Red, White & Blue Chocolate Ganache Cupcakes
A Recipe From Blooming Into Life There’s a moment in Blooming Into Life when Mary Ann watches her niece and granddaughters frost cupcakes for the Criss Creek Fourth of July celebration, and realizes...
Mary Ann’s Buttermilk Drop Biscuits: A Family Recipe Worth Keeping
There's a moment in Blooming Into Life when I knew Colleen's story needed something soft to land on. She's deep into a detox diet, all green juices and rigid rules, and the page felt a little cold....
10 Cozy Women’s Fiction Novels That Feel Like a Warm Hug
There's a particular kind of comfort in small-town women's fiction. The familiar faces on Main Street, the porches where people actually sit and talk, the way a whole community shows up when one of...
Old-Fashioned Strawberry Jam (The Jam From My Novels)
There's a jar of strawberry jam that keeps finding its way into my fiction. Readers of Blooming Into Life may remember it making an appearance there. In Summer in the Moon Garden, Danny brings a jar...
The Song That Inspired Summer in the Moon Garden
Readers often ask about the inspiration behind my stories. Sometimes it's a place. Sometimes it's a character who appears out of nowhere. And sometimes, it's a song. The song that inspired Summer in...
Meet Jess Dalton: A Fierce and Tender Heroine in Small-Town Women’s Fiction | Summer in the Moon Garden
If Kat is learning how to move forward, Jess Dalton is learning how to stand her ground. In Summer in the Moon Garden, Jess is the woman you want in your corner—fiercely loyal, quietly determined,...
Sweet Mama Jane’s Cinnamon Rolls
These are my take on The Pioneer Woman’s cinnamon rolls. I cut her recipe in half and I use cream cheese frosting instead of the glaze from her recipe—they never disappoint. Soft, buttery, and...
Meet Kat Bauer: A Story of Starting Over, Second Chances, and Rediscovering Herself
In Summer in the Moon Garden, Kat Bauer is a woman standing at a crossroads. After twenty years of marriage, Kat’s world is quietly falling apart. Her once-loving husband has become distant. Her...
Second Chances in Life and Love
Second chances—those slippery, almost mythical opportunities we long for—often feel like something that happens in books or movies rather than in real life. “If only I could do it all over again…”...