Blog Archives
Writing About the Emotional Fallout
A Thousand More centers around identical twins separated as infants whose buried truths are brought to light following a tragic accident. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
The inspiration for A Thousand More came from a dream I had in 2005. I dreamt about Michelle Carrington and Bradley Cole and immediately knew Michelle was an identical twin. As I began developing the story, Michelle’s twin was named Danielle at birth but was later renamed by her adoptive parents.
I knew I needed two names that would sound alike when shortened. That’s how Michelle became “Chelle” and her twin sister, Shelby became “Shel”.
By telling the twins’ stories in tandem, my intention was to give the reader the opportunity to build a connection with all the characters that touched Michelle’s and Shelby’s lives from infancy into adulthood.
Family secrets drive much of the plot. What fascinates you about the consequences of hidden truths?
For me, writing about the emotional fallout when the truth is revealed is both intriguing and interesting. People often believe their decision to hide the truth comes from a place of love and protection, but secrets rarely stay buried. I was intrigued by why people keep secrets and how their decisions can affect lives even decades later. When that secret is revealed, the unintended consequences create a compelling story.
The mistaken identity storyline creates both tragedy and revelation. What interested you about that narrative device?
I’ve always been fascinated by the mistaken identity storyline because it creates opportunities to explore characters who face difficult choices, experience heartbreak, yet still find hope during times of tragedy.
It was important to the storyline of A Thousand More that the name Chelle/Shel be familiar to the twin who is diagnosed with amnesia after the tragic accident. Mistaken identity was just the top layer to the depth of the story.
I enjoy writing about how characters navigate the consequences of their decisions when circumstances are out of their control. Writing a story whose characters undergo personal growth often resonates with readers. I wanted readers to experience the emotional tension and complexity of my characters’ journey.
What is the next book you are working on, and when will it be available?
The next book I’m working on is another family-saga romance set in a small, dusty town (not yet named) in Texas and the fast-paced world of Santa Barbara, California. The story revolves around Jessica Carter, a fiercely independent Texas bartender, and Keith Branson, a charming, confident professional who enjoys a privileged life. Their story brings all the drama of family secrets, romance, an unexpected twist, and found family.
Currently, there is no set date for availability; however, the estimated publication date will be at the end of 2026 or the beginning of 2027.
Author Links: GoodReads | X | Facebook | Website
When Ann Carrington’s dream of motherhood is shattered by a devastating choice in 1982, the consequences ripple through the lives of identical twins, separated at birth and raised in worlds apart. One grows up in privilege, haunted by a sense of loss she cannot name. The other, adopted by a loving nurse, finds strength in overcoming tragedy and forging her own path.
As Michelle and Shelby’s parallel lives unfold, love, betrayal, and fate draw them together decades later, culminating in a heart-stopping moment that will change everything. When the truth slowly unravels, their families must face the fallout of tragedy and mistaken identity, leading to a heart-wrenching decision.
With unforgettable characters and a story that explores the depths of forgiveness, identity, and the ties that bind, A Thousand More is a poignant testament to the resilience of the human heart.
Dragonslayer’s Valkyrie: The Legend of Sigurd and Brynhildr
Jennifer Ivy Walker’s Dragonslayer’s Valkyrie is a sweeping Norse romantic fantasy that retells the legend of Sigurd and Brynhildr through a story rich with gods, prophecy, battle, and fierce devotion. The book follows Sigurd, the Sea Wolf warrior destined to become a dragonslayer and king, and Brynhildr, the Sun Falcon shieldmaiden born of both mortal and divine realms. From icy fjords and roaring waterfalls to Valkyrie halls and dragon-haunted mountains, the novel builds a world that feels steeped in saga tradition while still leaning into the emotional pull of a passionate romance.
At its heart, this is a love story shaped by fate, but it’s also very much a story about identity. Sigurd isn’t just chasing glory. He’s reclaiming his bloodline, avenging his father, and learning what kind of ruler he’s meant to become. Brynhildr isn’t waiting to be chosen. She’s a warrior with her own calling, blessed by Freyja and fated for the Valkyries. When Freyja tells her, “No mortal enemy may defeat you,” it sets the tone for Brynhildr’s arc: she’s powerful, beloved by the gods, and determined to claim a destiny worthy of her spirit.
The romance between Sigurd and Brynhildr is intense, sensual, and central to nearly every turn of the plot. Their bond is written as something larger than attraction, a soul-deep connection tied to seiðr, prophecy, and the web of wyrd. The book takes its time with their longing, vows, separations, reunions, and shared rituals, giving their relationship the feel of a sacred bond as much as a marriage. Sigurd’s vow, “My heart and soul are yours, now and forevermore,” captures the emotional pitch of the novel: direct, earnest, and fully committed.
Walker’s writing is highly visual, with detailed descriptions of weapons, ships, halls, clothing, feasts, ceremonies, and landscapes. The story has a lavish, almost ceremonial style, especially in its scenes of oath-taking, weddings, battles, and divine encounters. The Norse vocabulary and mythological references give the book a strong sense of place, and the recurring symbols of wolves, falcons, dragons, ravens, rings, and fire help tie the romance and adventure together. It’s a book that wants readers to feel the salt air, hear the horns, and see the gold glinting in torchlight.
Dragonslayer’s Valkyrie is best read as a bold, romantic saga about two legendary figures stepping into the roles fate has carved for them. It blends Viking adventure, mythic fantasy, and passionate romance into a story full of crowns, curses, sacred vows, dragonfire, and divine intervention. Readers who enjoy heroic love stories with a strong mythological backbone will find plenty to sink into here, especially in the way the novel treats love not as a distraction from destiny, but as the force that helps Sigurd and Brynhildr meet it.
Pages: 388 | ASIN: B0H2P7N82M
The Hero
The Hero, by Eve M. Riley, follows James Royce, a wounded tech executive whose breakup has pushed him to a frightening edge, and Sadie Turner, a quiet, self-taught developer carrying her own cargo of shame, fear, and family obligation. When circumstances bring Sadie into James’s orbit more closely than either expects, their connection grows from wary workplace awareness into something tender, physical, and unexpectedly restorative. This is a romance about two people who have learned to survive by staying small, then slowly discover that love can be less a rescue than a room with the lights finally on.
What struck me first was the book’s refusal to make James’s pain ornamental. His despair is messy, embarrassing, bodily, and not quickly solved by attraction. Riley gives him humor, competence, and ache in the same breath, which makes him feel less like a “broken hero” trope and more like a man whose inner architecture has simply failed under too much weather. Sadie, meanwhile, is beautifully drawn as someone whose silence is not emptiness but compression. Her dyslexia, class anxiety, impostor syndrome, and complicated loyalty to her mother all make her feel specific rather than generically fragile.
I also appreciated the texture of the romance itself. James and Sadie do not sparkle their way into intimacy; they accrue it through small gestures, shared nerdiness, awkward honesty, and a kind of mutual watchfulness that feels almost sacred by the time it turns romantic. The book is emotionally heavy in places, and some of the external conflicts arrive with melodramatic force, but the central relationship has a steady pulse. I believed in their tenderness because it was built from unshowy acts of care: noticing, staying, making space, asking the question no one else has asked.
I’d recommend The Hero to readers who enjoy adult contemporary romance, workplace romance, found family, spicy romance, and emotionally intense tech-world love stories. Readers who like Abby Jimenez’s blend of humor, vulnerability, and bruised-but-hopeful characters may find a darker, steamier cousin here, with more code, more danger, and a sharper emotional undertow. The Hero is a romance about staying alive long enough to be loved properly, and that makes its softness feel hard-won.
Pages: 318 | ASIN : B0GTWLBY4V
Cherry Creek
Cherry Creek, by Linda Griffin, is a historical western romance about Molly, a young woman in 1850s Ohio who wants more from life than duty, patience, and a cramped future in her husband’s family home. After marrying Andrew MacLeith, she grows restless and frustrated, then impulsively leaves with his charming gambler brother, Hugh, for the Pike’s Peak gold region. What begins as a bid for romance and freedom becomes a hard lesson in survival, independence, and the true meaning of home.
What struck me first was how grounded the book feels. Griffin doesn’t treat the frontier as a shiny adventure waiting to transform everyone into legends. Cherry Creek is dirty, noisy, exhausting, and often lonely. Molly’s life there is built from work, not glamour. She cooks, washes, nurses, bargains, saves, loses, and keeps going. I liked that choice. It gives the novel weight. This is a western romance, yes, but the romance is not only between Molly and Andrew. It is also Molly’s romance with possibility, with the idea that somewhere beyond the next hill she might become the person she imagines herself to be. The book is candid about how costly that dream can be.
I also appreciated the way Griffin lets Molly be young without making her foolishness feel shallow. Molly can be impulsive, proud, unfair, and painfully naive, but she is never empty. Her mistakes come from hunger, the kind that makes a person reach for the door before asking what waits on the other side. Andrew, too, is drawn with restraint. He is not a sweeping romantic hero in the obvious sense, and that makes him more interesting. His steadiness can feel dull beside Hugh’s sparkle, especially early on, but the novel slowly asks whether steadiness might be its own kind of courage. That question stayed with me. The pacing is steady, and readers who want constant drama may find the middle more reflective than urgent, but I found that slower rhythm suited the story. It gives Molly room to change.
Cherry Creek felt like a thoughtful historical western romance about growing up the hard way. I would recommend it to readers who enjoy character-driven historical fiction, frontier settings, and romance that develops through regret, distance, and self-knowledge rather than grand speeches. It will especially appeal to anyone who likes stories about women testing the limits of the lives handed to them and discovering that freedom is not always escape. Sometimes it is knowing what, and whom, you choose.
Pages: 82 | ASIN : B0GX2TH5Q5
Our Place in the World
Being Laramie Buchanan follows a twenty-three-year-old woman navigating grief, first love, family secrets, and sudden danger. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
The first chapter of all of my novels is the framework from which the writing emerges organically. Sometimes a song, an observation, a dream, or a personal experience inspires the setting. The setting of the first chapter of Being Laramie Buchanan is reminiscent of my own law school graduation ceremony that took place at Chautauqua Auditorium in Boulder. I recently saw a photo of me in a cap and gown at that ceremony, and as with all of my novels, I asked the question “what if”? For Laramie Buchanan, the question was “what if someone significant had been missing at the ceremony”? And from there, the story develops with answers provided in the backstory and its aftermath. I discovered that as I write, I am able to see the action develop in front of me – almost like watching a movie. As I sit at my keyboard, it often feels like the novel is writing itself and my fingers on the keyboard are just the tools needed to put it into words on a page.
Family secrets play a significant role in the narrative. Why do you think hidden family histories have such power over our sense of self?
I believe that our sense of self is silently built around us, almost like a hidden building structure, as we grow. It gives us a sense of security by knowing our place in the world, particularly in the closeness of the family environment. But hidden family secrets can shake that “structure”, sometimes almost like an earthquake, and force us to evaluate and repair the damage to make the “structure” safe and strong again. For Laramie Buchanan, the family secret wasn’t in itself “earth-shattering” but it added another layer of conflict and confusion to the complications she had begun to face in her early steps into adulthood.
Crescent Moon Ranch feels almost like a character itself. What inspired the ranch setting?
I was born and raised in Boulder County, Colorado, which is a mixture of mountains and plains. Having lived here my entire life, I’ve absorbed the essence of the exquisite area, and it has naturally emerged in the writing of each of my novels. I have also practiced yoga for several years. So I felt that Laramie needed a place of renewal and peace to allow herself to regain perspective and perhaps experience self-discovery. I have travelled up the mountain canyons many times and could visualize a place like the “Crescent Moon Ranch Yoga Retreat” tucked away on “Raspberry Road” and let my imagination run freely.
What is the next book you are working on, and when will it be available?
I have begun writing the next novel, which will be a crossover of the literary/ contemporary women’s fiction/ romance genres with a slight fantasy element. This book may be available in late 2026 or early 2027. I also write illustrated picture books in rhyme for children, ages 2-6, one of which may be published within the next year, as well.
Author Links: GoodReads | Facebook | Website | Amazon
Laramie Buchanan is a likeable, relatable protagonist whose journey from emotional reflection to self-discovery is paved by seemingly insignificant moments that carry consequential impact.
Spirited Laramie Buchanan steps into her early twenties full of lifelong curiosity and enthusiasm. Living in a quiet unassuming family, Laramie had fueled her thirst for discovery at the library since age 6 – learning to prepare French cuisine, studying Greek and Roman art, developing a passion for yoga. But as a young adult, the smooth life shaped in Boulder, Colorado, is upended when painful life events rapidly converge. A first love, ghosted, a death in the family, heartbreak, missing pages in a journal, a crumbling shack, and unwitting perils leave her stunned and nearly broken.
Can she muster the strength and resilience to bear harsh realities on her own? Will she allow a silent handsome mystery man to enter her life at the same time?”Being Laramie Buchanan” is another book in the “Boulder Girl” series that began with the award-winning debut novel, “Boulder Girl, Remember Me When the Moon Hangs Low”. Like Clark’s previous novels, “Being Laramie Buchanan” is set in and around vibrant, scenic Boulder, Colorado and follows Laramie Buchanan’s first steps and missteps into early adulthood. This book, with its blend of romance and grief, will appeal to readers of contemporary romance, literary crossover fiction, book club readers, and fans of authors like Colleen Hoover, Taylor Jenkins Reid, and Nicholas Sparks.
The Soundless Symphony: At the Heart of Night
The Soundless Symphony: At the Heart of Night is a poetry collection steeped in darkness, longing, nature, myth, and emotional survival. Stacy Seraphina White moves through grief, desire, silence, and renewal with a voice that often feels like it’s standing at the edge of night, listening for something tender beneath the hush. The book begins in an almost self-aware creative space with “The art of creation,” then drifts through poems of inner fracture, romantic ache, fantasy realms, and finally the natural world’s fragile light. By the time the collection reaches pieces like “To reach for Theia’s light” and “Familiarity,” it has become less a linear journey than a nocturnal procession, one where sorrow, beauty, and imagination keep brushing against each other in the dark.
What struck me most was the intensity of the imagery. This isn’t a quiet book in the plain sense, even though silence is one of its central moods. White writes in lush, shadowed textures, full of black roses, moonlit melodies, scarred palms, river pearls, pegasus wings, phoenix fire, and goddess light. At times, I found the poems almost baroque in their layering, especially in “Step into my realm,” where the speaker tumbles through a fantasy landscape of demons, fae, griffins, and a dark kingdom. That kind of abundance won’t be for every reader, but I admired how fully the book commits to its atmosphere. It believes in its own dream logic, and that sincerity gives the collection its emotional pull.
I also appreciated the ideas underneath the ornamentation. The book returns again and again to the cost of feeling too deeply, of being unseen, of turning pain into something that can be held without being simplified. “Reflection” captures that sense of being trapped by memory, while “Silence” turns grief into something thorned and alive. The love poems are often wounded rather than sweet, with desire mingling with abandonment in pieces like “Adrift” and “Heartache, a moonlit melody.” Even when the language is heavy with velvet and shadow, there’s a genuine emotional intelligence working beneath it. White understands that beauty doesn’t cancel ugliness. Sometimes it’s the only vessel strong enough to carry it.
I came away from The Soundless Symphony feeling as if I’d wandered through a candlelit gallery of grief, myth, and private weather. It’s a collection with a distinct sensibility, romantic, mournful, ornate, and deeply invested in transformation. This book is at its best when its darkness opens toward tenderness, when the night doesn’t merely consume but shelters. I’d recommend it to readers who enjoy atmospheric poetry, gothic romantic imagery, mythic flourishes, and emotionally saturated writing that lingers in sorrow without surrendering entirely to it.
Pages: 75 | ASIN : B0H1NCP5Z8
A Warrior’s Destiny
A Warrior’s Destiny, by Denna Holm, is a paranormal romance with strong science fiction and fantasy elements, following Jada and Bryce as they try to repair a bond damaged by grief, fear, and years of silence. Jada is Bryce’s fated mate, but their beginning was shaped by violence and loss, and when Bryce falls into a dangerous coma, she is pulled back into his life and into a wider conflict involving shifters, vampires, fae, Djinn, alien worlds, and old powers that are not finished causing harm. At its heart, though, this is a story about two people trying to find their way back to each other.
What stood out to me most was how much of the book is built around emotional recovery rather than just romance. Jada is not simply stubborn or reluctant for the sake of drama. She is frightened, guilty, and deeply unsettled by what she has seen and what she has become. I appreciated that Denna Holm lets that discomfort sit on the page. It makes the fated-mate idea feel less like an easy shortcut and more like a problem the characters have to grow into. Bryce, too, carries pain in a quieter way. His devotion is clear, but the book does not pretend devotion fixes everything overnight. That gave the romance a heavier, more reflective feel than I expected.
The writing is direct and fast-moving, with a lot of dialogue and a steady stream of supernatural complications. Sometimes the world can feel somewhat crowded, with vampires, shifters, fae, Djinn, portals, councils, and past conflicts all pushing into the story at once. There is energy in that abundance. The book has the feel of a long-running series where every side character has history, every threat connects to something larger, and every quiet scene is sitting beside a much bigger storm. I also liked the author’s choice to make Jada’s inner struggle with her wolf part of the emotional plot. Her growth isn’t just about accepting Bryce. It’s about accepting herself.
I would recommend A Warrior’s Destiny to readers who enjoy paranormal romance that leans into series lore, fated mates, protective heroes, wounded heroines, and high-stakes supernatural conflict. It is best suited for readers who like their romance wrapped in action, alien-world politics, and fantasy danger rather than kept in a simple contemporary frame. For fans of immersive paranormal romance worlds, this book offers a passionate, dramatic, and sincere entry.
Pages: 363 | ASIN : B0GX322HVZ
A Thousand More
A Thousand More follows identical twins Michelle and Shelby, separated as infants after one is abandoned by her adoptive parents during a medical crisis. Raised in different families, each girl grows into a life shaped by love, loss, friendship, marriage, and secrets that should never have been kept. When a tragic accident and a case of mistaken identity finally force the buried truth into the open, the novel becomes a sweeping family drama about what people owe one another after betrayal, and whether love can survive the strange arithmetic of grief.
I was most drawn to the novel’s emotional architecture. K. S. Lynn builds the story across decades, allowing childhood friendships, first loves, parental devotion, and old wounds to accumulate real weight. The book doesn’t rush its heartbreak; it lets relationships settle into place before testing them. Michelle’s life with Brad and Liam, Shelby’s bond with her parents and Sam, and Martha’s long-held guilt all give the story a layered, lived-in feeling. The result is a novel that understands how family is not only inherited or chosen, but sometimes painfully discovered.
I really appreciated the way the book treats forgiveness as something thornier than a tidy moral victory. Seth’s cruelty, Ann’s weakness, Martha’s silence, Scott and Sam’s betrayal, and Liam’s grief all sit in the same emotional room, and the novel asks the reader to look at each without flattening them. Some turns are unabashedly dramatic, even melodramatic, but the sincerity of the storytelling keeps the pages moving. I found myself invested not because every character made wise choices, but because their poor choices had consequences that rippled outward with bruising persistence.
I think the book is best suited for readers who enjoy women’s fiction, family sagas, contemporary romance, and emotional literary drama. Readers who appreciate the moral entanglements of Jodi Picoult or the multigenerational heartache of Kristin Hannah will likely find themselves absorbed by Lynn’s blend of secrets, sorrow, and redemption. A Thousand More is a tender and twist-laden novel about the families we lose, the families we make, and the love that keeps arriving after we think our hearts are already full.
Pages: 456 | ASIN : B0FW6DDT7Y
