couple – Josie and Jeff – with a great country inn decided to take on the 100-mile diet and all the other things that would make their inn green? And what if they did such a great job that they received fantastic publicity?

And then I thought, what if that publicity backfired?

That’s when things started to get interesting.

At the same time I was publicizing our new green building out here in the real world, I was also reading a lot of romantic suspense books and couldn’t find any in which the love story centered on a married couple. That piqued my interest because, if we’re lucky, we spend a whole lot more time in a marriage than in the stages leading up to the marriage.  So I thought, what if a married couple had fallen into a hum-drum existence and suddenly something – or someone – came along and shook it up?

In the Trouble With Green, that someone is Nathan Brown, who knows Josie’s secrets and doesn’t hesitate to share them with her husband, Jeff.

Finally, I heard about a father who lost his oldest son in a kayaking accident after the son had managed to save his girlfriend from drowning. I was so moved by the tragedy of that story, and by the weight of being the girl who was saved, that I brought it into the novel.

I intertwined those three snippets – the green inn, the rekindling of a marriage, and being “the girl who lived” – and The Trouble With Green was born.

Synopsis (borrowed from author’s blog):
When Josie’s earth-friendly inns get national press it seems like a good deal all around. So much of a good deal, in fact, that her architect husband gets a new gig … on the other side of the country. And the owners of one of her best inns go missing, just days after the feature appears. And then there’s the long-forgotten Nathan Brown, whose appearance on her doorstep can only mean trouble. Josie must overcome the ghosts of her past if she has any hope of keeping her marriage and her business alive.

What a day today is!!! I am beyond thrilled!!! I even checked my Thesaurus and couldn’t find a word to express what I am feeling. I am now a tour host for WOW-Women On Writing and what a way to start! Please help me give a very big and warm welcome to today’s guest, Madeline Sharples, as she stops by while on virtual tour, to talk about her inspirational memoir.

Madeline turned to another type of writing, memoir, as she grappled with her older son’s bipolar disorder and subsequent suicide. She and her husband of 40 years live in Manhattan Beach, California, a small beach community south of Los Angeles. Her younger son Ben lives in Santa Monica, California with his bride Marissa.
Just Thought You Should Know:
More than 30,000 Americans commit suicide each year, most leaving behind grieving families. Teenagers make up 5,000 of this group.

You can visit Madeline Sharples at her websites:
http://madeline40.blogspot.com/
www.madelinesharples.com

Sharples explains: “I write about the steps I took in living with the loss of my son, including making use of diversions to help me forget. Leaving the Hall Light On is also about the milestones I met toward living a full life without him: packing and giving away his clothes, demolishing and redoing the scene of his death, cataloging and packing away all his records and books, copying all of his original music compositions onto CDs, digitizing all of our family photos, and gutting his room and turning it into my office and sanctuary with a bay window that looks out toward a lush garden and a bubbling water fountain.”

What a day today is!!! I am beyond thrilled!!! I even checked my Thesaurus and couldn’t find a word to express what I am feeling. I am now a tour host for WOW-Women On Writing and what a way to start! Please help me give a very big and warm welcome to today’s guest, Madeline Sharples, as she stops by while on virtual tour, to talk about her inspirational memoir.

Madeline turned to another type of writing, memoir, as she grappled with her older son’s bipolar disorder and subsequent suicide. She and her husband of 40 years live in Manhattan Beach, California, a small beach community south of Los Angeles. Her younger son Ben lives in Santa Monica, California with his bride Marissa.
Just Thought You Should Know:
More than 30,000 Americans commit suicide each year, most leaving behind grieving families. Teenagers make up 5,000 of this group.

You can visit Madeline Sharples at her websites:
http://madeline40.blogspot.com/
www.madelinesharples.com

Sharples explains: “I write about the steps I took in living with the loss of my son, including making use of diversions to help me forget. Leaving the Hall Light On is also about the milestones I met toward living a full life without him: packing and giving away his clothes, demolishing and redoing the scene of his death, cataloging and packing away all his records and books, copying all of his original music compositions onto CDs, digitizing all of our family photos, and gutting his room and turning it into my office and sanctuary with a bay window that looks out toward a lush garden and a bubbling water fountain.”

If you are a regular follower of this blog, then you know how amazing the people from The Hachette Book Group are.  Brianne from Hachette is on virtual tour with author, Jami Alden, and today they are here talking about Ms. Alden’s new book and it sounds fantastic!!!!  So, please, help me welcome both Jami Alden and Brianne.

Like so many romance readers, my first romance novel was by Kathleen Woodiwiss – The Flame and the Flower, to be exact. I was thirteen. I spent the next month working my way through her entire back list. Shortly thereafter I discovered Judith McNaught, Johanna Lindsey, Karen Robards, Catherine Coulter, Shirlee Busbee among others, and devoured their lavish historical epics full of overbearing alpha males and the women who brought them to their knees. I was hooked. My high school teachers marveled at my ability to read romance novels under the desk and still score straight A’s. I started to imagine myself, living in a cabin in the mountains somewhere, writing romance novels.

It took me quite awhile to pursue my dream. After graduating from Stanford with a degree in English Literature, I worked in a variety of soul sucking admin jobs before I began my career in marketing. It wasn’t exactly my dream job, but at least my writing appeared on several web sites and in many software marketing brochures. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to fit the phrase “and her loins melted like hot wax” into any of them.

During my stint as the world’s surliest receptionist, I took my first stab at writing. The result was a very melodramatic western historical which reads like a bad Elizabeth Lowell rip off. Its currently languishing on my hard drive, forever stuck on page 330.

Then in fall 2001 I had an incredible stroke of luck and got laid off from my marketing job. I decided it was time to stop saying I wanted to be a writer and to actually give it a serious go. Fortunately my husband, a socially well adjusted alpha male, is a very generous patron of the arts.

Four years later, I sold my first book and I’m pretty much living the dream of getting paid to write romance. I don’t live in a cabin in the mountains, but I do live in a rural-ish town near San Francisco (hey, we have deer and bunnies in our yard, along with the occasional coyote) with my husband, sons, and two dogs who patiently listen to my dialogue and help me work out plot points. When I’m not writing sexy romance, I enjoy running, reading, yoga and watching Food Network and bad reality TV.

1. Beg for Mercy was originally going to be set in California. However, once I started doing research about California’s death row and the appeals process I realized my heroine would be about sixty years old before the action in the book could take place! I quickly realized I had to change the setting to a state where things moved a bit faster. Hence, the book takes place in Seattle.

2. I’m pretty sure I’m the only parent in my son’s preschool class who has called the Washington State Penitentiary to inquire about visitation rules for death row inmates.

3. When my boys, ages 3 and 5 first saw the cover they asked if I had written a book about Avatars.

4. At least fifty pages of this book were written in a remote cabin in Alaska in the middle of winter. How remote? It’s 25 miles from the nearest town and you have to fly in a plane and/or ride a snow machine to get there.

5. I rarely get emotional over my own writing, but I teared up a little when I wrote the scene that reveals my villain’s backstory.

Megan Flynn thought she was falling in love. Cole Williams wasn’t just handsome and passionate, he was one of the good guys. Or so she thought, until he arrested her brother-the only family she has left-for a murder she knows he couldn’t have possibly committed. Now, with her heart broken and her brother’s life hanging in the balance, Megan will risk everything to prove his innocence. Even if that means throwing herself into the path of a sadistic killer with a hauntingly familiar MO.

Seattle Detective Cole Williams had given up on making Megan see reason where her brother is concerned. But when she insinuates herself into the most shockingly brutal case Cole has ever worked, he can’t stand idly by. Plunged into a secret world where the city’s elite indulge their darkest desires, Cole will do whatever it takes to bring down a madman who has made Megan his most coveted prey.

If you are a regular follower of this blog, then you know how amazing the people from The Hachette Book Group are.  Brianne from Hachette is on virtual tour with author, Jami Alden, and today they are here talking about Ms. Alden’s new book and it sounds fantastic!!!!  So, please, help me welcome both Jami Alden and Brianne.

Like so many romance readers, my first romance novel was by Kathleen Woodiwiss – The Flame and the Flower, to be exact. I was thirteen. I spent the next month working my way through her entire back list. Shortly thereafter I discovered Judith McNaught, Johanna Lindsey, Karen Robards, Catherine Coulter, Shirlee Busbee among others, and devoured their lavish historical epics full of overbearing alpha males and the women who brought them to their knees. I was hooked. My high school teachers marveled at my ability to read romance novels under the desk and still score straight A’s. I started to imagine myself, living in a cabin in the mountains somewhere, writing romance novels.

It took me quite awhile to pursue my dream. After graduating from Stanford with a degree in English Literature, I worked in a variety of soul sucking admin jobs before I began my career in marketing. It wasn’t exactly my dream job, but at least my writing appeared on several web sites and in many software marketing brochures. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to fit the phrase “and her loins melted like hot wax” into any of them.

During my stint as the world’s surliest receptionist, I took my first stab at writing. The result was a very melodramatic western historical which reads like a bad Elizabeth Lowell rip off. Its currently languishing on my hard drive, forever stuck on page 330.

Then in fall 2001 I had an incredible stroke of luck and got laid off from my marketing job. I decided it was time to stop saying I wanted to be a writer and to actually give it a serious go. Fortunately my husband, a socially well adjusted alpha male, is a very generous patron of the arts.

Four years later, I sold my first book and I’m pretty much living the dream of getting paid to write romance. I don’t live in a cabin in the mountains, but I do live in a rural-ish town near San Francisco (hey, we have deer and bunnies in our yard, along with the occasional coyote) with my husband, sons, and two dogs who patiently listen to my dialogue and help me work out plot points. When I’m not writing sexy romance, I enjoy running, reading, yoga and watching Food Network and bad reality TV.

1. Beg for Mercy was originally going to be set in California. However, once I started doing research about California’s death row and the appeals process I realized my heroine would be about sixty years old before the action in the book could take place! I quickly realized I had to change the setting to a state where things moved a bit faster. Hence, the book takes place in Seattle.

2. I’m pretty sure I’m the only parent in my son’s preschool class who has called the Washington State Penitentiary to inquire about visitation rules for death row inmates.

3. When my boys, ages 3 and 5 first saw the cover they asked if I had written a book about Avatars.

4. At least fifty pages of this book were written in a remote cabin in Alaska in the middle of winter. How remote? It’s 25 miles from the nearest town and you have to fly in a plane and/or ride a snow machine to get there.

5. I rarely get emotional over my own writing, but I teared up a little when I wrote the scene that reveals my villain’s backstory.

Megan Flynn thought she was falling in love. Cole Williams wasn’t just handsome and passionate, he was one of the good guys. Or so she thought, until he arrested her brother-the only family she has left-for a murder she knows he couldn’t have possibly committed. Now, with her heart broken and her brother’s life hanging in the balance, Megan will risk everything to prove his innocence. Even if that means throwing herself into the path of a sadistic killer with a hauntingly familiar MO.

Seattle Detective Cole Williams had given up on making Megan see reason where her brother is concerned. But when she insinuates herself into the most shockingly brutal case Cole has ever worked, he can’t stand idly by. Plunged into a secret world where the city’s elite indulge their darkest desires, Cole will do whatever it takes to bring down a madman who has made Megan his most coveted prey.

We have had quite the week here at CMash with visitors requesting to stop by and sharing their latest work with us, so I figured there was no better way to end the week than by introducing you to another Guest Author.  And once again, I ask, as only you can do, give Mr. Iain Edward Henn a very warm welcome!!!

If I do that now I get strange looks. So I try not to do it.

Born and raised in Sydney, in Australia, I have a working background in newspaper and magazine publishing.

Writing fiction in the mystery/suspense genres has been a passion from a young age.

My short suspense stories have been published by magazines in England, North America, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Australia and New Zealand, and one of these has also appeared with the Scandinavian University Press.

My novel, ‘The Delta Chain,’ was an Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award Quarter finalist, described by Publisher’s Weekly as a “…fast-paced thriller…hooks readers into caring about the chase…”

When I’m not writing, researching or commuting, my wife and I indulge in movies, exploring the coast, and the search for the perfect cappuccino.

     A storyteller’s best friend might not be an idea or a character or a whopping advance or a shiny new laptop.
     It might just be a question – a question that can be written down or asked out loud or privately within your own mind. A question to which there is no right or wrong answers. A question to which there is no limit to the number or types of answers that can be given.
     The question …What if?
     A question where the answers come from your own imagination. Or maybe from some mysterious other place. Who knows?
     Like any good friend, “What if?” can help you when you’re in dire need. Perhaps you’re suffering the infamous ‘writer’s block,’ (some say this exists, some say it doesn’t, so it’s a debate a little like the one on climate change), and by asking the “What if?’ question you just might break through that mental barrier. (Maybe you’ll even solve global warming, but that’s a long shot.)
     An author might ask the question in response to an item seen on the nightly TV news, or to a observation made while walking down the street or catching a train.
     You wonder what might happen next in some given situation. What if?
     A famous example can be seen in the movie, ‘Sliding Doors,’ which simultaneously unfolds two story lines – one in which Gwyneth Paltrow’s character catches a train; and an alternative storyline in which she misses the train, causing her life to head in a whole different direction.
     I sometimes wonder if prolific writers like Stephen King are asking that question all day every day, at breakfast, while talking on their cell phone, while driving to the gas station (come to think of it, just two of King’s novels in the past 10 years have been “Cell,” about a signal sent out globally to cellphone users that turns them in to vicious killers; and ‘From A Buick 8,’ about an abandoned, seemingly ‘possessed’ car found at a gas station), so maybe he is asking that question, over and over again.
     A storyteller might have lots of “besties,’ but that question we ask of the imagination might just be the oldest and dearest of them all.

When her brother meets a terrifying death in the wilderness, Kate Kovacs is determined to use her IT skills to help track the killers. A baffling link is found between these cases, leading Adam and Kate on a labyrinth trail to a scientific research group, to a Washington power elite, and to a secret reaching back over thirty years to a war-ravaged Vietnam.

Powerful forces are gathering, and Adam and Kate just became their targets…

We have had quite the week here at CMash with visitors requesting to stop by and sharing their latest work with us, so I figured there was no better way to end the week than by introducing you to another Guest Author.  And once again, I ask, as only you can do, give Mr. Iain Edward Henn a very warm welcome!!!

If I do that now I get strange looks. So I try not to do it.

Born and raised in Sydney, in Australia, I have a working background in newspaper and magazine publishing.

Writing fiction in the mystery/suspense genres has been a passion from a young age.

My short suspense stories have been published by magazines in England, North America, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Australia and New Zealand, and one of these has also appeared with the Scandinavian University Press.

My novel, ‘The Delta Chain,’ was an Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award Quarter finalist, described by Publisher’s Weekly as a “…fast-paced thriller…hooks readers into caring about the chase…”

When I’m not writing, researching or commuting, my wife and I indulge in movies, exploring the coast, and the search for the perfect cappuccino.

     A storyteller’s best friend might not be an idea or a character or a whopping advance or a shiny new laptop.
     It might just be a question – a question that can be written down or asked out loud or privately within your own mind. A question to which there is no right or wrong answers. A question to which there is no limit to the number or types of answers that can be given.
     The question …What if?
     A question where the answers come from your own imagination. Or maybe from some mysterious other place. Who knows?
     Like any good friend, “What if?” can help you when you’re in dire need. Perhaps you’re suffering the infamous ‘writer’s block,’ (some say this exists, some say it doesn’t, so it’s a debate a little like the one on climate change), and by asking the “What if?’ question you just might break through that mental barrier. (Maybe you’ll even solve global warming, but that’s a long shot.)
     An author might ask the question in response to an item seen on the nightly TV news, or to a observation made while walking down the street or catching a train.
     You wonder what might happen next in some given situation. What if?
     A famous example can be seen in the movie, ‘Sliding Doors,’ which simultaneously unfolds two story lines – one in which Gwyneth Paltrow’s character catches a train; and an alternative storyline in which she misses the train, causing her life to head in a whole different direction.
     I sometimes wonder if prolific writers like Stephen King are asking that question all day every day, at breakfast, while talking on their cell phone, while driving to the gas station (come to think of it, just two of King’s novels in the past 10 years have been “Cell,” about a signal sent out globally to cellphone users that turns them in to vicious killers; and ‘From A Buick 8,’ about an abandoned, seemingly ‘possessed’ car found at a gas station), so maybe he is asking that question, over and over again.
     A storyteller might have lots of “besties,’ but that question we ask of the imagination might just be the oldest and dearest of them all.

When her brother meets a terrifying death in the wilderness, Kate Kovacs is determined to use her IT skills to help track the killers. A baffling link is found between these cases, leading Adam and Kate on a labyrinth trail to a scientific research group, to a Washington power elite, and to a secret reaching back over thirty years to a war-ravaged Vietnam.

Powerful forces are gathering, and Adam and Kate just became their targets…

Howdy Partners!!!  Do I have a huge treat for you!!!  And I mean HUGE!!!  Rein in your horses and tie them up to the posts because you are definitely going to want to stay for a while!!!  While on her blog tour, one of her stops is here, HERE today, taking time out of her very busy schedule. We have New York Times Best Selling Author, Linda Lael Miller!!!!!  I told you it was HUGE!!  So please help me give her a very warm western welcome to our blog!!!!

As the daughter of a town marshal, Linda has come home to the western lifestyle that gave birth to one of today’s most successful authors. With more than 80 novels to her credit, the self-confessed barn goddess left Washington years ago and pursued her wanderlust, living in Arizona and London and traveling the world. But now the “First Lady of the West” is glad to be back home, writing contemporary and historical novels that have earned her awards and placements on all the national bestsellers lists.

Linda traces the birth of her writing career to the day when a Northport teacher told her that the stories she was writing were good, that she just might have a future in writing. Later, when she decided to write novels, she endured her share of rejection before she sold Fletcher’s Woman in 1983 to Pocket Books. Since then, Linda has successfully published historicals, contemporaries, paranormals, and thrillers before coming home, in a literal sense, and concentrating on novels with a Western flavor. For her devotion to her craft, the Romance Writers of America awarded her their prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award in 2007.

Linda has come a long way since leaving Washington to experience the world. “But growing up in that time and place, in a family grounded in Western values, served me well,” she allows. “And I’m happy to be back home.”
To learn more about Linda, visit http://www.lindalaelmiller.com/. For a behind-the-scenes look at the sexy Creed cowboys, visit www.TakeACowboyHome.com.

Conner Creed knows exactly who he is: a hardworking rancher carrying on his uncle’s legacy in Lonesome Bend, Colorado. Maybe a small-town cowboy’s life isn’t his dream, but he owes the man who took him in as a kid. Until the identical twin brother he’s been estranged from for years reenters his life.

Conner struggles with identity issues as he gets to know his wilder brother. And then he meets Tricia McCall, a beautiful woman who knows a thing or two about living someone else’s dreams. Together, they just might find their own dreams right here in Lonesome Bend….