First, a big THANK YOU to John Clement for being my guest this week. He graciously has agreed to give away two copies of the next Dixie Hemingway mystery! And the winners are … KIRSTEN ROY and WENDY R!!! Congratulations! Please email me allison (at) allisonbrennan (dot) com with your mailing address and I’ll forward the information to John. I’d planned on writing a big wrap-up blog about the RT Book Reviews conference, but so many other authors have posted pictures and stories. So here’s my observations:

Laura Griffin and I are thrilled to announce book 2 in the Moreno & Hart Mysteries will be available on July 21 wherever digital books are sold! (Wild cheers from the crowd!) HIT AND RUN follows two more mysteries for our dynamic investigative duo, Scarlet Moreno and Krista Hart.Three years ago, when they were LAPD cops, they were nearly killed in an ambush. They quit the force and started Moreno & Hart Investigations in nearby Orange County.

So I was reading GalleyCat last week and noticed this tidbit: A Canadian parent filed a complaint to the Toronto library last year, asking to ban Dr. Seuss’ classic children’s book Hop on Pop because it “encourages children to use violence against their fathers.” The complaint was revealed this week when the Toronto Library released its Materials Review Committee report for 2013. The person suggested that the library remove the book from the library’s collection and “issue an apology to fathers in the GTA and pay for damages resulting from the book.” The committee rejected the complaint and retained the book in the children’s… Read More

Yes, I’ve been out of the loop the past couple of weeks … book deadline, college trip with my daughter, novella I’m writing with Laura, my daughter’s 18th birthday, and just yesterday I received 11 pages of notes from my editor on COMPULSION (Max Revere #2). The good news is that she loves the book and the story — and the other good news is that I have lots of revisions! Yes, I love revisions. I can take a good story and make it the best it can be because of editorial input. Most of the notes are about specifics… Read More

It’s Tuesday, which means we’re touring Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois. I plan on blogging about our trip next week! I would have loved to have done a journal as we went, but I’m not bringing my laptop with me. Max Revere and Lucy Kincaid are distinctly different characters. I love it, because I don’t want to get bored with either one, but sometimes going from Max to Lucy and back again can be a challenge. Right now, I’m writing a novella for Hit and Run, book two of the Moreno and Hart Mystery Series I’m co-writing with Laura Griffin…. Read More

I love reading a series. It’s the same reason I prefer television to movies. I like revisiting my favorite characters, finding out what they’re doing, how they’re growing, how they’re going to solve the Next Big Crime. So when I had the opportunity to write the Lucy Kincaid series I jumped at it. I knew from the minute Lucy survived her ordeal in FEAR NO EVIL that I wanted her to be a series character. It wasn’t until I wrote CUTTING EDGE six books later that I started to think that Sean Rogan might be the best man for her…. Read More

A second post today! Surprise! But I couldn’t contain my excitement. COLD SNAP is a finalist in the 2014 Thriller Awards for Best Paperback Original. I am totally surprised and thrilled and humbled because I am in AMAZING company, including MSW alum Kendra Elliot. I have been a judge for the Thriller Awards in all but three years of the contest, and one of those years I was the awards chair, so I know how difficult it is for judges to narrow down a list to just a few books. There are so many fabulous thrillers published every year, and… Read More

I’m back home after my mini-tour. I blogged about that last week, and all-in-all, I think it was time well spent. Except for the writing part. Usually I can write when I travel, but that’s when I fly to a conference and am at the same hotel for five days straight. I set aside writing time on a schedule so I know I’ll always put in my hours — the time changes depending on what I need to do at the conference, but I usually work either four hours in the morning or four hours in the afternoon. This helps… Read More

I never thought I’d write that! Book Tour! Wow 🙂 I haven’t been blogging much because I’ve been out of town on and off ever since Left Coast Crime in Monterey. And when I’ve been home, I’ve been writing and playing with the kids because they’ve missed me. So my plan to blog twice a week with one guest has failed. Hoping that I’ll pick it up again in the coming month! So, what’s this book tour been like?

THANK YOU to Face in a Book in El Dorado Hills for helping launch NOTORIOUS. And a special thanks to my friend Brenda Novak who co-signed with me. Her newest book in her Whiskey Creek series COME HOME TO ME (set in California’s Gold Country) came out the same day! We had a fabulous turnout, and I greatly appreciate all the support from my friends and readers who came — including those who drove all the way from Napa! I was so humbled and thrilled to talk about Max Revere and meet so many of my readers. My husband took… Read More