I’ve been thinking a lot about siblings these days. I only have one — a brother — though there were many times growing up when I thought there were six of him. The boy was a holy terror, sometimes without the holy. I have the funniest memories of him growing up. Though he’s three years younger than I am, when he was around five or six, he used to beat me up. He did it because I’d never hit him back. Well, I woke up to that pretty quickly, and accidentally socked him one day. Guess what? My brother’s love of hitting his big sister suddenly faded. My brother used to torture me with dessert. Like a normal person, I would eat my dessert immediately after the meal. Not my brother. He’d save his for later that night when I had none. Then he’d sit in front of me eating his, waiting for me to ask for a bite so he could deny me. I wish I could say I never asked, but I always did. As we grew older, I seemed to get the upper hand on my little brother. My mom worked two jobs when we were kids,…

My Violet series is about a not-so-confident model named Violet Greenfield, a real girl who finds herself under runway lights and in the clutches of an overbearing (and sometimes cruel) agent. Over the course of the trilogy, Violet tries to navigate the crazy fashion world, hold onto her real friends and discover who she is on the inside while attention swirls around her outside. In the Young Adult genre, there’s been some talk about “message books,” books that teach lessons, essentially, and whether YA authors have an obligation to write this kind of book. I say absolutely not–why should YA authors be held to a different standard than Adult authors? Teen readers are smart, imaginative and endlessly savvy. They deserve characters that ring true, that grow, that inspire them. But they don’t need Pollyannas at every turn. That’s why I sometimes wanted to explore the dark sides of the fashion industry with the Violet books. In Violet on the Runway, Violet encounters drug addiction; in Violet by Design, she faces immense pressure to stay skinny in order to be “runway ready;” and in Violet in Private, she has to make a choice–stay in the spotlight or give up modeling and…

Sara of Fresh Fiction fame thinks I can write a column while I on the other hand am not as certain, but decided that if she was going to be encouraging then I should give it my best shot by helping with the Fresh Fiction blog. Christine SonOriginally uploaded by freshfiction Friday, August 15, 2008 I met a couple of friends for a lovely and lively dinner, and then on to a book signing for a debut author [Christine Son] who also happens to be local to our area. Is there really anything better than meeting friends for a dinner and books without the husband, significant other, and or children? I for one think not. Yes, the main purpose is to discuss books, but if the group of friends is close doesn’t the discussion naturally go from the romance found in books to the romance found in your real life? Does that not then have you wondering are you married to a hero worthy of a romance novel? I know that physically I may not be married to a typical hero, but he’s there for me emotionally and financially. He’s a great dad, but more importantly he doesn’t mind my…

Two weeks ago I was at the RWA conference in San Francisco where I gave a talk about writing for the YA market. For those of you who weren’t there, here’s the list – YA books stay on the shelves longer (by longer I mean longer than category romance which is my other outlet) Category books are gone in a month, but the last time I checked at my local Borders, all three of my books in the BFF series, MANDERLEY PREP, RICH GIRL and THE GUY NEXT DOOR were still on the shelves. Teens are loyal readers, if they like your book, they spread the word by texting, calling or whatever. Series are popular. Hook a teen reader and they’ll stick with you. YA books are short, around 50,000 words. You can write more books in a year than single titles. Writing for and hanging out with teens can keep you young. You can dig into your own past for material or use your kids or your neighbors. Deal a blow forever to the memory of those geeks, freaks, nerds, cheerleaders, jocks and goths who wouldn’t eat lunch with you, date you, or even speak to you in the…

Hey all! It’s an honor to be guest blogging here—thanks so much to Fresh Fiction for lending me the microphone. Suckers. My new novel, GOOD PEOPLE is about, well, good people, specifically a married couple that’s been trying to have a baby. They haven’t had any luck, and are being crushed by debt from fertility treatments, and that’s straining their marriage and their hope. Then one night, everything changes. Offered a chance at a future they’d almost lost hope in, they seize it. One simple choice. A fairy-tale ending. But as they soon learn, fairy tale endings don’t come cheap…. Of course, that’s the finished book. When I began thinking about it, I didn’t know all that stuff. See, for me, starting a book is a difficult time. I usually have some idea of what I want to explore, but I can’t get started until something clicks. Sometimes it’s a character, sometimes a scene. I never know until it hits. So I spend a lot of time freewriting, staring at the wall, cleaning the toilet, reading other books, cooking, browsing the web…. And it was that last that made this come together. I was just surfing, the way people don’t…

Thank you Fresh Fiction for allowing me to visit today. I’m having a great day because my book, BILLIONAIRE’S MARRIAGE BARGAIN, which features a hot, powerful, charming and RICH man is on the stands! Alex Megalos has the ability to charm women into his bed with no difficulty at all. When my shero, Mallory James tells him she’s not interested in him, he decides to prove her wrong. There is a lot of heat and a couple of scandals to keep things interesting. If you get a chance to read BILLIONAIRE’S MARRIAGE BARGAIN, please write me. I’d love to hear from you. I’m having a great day, but that got me to thinking about bad days… or odd days. …cuz you had an odd day… I changed the lyrics to that hit song American Idol played over and over again because I believe there are degrees to bad. Bad is a piano falling on you, incurable diseases, a plane flying into your condo, bombs going off in your town … You get the picture. I feel like a real whiner if I say I’ve had a bad day when I think about how tough a lot of other people have…

Jay, who, you ask? Jay Burgess, one of the main characters in my new novel, SMOKE SCREEN, which, by the way, goes on sale today. I’m sure you’re wondering how and why a main character can be dead (and not a ghostly presence), but this is very much the case with Jay, and even though he’s deceased, I still had to make him as dynamic as every other character in the book. You see, everything in SMOKE SCREEN revolves around Jay, his childhood friend, Raley Gannon, our intrepid heroine, Britt Shelley and a fire. And much like the fire, a single event that fuels the back-story of nearly every character in the book, Jay Burgess is a man who impacted many lives. Besides Jay, Raley and Britt, there’s a host of other characters. Matter of fact, SMOKE SCREEN probably has more characters than any other book I’ve written. This is due in part to the villain not being revealed until so late in the book. Keeping that identity a secret necessitated creating four or five viable suspects and each of them needed motive, opportunity and most importantly, character traits that define them, make them seem not only real but unique…

And I mean that literally. The other day, I was out signing stock at local bookstores for my current release, The Druid Made Me Do It (Dorchester Love Spell, Aug. 2008), and had the good fortune to run into a reader who was really excited about my books and authors in general. It didn’t take thirty seconds for her to ask the question that writers field pretty frequently: Where did you get your idea for these stories? Well, I’d like to say I was off on some exotic adventure and based my books on personal experience. But, um, no. I was surfing the Internet. Geeky, huh? While procrastinating, I frequently find myself drawn to news stories and websites describing the weird, the wild and the wonderful. I was reading up on fun stuff like Druids and ancient monuments and mythology (another obsession of mine). That’s when I came across this piece about the Circle of Avebury in Wiltshire, England. The Circle of Avebury is like Stonehenge, except older, bigger and less well maintained. A lot of the stones are missing, many of them taken down by Christian authorities who insisted on replacing pagan sites of ritual with churches of their…

My trip to California (and back to Texas) is over. On one hand I say thank goodness, on the other, I miss the cool air of Northern California. According to husband it was in the 100s while I was gone. It’s “cooled” down to just 100 since I’ve been home. Just call me “bringer of cool temps” LOL Gwen and I saw lots of the country on our twelve day adventure, and it’s a BIG country if you were in any doubt. Still many many miles of beautiful vistas, no houses or lights and awe-inspiring landscapes! It nourished my soul to be able to see it closer than 40,000 feet through a small dirty porthole. Our main objective on this trip was the annual Romance Writers of America convention in San Francisco. We arrived in San Francisco on Tuesday afternoon and spent the rest of day relaxing and getting ready to go-go-go. We closed down on Saturday night after FOUR JAM PACKED DAYS!!! I’m not sure how to cover it all, so I’ll just try to hit some of the highlights. Fresh Fiction staff – Sara, Gwen, Suan, Mindy, Faye, TanzeyOriginally uploaded by freshfiction Wednesday, July 30th. The Fresh Fiction…

Have you ever looked down at a sleeping child and realized you would do anything, resort to any measure, to protect the life entrusted to you? Have you ever loved so deeply that it’s almost like a physical ache? Excused behavior even when you knew it was wrong? If the answer to any of these is yes, perhaps you’ll understand the inspiration for my latest romantic thriller, Triple Exposure, where I explore the idea that even the best, most wholesome emotional attachment can be taken to deadly extremes. Fine art photographer Rachel Copeland is acquitted of the self-defense slaying of a nineteen-year-old student who’d been stalking her back in Philadelphia. But thanks to a heart-wrenching emotional appeal from the young man’s mother, a popular television personality and the doctored-pornographic photos the “victim” posted to the Internet, Rachel finds no peace, even when she returns home in an attempt to reclaim her life. What Rachel does find is a new assignment that leads her to photograph reclusive desert craftsman Zeke Pike without his knowledge. The picture taken highlights both his strength and sensuality as he creates his furnishings, igniting feelings Rachel had thought extinguished by her ordeal. But the lit fuse…