Blog Archives
I Really Love Tragic Stories
Playlist follows two people with a tragic past that help each other heal and find a way forward. What was the inspiration for the setup to your story?
Romeo and Juliet were the biggest inspiration for this novel. I really love tragic stories, and I wanted there to be some beauty in it. I wanted this novel to matter.
Your characters are wonderfully emotive and relatable. Were you able to use anything from your own life to inform their character development?
I always will add an Easter egg or two of my own life into a novel. But honestly, I create this characters from so where in my brain, and I follow them around. I find out things they do as the reader does too.
What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?
Love, lost, self-worth, and how to work on overcoming tragedy. I think we all can easily get consumed into the darkness. I wanted to make sure people could
Come out of it.
What is the next book that you are working on and when will it be available?
I have a book coming out called Camp Afterlife. It’s another coming of age LGBT novel. It will be out October.
Author Links: GoodReads | Twitter | Facebook
Looking For An Escape
Vale Born follows a young woman who discovers she’s half Fae as she sets out to find her missing friend and gets caught in the middle of a war. What was the inspiration for the setup to your story?
I wanted to write a great fantasy adventure with epic world building and thrilling situations. I knew basically what I wanted to write, but I wasn’t sure where I wanted to start. I was visiting my family ranch in San Diego when inspiration struck. In the hills far off to the east there is a grouping of cliff rocks that I grew up looking at, they always felt off-limits and forbidden. That was the start of it all, the question of what if I had always been drawn to that area for a reason? The idea that the rocks were alluring because there was a tear in the Vale germinated–a passage to another world, and only someone who was born near the Vale could pass through it. The whole story evolved from that point.
Lily is an intriguing and well developed character. What were some driving ideals behind her character’s development?
It was important to me that Lily is a proactive protagonist, though she is displaced in a mystical world and seemingly stuck there, I wanted her to have agency. It was also important to me that she not be perfect, and on top of that she is dealing with her own issues of anxiety and PTSD. She gradually starts to face those issues rather than avoid them. As we join her on her adventure, we get to be there for her journey of healing and self-discovery as well.
What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?
I wanted there to be diverse magical creatures and for the story to feel very lush and vivid, but I still wanted it to be relatable to the human experience. There were several themes I wanted to include, while this book deals with loss and recovery from that, I wanted to explore what happens to a young person when they don’t take the path that they had always expected they would take, such as a specific career or college. She had always intended to become a horse veterinarian, yet when it came time to actually pursue that goal, she turned away from it, and didn’t move forward. I really wanted to dive into what Lily would be feeling at this point, as she is now twenty-one. Lily’s anxiety and PTSD stem from an event that changed the course of her life. She’s looking for an escape, which is another way for her to avoid moving forward. Instead of an escape, she finds her decisions are far more critical and involve more than just her as she’s confronted with life-and-death situations.
What is the next book that you are working on and when will it be available?
I just finished the first draft for the third book in the Vale Born series. I like to give a little breathing room after finishing a draft before editing begins, so while that simmers I’ll be working on a fantasy Christmas novella set with fellow author Laura L. Hohman. I’m looking forward to writing something different! We expect those to be released around Thanksgiving this year.
Author Links: GoodReads | Twitter | Website | Instagram
She makes a deal with a lethally attractive male that could save them both, as she tracks down her friend…if it’s not too late.
She must grow past her trauma and learn what it means to be Vale Born, if she is going to survive the treacherous perils of Alternis.
Fans of Sarah J. Maas’s A Court of Thorns and Roses will love this lush and vivid adventure. Vale Born is the first in a New Adult fantasy novel series.
Vale Born
![Vale Born by [Lorin Petrazilka]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41hvnZ8VytL.jpg)
Vale Born is a thrilling YA fantasy book by Lorin Petrazilka. It follows the life of Lily, a young woman who discovers she is half-Fae after she passes through a portal to another realm. While her journey begins as a search for her recently missing friend Josie, it develops into much more than she had anticipated.
She meets different kinds of Fae, makes friends, falls in love, and even experiences shocking betrayals. At some point, she is even caught in a love triangle. But while living in this new realm is far from boring, it comes with dangers at every corner. Ultimately, Lily has to figure out who she really is and decide what home means to her.
If there is one thing that this book has going for it, it is its suspense factor. The author manages to keep us at the edge of our seats throughout the narrative. We are constantly wondering who means well and who doesn’t. Additionally, since the book is written in the first person from Lily’s perspective, we discover new information and revelations all through her perspective. This makes the narrative feel more like real life and also creates a sense of camaraderie between Lily and the reader. You can’t help but root for her and feel her loss more deeply. This is further intensified by the fact that Lily’s character is very well developed. You not only get a sense of her physical features but also of her personality and beliefs. It is the little idiosyncrasies that the author includes that make this character believable and relatable.
By the end of the book, you can clearly see the major themes that the author was trying to discuss in this narrative – love, family, belonging, and the importance of tenacity. The author also does a good job of tying the behaviors of the characters to their intentions in very realistic ways.
Moreover, her writing style is light yet informative – she tells you the most with as few words as possible. As such, there aren’t any long-winded paragraphs and the dialogue is clear and precise, making the book easy to read. Also, the author is great at infusing humor and quirkiness in the story, particularly through Lily’s personality.
Vale Born is a suspenseful new adult story that creatively combines romance with epic fantasy in a compelling way that makes this novel relentlessly entertaining.
Pages: 306 | ASIN: B08PS1XBB8
Small Fingernails: Even Less Love – Book Trailer
Sometimes, love finds us; other times, love is a trauma that hurls itself into the very fabric of our lives. My experiences at New England University explain how traumatic events and life’s unfortunate turns can become amplified and overshadow our understanding of how love and friendship should contribute to our lives.
The sages say love can blind us; however, sometimes, that love transforms our lives into radically altered states–states in which we must learn how to cope for the relationship to survive and thrive. These altered states are often difficult to manage without help from friends and family. If left to our own devices, without these critical supports, the very creative energy that once nurtured our passion has the potential to destroy the very foundation of our love and caring that was once manifest.
Small Fingernails chronicles my life as a student at college in Freedomtown and in love. It evaluates the impact of toxic relationships on our well-being and our capacity to pursue friendship. Through transgressions, fear, loss, grief, and misfortune, even my profound love could endure. Ultimately, my ethics and belief in what is right collapsed on its head.
Love needs to be free and rid of all elements that can destroy its beauty. This book signals the need to reevaluate our closest and most personal spaces, friends, and family members. The complications that interfere with our pursuit of happiness will one day be more easily overcome by people who follow their hearts and seek only the best for those they care about the most.
Perseverance: How It All Began
![Perseverance: How It All Began by [Rebecca Branch]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51ME1s7AwlL.jpg)
Perseverance: How it All Began, is the first novel in a romance series following Cadence who is a nurse at a local hospital. The story follows her journey, as her friend Trystan (whom she has admired from afar), moves closer to her, throwing her emotions into turmoil.
Perseverance: How it all Began has an easy to follow structure. It is organized into chapters that are narrated by the two main characters, although most chapters are told from Cadence’s viewpoint. The story is simple to follow, but there are several very compelling twists and turns. Although the action is mostly centered around the budding romance of the two main characters, there are some moments of tension that really bring this novel to life.
Cadence is a well-developed character that comes across as authentic and believable. A nurse at a local hospital, the story focuses on her anguish in trying to choose between two men. Readers follow her emotional turmoil, fears, and dreams. Her character develops and deepens over the course of the novel, as she finds herself falling in love with Blake whilst still pining for Trystan, a friend who she’d fallen in love with but never admitted her feelings to him or anyone else.
The dialogue throughout the novel felt grounded and the characters motivations throughout the story were believable, both of these things combine to make a novel that is easy to be engrossed with. Cadence’s long-time friend Trystan is also a main character in the novel. We gain less of an insight into his thoughts, but he’s still an intriguing character without feeling completely original. He has a manly job, is intensely handsome, self-confident, and their relationship starts with him showing Cadence little, if any, romantic attention. However, once another man is in the picture his interest soon increases! These two characters are supported by numerous smaller characters, such as Cadence’s boyfriend, and their respective friends and colleagues. These characters add welcomed depth and interest to the story.
This novel is firmly focused on the romance between Cadence and Trystan and the descriptive writing focuses on the main characters and their physical descriptions, rather than building out the setting and world.
Perseverance: How it All Began is an impassioned romance novel that will appeal to readers looking for an easy to follow but stirring story that focuses on the relationships between people.
Pages: 432 | ASIN: B07BF4MM46
Delightful and Endlessly Funny
Linda Sheehan Author Interview
Decanted follows a vivacious young woman as she learns making wine and the perils of love. What was the inspiration for the setup to your story?
My daughter, the delightful and endlessly funny Samantha Sheehan, who created and produces Poe Wines Pinot Noir, Ultraviolet Cabernet, and a 95 point organic vermouth under the MOMMENPOP label is my total inspiration for Decanted. Like the novel’s heroine Samantha Goodyear, my daughter quit her job at a big five accounting firm to go to France to learn everything she could about making wine. Like the main character in Decanted, she then moved to Napa and took a bookkeeping job at a winery before launching her own wine brand that’s sold across the US and in many countries around the world.
Samantha is a compelling character that was fun to follow. What were some driving ideals behind her character development?
I wanted to draw my main character as a young woman who, though she’s a total product of modern times, has a tremendous love and respect for those who came before her. Samantha also has a tremendous work ethic, and never veers from her quest to achieve her dreams.
Wine making and wine culture were intriguing parts of this novel. Why was this an important aspect for you to include in the story?
Many people would like to understand more about wine culture and the winemaking process but don’t know where to begin. My goal in writing the book was to seamlessly give readers a fun wine education and illustrate what separates a great wine that reflects what nature intended from a tricked up brand with ingredients and flavors added by the big corporate wineries to sell the most bottles possible.
What is the next book that you are working on and when will it be available?
My next book is my novel Fore Play, a comedy set at a Los Angeles country club that will be available this coming summer.
Author Links: Facebook | Website
From author Linda Sheehan, who’s part of a Napa wine dynasty, comes a story of grapes, wine, first crushes, and juicy redemption. Dreading the desk job that awaits her after high school, eighteen- year-old Vivian Goodyear takes off for pre- World War ll Paris, where she supports herself as an artist’s model.
Flash forward to modern day Manhattan where, inspired by Vivian’s courage, her grand-niece Samantha leaves her pressure cooker career to work the grape harvest in France. There, between picking grapes in the vineyard and crushing them in the cellar, she gets lessons in the art of making wine and in the art of making love. But when her world is turned upside down, a link from Aunt Vivian’s past could right it in a tale of being on top, sinking to the bottom, and coming up for glorious air.
Changing the Rules
![Changing the Rules (The Sterling Woods Series Book 2) by [Charlene Johnson]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51eRxH7z9zL.jpg)
Stephanie Xavier hasn’t wanted for anything her entire life. She is privileged, spoiled, and has everything at her disposal. Her family’s wealth is well-known, and she has never had to hold a job or support herself. As perfect as her life seems, Stephanie is in need of much more. She has spent the better part of teens and young adulthood moving through meaningless short-lived relationships and has never known true love. The friendships she has made can hardly be called true. In fact, the only two women who still manage to spend time with her are as emotionally bankrupt as she is. When she makes up her mind to change her life, will the ones she wants to take with her be ready and willing?
Changing the Rules, the second book in the Sterling Wood series, by Charlene Johnson, chronicles the tempestuous life of Stephanie Xavier and her quest for a meaningful and loving relationship. After spending years bouncing from one man to the next in an effort to compete in a game based on sexual conquests, Stephanie realizes she wants love and not physical attention. Her problem is the man she wants, Craig, has been burned and is sure he can never love again–especially someone like Stephanie. He has heard the stories about her sex club and he knows she is the last person to commit. Their relationship seems doomed from the beginning. I couldn’t help but feel sorry for Stephanie–as privileged as she is, she is a truly sad character.
Romance fans will revel in Johnson’s work. From cover to cover, the main characters are embroiled in one gratuitous sex scene after another. Buried within the explicit scenes is a storyline that doesn’t seem to get enough attention. The prologue set me up with some high expectations for the plot, but this was less a thriller and more of a romance. This is a plot-driven romantic suspense novel, with intense sex scenes, but I really wanted to see much more develop between Stephanie and several of the other characters.
I highly recommend Changing the Rules to any romance fan. With an element of mystery to the plot, I can see romance fans being intrigued with Stephanie’s storyline, her turbulent life, and the constant conflict she faces with Craig–she is a memorable character and definitely leaves her mark on readers.
Pages: 296 | ASIN: B08R81BYRT
Perseverance: How It All Began
Epic love laced with epic pain…
Loving him was my secret. Mine alone. I never let anyone come remotely close to accessing that part of my heart. Not even myself, except on rare occasions. Trystan was simultaneously the source of my greatest love and the source of my greatest heartache.
He never knew how I felt about him. I’d never told him how deeply and profoundly in love with him I was…and still am. He had always considered me a friend so that was the position in his life that I desperately struggled to maintain. I couldn’t let him know, but I also couldn’t let him go.
I tried to put Trystan in my past. To some degree, I was able to achieve just that. He lived so far away and only came back to visit on occasion. But every time he returned, it was like reigniting a smoldering inferno within me.
Then I met Blake. Arguably the most eligible man in Hollywood. Wait, did I say Hollywood? I meant the world. He is the epitome of what every female dreams about.
Falling in love with Blake was seamless. Trystan was rarely around and after spending years feeling like I was suffocating, being with Blake was like breathing my first breath of fresh air. It was a much needed reprieve for a wounded and tattered heart like mine.
Then an ordinary trip leads to extraordinary events. Extreme circumstances usher in changes in me and in my life that I could never have dreamed were possible. And a love I thought was beyond my reach is suddenly right within my grasp.
Past love collides with future love and there is nothing I can do to escape either.
Follow Cadence as she begins her travel into the unknown.
LITERARY TITAN 