Thanks for joining us! Our members were drawn together by our love of writing and a desire to share our musings and foresight, challenges and successes with readers and writers alike. We blog on craft, the writers life, upcoming projects, and the world as we see it. We invite you to drop in often - subscribe or follow -to hear the varied voices we bring as Novel Spaces.
Who are we?
Jewel Amethyst was born and raised on the lovely island of St. Kitts in the Caribbean. Her first full length novel,
A Marriage of Convenience, comes out August 2009. Her holiday romance story,
From SKB with Love is part of an anthology of romance stories
Holiday Brides: Gifts of Love which includes stories by Farrah Rochon and Stefanie Worth due to be released in October 2009. Jewel lives with her husband and kids in Maryland where she enjoys writing fiction. She also has a passion for writing poetry and short stories emphasizing Kittitian culture and language.
Devon Vaughn Archer is the bestselling author of romance, urban, and mainstream fiction. His latest novel is a tale of seduction, passion, betrayal, revenge, and danger, titled
The Secrets of Paradise Bay (Urban Books, 2010). Devon has written a number of contemporary romances for Harlequin's Kimani Press, including
Kissing the Man Next Door and
Christmas Diamonds. He has the distinction of being the first male to write for Harlequin's Arabesque line with the 2006 hit mainstream romance,
Love Once Again. Archer also writes mystery and thriller fiction under the name R. Barri Flowers. Upcoming novels from Devon Vaughn Archer include
The Hitman's Woman (Urban Books, Summer 2011) and
Pleasure Me in Hawaii (Kimani, June 2011).
Do you like passion with your fiction? Hi everyone, I'm Kaz Augustin and I write mostly science-fiction romance, although I also write fantasy and it appears that the contemporary romance bug has recently jumped on my back too! I'm in Malaysia, so you'll probably read my posts and comments twelve hours after everybody else. LOL I'm proud to be part of this dynamic and diverse group and hope you enjoy our posts and our work.
Mollie lives in Cheshire, England with her husband and son. A former director of finance, she was a latecomer to writing. So far she has written five adult books of provocative romance and alluring suspense. A lover of sexy romance with the hint of danger, Mollie tackles some difficult issues for her characters but always ensures a happy ever after for the good guys. All her books are under contract with Black Opal Books. The first one,
The Secret At Arnford Hall, was published in February, with the second one,
Guiltless, is due at the end of August. All her books so far are in excess of 100k words. Always up for a challenge, she is currently trying her hand at a short story.
Mollie is a member of International Thriller Writers' group & UK Romantic Novelists' Association. She loves eating chocolate, drinking Prosecco and driving fast cars. She writes because she wants to and goes to the gym because she has to.
A native of Chicago’s Southside, Phyllis Bourne began her writing career as a crime reporter for the
Ft. Wayne News-Sentinel and the
South Florida Sun-Sentinel. After years of chasing cops and criminals, she left reporting to write about life’s sweeter side.
Her books are about true love and happily-ever-afters. She blogs about looking and feeling great – even on deadline.
John Brantingham's poems, essays, and stories have been published in hundreds of magazines and on Garrison Keillor's Writer's Almanac. His books include
Mann of War, Let Us All Pray Now to Our Own Strange Gods, The Gift of Form, and
East of Los Angeles. He teaches at Mt. San Antonio College just East of Los Angeles where he lives with his wife Ann.
Velda Brotherton’s first love has always been fiction. From Western Historical romances to women’s fiction, mysteries and an occasional out-of-the-box tale, she also occasionally turns her attention to short stories, which have been published in 15 anthologies over the past few years. Her latest novel,
Beyond the Moon, and a Western Historical romance,
Rowena’s Hellion, were published in 2014. The second in her Twist of Poe series was released in 2015. Still to come is a gritty horror tale of demonic possession. Most every day she can be found in her office in the wilderness of the Ozarks, pounding away at her keyboard.
Joyce Ann Brown, the author of the
Psycho Cat and the Landlady Mystery series, set in Kansas City, was a librarian, a landlady, and a realtor before becoming a short story and novel writer. She also has two mischievous cats. Her actual tenants have never disappeared, murdered, or been murdered. Nor have any of them found a skeleton in the attic. Joyce has never solved a crime. Moose and Chloe, her cats, haven’t sniffed out a mystery, at least not yet.
Joyce spends her days writing (with a few breaks for tennis, walking, and book clubs) so that Beth, the landlady in the series, and Sylvester, the Psycho Cat, can make up for her real-life lack of excitement in a big way.
After a successful career in mathematics and computer science, receiving grants from the National Science Foundation and NASA, and being listed in
Who’s Who in Computer Science and
Two Thousand Notable Americans, James R. Callan turned to his first love—writing. He has had four non-fiction books published. He now concentrates on his favorite genre, mystery/suspense, with his sixth book releasing in 2015.
Marta Chausée's first full-length mystery,
Murder's Last Resort, was a winner in the 2011 Dark Oak Contest and is published by Oak Tree Press. Her second book,
Buried in Berlin, will be released in Spring, 2016. Both books feature Maya French, someone Kinky Friedman says is "...one of the best heroines of mystery to come along in decades...the bastard literary child of Agatha Christie and Lt. Colombo." Marta's memoir pieces, flash fiction and poetry have also won awards and prizes in various literary journals.
Marta grew up a cross-cultural mess in the oldest 'hood of Los Angeles. She explored caves in the foothills and spied on hobo camps in the arroyos near her home. Her friends were as mixed up and foolhardy as she, creating play kingdoms at the lagoon and secret clubs in the McGrey house, an abandoned mansion near Marmion Way. She once crossed the Sahara with three friends and 15 crazed Moroccans in a beat down, rusty old Jeep, and was recently lost in Alexandria, Egypt for six hours. She weaves these and other adventures into her tall tales and short stories. Marta collects experiences and found objects for future projects. She sashays along the Road of Happy Destiny, where she also dances, and takes long bicycle rides, ever searching for the perfect pomegranate.
William Doonan is an archaeologist and professor of anthropology in Sacramento, CA. He has spent many years conducting excavations in Central and South America. He is also a veteran cruise ship lecturer, traveling the world and speaking on topics as diverse as the Trojan War, piracy in the Adriatic, and the peopling of the Americas.
Doonan is the author of three mystery novels.
Grave Passage and
Mediterranean Grave recount the adventures of an octogenarian detective who solves crimes on cruise ships. His new archaeological mystery
American Caliphate was released by Dark Oak Mysteries in April 2012.
Doonan lives in Sacramento with his wife and two sons. He blogs about undead conquistador mummies at
www.themumiesofblogspace9.com.
Mix knowledge of voodoo, Louisiana politics and forensic social work with the dedication to write fiction while working each day as a clinical social worker, and you get a snapshot of author Lynn Emery. Lynn has been a contributing consultant to the magazine
Today’s Black Woman for three articles about contemporary relationships between black men and women. Lynn is a licensed social worker with a special interest in mental health issues as they affect women. Lynn has sold fourteen novels to four major publishers. BET produced a movie based on her novel
After All. Currently she is marketing a murder mystery. Lynn is a native of Baton Rouge and is a member of Mystery Writers of America, Romance Writers of America, and Novelists, Inc.
Sunny Frazier is a Navy veteran and a former newspaper reporter until the publication folded. She joined the Fresno County Sheriff's Dept. and worked as a confidential secretary for an undercover narcotics team. After 17 years in law enforcement, she turned her energies to writing the Christy Bristol Astrology Mysteries. Based in the San Joaquin Valley of California, the novels are inspired by real cases and 40 years of casting horoscopes. Frazier is also acquisitions editor for Oak Tree Press.
Che Gilson is the author of
Avigon and
Avigon: Gods and Demons, graphic novels published by Image Comics and illustrated by Jimmy Robinson. She went on to write
Dark Moon Diary volume 1 and 2 published by TOKYOPOP and illustrated by Brett Uher. Her short fiction has appeared in the e-zines Drops of Crimson and Luna Station Quarterly. Most recently her urban fantasy novella
Carmine Rojas: Dog Fight was acquired by Black Opal Books. She is also an artist and attended Savannah College of Art and Design, majoring in sequential art. Fiction, particularly Middle Grade, comic books, and Young Adult have been a lifelong passion.
Charles reads, writes, and blogs from his home in the woods of southern Louisiana. He’s written fantasy, horror, westerns, and a lot of other strange things. One of his weirdest works is a chapbook of vampire haiku called
Wanting the Mouth of a Lover. He also has a nonfiction book out called
Write With Fire which is a collection of essays and how-to articles on writing. Charles’s wife, Lana, is a talented artist in her own right.
KeVin Killiany has been married to Valerie for three decades and the father of Alethea, Anson, and Daya for various shorter periods of time. In addition to being a writer, KeVin has been a teacher, photographer, at-risk intervention counselor, warehouse grunt, associate pastor, paperboy, and community services case manager. KeVin has published two novels set in the MechWarrior universe and two volumes of the
Star Trek: Starfleet Corps of Engineers series. He has published short fiction in Star Trek, Doctor Who, BattleTech, and Shadowrun universes. KeVin also writes web content and "fluff" (in-character guides and reference books) for several role-playing, video, and tabletop games. Though his published works to date have been science fiction, KeVin also writes mystery and romance. He and Valerie live in Wilmington, NC.
Maggie King is the author of the Hazel Rose Book Group Mysteries, including
Murder at the Book Group and
Murder at the Moonshine Inn. She contributed the stories “A Not So Genteel Murder” and “Reunion in Shockoe Slip” to the
Virginia is for Mysteries anthologies. “Wine, Women, and Wrong” appears in
50 Shades of Cabernet: A Mysterious Anthology.
Maggie is a member of Sisters in Crime and James River Writers. She has worked as a software developer, retail sales manager, and customer service supervisor. Maggie graduated from Elizabeth Seton College and earned a B.S. degree in Business Administration from Rochester Institute of Technology. She has called New Jersey, Massachusetts, and California home. These days she lives in Richmond, Virginia with her husband Glen, and cats Morris and Olive. She enjoys walking, travel, film, and the theatre. Visit Maggie on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and at maggieking.com.
Cindy McKenzie is a born and bred Grenadian, who feels fortunate to have had a village upbringing in the days when the road was her playground and doors were never locked. Her first novel,
Force Ripe, was published in September 2015. Cindy migrated to the UK in 2007, but after seven winters moved back to her island in the sun, Grenada, where she explores and nurtures her passions and creativity through writing, as well as her new discovery – her Rustic Selections pottery. With Cindy, nothing is set in stone. She lets her free-spirited nature take her on musical experiences, dancing under the stars with the live bands. She is the mother of three grown children which, thankfully, allows her the time and freedom for these explorations.
In 2008, after a career in business and information technology, Carol married two of her passions, reading and children. Inspired by the historic Brimstone Hill in St. Kitts, she began the
Caribbean Adventure Series (CAS), and as we speak there are four books in the series, each based in a different Caribbean island. The CAS series sparked an off-shoot, Chee Chee's Adventures, a five book series aimed at younger children, 0-7 years old. Carol has written two other books,
Sea Scapes and
Another Day, a young adult novel. These are all published under the CaribbeanReads label, a label that seeks to promote Caribbean literature by supporting Caribbean writers and Caribbean based narratives.
Formerly self-published, Marissa Monteilh (Mon-tay) signed a two-book deal with HarperCollins in 2001, and since then has gone on to write seven mainstream and two erotica titles. Currently with Hachette Books, she is a strong advocate of self-publishing, and mentors writers who choose to publish their own titles. Writing erotica books under her pseudonym, Pynk, Marissa focuses on subjects that promote “guilt free,” responsible sex for liberated women, and encourages readers to be “Sex-See,” which is a regular segment included in her erotica books, along with a sex dictionary and lead character commentary. Most of Marissa’s blog posts will focus on writing and on sex-related issues for women.
Eugenia O'Neal is from the Virgin Islands, a tiny, British territory in the Caribbean. Her first book, the non-fiction From the Fields to the Legislature: A History of Women in the Virgin Islands, was published by Greenwood Press in 2001. Since then she has published the novels Just an Affair, Dido's Prize and Jessamine. Her next novel, The Water of Sunlight, will be out in October.
Amy M. Reade is a cook, chauffeur, household CEO, doctor, laundress, maid, psychiatrist, warden, seer, teacher, pet whisperer, and recovering attorney. In other words, a full-time wife, mother, and writer. She is the author of
Secrets of Hallstead House,
The Ghosts of Peppernell Manor, and most recently,
House of Hanging Jade. She is currently working on the first and second book in the Malice series, a gothic trilogy set in the United Kingdom (expected release date in early 2017). She loves cooking, reading, and traveling.
Shauna Roberts’ first novel,
Like Mayflies in a Stream, will debut in October 2009. In this historical novel set in ancient Mesopotamia, a priestess of Inanna struggles to keep the precarious flame of civilization burning in the world's first city.
Roberts has also published fantasy, science fiction, and romance short stories and is attending the 2009 Clarion Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers' Workshop.
She has been a freelance biomedical writer and copy editor since 1990. Her consumer-health columns and book have won several awards.
Roberts grew up in Beavercreek, Ohio, and currently lives in Southern California. She enjoys herb gardening, quilting, playing medieval and Renaissance music, and bellydancing.
Farrah Rochon, award-winning author of the popular Holmes Brothers series, hails from a small town just west of New Orleans. Currently residing in Austin, Texas, Farrah is the author of three contemporary romances,
Deliver Me, Release Me, and
Rescue Me, and two holiday novellas,
A Change of Heart in
The Holiday Inn anthology, and the upcoming
No Ordinary Gift in the
Holiday Brides anthology, all published under Dorchester Publishing’s Leisure Imprint.
Farrah recently signed a two-book deal with Harlequin’s Kimani Romance.
Playing With Fire, the first book in her new series centered around the fictional New York Sabers professional football team, is slated for release in September 2010.
Liane Spicer is a pen name of Charmaine Rousseau who hails from Trinidad, the southernmost island in the Caribbean. After teaching high school for too many years, she ran away and has led an adventurous life since, but through it all writing has been her anchor. Her first novel,
Café au Lait, was published by Dorchester (New York) in 2008 and re-released by Montlake Publishing in 2012.
Give Me the Night, a romantic suspense novel, followed in 2014. Her short fiction has been published in
The Caribbean Writer and
St. Somewhere Literary Journal and one of her stories, "Miss Annie Cooks Fish", was shortlisted for the 2014 Commonwealth Short Stort Story Prize. Ms. Spicer also writes mainstream, mystery and speculative fiction under a variety of pen names.
Terence Taylor is an award-winning children's television writer, whose work has appeared on PBS, Nickelodeon, and Disney, among many others. After a career of comforting young kids, he's now equally dedicated to scaring their parents. His short horror stories have been published in all three
Dark Dreams anthologies. He lives quietly in Brooklyn and laughs a lot between acts of literary carnage.
Linda Thorne began pursuing her true passion, writing, in 2005. Since then, she has published numerous short stories in the genres of mystery, thriller, and romance. Her debut novel,
Just Another Termination, was published in August 2015 and is the first in a planned series of mysteries that tell the story of Judy Kenagy, the first career human resources manager to turn sleuth. She is currently writing the second in the series,
A Promotion to Die For.
Like her lead character, Thorne is a career human resources manager. She has worked in her profession in Arizona, Colorado, Mississippi, California, and now Tennessee. Thorne has lived in a suburb of Nashville since early 2008 with her husband, Dave, and two border collies (fur people), Abby and Mo.
Susan Connell Vondrak is the author of
No Evidence of a Crime and
The Evidence is Clear. She is a 30-year veteran of the Illinois State Police, first working as a forensic toxicologist, then training new toxicologists. In 2003, she was appointed the Director of Training and still works for the Illinois State Police as a program liaison with the National Institute of Justice, overseeing the Federal grant programs in forensics. Susan’s novels are fiction but she brings a realistic aspect of crime laboratory work into her books through her knowledge of the crime lab’s role in police investigations. If you like mysteries where the evidence leads you to the truth, you will enjoy her mysteries. Susan's other passions are cooking, traveling and gardening. Although her mysteries stay true to her law enforcement background, the enjoyment she finds in these pursuits comes through in her books. Whether you are sitting in Stone Soup Café or the garden overlooking Washington, D.C., there is an inviting familiarity in her books, mixed with a little humor--and of course a little murder.
Karen Owens is the author of six romance novels and one novella. In addition to writing, Karen works as a reference librarian at the Mount Clemens Public Library and teaches freshman essay writing at Wayne State University. Her 2004 novel,
Circles of Love received a 4-1/2 Gold review from Romantic Times Book Club, the highest honor an author can receive and was nominated Best Multicultural Novel for 2004. She also received a nomination for Best Hero from the Romantic Slam Jam Emma Awards.
Love Changes Everything received 4-1/2 stars from Romantic Times Book Club and was top pick for November 2005.
Currently she works as a part time instructor at Wayne State University's Interdisciplinary Studies Program, teaching writing communications skills to undergraduate students. As a devoted supporter of the Detroit Writers Guild Annual Conferences, she conducts workshops on characterization and rejection letters and provides manuscript critiquing. Gary her husband of 20 years is her biggest fan.
Dayton Ward is a science fiction author primarily known for his
Star Trek novels and short stories, which began with publication in the
Strange New Worlds anthology series. He published stories in each of the first three
Strange New Worlds volumes, making him the first author to render himself ineligible under the rules of that series. As such, future authors who achieved the same feat were said to have earned a "Wardy."
In addition to his
Star Trek books, he has written numerous articles related to
Star Trek in
Star Trek Communicator and
Star Trek Magazine. He has also published a number of short stories in various magazines and collections.
As soon as she put fingers to keyboard to crank out her first novel, award-winning author, writer and former journalist Stefanie Worth realized that normalcy didn’t fit into her plot. Contemporary, yes. Passionate, moreso. But ready yourself for twists and turns that whisk you from ordinary to otherworldy, from “what if” to “why not?”
Stefanie’s debut novel,
Where Souls Collide, won the Science Fiction category of the 2008 African American Literary Awards. Her follow-up work, a novella titled
Can You Believe, appeared in
The Holiday Inn anthology, and another novella,
HeavenSent.com is slated to appear in the
Holiday Brides anthology (October 2008). She is currently at work on her next novel, to be released in 2011.
