Last week I talked about reading while you’re sick, and this week I want to talk about what happens if insomnia hits. I really don’t want to sound like I’m a complainer or a hypochondriac, but I’m curious! I’m of an age where insomnia hits me on a fairly regular schedule. Some nights of course are better than others. Those are the nights I wake up squint at the clock (it’s across the room and without my glasses on I’m totally unable to see) and lie back down and immediately sleep comes back to me. Other nights I squint at the clock lie down again and it seems like 10 minutes later I’m still wide awake. When I first started contributing to this blog and insomnia hit I opened up my laptop and made a whole list of topics I thought might be interesting. I felt like a real writer having to get up and put my inspirations down before they became something I just wished I had remembered. Like I’m sure many authors feel I’m wondering now if those topics are as good as I imagined them to be at 2 AM! I know that some of my fellow…

Our book club assignment is to list the best book we’ve read in 2008 — so far — because one of our members is trying to put together a list to share at our annual Holiday tea next week. So everyone has put on their thinking caps. In some cases, those with tidy and ordered minds, they’ve pulled out reading journals to consult, who knew about such things? While others of us are just trying to remember what we read last week. It was almost amusing if not painful to watch reactions of members when assigned at the last book club. There was even a follow-up on-line note which is unfortunate because I missed the pained reactions of others. Ah well. This week, I asked M how the list was going and she sighed…heavily…and told me she wasn’t very successful, not too many books were being forwarded to her. She reminded me that I hadn’t listed any either. So, I got to sigh in return. It got a little sad for a few moments. Then I confessed. I was one of those who “read so much I couldn’t remember anything except what I read in the past few weeks.” And…

Are you one of those people who tend to crack a joke when you’re in trouble? Is it because fear brings out the urge to laugh, or is it that laughter helps us get though the worst of times? And maybe it depends on who’s in it with you. Like a good buddy you can count on to watch your back. Our heroine, Brooklyn sex therapist Saylor Oz, and her sidekick, Benita Morales, are buddies who race through crime adventures bickering and bantering, sometimes blaming, and always forgiving. Kind of like our marriage. Being a husband-wife team writing under one pseudonym, we sometimes feel like we’re living a reality TV buddy movie. Aside from combining our opposite qualities — a guy who loves boxing and a woman who loves perfume — we use the roller coaster dynamics of a relationship between two strong-willed people to help shape the fun and exciting relationship of our characters. Not that we’ve ever been given a deadly ultimatum by a hit man called “The Monster.” Or that we’d go poking into dangerous situations. Like Saylor does, only to find herself knee-deep in trouble against some slimy, nasty dudes. But we love combining a gritty,…

To me, the holidays have always meant family and friends, togetherness and good cheer, peppermint mochas and gingerbread cookies. But increasingly, the Christmas season can also mean traffic and crowded stores, stress and anxiety, heartburn and credit-card bills. Now more than ever, we’re feeling the pinch. Our wallets are lighter. Our worries are many. But our hearts are still full. And that gives me hope. At the risk of sounding like a character from a Hallmark Channel TV movie, I believe it’s possible to have a fantastic time at Christmas…even without miles of blinking LED lights, candy canes, and a huge pile of gifts under the tree. Because those things are all extras. They’re just accessories. They’re optional. You don’t really need decorations or gifts or goodies at all. A freaky idea? Not really. Because what matters right now is being with the people you care about–and all the extraneous Christmas stuff can actually be a distraction from that. Think about it. Have you ever plowed through the mall, searching for exactly the right gift for someone special, only to come home exhausted…and snap at that special someone? (Oops.) Have you ever gotten so obsessed with pulling off a Martha…

And it has always been that way. Not because we are doing anything stressful. What can be stressful about seeing family and friends? Okay, let me rephrase that—what can be stressful about seeing friends? The truth of the matter is that it isn’t a bad thing to try and do too much. It isn’t bad to push ourselves a bit or do a little extra. These shorter days beg for us to do something especially cheerful. But what is bad to not take our time and enjoy the doing of it. One of the ways I de-stress is with books. Hey, books are the best entertainment bang for under twenty dollars—many times less than five. If you go to your library, they are free. Reading helps you keep real worries and fears in perspective or gives you insights into other people’s lives that you can apply to your own, even in fiction. Perhaps I should say most always in fiction. I always feel revitalized after spending time with characters I love. Plus, I’m one of those read-at-bedtime people. It’s “me” time at the end of a long day. Right now, I’m helping Sid Halley solve a murder in a Dick…

And I’m still full from my turkey induced coma of last week, have done no shopping and don’t plan to. What am I going to do this holiday season? Read. And read some more. Funny thing that. Thanksgiving night I was going a bit stir crazy wanting a good book. One with a hot alpha, who had hot alpha friends, and who meet up with a heroine who was like no other woman any of them had ever encountered. I was stumped because this story also had to have mad passion, conflict and angst. I looked over my to-be-read pile and still could not quite find what I was looking for. Then I looked down at the box that had arrived from my publisher Simon and Schuster the day before. I knew what was in it, and I smiled. There in that box was a true love story that still haunts me almost 8 months after I wrote it: MASTER OR TORMENT, book two in my Blood Sword Legacy series. This story is of Sir Wulfson and Lady Tarian Godwinson. It is without exception a story of my heart and soul, and it transcended the pages. Reviewers love this story,…

The other day I received a question from a reader who’d already read my latest release Scions:Revelation (December 1st) and the last book in my Scions trilogy. She asked if the prophecy–that has been an underlying thread through all three of the books in the Scions trilogy–was something I planned from the very beginning, or if the outcome of the prophecy had come to me as I wrote the books. The answer is actually somewhere in between. 🙂 The idea for the first book in my Scions series came straight from a dream. I’d dreamed about a woman who was kidnapped by a vampire and they were being chased by gunmen. Lots of running, leaping across building rooftops and gunshots ensued. The scene in my dream was right out of an adventure novel and too surreal not to write once I woke up. But once I started jotting down notes, I then had to figure out how to turn that “one scene” into a novel. Hmmm…I ask the question: Why the vampire might want to kidnap the human woman and why the gunmen were chasing them….and all the reasons in between….and that’s how the first five chapters in the first…