Ask the Author #3, Why fairies?

Once upon a time there was a girl who read a lot of science fiction and fantasy books.  I mean a lot.  A whole lot.  She grew up in Middle Earth, Narnia, Oz and a bunch of other magical worlds.  One day, she finally decided what she wanted to do when she grew up. She wanted to be a writer.  But rather than writing science fiction or fantasy, she wrote romance.  Why?  Because she fell in love with...love.

A few years after she started the greatest job in the history of jobs, (I mean, she got to go to work on her couch and wear holey jeans...and spend her day making up stories) she got an idea for fairies.  I mean, poof.  They were just there one day...like magic.  And it turned out Myrtle, Fern and Blossom were fun...and a bit inept.  But they had good hearts!  The books were published and Holly went on to write a bunch more romantic comedies, and then some romance + stories (women's fiction/romances).  But the fairies weren't done.  A new publisher picked them up and gave them new (much prettier) covers and put them back in the world!

So come visit Erie, PA (I always say it's the best city ever and it has almost everything...even fairies now) and Myrtle, Fern and Blossom in...Mad About Max, Magic for Joy, Miracles for Nick and Fairly Human!

Holly

The Naming of Things

I'm so excited that Hold Her Heart is coming out soon!  I loved writing the Words of the Heart series (there's one more book coming out next year...Between the Words).

In Carry Her Heart, you met Ned and Pip and read excerpts from Pip's journal in it.  You caught a glimpse of them in These Three Words and that book explored the words that matter the most.  In Hold Her Heart, each chapter starts with an excerpt from one of Pip's books.  This one is one of my favorites:

Words have power. They can cut, but they can also heal. 

They can hurt, but they can also uplift. 

But maybe even more than words themselves, names have power. 

If a rock weren’t called a rock, would it be as strong? 

If a cloud weren’t a cloud, what would it be? 

If I weren’t my mother’s daughter, would I still be me? 

—The Naming of Things, by Pip

I've explored the idea of words having power before in my romcom, Everything But... series.  I look at the news these days and see people using words as weapons.  They name things in a way designed to hurt cut.  They use words that are designed to divide people rather than bring them together.

I know my little stories won't change the world, but I hope that through them maybe a few readers stop and think about what words they use.

Words do have power.  They can shape the world around us.  So I plan to keep writing about love and talking about glee! I hope to use words that uplift and heal.  Words that remind people around me that there is love, beauty and glee around every corner...you just have to take a moment to look for it!

Holly

Vacation

I spent a week recently at the beach.  I'll confess, living on the shore of Lake Erie, I get to go to the beach a lot.  It's a perk.  And our beach here has inspired so many of my books.  Including my most recent ebook release, Same Time Next Summer.  I loved the idea of summer friends...who become so much more to each other. Keri Noble's Piece of my Heart really sums up the story for me.  The wistfulness of it all.  Beaches, summer friends...romance.  This book spoke to me as I wrote it.  It was one of the first Romance+ stories I did.  After years of writing comedies and sweet romances, it was a new stretch to look at a different type of story.  A different type of romance.

A summer kind of love!

We had a great week on the beach.  I read, I wrote, I ate a lot and I hung out with some of my favorite people on earth!

Now my vacation is over.  Summer is winding down here.  I heard my first geese of the season the other morning.  For me, that's always a sign that fall is on the horizon!  But I think we have time for a few more beach reads this year!  If not the beach, then a vacation read.

Did you go, or are you going, on vacation?

Holly