The Fresh Fiction Podcast

NYT and USA Today bestselling author Michelle M. Pillow joins Samantha Tennant to talk about the re-release of The King of the Unblessed (Book 1 of the Realm Immortal series) through Tor Bramble — a lush, epic dark romantasy that Michelle wrote long before "romantasy" was even a coined term. They dig into the Labyrinth-inspired origins of the Goblin King story, Michelle's massive world-building across 100+ books and eight series, and what it's like to revisit older stories with fresh eyes. Plus: the Fresh Fiction Facts Q&A gets into zombie aspirations, campy horror DVDs, Darcy's botched proposal, and why Sarah absolutely should have stayed in the Labyrinth.

Bestselling historical romance author Cathy Maxwell joins Fresh Fiction to talk about her first indie release, Curves for the Rakish Duke, and her first-ever author collaboration with the Busty Bodice Club series. Cathy opens up about the surprising generosity of indie readers, the creative freedom of publishing without gatekeepers, and why she is finally revisiting an old favorite novella with fresh eyes.

Before Christine Gunderson became an Amazon bestselling author, she was a TV reporter, a Capitol Hill press secretary, and a stay-at-home mom who wrote her first novel in stolen minutes at school pickup. In this Fresh Fiction Video Book Club conversation with host Samantha Tennant, Christine talks about the long, twisty road to publication, the real women who inspired the 1965 storyline in her new novel Behind White Picket Fences, and why she believes the pressure on mothers to do it all is as unrealistic now as it was sixty years ago. Plus, a rapid-fire round covering her go-to gas station snack, her Jane Austen obsession, and the cult she would absolutely start.

This episode centers on the Fresh Fiction team's weekend at Kiss and Tell, a local romance author book signing event in Grapevine, Texas. The team attended alongside book club members, meeting favorite authors, discovering new-to-them authors, and connecting with fellow readers.

Bestselling author Jayne Castle joins Fresh Fiction's Podcast to talk about ENTER THE NIGHTMARE, book nineteen in her Harmony series. She traces the real government psychic research that inspired her world building, introduces Sebastian, the reader-made dust bunny that inspired her mascot, and shares stories from a Cotswolds hiking trip with fellow authors Susan Elizabeth Phillips and Christina Dodd. Jayne also talks about writing under three names, why she never reuses the same hero and heroine, and what is coming next in her Psychic Dog series.

Romance author Amy Award joins Samantha Tennant to talk about THE COCKY KINGMANS, her football-playing family of brothers, and why every heroine, no matter her size, deserves a happy ending.

Four award-winning authors — Nina Crespo, Misty Urban, Carrie Schaffer, and Debra Parmley — join host Samantha Tennant to pick their best summer reads, talk travel tropes, and reveal what makes their characters impossible to put down.

USA Today bestselling author Sheila Roberts joins Fresh Fiction's Samantha Tennant to talk about her latest novel, Love on the Shelf — a bookshop-set enemies-to-lovers story that's anything but your typical rom-com. Sheila opens up about the real cultural moment that inspired Parker Black (yes, the man everyone loves to hate), why she believes love always wins, and how the romance genre is finally getting the respect it deserves. Plus, Fresh Fiction Facts — from bug collecting to designer purse opinions to the book that made her feel like a rock star. If you love women's fiction, booktok, and romance that makes you think, this one's for you.

Samantha Tennant sits down with Andrea Hairston — novelist, playwright, Afrofuturist, and self-described "scientist, artiste, and hoodoo conjurer" — to talk about her latest novel, THE REDEMPTION CENTER IS CLOSED ON SUNDAYS, a genre-defying extra-dimensional murder mystery anchored by a Saint Bernardoodle dog detective named Una.

Andrea draws on her decades in theater — as director, playwright, and professor — to explain how she weaves mystery, romance, and science fiction into a single story without losing the thread of any of them. She talks about using the dog as a pivot point: Una doesn't recognize genre, she just knows the people she loves, which turns out to be the perfect lens for a story that spans dimensions.

The conversation moves into Andrea's background shift from mathematics and physics to theater (with a detour through lighting design and Ohm's Law), her long-standing research into animal cognition and dog behavior, and what Afrofuturism actually means in practice — not predicting the future, but understanding the present deeply enough to make real choices about what comes next. She uses Harriet Tubman and Einstein as parallel examples of people who imagined their way to something that didn't exist yet.

The Fresh Fiction Facts segment reveals she owns a "ridiculous" number of DVDs (including every Star Trek series), that she'd rather visit the future than the past, and that her most dog-eared books are Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower, anything by Ursula Le Guin, and Momo by Michael Ende — which she re-reads in German.

Andrea closes with a peek at her work-in-progress: QUEEN FOR TODAY, a secondary world fantasy about a carnival queen of misrule whose single day of reign changes everything.

Samantha Tennant sits down with New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Mary Ellen Taylor to talk about her newest women's fiction novel, The Sky Beneath Her. Set on North Carolina's Outer Banks — nicknamed the Graveyard of the Atlantic — the book weaves between 1942, when a ship full of desperate passengers crosses U-boat-patrolled waters knowing they may not survive, and the present day, where a scuba diver who lost her mother at sea is finally forced to return to the water.

Mary Ellen opens up about the history book that sparked the story, why she signed up for surf camp in her 50s, her seven-draft process, and the revelation that arrived mid-cookie-bake. She also teases her next book — a California-set story rooted in the early 1970s — and shares that The Sky Beneath Her is the June Amazon First Reads pick (free for Prime members, $1.99 for everyone else).