C.J. Carmichael's Blog

Whether you enjoy small town romance and women's fiction, or classic mystery series, I'd love to see you on my newsletter list: https://cjcarmichael.com/contact/#sub...

This is where you get the inside scoop. What am I working on? When is the next book coming? And of course, there are always special deals and giveaways.

With my newest book, A Baby at Bramble House (romance, women's fiction) coming on September 18, this is a great time to join for news and release day giveaways.

I hope to see your name on my e-mail list soon!

Cheers from CJ

As I hunker down for a traditional Canadian Christmas and New Years with my family I’d like to share my suggestions for some feel good holiday movies. Of course A Bramble House Christmas will always top my list of favorites (I wonder why?) but this year two new movies were released based on novels by my dear friends, Jane Porter and Barbara Dunlop, that I highly recommend. Don’t miss A Christmas Miracle For Daisy and Jingle Bell Princess. They’ll be sure to add to your holiday spirit! Wishing good health, great books and brighter days ahead to all my friends and readers in 2022!

When my father passed away a few years ago we found a small, innocuous box at the very back of his closet. Inside were all the love letters he had mailed to our mother during his time in the Canadian navy, before they were married.

My father was a gruff man, not given to praise or signs of affection. So finding these letters, full of love and sweet words for our mother, was such a treasure.

I recently asked my newsletter subscribers to share their stories of saved love letters and received so many heart warming, funny, and sad stories. I really do hope that email and text messages don't signal the end of the old-fashioned love letter for our future generations.

Love letters feature large in my new release Letters From Grace. In this book (based on a premise from my older novel, Jessie's Father, which is no longer in print) a daughter finds a stash of love letters from her widowed father's high school sweetheart and sets out to match-make. I'm so pleased with early reviews from Publishers weekly and readers. I hope you will add this book to your TBR pile!

Happy reading my friends,
Love from CJ Carmichael, author of Letters From Grace

Florist Shelby Turner has been in love with rodeo cowboy Blake Timber since they were in high school. But as his collection of championship buckles grows it feels like he's turning his back on the small town they grew up in, the grandmother who raised him...and her.

When the local mayor invites Blake home to be guest of honor of their annual Sheep River days Shelby gets a chance to see for herself the kind of man Blake has become. And whether he's trying to rekindle a simple friendship...or offer her the forever love she craves.
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I'm offering Devoted To Her Cowboy free in 10 instalments to my newsletter subscribers beginning November 10. Are you on the list? I hope so! Sign up here: https://cjcarmichael.com/connect.php#...

I wake to a radio announcer telling me my skin will freeze within thirty seconds if I dare step outside. I look out my window, which is ringed with frost. There are only two colors in this winter "wonderland" and they are white and grey. Looking into the blandness, I feel no sense of wonder.

This is the sort of weather that makes me glad I don't have to drive to work All I need to do is step from the kitchen to my office. My darling hubby hands me my latte and the day has begun...

How many words will I write today? That depends on how much I allow myself to be distracted by Duolingo (I'm learning French), Wingspan (the addictive board game we received for Christmas) and our Welshie Jazz (who still wants to go outside even in these insane temperatures).

The bright spot on the horizon is...the days are getting longer folks. January is almost half over and this frigid weather is supposed to break at the end of the week.

I wonder if I'll get more writing done then?

So, a new book, the third in my Bitter Root Mysteries series, is launching tomorrow and I'm a little anxious about the ending. I re-worked it many times (as I tend to do with endings...they're so important.)

What resulted is very fitting to the title of the book, but it's also a little dark. I'm excited (and a bit nervous) to hear what readers think.

By the way, the ending commits me to writing a fourth book in the series. So much for my grand plan to limit this to a trilogy!

Have you watched Broadchurch, the mystery series on NetFlix? It has everything I love in a good mystery series. A picturesque, somewhat isolated, small town. A cast of intriguing characters, all of whom seem to have at least one terrible secret to protect. And a heart-wrenching crime that forms the backbone of the story.

I watched Season One of Broadchurch about a year ago, well after I had penned my own first mystery series, the Twisted Cedars Trilogy, yet I was intrigued to notice that I had included all the elements I loved in Broadchurch in my own books. Accident? I think not.

This year when I started my new series (the 3 book, Bitter Root Mysteries) I very consciously set out to create a world and a story that included this same mix of ingredients. I set this new series in Lost Trail, Montana, an isolated ranching and ski town on the border of Montana and Idaho. Almost all the main characters, and most secondary ones in Lost Trail have secrets. And the mysteries are layered, so that while each book has its own resolution, the stories build on one another, until the final, surprising, finale.

I always feel I've succeeded as a writer if my readers tell me they wish they could live in my fictional town, if my characters seem real to them and if the story has enough twists and surprises to keep them turning pages fast and furiously. Time will tell if I've succeeded with Bitter Roots. I hope so!

When I began writing the first book in the Love at the Chocolate Shop series I knew I wanted to start with a hero who buys a box of chocolates every week from the heroine. He’s a cowboy, and a man of mystery. The heroine doesn’t know much about him—only that his visits are the highlight of her week. She can’t help wondering who the chocolates are for. Does the cowboy have a sweetheart? She hopes not.

This is where the story Melt My Heart Cowboy begins. Of course there are a few surprises, and some sweet chocolate moments along the way to a happy ending. There is also a continuing story thread about a young woman who has dropped out of college for reasons she’s not sharing. Portia Bishop’s story will continue throughout the entire twelve book series with a final resolution in the very last book.

A year of Love at the Chocolate Shop—doesn’t that sound like fun? Starting this October, one book will be published every month. Two of them (the first and the last) will be written by me. The others will be written by some of my very talented, bestselling author colleagues: Melissa McClone, Debra Salonen, Roxanne Snopek, Marin Thomas and Steena Holmes.

If you’d like to keep up to date with news of this series, including inside stories and fun chocolate giveaways, please like our Facebook Page and request our post notifications in your Facebook feed. We are also going to be offering special collectible recipe cards with the publication of each book, so keep in touch for more details on that.

One more thing I must mention—book covers. Our publisher, Tule Publishing, has done an outstanding job in commissioning beautifully artistic covers for each of these special stories. The covers truly do capture the charm and fun of our chocolate book series.

I hope our books provide a fun and heartwarming experience for you, the reader. My goal is to make you feel like Marietta is a real place and the characters in our books are your very own friends and neighbors.

So please come to our Chocolate Shop. And do let us know what you think!

Happy Reading,
C.J.Carmichael, author
Melt My Heart, CowboyCJ Carmichael

I'm always attached to the settings of my books. Even when they're fictional, they feel very real to me. This is especially true for Twisted Cedars, Oregon, the setting of my mystery trilogy of the same name.

After years of painstaking plotting, writing (and re-writing) I've finally completed the third book which will be released on February 25.

I am sad to be saying farewell to Twisted Cedars and all its quirks and charms. The Buttermilk Cafe, the Linger Longer pub, the wild bluffs that overlook the mighty Pacific Ocean... And so much more.

I'm even sadder to be leaving characters I truly love--librarian Charlotte Hammond, for instance, who at the beginning of the series "preferred her adventures--and her romances--between the covers of a book," and true-crime writer Dougal Lachlan who learns to accept and live with his family's secrets over the course of the 3 book series.

The only upside to all these goodbyes is knowing that the stories are now ready for my readers. I can't wait to re-explore the world of Twisted Cedars through their eyes. Please know I read every review and appreciate every email I receive from my readers.

Twisted Cedar Mysteries (in order)
Buried
Forgotten
Exposed

exposed: A Twisted Cedar Mystery

Happy Reading!
C. J. Carmichael

I wrote my first Christmas story, Together by Christmas, in 2002. Since then I’ve written many more, working hard to come up with the magical combination of story elements for a satisfying holiday read. With The Gift—first published in 2011—I believe I finally managed to perfect my signiature “recipe.”

I’m not claiming this book is perfect. But I do believe it has the ingredients that readers crave at Christmas time and it’s a recipe I’ve tried to follow in all the Christmas stories I’ve written since then. And what are the ingredients?

A sweeter-than-average heroine and an honorable hero: I enjoy edgy, provocative main characters as much as the next person. But when I’m looking for a holiday read, I want to root for a woman who is truly a kind and good person, and an honorable man who is willing to put his woman’s best interests ahead of his own.

Delicious baking and cozy settings: I always include the flavors, textures and aromas of holiday favorites like gingersnaps, hot cocoa, roasting turkey, etc. And I try to draw my readers into the sorts of cozy settings that they would love to enjoy over the holidays—rooms with wood-burning fireplaces, comfy chairs, and decorated Christmas trees.

Small-town settings: Maybe it’s because I grew up in a rural area, but I favor stories set in ranching communities such as Marietta, Montana, for my holiday stories. And I generally include at least one major snowfall—sometimes a blizzard!—as well. Because, frankly, there is no Christmas like a white one.

A special child: Since Christmas is for children, I almost always include a child who is in need of “rescuing” of some sort. In The Gift, I included a preschooler who needs to escape an abusive situation, while in my latest, A Bramble House Christmas, we meet a spirited boy, Scout, who has just recovered from leukemia and longs to be a normal kid again.

Happily Ever After Ending: Think of the way you feel when the credits roll at the end of your favorite holiday movie. Whether it’s Miracle on 34th Street, The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, It’s A Wonderful Life, or something else, I bet you have both a smile on your face and a tear in your eye.

And that is how I hope to leave my readers, with each and every Christmas story I write.

My latest Holiday story, A Bramble House Christmas, was just released on October 26.

Happy Reading,
C. J.