Hey y’all!

Popping in here today to make sure y’all know that I will be signing Never Fall Again at the Spartanburg, SC Barnes & Noble, Friday, February 16, from 4-6 p.m.

I’ll be joining Lynette Eason on her book tour, and we can’t wait to meet our readers, say hello, take pictures, and hug! (For those who wish to be hugged. I have a few friends who are definitely anti-hug, so I never assume!) šŸ™‚

Looking ahead, I’ll be in Columbus, Ohio in April at the Public Library Association 2024 conference. I’ll be signing books on April 4th from 3-4 p.m.

And then on June 24th I’ll be at the Mauney Memorial Library in Kings Mountain, NC at 3 p.m. I’ll be speaking about writing and discussing Never Fall Again.

It’s going to be fun!

Grace and peace,

I’m so excited about this!Ā 

When you preorder Never Fall Again from Baker Book House, not only will you get the BEST deal – 40% off AND Free U.S. Shipping, but while supplies last you’ll also receive a signed book plate and a “Welcome to Gossamer Falls” sticker designed by the lovely, talented, and absolutely delightful Lydia Basham (@cre8ive.mango on Instagram).

And for those of you who might be wondering about her last name, yes, Lydia is the daughter of Pepper Basham, who is one of my favorite people and a must-buy author!Ā 

These goodies are going in the mail to Michigan today, where the friendly people at Baker Book House will keep them safe until it’s time to ship them out to readers all over the country!Ā 

Preorders are something that I simply didn’t appreciate until I started writing. But they are so very important for authors.

Preorders help booksellers and publishers know how much readers are committed to reading a new release. A history of solid preorders can help a lot when it’s time to pitch a new series … which … I will be doing later this year.

So…yeah…preorders make a difference. And I’m thrilled to partner with Baker Book House to make these gifts available to you. I have never seen a better deal – you can’t beat 40% off and free shipping! AND, here’s a not-so-secret tip…there are no guarantees, but sometimes BBH gets their books out early. Which means if you order from BBH, you save money, get stickers, and might have Never Fall Again in your hand before release day.

So fun!

The fine print: I sent them a lot of signed bookplates and stickers, but once they’re gone, they’re gone. This offer is exclusive to Baker Book House.Ā 

Grace and peace,

I know! I know!

Some of you LOVE a sneak peek.

Some of you HATE a sneak peek.

And I get it. I’m somewhere in the middle. Sometimes I’ll read early, but sometimes I want to wait until I can read the whole thing because it makes me antsy when I can’t keep going!

Regardless…

There IS a sneak peek available IF you want to read it.

You can find it here.Ā 

Welcome to Gossamer Falls friends! I hope you’re going to love it as much as I do!

Grace and peace,

 

It’s almost time!

No, I’m not talking about Christmas!

It’s almost time for the applications to open for the Never Fall Again launch team!

 

Here are the details:

**The application is ONLY available to newsletter subscribers. It will not appear on social media or on this website. If you want to receive the application, you need to subscribe.

**The application will ONLY be open from December 18-29, 2023. I know that’s over Christmas and you might be traveling. That’s why I’m telling you now so you can be on the lookout. šŸ™‚

**Once the application window closes, the wonderfully talented Tammy Karasek will be managing the team as she has done for my last several releases.

**I don’t choose the team.Ā 

**You will ONLY receive an email if you are chosen. Tammy will do her very best to hunt you down. But if you haven’t received an email by January 5th, then you aren’t on the team this year.

**We received permission from my publisher to try something new, and I’m so excited about it. I think it will give more people an opportunity to get in on the launch process. The details will be IN THE NEWSLETTER ON DECEMBER 18TH!

**I am on multiple deadlines, and it’s Christmas. If you email me to ask me if you’re subscribed, please know that while I 100% will respond, I can’t guarantee WHEN I will respond.

A few random details about my newsletter and newsletters in general:

**If you’re already subscribed and try to subscribe again to confirm, please understand that the system I use for newsletters will see that you’re already subscribed and will not send you confirmation emails. I wish it would say something like, “Thank you. We already have you on the list.” But it doesn’t. So if you subscribe and you don’t get anything, there’s an excellent chance it’s because you’re ALREADY subscribed.Ā 

**The most recent newsletter was sent on November 29, 2023. If you didn’t receive it, then you may want to check your junk/spam folders.

**Most newsletter subscription management is based on the number of subscribers – the more subscribers you have, the more you pay. Because of this, if readers aren’t opening/reading newsletters from their favorite authors, it is very possible that they will be deemed inactive and unsubscribed automatically. So if you’re thinking, “I was subscribed a few years ago but haven’t seen anything recently,” that may be what has happened.

****

Whew! That is an awful lot of words. Ugh. But hopefully it will help answer questions and explain the process. I’m so excited about Cal and Landry’s story and can’t wait for you get your hands on Never Fall Again!

So be on the lookout for that December 18th newsletter!Ā 

 

Also – in case you missed it, The Heroes in the Crossfire novella collection is going away. If you want to own it, now’s the time to purchase it for your Kindle or in paperback. It will no longer be available for purchase or in KU after December 31. I do plan to make my novella, Out of Time, available for individual purchase as an ebook, but that won’t happen until later in the year. Because…deadlines! šŸ™‚

Grace and peace,

Happy Fall everyone!

I’ve joined up with some phenomenal authors for the BeLeaf Fall Christian Fiction Giveaway, and the prizes are amazing!

Hop over to Rafflecopter and enter today!

I’d love for one of my readers to win!!!

I hope your October is off to an awesome start. Mine is … well … it’s a bit hectic! I’m up to my eyeballs in words. SO.MANY.WORDS!

I’m on a deadline for a project I can’t wait to share with you…and…yeah…I have a lot of writing to do before I can spill the beans.

So stay tuned for more news. Things are about to get super busy around here!

Grace and peace,

Secret Service Summer 2023It’s Secret Service Summer for the month of August!

July was all about the Dive Team Investigations series, and I loved revisiting my Carrington friends. But in August, we’re focusing on the Defend and Protect series which is now 100% complete!

I don’t know about you, but as a reader, I have mixed feelings about series. On the one hand, I pretty much never want them to end. I always want more. On the other hand, I love finding a series that is complete so I know I don’t have to wait for the next installment.

As an author, there’s something bittersweet about a completed series. I will miss my Secret Service friends. But I’m already fully immersed in a new place with new characters that I hope my readers will love just as much as they love the Carrington and Raleigh teams.

Before we turn our sights to Gossamer Falls (the new book releases in March!), I’m excited to get to spend the next month just chilling with the Raleigh Secret Service agents – and a few FBI agents, and a few DC Secret Service agents thrown in for good measure!

To celebrate Secret Service Summer, there’s a giveaway headed your way.

There will be one grand prize winner and twenty – that’s right – I said twenty winners who will receive a signed bookplate, some of my brand new completed series stickers, and bookmarks and stickers for some of the Defend and Protect stories. (I’m ridiculously excited about the stickers!)

There are a variety of ways to enter, and if you’ve already followed me everywhere, don’t worry! You can enter every day by saying Hi!Ā 

Visit the Rafflecopter link today to get started. And be sure to check my social media for all things Defend and Protect during our #SecretServiceSummer!

 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Grace and peace,

Happy July friends!

This month, weā€™re basking in the backlist!

If you arenā€™t familiar with the term, an authorā€™s backlist is made up of the books they have published previously – usually at least a year earlier – that are still in print.

Backlist books donā€™t receive all the marketing and publicity that is showered on current releases. You probably wonā€™t see them as much on social media. And if youā€™re new to an author, you may not have heard much, if anything, about these books.

Of course, if the author enjoys dropping her previous characters into her new books, itā€™s possible the reader has met some, maybe even all, of the backlist characters without realizing it.

As that very kind of author, I can assure you that if youā€™ve read the Defend and Protect series, youā€™ve met the Dive Team Investigations characters. They just insisted on showing up!

And then they clamored for their fair share of the spotlight.

ā€œItā€™s been all about Raleigh, the Secret Service, the FBI. Special agents everywhere. How about showing us some love? Letā€™s talk about diving, serial killers, human trafficking, cold cases, and everyoneā€™s favorite cyber security/computer forensics expert.ā€

Iā€™ll let you guess which character was most insistent. Honestly, it wasnā€™t a hard sell. Iā€™ve missed them. And I want you to love them as much as I do.

Which is why weā€™re #baskinginthebacklist this July!

And to make it extra fun, Iā€™m giving away exclusive #DiveTeamInvestigations goodies. I have a bunch of random bookish delights, and reallyā€¦what good are they sitting in a basket in my office? I want to share them with you.

Hereā€™s how it will work:

My Twitter/Facebook/Instagram posts will focus on the Dive Team series. There will be two giveaways.

Drawings will take place on July 8 and July 31.

How do you enter? Firstā€¦click here. The first giveaway is already open!

You can enter once a day just by saying Hi. You can grab more entries by following me on all the social media spots and by subscribing to my newsletter.

A new giveaway link will be sent out on July 10 and that giveaway will run until the end of July.

Any questions? Holler!

Otherwise, letā€™s enjoy hanging out with the Dive Team in July.

Grace and peace,

Hey y’all!

Howā€™s your summer going? Iā€™m hanging out at baseball fields with my boys and working on the revisions to Never Fall Again, the first book in my new Gossamer Falls series (coming March 2024).

But I hear you! March is so far away!

Thatā€™s why I have some fun stuff coming up this summer, and I donā€™t want anyone to miss out!

 

First up – if you havenā€™t entered the Creepin it Real Summer giveaway, thereā€™s still time! The winner will receive ALL of these books! Enter here!

Second – my social media in July will be all about #BaskingintheBacklist with the focus on the Dive Team Investigations books! Ryan, Leigh, Adam, Sabrina, Gabe, and Anissa are all excited for their time in the spotlight!

To celebrate, there will be some awesome giveaways of #DiveTeamInvestigations exclusive goodies. These are things like tote bags, bookmarks, keychains, and other bookish delights! I hope youā€™ll participate!!!

Last but not least – if youā€™re anywhere in the Columbus, OH area I would love to meet you at the Columbus Book Festival on Saturday, July 15th! Iā€™llĀ be on a panel Saturday morning and doing a book signing immediate following. Come say hi!!

That’s it for now!

Grace and peace,

 

Under Fire is available everywhere! You can purchase it at your favorite local retailer, online, in e-book formats, and audio formats – wherever you buy your books, you can find it!

If you are one of the many readers who pre-ordered Under Fire, THANK YOU!!!!

If you’ve been waiting for release day, it’s here!

This is Book #3 in the Defend and Protect series, and it is a bittersweet day because I hate to say goodbye to the Raleigh team.

Here are the details about this final installment:

USSS Special Agent Zane Thacker has landed his dream assignment protecting the president of the United States. When the president plans a fundraiser at the exclusive estate of a political supporter in Raleigh, Zane is thrilled to be working again with Special Agent Tessa Reed, his best friendā€“and the woman he desperately wishes could be more.

Though Tessa almost lost everything, she battled her demons and came out on the other side healthy and healed. But when her role as the liaison between the Raleigh office and the presidentā€™s protective detail wrenches her past back into the present, her greatest failure threatens to come to light.

Zane refuses to let Tessa go through this alone. But can he stand by the woman he lovesĀ andĀ protect the president from a mounting threat at the same time?

Sparks fly as award-winning romantic suspense writer Lynn H. Blackburn closes out her Defend and Protect series with this explosive tale of secrets kept, lies exposed, and relationships restored.

I hope you fall as much in love with Zane and Tessa (#Zessa!) as I am!

Grace and peace,

 

If you follow me on social media at all, you already know that Under Fire, Book 3 in the Defend and Protect series, releases March 7! Just 3 weeks, yā€™all!! I love this story so much, and Iā€™m busy doing lots of launchy (I just made that word up) things for that.

But Iā€™m also on a deadline.

Iā€™m working on the first book in a new romantic suspense series. The book is due March 1st and will release March 2024. It has a title, and I love it, but I canā€™t share it yet. šŸ™‚

Someone asked me about my writing the other day. When I stopped hyperventilating (kidding, but not completely) I decided to take a hard look at where I am.

In case youā€™re wondering, writing it all out did *not* help. I thought it might. I was wrong.

State of the Deadline:

Date Due: March 1

Completion Status: Trying to land the plane. Circling the runway. Not down yet. Close. Very close. Stress level – šŸ¤¢

Word Count: I will probably finish writing this bad boy somewhere between 95K-100K and then Iā€™ll have to cut 10% of it. (My word count is 85-90K). Stress level – šŸ˜µā€šŸ’«

Plot: Yeah, we have a few holes. Some dangling threads. A few things that I started but still havenā€™t finished. Stress level – šŸ«£

Characterization: Hate to say it, but today as I was driving I realized that my hero is too perfect. Heā€™s had some hard stuff happen, and life has roughed him up. But he need some more flaws. The heroine has a few flaws that I think Iā€™ve done a decent job of showing, but one of her big arcs is also one of those dangling threads I mentioned earlier. And the villain needs more time on the page. Stress level – šŸ„“ šŸ˜’

Romance: Yā€™all. I wrote a line the other day that made me all kinds of swoony. But there are some issues here as well. Stress Level – šŸ˜¬ šŸ«¶šŸ¼

Suspense: Not gonna lie, weā€™re leaning hard into the romance in this book, but the suspense is pretty creepy. At least, I think it is? Maybe? I should stop overthinking it, but I wonā€™t. Stress Level – šŸ˜–

Focus: None. Absolutely none. You know what I keep thinking about? The first line ofā€¦wait for itā€¦BOOK 3 in this series. Thatā€™s right friends. A book that isnā€™t due for 2 MORE YEARS. Stress level – šŸ¤Æ šŸ¤Æ

Sleep: I either donā€™t sleep, or I have incredibly random dreams. Last night I dreamed that I returned to my job (a job I left unexpectedly 20 years ago when I went on bedrest when pregnant with Emma and never returned to). They offered me my old job back on the spot. And I was all kinds of awkward about it because I donā€™t have any plans to ever return to engineering, and it was a little bit like the scene in the Matrix where he tries to sneak out of the office. None of it made any sense at all. I woke up confused and discombobulated. This happens a lot when Iā€™m on a deadline. My subconscious goes haywire. Stress level – šŸ„ŗ šŸ˜“

Life: This is whatā€™s on my schedule over the next 2 weeksā€¦teach 2 Latin classes; homeschool 2 children; help youngest finish a big presentation/paper due March 3; visit an adult day facility that is a possible place for Emma when she ages out of the school system; celebrate Emmaā€™s 20th birthday; celebrate Drewā€™s 12th birthday; get the dog groomed; go to the chiropractor; get a massage – these are not fun massages – these are ā€œyou spend to much time sitting in a chairā€ massages; take the boys to five baseball practices and one baseball game; cook the meals, wash the clothes, and do all the normal things that just have to get done in the background no matter what else is happening; all the launchy things for Under Fire. Stress Level – šŸ¤ÆšŸ„ŗ šŸ˜µā€šŸ’«šŸ™„šŸ«£šŸ¤Æ

Needs: Prayer. ALL.THE.PRAYER. (Also, chocolate, coffee, and booksā€¦.noā€¦.not the booksā€¦.theyā€™re too tempting). šŸ™šŸ™šŸ™šŸ™šŸ«šŸ«šŸ«ā˜•ļøā˜•ļøā˜•ļøšŸ“ššŸ™šŸ™šŸ™šŸ™

I’m going to go eat some takeout now.Ā And maybe take a nap. šŸ™‚

More soon…

Grace & peace,

 

 

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