HOLLYWOOD CONFESSIONS Blog Tour!

Welcome to the first stop on my HOLLYWOOD CONFESSIONS Blog Tour! For the next two weeks I’ll be hopping all over the blogosphere posting snippets and stories about my latest release, as well as giving out freebies and prizes at every stop – including Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble gift cards, free books, cameo appearances in an upcoming book, Hollywood Headlines collectibles, and more! So be sure to check out all the tour stops on my website and come by each day to enter for a new prize! (Some days, like today, I have more than one stop and will be giving away more than one prize!)


Since this is my first stop, and my home turf blog, I thought I’d start off by talking a little bit about the Hollywood Headlines series and how it came about. I always love getting insight into other writers’ creative process, so here’s a bit about mine…

In 2007 I was just finishing up what was, at the time, the last book in my High Heels series, and my editor sent me an email asking if I had any ideas about what I wanted to write next. God bless her for wanting a “next” book from me, so I sat down for some power brainstorming. One of my biggest challenges with the previous High Heel series was continuing a romance series with the same hero and heroine in each book… and keeping the romance fresh five books into it! So with the new series, I decided I wanted to play with different heroines in different books, but all connected somehow.

My first idea was to have them all work for a fashion magazine. But, as my editor pointed out, writers for Vouge don’t necessarily come across many dead bodies. It would be hard to work the mystery angle into that setting. A very good point. So, I went for a newspaper instead. I came up with three feisty investigative reporter characters who would be my main heroines in each of the three planned books, and one tough-as-nails managing editor lady to oversee them all. My editor loved the three heroines… but the editor thing seemed over done. Reluctantly, I had to agree. Back to the drawing board.

At the same time my last High Heels book came out, and I got more reader mail with that book than I ever had before, the bulk of it about the jilted lover at the end of my High Heels series, Felix Dunn. Poor Felix had been in love with Maddie Springer since the second Heels book, but seemed destined to be the nice tabloid reporter who never gets the girl. Personally, I’ve always had a soft spot for Felix. He’s a refined guy in a wrinkled suit, a millionaire several times over who still drives a beat up car, and the type of guy who would let the love of his life marry someone else if he thought that was what would make her happiest.

So, in the midst of all this reader mail about poor Felix, an idea was born. What if instead of newspaper, my three heroines worked for a tabloid… the tabloid manned by Felix! My editor loved the idea, and we ran with it, planning HOLLYWOOD CONFESSIONS as the first book in the series, where Felix gets to star in his own book, with his own heroine, and solve his own mystery. In fact, let’s make that heroine the same hot journalism student he met in the last Heels book, Allie Quick!

And as we developed the storylines for all three books, my editor had an even better idea. A… as Dr. Suess would put it… wonderful, awful idea. Let’s make readers wait to find out what happens to Felix. Let’s draw it out *just* a little. Let’s put his love story LAST in the series. (Bwahahaha!)

So we did. HOLLYWOOD SCANDALS came out first (originally under the title “Scandal Sheet”), chronicling the feisty, fiery gossip columnist at the L.A. Informer tabloid, Tina Bender, as she tracks down a threatening murderer among the juiciest scandals of Hollywood’s elite. A year later, the second book, HOLLYWOOD SECRETS (originally titled “The Perfect Shot”) was published, following Cameron Dakota, the L.A. Informer’s staff photographer and paparazzo extraordinaire, as she witnesses the gun-point kidnapping of an A-lister from a Hollywood nightclub.

And now, finally, four years after the original conception of the book, I’m so psyched to release HOLLYWOOD CONFESSIONS, which follows Felix and his newest reporter, Allie Quick, as the investigate the murder of a reality show producer and the dozens of reality show contestants who have reasons to hate him.

I hope you check out HOLLYWOOD CONFESSIONS, and please drop me a line to let me know how you like it!

And to kick off the blog tour right - and catch up any readers who hate starting with book #3 in a series - I’m giving away the first two books in the Hollywood Headlines series FREE to every single one of you!! Just go to Smashwords.com and type in the following promo codes at checkout:

For HOLLYWOOD SCANDALS: JZ89Y
For HOLLYWOOD SECRETS: HV54W

You can download in a variety of different ebook formats for just about any ereader, or for easy reading right on your pc or mac.

Happy Reading!

~ Trigger Happy Halliday