AAD Author Spotlight: Lissa Matthews

Please join me in welcoming author Lissa Matthews to the blog today as part of my Authors After Dark Spotlight series.
This is the last of my AAD author spotlights and I’m closing this feature out with this great interview with Lissa!
Thank you to all the authors who stopped by For What It’s Worth for guest posts and interviews. You can find them all here. I can’t wait to meet everyone in New Orleans August 8-12th! (Authors After Dark)

Karen: Describe yourself Twitter style - 140 characters. (feel free to use Twitlonger :-) )
Lissa: Coffee whore who procrastinates extraordinarily well at the written word, who is a musician, sports fan, queen baker (in my head), cool mom, supportive friend, and always learning

K: Use the same format to describe your writing or your latest book.
L: My writing: It's personal and emotionally driven, passionately fun, ever changing and evolving, quirky, full of Southern appreciation, sassy, my own...

K: Your About Me on your website says that you are so addicted to coffee that friends "are surprised she hasn’t floated away on a caffeine-induced cloud while giving life to feisty heroines and hunky heroes." Do you have a favorite coffee and just how deep does this addiction go?L: See, I don't know if I'm supposed to divulge the truth to the masses or not. It would completely destroy my coffee credibility. I can plead the 5th on the addiction part, right? I own a Keurig, 2 French presses, a small espresso machine, and I cold brew coffee all the time for what I call iced coffee crack.
As for a favorite coffee... In my Keurig, I love dark roasts. For whole bean coffee, I love Starbuck's Red. Lately though, I've found I am in love Larry's Beans. They're a small company here in North Carolina, sustainable facilities and organic coffee. I love their Mightier Mocha Java and their Cowboy Blend coffees.

Karen: I am currently addicted to Godiva Breakfast Blend coffee. I brew a pot and make a cup of iced coffee every morning. It’s like drinking a fudgesicle.

K: Do you have a playlist for your books or music to listen to that helps you write?
L: Yes. I have always written to music. Usually it has to be something that I know well, something that can be 'noise'... If it's a new song that I love, I can't write to it cause I'm paying too much attention to it. When I wrote the Blue Jeans and Hard Hats books, I listened to Neil Diamond over and over and over again. The music didn't distract me, it was 'noise' in the background, but it helped center me and focus me on the writing. I listen to a lot of Nickelback and Breaking Benjamin as backdrops for books. I listen to a lot of country too... newer guys like Justin Moore and Brantley Gilbert, love Miranda Lambert and Pistol Annies. I wrote Twisted Up listening to Sugarland and SHEDaisy.

K: What are you most looking forward to at AAD in August?
L: Seeing people I haven't seen in a while. I'm hoping that a few more readers will know my name this year. I am looking forward to the panels I am on. I am terribly nervous and have an awful case of stage fright (it was a challenge during speech class in college and even more of a challenge when I had solos in symphony). I don't do well talking in front of people, but I am looking forward to the panels. I am on a M/M panel and that should be a lot of fun. I love reading it and writing it. I am on a Keeper Shelf panel as well and honestly, there are so many books on my keeper shelf that I don't know which ones I'll talk about.

K: Is there a book you've recently read that you would tell everyone to go out and buy right NOW!
L: Sadly, no. I've read a lot of books lately and maybe I'm just in a funk. I'm not really loving anything. In the last year, I've read some that I'd tell everyone to go out and buy though... First Grave on the Right by Darynda Jones, Driving Mr. Dead by Molly Harper, Dakota Cassidy's Trophy Wives series, and any of Delilah Devlin's cowboy books. Now, the first two books I listed here are not usual reading for me, but they had me laughing out loud so often that I just couldn't put them down.

Karen: Oh no!!! Not the dreaded reading funk! Molly Harper and Dakota Cassidy are always fun reads for me too. Thanks Lissa!

Author: Website | Twitter | Facebook

Lissa’s latest:


Graham Hall is a twenty-six year old Texan with the job of his dreams: being a freelance travel writer for a national publication. He’s just finished his latest article about small winter resort destinations in Colorado and has earned some personal down time. With the six month lease not yet up on the small cabin he rented, Graham decides to stick around the area for a while and in the process, finds himself agreeing to a blind date with a feisty, down on her luck in the love department, candy maker named Jane.

After all, what could it hurt?

Jane, completely oblivious to the set up, arrives at Graham’s isolated little valley cabin to deliver a box of her handmade Chocolate Kick truffles. From the moment Graham opens the door, Jane is tongue tied and ticked off. Edward, her business partner and most certainly former best friend, set her up. When she regains her ability to put two coherent words together, plus size, mid-thirties Jane apologizes for intruding and assures Graham that she will take care of the mistake.

What ensues is a series of encounters and confrontations between Jane and Edward, Jane and Graham, and Edward and Graham. At the heart of it all, is Jane’s happiness. Edward wants this for her more than anything. Graham finds himself caught up in her tart tongue and curvy body and isn’t about to call his all too real pursuit a failure, no matter how many times she says no.

With her inability to continue denying herself the man she affectionately refers to as Cowboy Surfer in her head, she gives in and is rewarded with scorching hot sex and a lot of follow-up phone calls after she learns the truth of Graham’s attraction. His persistence leads Jane to believe that life doesn’t have to revolve around chocolate truffles, but rather should revolve around a delicious, well traveled and well built younger man. Amazon - Melting Jane