HER PIRATES HEART - LISA ANN VERGE

HER PIRATE HEART

By

Lisa Ann Verge

For the last few years we have been delighted by the mesmerizing works of Lisa Verge Higgins and her works in the Women’s Fiction genre.  Her stories have been poignant, hitting close to home and heart of the women who read her novels.  Little did many of us know of a lighter and bawdier side of Lisa. 

During her college years she started writing historical novels that would curl the toes of the staunchest church goer.  But the novels were not devoted to heavy breathing, they were living works to a time before ours.  She wrote novels that believed the women were not chattel, that they were capable of having a voice and controlling their destiny.

SYNOPSIS

Another sexy, adventurous romance from the RITA-nominated author of seventeen novels, Lisa Ann Verge 

"A rousing swashbucker . . . a wonderful read!" --RT Book Reviews 

"Sweaty, gritty, and suspenseful. Don't miss it!" --Rendezvous 

"Verge is a tale-teller whose writing is stunningly real." --Affaire de Coeur 

WINNER Best Swashbuckler of the Year -- RT Book Reviews 

When the ravages of war destroy her world, newly-orphaned Adriana Joubert binds her chest and slips into the disguise of a sailor boy. With nothing left to lose, she’s determined to sign on to the boldest pirate ship in Saint Malo Bay. She figures she’ll help the captain capture a few rich prizes, and a lifetime of security will surely follow. 

But the notorious Captain Wolfe has better things to do than hunt English ships and Spanish galleons. He launches his motley crew clear across the world in pursuit of a man who owes him blood. He soon unmasks the smart-mouthed, dirty-faced ship’s-boy and, for her protection, confines her to his own cabin. But as mutiny brews and his enemy comes into sight, Captain Wolfe realizes that his greatest battle will be to win Adriana’s heart. 

REVIEW

Her Pirate Heart is a new work, but stays true to her earlier style of writing.  The only differences show in Lisa’s growth and maturity as an author.  This can be seen in the depth of development of her core characters as the live, breath and walk across the pages of the novel.  The storyline and plots of the book are full of twists that don’t allow the reader time to take a breath before sending them off on another hair-raising turn. 

Lisa’s ability to raise the temperature in the room has not disappeared with time, either.  While ramping up the temp and the hormones, she manages to accomplish it without embarrassing and tipping the scale to the more genteel side of the bedroom scene. (For once, maybe I didn’t quite skip over the “good” parts… lol.)

I love that Lisa chose to write about a lesser known time and area of early American, English, and French history as a historical novel.  The Carolinas and early settlement, including stories about early settlement of the Huguenots is not front shelf material at the library.  I love it, because it is part of my family history, at least the Huguenot portion of it.  Except my family immigrated straight to New Orleans instead of the Carolinas during that time.  Life if interesting.

Lisa, I hope to see more of your historical novels, along with your contemporary women’s fiction works in the future.  The each command and fill a much needed void in the shelves of today’s literature.  I think that you have proven, that a good story-teller transcends genre.  It would be interesting to see where your lively and lovely imagination might take us next.

You can acquire your own copy of Her Pirate Heart  at Amazon

ABOUT LISA ANN VERGE

Lisa Ann Verge is the critically acclaimed RITA-nominated author of seventeen novels that have been published worldwide and translated into as many languages. She started her career writing emotionally intense romances about hot men and dangerous women, and now she also writes life-affirming women's fiction under the name Lisa Verge Higgins. A finalist for Romantic Times' book awards five times over, Lisa has won the Golden Leaf and the Bean Pot, and twice she has cracked Barnes & Noble's General Fiction Forum's top twenty books of the year. She currently lives in New Jersey with her husband and their three daughters, who never fail to make life interesting.

Connect with her at:

Website: www.lisavergehiggins.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/lisaannverge
Twitter: @lisaannverge
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/LisaAnnVerge

Heaven In His Arms - A Book Review

Heaven In His Arms

By 

Lisa Verge Higgins

SYNOPSIS

Struggling to survive on the streets of Paris, Genevieve will do anything to start a new life. She’ll even switch places with a King’s Girl, one of many penniless young noblewomen destined to be shipped to the savage French colonies. It’s a dangerous masquerade that comes with a high price: Once in Quebec, Genny will have to marry a stranger.

Notorious explorer André Lefebvre has too many reasons not to take a wife. He’s launching a western expedition deep into untamed lands—a perilous journey that no gentlewoman could possibly survive. Forced to exchange vows with a King’s Girl in order to receive royal consent, he intends to leave his wife-of-convenience safely behind.

But once set loose in the New World, Genny defies her brawny, free-spirited husband, preferring to seduce rather than obey. She’ll risk any danger for a chance to build a real future . . . even the danger to her own heart. 

REVIEW

To date, I have loved and enjoyed the light lyrical works of Lisa Verge Higgins’ Historical Romance novels and novellas.  In His Arms left the “light and lyrical” behind to delve into the realms of a realistic historical fiction that covered an Era and place that are typically overlooked by historical fiction writers.  True to Lisa’s style, the novel maintained the deep emotional and lyrical rhythms of the bedroom that she is famous for and does so well.  But this time, she left the civilized world behind and planted the hero and heroine (Genny and Andre) in the deep northern woods of colonial Canada, during the 1700’s when it was still a wild and unexplored territory. 

Just as you reached a point in your reading, when you thought that you might know the back story for Genny, a turn of the page revealed a new clue leading you down an unexpected path out in the wilds.  But these wilds were not fraught with blood-curdling, heathens who would lift your scalp (even if Andre tried his best to get the socialite upper-class French Courtesan to believe him). 

In truth Genny was made of the stuff, and had the moral caliber and fortitude that women of that day needed to live and survive in the remote backwoods and wilds of a wilderness.  Or, was she running from a bigger monster that anything that the wilds of the Canadian wilderness could throw her way?

Just like in real life, no matter how determined you are to lock your heart and mind away, if you continually find it in close quarters with a wildly enticing creature for days and weeks on end, whose very essence and being start to seep and creep into your pores, you wear down.  Much like a strong rock wall held together with old mortar and daub, the fortification slowly crumbles as love and friendship seep down through the cracks and daub.  Finally, one hard knock (a crisis of potential loss) sends all the final reserves tumbling into a pile of defeat.

I loved the questions that were raised in the story line, the fact that the ebb and flow allowed each of the readers to draw their own conclusions to what really happened in Andre and Genny’s past, and outside the written pages of the novel.  I do hope that a sequel to In His Arms will come along before long, because there are many twists and turns, and discoveries waiting to happen; along with much more history waiting to peek out from behind unexpected corners, providing terror and potential reward.

Lisa gives her readers strong, independent heroines, who are capable of conquering their worlds and making their own way through adversity.  At the same time, she knows how to provide strong and stalwart heroes to serve as supporting cast, without being wimps and bedroom eye-candy.  On the other hand, her cast of villains is varied and crosses the gender lines.  They are as likely be pulled from places you would expect supporting characters to come from as from the gutters and barrooms of the back alleys.  What she shows is that goodness and evil prevail in all walks of life.  Just like in real life, you never know where your help will come from, nor where the nefarious blackguard will leap out from to destroy your world.

Lisa, has left the soufflé romance in the dirt, with this wonderful piece.  I give it a FIVE STAR rating for story-telling, character development, and romance.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Lisa Ann Verge is the critically acclaimed RITA-nominated author of seventeen novels that have been published worldwide and translated into as many languages. She started her career writing emotionally intense romances about hot men and dangerous women, and now she also writes life-affirming women's fiction under the name Lisa Verge Higgins. A finalist for Romantic Times' book awards five times over, Lisa has won the Golden Leaf and the Bean Pot, and twice she has cracked Barnes & Noble's General Fiction Forum's top twenty books of the year. She currently lives in New Jersey with her husband and their three daughters, who never fail to make life interesting

YOU CAN BUY IN HIS ARMS HERE

Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, iBooks, andGoogle Play!

SENSELESS ACTS OF BEAUTY

By

Lisa Verge Higgins

Synopsis

A new novel of women's friendship from the author of Random Acts of Kindness that will appeal to fans of Kristin Hannah, Luanne Rice, and Karen White.
Tess has a secret. For fifteen years she has been furtively following  the life of the daughter she gave up as an infant for adoption.  But  when Sadie runs away from home determined to find her birth mother, Tess  has no choice but to hunt down the desperate girl in the one place she
dreads--Pine Lake, where a terrible, buried secret threatens to destroy  them both.

Preview

I spent this last month in the company of a group of good friends and Lisa Higgins at Goodreads.  Deb Haupt hosted a month long read for Senseless Acts of Beauty on the General Fiction Forum Expats Group.  As always, the group was a rollicking discussion across the airwaves and between Continents as we worked our way through the book with Lisa and Deb.

Review

Lisa has become known for her Women’s Fiction and novels that address issues that strike the very core of women’s hearts and the essence of who we are.  She seems to be able to crawl into our psyche and address the very issues we are most afraid to address.  She brings them to life with her special magic and a modicum of levity and heart, then she nails us between the eyes with the reality of life.

With Senseless Acts of Beauty, Lisa took the bare bones of our human need to be accepted and loved.  She addressed our basic need to have a safe place to call home and nailed the story to the barn wall. She has captured the very essence of the fear, the anxiety, the confusion, the sadness, the loneliness, and most of all the "lostness" of kids that just don't feel like they truly belong.

There are the lucky ones that are truly loved at home.  But then there are those like Tess, where home was just a Wrecking Derby. “Love” was a “longed for dream” that she really did not know what it really was, and if and when someone showed her a basic kindness, she ran for the hills. She did not know how to receive or reciprocate those emotions of tender feelings -- they were truly foreign. The one time in her life that she actually found and felt those feelings was with Riley's grandparents.

I love the way Lisa uses words and finds symbolism in imagery within her stories. It broadens the visual experience of her novels.  So many times when words will fail to get an emotion across, simple visual imagery will send us across vast wonders of beauty or terror that will bring that emotion the writer is trying to describe pouring from our souls.  Lisa is a master at this and utilized it often in the pages of this book.  She was also capable of letting her "geek" escape, and sending this reader on a trip to google to discover some new source that I had forgotten about or had yet to know.  (I love it when the “geek” escapes and we all learn something new.

In the end, once again, Lisa led us all to the discovery of the power of love, and that love can conquer all.  I think that is why I find her stories so habit forming and why I keep watching for them next new book at the bookstore.  

About the Author

Lisa Verge Higgins is the RITA-nominated author of seventeen novels that have been published worldwide and translated into as many languages--quite a switch for this former PhD candidate in chemistry. A mother of three, this five-time RT Book Awards finalist has won the Golden Leaf, The Bean Pot, and twice has been anointed by Barnes & Noble's General Fiction Forum for their top twenty novels-of-the-year. Her stories about women’s lives and women’s friendships have been described by critics as “joyous,” “uplifting,” “full of humor, love and life lessons,” and “inspire us to focus on what’s really important in our lives.” When not writing stories, Lisa is reading them as a reviewer for The New York Journal of Books. She currently lives in New Jersey with her husband and their three teenage daughters, who never fail to make life interesting. 

Lisa and her books can be found on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and other Indie bookstores online.

The Faery Bride - Review and Interview

By

Lisa Ann Verge

SYNOPSIS

A RITA finalist from Lisa Ann Verge, the multiple-award-winning author of historical and paranormal romance. 

Rhys is a man accursed, forced to hide his scarred face behind a leather mask. When rumors reach Wales of an Irishwoman with healing powers, he crosses a sea to kidnap her. But Aileen is no frightened girl, and she will move the Welsh lord as no blue-blooded beauty ever has. 

Possessed with the gift of ancient magic, Aileen knows her captor is a man more afflicted in spirit than flesh. She despises him for stealing her from home, but she can’t deny the passion that flares between them. Time may heal the scars on Rhys’s face . . . but Aileen fears it will take a miracle to change his unbelieving heart. 

REVIEW

After weeks of “heavy”, although delightful, reading through some rather thick tombs of historical fiction, what a delight to take an afternoon and evening of a cold wet sleety day and curl up with one of my favorite authors.  This time I went back and actually read her first publication from her college years…back when her head was still filled with chemistry formulas and other academia, though you would never know it to read this hot and steamy novel.

Set in Wales the end of the 1200s when England was still a wild land and the Throne of England did not truly include the land of Wales…There Once Was A Prince of Wales….  While a historical romance in its’ truest form, Faery Bride also was a bit of fantasy and enlarged on the strong superstitions of the local Welsh people of the era.  Aileen, the young “doctor” or healer that was kidnapped from an island off the coast of Ireland and whisked away to the highlands of Wales to heal the Prince of the land, Rhys, was absconded because of the rumors of her healing skills beyond the “normal”.  The Prince of the land had tried every healer and cure available for the last years to no avail and this was his last resort for a cure for the malady that had turned him from a tall handsome prince to a masked monster.  In truth, she had come from an ancient line of healers and there was healing in her hands.

On the way to the healing, there was one small misadventure…Rhys was blindsided by Aileen’s beauty and instead of seeking healing, kidnaped her. Oops.  One small descriptive about Aileen, she was a long tall red-headed firestorm (beauty is always in the mind of the beholder).  Her temper and spirit matched her fiery mane and the rest of the delightful rollicking story kept me in stitches or fanning my fancy to the final pages as happily ever after finally came to the rescue of the remainder of castle and its population.

This earlier work was totally different from the modern women’s literature that Lisa has been writing in the last few years.  Her personality and storyline were just as mesmerizing and entertaining as I rolled through the pages, figuratively and otherwise (smile wink).  I look forward to Lisa continuing to re-release some of her original works for our continued enjoyment in the coming months.  My smile will continue to widen in delight.

INTERVIEW

Hello Lisa, I love getting a chance to catch you between exciting books.  Just a couple of questions.

Don’t you have a new book being released in a few days?  Can you give us a blurb about it?

Hello, Karen, thanks so much for welcoming me to Shade Tree Book Reviews! 

I do have a new book coming out, writing as Lisa Verge Higgins – another novel about the warmth and complexity of women’s lives and women’s friendships.   SENSELESS ACTS OF BEAUTY is about three women—two high school friends who grew up in very different parts of their hometown, and the fourteen-year-old daughter one of them gave up for adoption.

Tess has a secret:  For fifteen years she has been furtively following the life of the daughter she gave up as an infant for adoption.  But when Sadie runs away from home determined to find her birth mother, Tess has no choice but to hunt down the desperate girl in the one place she dreads—Pine Lake, where a terrible, buried secret threatens to destroy them both.

It’s being released on March 10^th, can’t wait!

Other than “because I needed to earn money”. What made you think to try your hand at writing a book in the middle of your post-graduate work?  Geez, my daughter is in the middle of hers and she can’t see straight, she is so busy.

Graduate school is grueling, as your daughter knows, and I didn’t actually write while I was working on my Ph.D.  It was only after I took a leave of absence that I put pen to paper (actually, fingers to manual-Smith-Corona!  Anyone remembers those days?)  Than the stories flooded out of me. I wrote with no expectation of publication, only to use the creative side of my brain which I’d apparently have to suppress while doing lab work, teaching introductory chemistry, and taking a few classes of my own.  It was such a relief to have time to write!

What is the next book from your delightfully youthful and wicked past?  How many did you write while you were in graduate school and just after, before “retiring”?

There’s an old story about Pavarotti.  Apparently, he intended to become a teacher in his youth, but he loved to sing.  So he studied and he sang and agonized about which career path to follow.  He finally asked his father for advice.  His father said:  You can’t sit in two chairs. 

Thankfully, Pavarotti sat in the right chair!

That’s sort of how I felt after I wrote (and sold) three historical romances.  Should I stick with my stable job as a chemist?  Or should I strike out and make a go at writing?  Although I miss the lab now and again, I’ve never regretted my choice.

As for my next book from my wicked past . . .I recently released HEAVEN IN HIS ARMS, which is a twist on the mail-order bride theme set in colonial North America.  Genny is a “King’s Girl,” one of dozens of women swept off the streets of Paris to be shipped to the colonies to marry settlers. Except the man she’s married off to is an explorer with big plans and no intention of settling.  But city-smart, determined Genny has traveled across an ocean to start a new life, so she sets off into the wild to track him down. 

How cool…new book on my stack J

With your wonderful recent success in Women’s fiction and literature, do you think you will ever be tempted to return to historical romance again?  If so,  What century would we find you in next?

Funny you should ask, because during a recent one-month writing challenge, I penned about a third of the sequel to The Faery Bride!   It follows the adventures of Aileen’s dreamy, favored sister Cairenn, who stumbles across a mysterious man washed up on the shores of her island.  It was a lot of fun to write!

That book – if I finish it! – will be the fourth installment in the Celtic Legends Series.  I enjoyed returning to that world—the world of The Faery Bride, Twice Upon A Time, and The O’Madden—where there’s always love and magic in the air. 

Something tells me, Lisa, that no matter what genre you tackle you would make it something that wraps around our hearts and minds and gives each of us readers a bad case of “gotta have more of this!”

Thank you for taking the time from your hectic schedule to once again drop by and say high.  You are always welcome.

Thanks so much Karen!  The pleasure is mine. 

 ABOUT AUTHOR
Lisa Verge Higgins is the bestselling author of seventeen novels that have been published worldwide and translated into as many languages—quite a switch for this former Ph.D. candidate in chemistry. Currently writing women’s fiction for Hachette, Lisa’s books have finalled for a RITA, won the Golden Leaf and Bean Pot Awards, and twice she has cracked Barnes & Noble’s General Fiction Forum’s top twenty books of the year. She currently lives in New Jersey with her husband and their three teenage daughters, who never fail to make life interesting.
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RANDOM ACTS OF KINDNESS

Random

Acts of Kindness

By

Lisa Verge Higgins

Lisa Verge Higgins has a wonderful way of taking the mundane of life, the everyday crisis that we live through and turning it into a delightful read that leaves us giggling, laughing, and dabbing at our eyes as our mascara slides down our cheeks either in sheer mirth or in gut wrenching sobs as we connect at an intimate level with what is happening to the characters in one of her novels.

I have had the unique pleasure of participating in lively and spirited book club reads with Lisa over the last few years as her books have been released, as hosted by Debbie Haupt through the General Fiction board at the now defunct Barnes and Nobles Book Clubs.  Each book was a month long road through one of her works and punctuated with spirited dialogue and camaraderie with Lisa’s willing participation.  The days were filled with laughter and tears, arguments and debates, but most of all lots of fun. 

The last book that came out in 2013 was Random Acts of Kindness.  As we all discovered very quickly, this was a story of a different flavor.  Even though there was some light hearted banter between the characters of Random Acts of Kindness, the subject matter of this book seemed to hit most of us a little closer to home and on issues a little more difficult to talk about. 

What do you say to your sister who is dying of cancer?  Or to your sister if you have cancer but have a different viewpoint on how you want to deal with facing the possibility of imminent death?  How do you keep your head above the water and blues?

What do you say to your friends when you can’t even admit to yourself that you can’t handle the failure going on in your own life?  You have always been the rock, the one who could be counted on to come through, but you know you can’t be perfect anymore. 
What do you do? How do you share your worst nightmare of your married life with your friends?  How can you let them share with you something that you can’t even face or share with yourself?

The characters within the pages deal with such real turmoil on levels that the reader can identify with and feel, as if the emotions roiling within are their own.  You know that the writer has truly hit home when you have to set the book aside and pick up the box of tissue and hold it as the sobs wrack your soul, for you have lived that experience, that trial. 

In the guise of a farewell road trip for one of the characters, each of the characters faces their own demons and discovers the strength and friendship of the other friends along the way, that help them through their own crisis. 

Though a much darker novel than her others, Random Acts of Kindness does not lack for Lisa’s magical touch of well-placed hilarity where it is needed, in a timely manner.  Even though this was probably the most difficult of all the novels for me to read because I identified so closely with the subject matter, I would consider this probably the best of her literary works to date. 

Random Acts of Kindness is worthy of five stars (and 3 boxes of tissue).  A job well done.

The sequel to Random Acts of Kindness  will be coming out in the Spring of 2015.  You will not want to miss the continuing story of the friends we first met on the road trip across America in Random Acts of Kindness.  There is nothing like life time friends that you can depend on when life just "happens", for that is when you find out who your friends truly are.  

Keep up with Lisa Verge Higgins and her current books at:

Facebook: www.facebook.com/lisavergehiggins

Twitter: www.twitter.com/lvhiggins

Pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/lisavergehiggin/

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3466934.Lisa_Verge_Higgins

INTERVIEW WITH LISA VERGE HIGGINS

Interview with

Lisa Verge Higgins

Before I start the interview with Lisa Verge Higgins, a noted award winning author, I want to introduce her a little.  I have had the opportunity of participating in book club reads, through Barnes & Nobles, of Lisa’s first three Women’s Fiction books, then under another venue hosted by The Reading Frenzy and Debbie Haupt, participated in her fourth book read. 

When you are reading a book over a month and discussing it at length with multiple women and the author things can get lively.  They did.  Lisa’s intellect and sense of humor quickly came out as at times keyboards burned with interactions between the participants and Lisa as we discussed the foibles of the characters in the book.  Shared laughter and tears made the circles on many occasions because we could identify with Lisa’s characters.  They could have been us or our husbands or boyfriends.  We all came to love Lisa dearly and the reading group grew with the reads, but few left.

It is with great joy, and much pride that I am privileged to introduce Lisa Verge Higgins you.  I hope that you get to know her in this interview and come to love her as much as I have, as you read her books.  And now for an interview about Lisa’s favorite book (and one of mine) and other tidbitsl

Lisa, welcome to Blogging Under the Shade Tree and Shade Tree Book Reviews.  We are so glad to have you with us today.  Could you tell us a little about your favorite novel, The Proper Care and Maintenance of Friendship?

I’d love to!  Proper Care is about adventurer Rachel Braun, one of those crazy live-in-the-moment women who arranges, in the event of her death, to have pre-written letters forwarded to her best friends—letters that challenge them to face their biggest fears.  Sarah, an international relief worker, is compelled to track down the only man she ever loved. Stay-at-home mom Kate must confront her fear of heights by skydiving and soon finds that her new hobby is affecting her once-tranquil marriage. And Jo, a media mogul voted “least likely to breed,” is given the most terrifying assignment of all: caring for Rachel’s orphaned and grieving little girl.

 Why did you choose The Proper Care and Maintenance of Friendship as your favorite of all your novels?

Honestly, I feel a little uneasy confessing that I have a favorite among seventeen novels, but I admit I suffer from “Precious Firstborn Syndrome.”  Proper Care was my very first novel of women’s fiction, and it’s particularly special to me because it was almost never born. 

Some of your readers may know that after my wicked past writing romances, I took a ten-year hiatus to raise my three daughters.  When I finally picked up my pen again, what came out of that rush of inspiration was the story that would become Proper Care.  A decade had passed since I’d been involved in the publishing world and many of my contacts had moved on, so like many mothers coming back into the workplace, I had to start anew.  I tried to sell the story for two years, getting lots of nibbles but no real bites.  Demoralized, I’d decided to dust off my chemistry degree and look for real work.

As sometimes happens in these instances, the Universe intervened.  I happened to see an opportunity to attend a speed-pitching session with a local writer’s group. To make the meeting would require an immense amount juggling and shuffling—a mother of three active girls always works on Saturdays.  I almost didn’t go, resigned that it Wasn’t Meant To Be.  But I took a deep breath, gathered the last of my heart, and with the generous help of friends willing to take over my schedule . . . I just did it.  It was there that I met my future editor, who loved my pitch and bought Proper Care within a week.

It’s no coincidence that in One Good Friend Deserves Another, Friendship Makes The Heart Grow Fonder, and even Random Acts of Kindness, my characters tend to leap off of cliffs (or bridges, or rocks). It’s one of the major themes: Great change often involves leaps of faith, and a willingness to break through fear in order to grow.

A chemist? Seriously?

Yeah, I know! When I first started writing novels, I was still studying for a Ph.D in organic chemistry. I loved teaching and research, but at the time I wanted to do something creative, too.  So I started writing a novel on the side.  Within a year I shocked my lab-mates by selling that book, and then over the next few years I sold more.  Eventually, I had to make the difficult decision of choosing between being a chemist or a writer.  It was one of those leaps of faith.  I’ve never regretted the decision.

As an interesting aside, my eldest daughter has a degree in physics, and she just sold three science fiction novels to Random House!  The first, Equation of State, is coming out in August 2015.  So the nut doesn’t fall very far from the tree....

Do you have any interesting anecdotes about writing the book?

Because Proper Care is quite different from my earlier books—which were all sexy, adventurous romances—this was the first of my novels that I allowed my (older) teenage daughters to read. 

After my middle daughter finished the book, she told me, quite bluntly, that it “made her curious about my sex life.” 

I said, “Honey, I’m your mother.  I don’t have a sex life.”

 

Where do you get your ideas?

I suspect there’s an “idea miasma” around us at all times, and those who are attuned to it—writers, painters, musicians—pull inspiration from the webbing all the time.  We take it this source for granted, which is why the question always pulls us up short.

One thing is for sure:  Women’s lives and women’s friendships are themes that thrum through all my stories, mostly because at this stage of life those issues have become close to my heart.  The books that I’ve been writing about lately involve a group of twelve women who went to high school together in the little Adirondack town of Pine Lake.  I’m having a wonderful time focusing on a small community of women who have been scattered about, and are only now starting to realize the importance of old friends.  Random Acts of Kindness is the first in the series—about a woman-in-distress who commits an act of generosity that comes back to her in ways she could never have expected. 

I dedicated that book to my mother, who took in foster children while I was growing up.  At various times in my childhood, there’d be six or seven kids sleeping in our little cape house. I just took this for granted. I didn’t really understand the magnitude of her generosity and kindness until I was older and had kids of my own.  Now I stand in awe of what she did for so many souls.

What are you working on now?

I’m thrilled to announce that my next book, Senseless Acts of Beauty, is now available for pre-order in anticipation of its March 10, 2015 publication date. Senseless Acts of Beauty takes up the story of two more Pine Lake women, one of whom is the notorious Tess Hendrick whose fate was left a mystery in Random Acts of Kindness. 

Tess has a secret: For fifteen years she has been furtively following the life of the daughter she gave up as an infant for adoption. But when Sadie runs away from home determined to find her birth mother, Tess has no choice but to hunt down the desperate girl in the one place she dreads—Pine Lake, where a terrible, buried secret threatens to destroy them both.

My editor and critique group have said that this is the most emotionally intense novel of the group.  I just finished proofreading the pages before it goes to press, and I still well up with happy tears when I read the ending.

As always, Lisa, you have been generous in sharing with our readers some of true meat of your work.  I personally look forward to once again reading your next offering to women’s fiction.  Each of your books, to date, have spoke to this reader and blogger.  You are a true joy to visit with.  Thank you for being here.

Awwwww.... thanks so much!  The pleasure has been all mine! 

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 In the coming weeks look for book reviews at Blogging Under the Shade Tree

and Shade Tree Book Reviews for books reviews on all of Lisa’s Women’s fiction collection.