For the Criminally Inane

 Hello friends! What's coming down the pike for 2025? Are you excited? What books are you most anticipating? Seasons of Sugar Creek Book 4 Three Spring Wedding s (outlined, not started.) Helping of Hope book 3 The Cookie Platter  (15k words so far) Chains Of Deceit by A. E. Zeigler (40k words so far) Books/series in planning stages: (Hopefully happening beginning in 2026) Gauche Girl book 2: Wing Girl (plotting stages)--Reverse Cyrano de Bergerac. She writes song lyrics and but gets a job as a social media manager for a famous singer and starts communicating for her boss via social media with a hot DJ (LiveR@ from book 1) . Everything is fine until she falls in love with him. Mark of the Beast : Baker's Dozen book 3 (plotting/planning stages) These take me a long time to write because of all the research! I have a few ideas of where it's going, I just need to dig into the details. Serving of Self: firefighter's series set in the same world as the Helping of Hope Series-...

Young Adult fantasy is my favorite genre. If you look at my shelves, they are filled with YA fantasy books. I love YA because it's clean, it's adventurous, it's all about growth, making mistakes, and taking responsibility. It was about putting off more mature decisions like intimacy until you're older and focused on the emotional relationship in the romance. YA lit is written for CHILDREN ages 12-18. However... Recently that's changed. I'm not sure when or why. I opened a book a while ago and was SHOCKED to find a scene in YA fantasy where they legit had S3X! It was euphemized. But it was totally obvious what they were talking about and they were clearly in bed. Another book talked about how they were gloriously naked after a tactful description of the act. GLORIOUSLY NAKED? WHAT THE HECK????  I know that some people are like, I let my kids read whatever they want and they're turning out okay. Fine. I get it. You can let your kid read Game of Thrones or wh...

 Waaaaaaay back in 2010 when we were still in grad school, my husband met a Japanese man at church who came to the area on business. Since my husband lived in Japan as a missionary for two years and is fluent, we invited him over for dinner after the services. I made homemade pizza which was fast and easy for me to make and fed a lot.  Then my husband offered to take him to the train station so he could catch his flight. (He offered to take him all the way to the airport, but the man insisted on taking the train--public transportation is much more common in Japan and it wasn't much of a hassle to taketh train to the airport and our family had taken it many times.) During dinner, the man casually asked my husband what he missed as food from Japan. My husband listed off a few things including Hiroshima-style okonomiyaki. The Osaka-style was more of a pancake where it's prepared omelet-style of throwing everything into a bowl and then cooking it. Hiroshima-style was more like lay...

  November is national bell pepper month. Do you know what that means? That means that sweet romance writers all over the internet are celebrating sweet romance. Get it? Bell peppers are sweet. Sweet romance don't have any spice? I hope you're laughing or at least looking at this screen amused. So what does that mean for you, dear reader? Lots of sweet/closed-door/fade-to-black romances coming your way!  How do I find what I'm looking for in the midst of these books? We've divided the sweet category up into different categories: Cherry --Sweet novellas Bell --all sweet full-length novels Shishito --action and adventures (romantic suspense) Mini sweet --light and adorable Sweet Banana --complexity PNR, Sci-fi Romance etc romantasy Cubanelle--love and food!  (Mine is in here!) CLICK HERE FOR THE LINK TO ALL OF THESE And giveaways. Paperback giveaways!! I love getting paperbacks in the mail. Be sure to check the dates (some haven't started yet...) and check and see if...

 I found this list and I'm going to be joining these authors in a promo. I want to check them out! If you have read any of these let me know! The Duchess: Tales of Kelnore Hannah E. Carey The Princess: Tales of Kelnore Hannah E. Carey Tutored By a Fae: An Enemies to Lovers Soulmates Romance Layla K Wood Trained by a Fae: A Fated Mates Romance Layla K Wood Crowned A Traitor : A Hellish Fairytale Book 1 Kate Callaghan Peaceweaver Everly Haywood Rejected By a Fae: An Enemies To Lovers Soulmate Romance Layla K Wood Motor Girl and the Endless Race A. A. Achibane The Three Fates Aisha Urooj A Hare in the Wilderness S E Turner A Winter of Fish and Favor E. M. Epps Queen of Deception Epic Fantasy Romance Healer's Blade Kyrie Wang Mask of Deception and Sacrifice Callie Thomas The Almost Queen Laura Greenwood Wicked Woods Complete Series Box Set Kailin Gow ...

  Seasons of Sugar Creek: Summer is here! Yeah, I know it's fall. It's a little late. But it's here,  it's here! You can now pre-order my book on Amazon. I'll get it up on other retailers soon! Don't you love this cover? It's like a breath of fresh air. Thanks to Hillary Doan Sperry for the cover design!  Here's the blurb: Who will believe that a billionaire fashion icon and a tomboy dairymaid are dating? Tomboy Kristen Benton is roped into competing in the Miss Sugar Princess pageant with her sister. No one expects her to win—especially not the preening bullies who taunt her into wagering on the winner. Desperate for a pageant coach, Kristen makes a deal with billionaire fashion icon Ward Bianci to help her get into the final five. But the price he asks is pretty steep… Italian-American Ward Bianci needs a fake girlfriend to inherit his grandfather’s multi-billion dollar fashion empire. At a mutual friend’s wedding, the groom wagers Ward can’t get Krist...

 Yahoo!  We did it! We funded the books, now we're working on stretch goals! I updated the original post but I thought I'd write one here, too. We are just about $300 away from sprayed edges!!! These books will look gorgeous on your shelf and you'll love getting it out and rereading the story! Also I am adding some metal bookmarks. Find out more here!  What else? Revisions for Sugar Creek is going well. I got a peek at the cover and it is GOR-geous! I can't wait to show you!

 My daughter's open house is over! Wedding prep that has lasted over a year for the three weddings is finally over! My sister got engaged last August. As her maid of honor-type person, we did a lot of talking about how and what to do for her wedding. As she was nearing 48, and her first wedding, we wanted to make sure that we properly celebrated. We decided on a Hallow-wedding! She loves Halloween and has skeletons hanging, not in her closet, but in her garage. So between August and October it was a race as we picked a color scheme. We designed wedding invites. We planned. Mature brides have different priorities than young ones. No attendants. So that was nice. She paid for a large chunk of the party herself. And she had a huge invite list. Her bridal shower as a "mourning the death of her single life," including an obituary and macabre decor. Perfect for October. Her reception was a costume party with prizes and dress up. I was a German barmaid with my daughter. MCed the...

#### update!##### We funded in TWO HOURS!! Now we're working on custom sprayed edges. We are so close to our stretch goals! We have color print, the prequel novella, the sprayed edges. The gorgeous hardbacks will all get foiled jackets! They are going to look amazing sitting on your shelf! Not only that, but the book itself is epic! Love, betrayal, enemies, lovers, centuries-old conflict.  Okay, I hope to see you there! I am trying something ridiculously scary and exciting all at the same time! I am launching my new pen name A. E. Zeigler in a Backerkit crowdfunding campaign !  What is crowdfunding ? Crowdfunding is where people all come together to fund a certain project that might be too expensive for a creator to fund on their own--like a board game or a print run of really beautiful edition of their books--within a certain funding period.  Words to know in a crowdfunding campaign: Creator : company or person who comes up with a project they want help funding Campaign ...

I did something today that I've never done before. I bought a label maker and made labels to organize my bookmarks. If you are a label-maker type person I envy you.  It doesn't come naturally to me. I really struggle. I found out recently that I have ADHD. I was surprised, but I found that I was already doing something things to manage it. Lately, my family (my brothers and sisters) talk a lot about ADHD because we've all recently discovered that we all had it. I think it started with one of my siblings actually going to the doctor and getting diagnosed and the rest of us saying, oh, wait. I have that symptom, too. I was talking to one of my brothers about it and he said I was the one who escaped it. I was like, what are you talking about? I can tell you several symptoms off the top of my head. Look at my backlist, it jumps from genre to genre and I haven't finished a complete series yet. ADHD? I think so. Learning I have ADHD has answered a lot of question that have pl...

I have a little bit of a rebellious streak. Not against God or authority or anything important. Mostly against social trends. Like when I was in high school, whatever was popular, I would do the opposite. Don't think that this is going to be a confession of epic proportions of all the shenanigans I pulled in my youth. Far from it. In fact, my rebelliousness tends to be the opposite. I go against the popular grain. This is great if you go to a crazy high school that had one of the highest drug and weapon confiscation rates in the state. It is not, however, great for writing. Because, you see, the same repulsion I have toward the trendy clothes, the trendy cups, the trendy water (in middle school everyone drank Evian,) etc. etc. carries through. I CANNOT write what everyone else is writing. It's in my nature. Authors are writing hockey romance because it's trending. I shrug my shoulders. Vampires in the early 2010s. Meh.  And that's a good thing. Those trend-chasers make ...

 Sorry, I lied... I know I said I wasn't going to use a pen name to write my Young Adult fantasy. But now I'm reconsidering it. I already have quite an AWESOME following for my sweet contemporary romance. And a lot of people will jump with me to another genre. (Some won't, and that's okay. I'm still writing for them as well!) But I'm hoping that I can also gain a new audience with my Young Adult fantasy books. Separating the genres by pen name would keep those two lines from being crossed. It wouldn't be anything dramatic, although I've already got Amy Leduc as one of them, I would likely go for a pen name like A. E. Zeigler or Amey E. Zeigler. I do hate that both my names are hard to spell, which makes it more likely that I'll choose the initials and the last name, but we'll see. What's your preference? What will you be writing and will I be interested in them? Great question. Here are a couple of ideas I've already started writing/plan...

 Why I write clean Young Adult Fantasy First off, I love teenagers. I connect with that age group. I feel like I'm still seventeen sometimes. I want to write books that will benefit them, give them hope, courage, and comfort. I want to write books that my kids can read and enjoy.  When I was younger, I would lose myself for hours reading the most fantastical books of the day. I loved how fantasy books could take me to another world, explore topics in a way that couldn't be done here in a contemporary setting, and could talk about good versus evil in a fantasy context. I loved the creativity of these writers, the worlds and characters they come up with and the conflicts! I want to bring that to you! Fantasy has had a resurgence in the last few years, especially the popular romantasy. If you aren't familiar with the term, it's basically romance genre smashed with fantasy. I love it! What a time to live! I tell you, I was born to write romantasy. But the problem is, what I...

  Top Ten YA Fantasy Reads 1. Prydain Chronicles by Lloyd Alexander: What I love about it: the characters are amazing, story is top notch, great read-aloud books to youngsters. Good morals.             2. Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer What I love about it: I love inventive retellings, characters are good. Each book has a fairytale couple.              3. Books of Bayern by Shannon Hale What I love about these books: fun lore and magic system, (Goose Girl is a little slow in the beginning, give it 60 pages), great story, memorable. I have signed copies. Shannon once said if she wanted to make money in the biz, she'd write more Bayern Books but her heart took her another way. I respect that.              4. Remnant Chronicles by Mary E. Pearson What I love about this series: clean YA, great story, pacing is exciting, and I think I just like t...

  You may be wondering why the genre switch... First off, I want to make sure you know that I am not leaving behind my contemporary sweet romances or my mysteries. I will still continue to write in both genres.  However... My personal mission has always been to create stories than anyone can enjoy whether you're 14 or 94. I write clean/fade to black/closed door/just kisses romances. I always will. Nothing changes. Just the setting. Why YA? I still read Young Adult literature and I feel like the genre is shifting into darker, steamier and grayer areas. I would love to make sure that my kids, your kids, our kids still have uplifting, clean books. Also no one tends to complain if there's not spice in them.  I love the adventure, the coming-of-age, the wonder and excitement of adventure. I consume these books with relish. Stay tuned for a list of my favorites low/no spice books enumerated in another post. Will you be using a pen name? I've gone back and forth about this a tho...