The World of Sophia Sinclair

Let's get real about fake marriages! There are so many great books about fake relationships/fake marriages out there. There's something extra angsty about reading the story of two people pretending to be a couple while each of them is secretly pining for the other, but trying so hard to stay cool and not let on. There is a whole romance subgenre devoted to this trope. Here's a quick look at a few currently popular titles: Faking Ms. Right by Claire Kingsley,  Unexpected Gift from R.S. Elliot, Fake Marriage by Ajme Williams, Backup Bride by Melinda Mink, A Cowboy and his Fake Marriage by Emmy Eugene, The Billionaire's Fake Wife by L. Steele ... and there are many more. Add in the secret baby or accidental pregnancy trope, and you've really got a hard-to-put-down read. Claiming Haley in my new series,  Babies and Brides , is in this tradition. Here's the blurb:  I’m a pregnant wedding planner who has less than two weeks to throw together a real wedding for ...

So I'm reading the good old New York Times Sunday paper yesterday and there's a business story that knocked my socks off. It's about people doing exactly what Ashley did in Crazy Little Thing . It is, in a word, crazy. Here's the story , which is pretty interesting. It's about old motels being turned into upscale destinations ... which is, if you've read Crazy Little Thing, exactly what Ashley did!  I did quite a bit of research to explain how a small-town bartender could save and invest her money and buy the motel and bar where she worked. I had to pretty much put together her business plan to make the whole thing believable! (Follow me for more great business ideas — my characters tend to do a lot of cool things!) In case you haven't read it, here's the blurb: Ashley Butler is everyone’s favorite bartender at The Clipper. She’s seemingly always there to remember your favorite drink and offer a sympathetic ear. But Ashley has plans that go far beyond ba...

What do Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul have to do with my books? Not very much, honestly, except I am always hoping they'll decide to do a sequel that explores the life of Walt Jr. But we all love a good spin-off, don't we?  That's why I'm writing a spin-off series that takes up right where the Small-Town Secrets ends. The new series, Babies and Brides , focuses on some of the younger residents of good old Fairview, the sweet little small town where the first series too place. You already know all the hang-outs in Fairview. If you were magically dropped in, you'd know where to order a pizza (Sorrentino's, of course) and where to get the best ice cream (Remy's). And would you order a drink anywhere but at The Clipper? Heck no. This series launches with Claiming Haley . You may remember her from Crazy Little Thing and Laws of Attraction . She appeared in both. Now we learn her back story, and you've probably already deduced by the series name that t...

If you've ever given birth, there's a decent chance you now have stretch marks. There's also a decent chance you're not thrilled about this. But I'm here to say we need to try to think a new way about our stretch marks. I have so many stretch marks. My babies were large — my son weighed 10 pounds even! Ouch!  For many years, I was too upset about my stretch marks to show them to anyone. I felt embarrassed by them and always wore a one-piece bathing suit. The thought of any man but my husband seeing them was terrifying to me! Part of what made me so embarrassed was the way he spoke about my stretch marks. When he decided he wanted a divorce, he told me my stretch marks looked so bad that if I were dead on the side of the road, a vulture wouldn't touch my stomach. He had a few other choice things to say about my stretch marks, too.  In time, I dated plenty of other men who didn't have a problem with my stretch marks. They knew I was a mom and they k...

One of the final issues. (Courtesy of Zoe York) I want to tell you a story. It’s about a crazy coincidence that allowed me to tell someone how much her late mother improved how I parent. And if I follow the daughter’s advice, she just might improve how I write. It started yesterday, when a fellow romance author recommended a book called Romance Your Brand: Building A Marketable Genre Fiction Series by Zoe York . The suggestion was timely; I’m in the early stages of planning a new romance series with the accidental pregnancy/secret baby tropes. I want to make it rain babies in my mythical town of Fairview, but I also want to make sure people find and love these books. I love babies, birth and breastfeeding so much I once considered becoming a midwife or doula. I love books so much that there’s seldom been a time in my life when I haven’t been reading or writing one. Problem is, my first small-town romance series ( The Small-Town Secrets ) has garnered strong reviews and enthusiasm but ...

Lots of news in the Sophia Sinclair world, but here are the two I want to talk about today. First of all, I'd like everyone to meet Cashew! She is a three-legged senior beagle mix I adopted from my local animal shelter recently. She's very, very sweet and hangs out with me on the futon in my office while I write. She thinks the dog in Worth the Wait should have been a larger part of the story. Everyone's a critic. Second, I'm still giving away free prequels (click here to download!) to the Small-Town Secrets series. This is Happily Ever After All, and it's about an older lady from the early days in Fairview, reminiscing about her life. Here's a line or two from Carol Ann's remembrance of her first time, just to whet your appetite. This part of the story takes place about a week before her wedding, when she and her soon-to-be husband were painting the house they would move into after returning from their honeymoon: She had always imagined her first tim...

Sometimes I cry when a good book ends. If I love the characters, I don't want to say goodbye forever. That's why I bring my characters back again and again in subsequent books. The main character in one book often shows up with a new baby in a later book. Each book features a different couple, and we follow them as they work to find their own Happily Ever After. I am so sure that you will love this series that I decided to write a prequel and give it to you free! All you need to do is click here , and it will send you to the page where you can download the book. It's the story of Carol Ann, the matriarch of Fairview, and it serves as an introduction to the little town where all the Small-Town Secrets are set. I recommend you make yourself a good cup of coffee (you'll know why I say that when you get into the book!), tuck yourself into a cozy spot and get ready for a happily ever after. Let me know what you think!

I just got a sneak peak at the cover for my novella that is the prequel to the Small-Town Secrets series, and I can't wait to get the final version so I can share it here! It's called Happily Ever After All, and you can't buy it. It's ONLY available to newsletter subscribers! Click here to sign up. It's easy, and as soon as I have the final cover back from the designer, I'll send the prequel out to you. My working title was Carol Ann Drinks Her Coffee. It's the story of an elderly widow who reminisces about meeting her husband, Archie, who eventually became the editor of Fairview's newspaper, The Fairview Review . She remembers when he went off to serve in the Korean War while she was pregnant and what it was like when he retired. Carol Ann has strong opinions about some of the things going on in today's world. And, of course, as a former newspaper editor myself, I enjoyed writing about Archie's career. Truth to tell, there's a lot of me in ...

The Reader Magnet is Coming! Do you know what a Reader Magnet is? We writers make a deal with you. We agree to give you a free short book, and in return, you give us your email address. Win-win for everyone. If you sign up for my newsletter, I'll sent along my newly finished reader magnet. It's working title, so far, is Carol Ann Drinks Her Coffee . It is a prequel to the Small-Town Secrets series, and when I finished writing it, and explained the plot to my husband, I cried. You see, Carol Ann is an older lady who likes to make a cup of coffee and people-watch from her porch or through her living room window. She's a widow, and we learn all about how she and Archie met and married. Archie had my career (newspaper editor) and many of my bad habits, so it's almost like Carol Ann was married to a curmudgeonly male version of me, (although I never went off to fight in the Korean War and left behind a pregnant wife, so there's that). All my newsletter subscribers will g...

Tell Me Another Story! We all love stories. Our ancient ancestors told stories around the fire at night. That was their entertainment, but it was also their oral history, which was the only history they had at that point.  We all still love stories, whether it's reading a book or watching a movie. But it would be a mistake to think stories are only entertainment. They are, but they're also so much more. My little granddaughter loves to hear stories about Queen Fluff and her cat kingdom. Incidentally, the cats in that kingdom cannot get enough asparagus. They grow and harvest it and then feast on various asparagus dishes. Queen Fluff's Favorite is an asparagus dish made with pasta and parmesan cheese. Do I have to tell you that my granddaughter loves asparagus now?  When I started a job at an advertising and marketing agency, I was taught to "tell a story" with my ads, and I realized I had been marketing asparagus to my granddaughter all along. I don't work at ...

It's the Deal of a Lifetime! OK, that's a lie. It's a pretty good deal, but probably not the deal of a lifetime.  But if you love to read, do sign up for authors' newsletters. Not just mine, but everyone's.  Most authors today do have a newsletter, and we typically offer you a deal: You give me your email address, and in return I will give you things like a free prequel to my current series, or a discount, or a chance to win a gift card, or perhaps just heads up on new releases.  Why are authors anxious to have you subscribe to our newsletters? For the same reason we write blogs and post frequently to social media: It is no longer enough just to write books. Back in the good old days, that was all we had to write. Just books. It must have been nice. But today, we have to hustle hard. Millions of books are published each year. Some are dreadful. Some are wonderful. Some books, which are exactly what you love to read, you'll never see. It's hard for authors to...

All Men Fart If you're in a relationship, you might compare yours with the ones in your favorite romance novels.  But doing that is very much like comparing your life to the lives of others on social media. You know what I'm talking about. Your friend confides in you that her marriage is on rocky ground, but her social media shows them on vacation, having fabulous meals, adorably playing with their toddler, whatever. She does not post pics and video of one of them crying or slamming doors or sleeping on the sofa. We all know that people's social media is not an accurate reflection of what their daily lives are. How many times have you cropped a photo to avoid the basket of unfolded laundry or the messy coffee table before posting the pic on your social media? Anybody would assume your house is always neat and tidy and maybe it is, but mine isn't. I only wish my house was as put together as it usually appears on my social media. Similarly, in Romance Land, you see a spec...

  Read the book that started it all! All the books in the Small-Town Secrets can stand alone, but like peanut butter and jelly, they are better together. When you read the books in order, you'll really get to know Fairview. You'll learn the best place for pizza (Sorrentino's, of course!) and where to go to get a drink (The Clipper, obviously!)   You'll get to know the characters well, because people you meet in an earlier book will pop right up in later books. You'll meet their children, who grow up as the series progresses.  The first book is all about Molly, the library director at the Fairview Public Library, a hard-working single mom who isn't even looking for a relationship until a sexy stranger with a compelling back story walks into her library. He's smitten immediately, probably because he saw a bit more than she intended when she climbed the ladder to put away a book on the top shelf. Oops. The great thing about Fairview? There are no presidential p...

Waiting For The Big Time There are a handful of authors out there who make the big bucks. Everybody loves their books. I'd go hungry if necessary to buy the hardback of Diana Gabaldon's latest, to give one example.  But there are thousands of fantastic books written every year that go unread. What do authors do to try to get noticed? We give our work away. It's what creative people do, I'm afraid, because the same thing is true of singers, artists and photographers. While nobody ever asks insurance salespeople or doctors or lawn care company owners or roofers to give away their work, it's just accepted that creative people will give it up for free. And you know what? We absolutely will, because we all hope that eventually, if enough people read our book/listen to our songs/look at our paintings, we will eventually have enough fans that we can make a living with our art.  That might not be true of most of us, but dreams die hard. So here's the deal: I need people...