A PLACE BEYOND COURAGE is the story of a Medieval knight, soldier and baron called John FitzGilbert, who, if you look him up online, had something of a reputation as a hard man of his times, willing to sacrifice his small son in order to hold onto one of his castles.  I was interested in finding out more about  his life, and to discover what really happened.  Did John really say that even if the boy was killed by the men who held him captive, it didn’t matter because he could beget better sons to replace him? John FitzGilbert was also known as John the Marshal. His second name was his job description.  So what exactly did a marshal do in the Middle Ages – and specifically the royal marshal, answerable to the king?  What were his responsibilities and duties? The name Marshal derives from Marescallus, which meant ‘Stable hand.’ So essentially the original job had to do with horses.  It was the marshal’s job to ensure there was stabling and fodder for the horses in the royal household.  From there, the duty spread out into provision and responsibility for the hounds in the kennels and the hawks in the…

This is Frank “Boss” Knight.  And his nickname says it all.  He’s the man, the head hancho, the big Kahuna.  And at Black Knights Inc., the custom motorcycle shop that provides the cover for his clandestine government defense firm, the buck stops with him – much to our heroine Becky’s intense chagrin.  A former Navy SEAL, Frank may spend his days as a simple motorcycle mechanic, but his nights are filled with the kind of missions too hot for Uncle Sam to handle.  With the help of his wickedly sharp KA-Bar knife and his custom-made Harley – appropriately named Boss Hog – he’s not the type of guy you want to cross.  Gruff, tough, and built like an Abram’s tank, Frank is all man.  But in the arms of our heroine, his hardened exterior softens to reveal a sweet and tender heart. If you asked Frank why he takes the jobs no one else would touch with a ten foot pole, he’d mutter, in that booming base of his, “Because somebody’s gotta do ’em.”  And if it’s not obvious from the hard line of his jaw, the scars on his face, and the grit in his eye, he’s done more…

When I was a child reading my grandmother’s Louis L’Amour books, I was always impressed by the author’s note that said if there was a stream mentioned in the book, that stream was really there. When I started writing books of my own, I realized that, while it was one thing to write about a geographical landmark or historical saloon, it was another to write about modern businesses that changed hands or names or even disappeared in the time it took to write a chapter. It was still another to write about unsavory characters doing unsavory things in real-life establishments owned by actual people who might sue you. And what if the place you need to write about doesn’t actually exist—but for the sake of the story, ought to? My detective, Jared McKean, operates in and around Nashville, Tennessee, and if I need him to go to a place that exists in the real world, all I need to do to describe it accurately is go there and look around. In A CUP FULL OF MIDNIGHT, the second book in the series, I needed a place for Jared to take a woman in whom he has a romantic interest. I…

A Breed Apart September 2012 On Sale: September 1, 2012 352 pages ISBN: 1616265949 EAN: 9781616265946 Kindle: B0082HEKKY Paperback $12.99  Add to Wish List Romance Suspense, Romance ContemporaryBuy at Amazon.com A thriller with a special animal Trinity: Military War Dog by Ronie Kendig An ex-Green Beret. His war dog. On the greatest mission of their lives. And probably their last. A year ago in Afghanistan, Green Beret Heath Daniel’s career was destroyed. Along with his faith. Now he and his military war dog, Trinity, have a chance to redeem their skills through the A Breed Apart organization. The job works. But his passion is to be back in the field. The medical discharge says it can’t happen due to the traumatic brain injury that forced Heath to the sidelines. Until. . . Military intelligence officer Darci Kintz is captured and the geological survey team she’s covertly embedded with is killed while secretly tracking the Taliban in the beautiful but brutal Hindu Kush. It’s clear only one dog can handle the extreme conditions to save her. And only one man can handle Trinity. Time is running out on the greatest—and most dangerous— mission of their lives. A fast-paced military thriller with…

Romance…and Thrillers “Move over Jack Reacher – Jess Harris is comin’ to town.” ~ Cindy Gerard, New York Times bestselling author. Agent Jess Harris is back in another thrilling installment of Debra Webb‘s Faces of Evil series. Jess is ready to start the next chapter in her life as the deputy chief of Birmingham’s major crimes division. But with her first love, Chief of Police Dan Burnett, acting as her new boss it looks like Jess won’t be able to put the past behind her that easily. When the death of a celebrated ballet instructor is assigned to another division and ruled an accident, Jess can’t shake the feeling that there’s more to the story. Her investigations take her deep into the world of Birmingham/s gang and drug culture where another kind of elite power is at work. Jess quickly finds herself the target of more than one deadly enemy. Will she be able to solve the crime before her own life is in jeopardy? “…readers won’t be able to resist.” ~ CJ Lyons, New York Times bestselling author. Faces of Evil Suspense series set in Birmingham, Alabama featuring FBI Special Agent Jess Harris Obsession Faces of Evil #1.0 August…

April 2011 On Sale: April 12, 2011 480 pages ISBN: 0515149489 EAN: 9780515149487 Paperback (reprint) $7.99  Add to Wish List Romance Suspense Buy at Amazon.com Romance with animals, a book club favorite The Search by Nora Roberts To most people, Fiona Bristow seems to have an idyllic life-a quaint house on an island off Seattle’s coast, a thriving dog-training school, and a challenging volunteer job performing canine search and rescues. Not to mention her three intensely loyal Labs. But Fiona got to this point by surviving a nightmare… Several years ago, Fiona was the only survivor of the Red Scarf serial killer, who shot and killed Fiona’s cop fiancé and his K-9 partner. On Orcas Island, Fiona found the peace and solitude she needed to rebuild her life. But all that changes on the day Simon Doyle barrels up her drive, desperate for her help. He’s the reluctant owner of an out-of-control puppy, foisted upon him by his mother. Jaws has eaten through Simon’s house, and he’s at his wit’s end. To Fiona, Jaws is nothing she can’t handle. Simon, however, is another matter. A newcomer to Orcas, he’s a rugged and in-tensely private artist, known for the exquisite furniture…

October 2011 On Sale: September 27, 2011 Featuring: Callie; Lovie; Elvis 240 pages ISBN: 0758241410 EAN: 9780758241412 Hardcover $23.00  Add to Wish List Mystery Pet Lovers Buy at Amazon.com Mysteries with pets Elvis and the Tropical Double Trouble by Peggy Webb It’s two times the turmoil for mayhem magnet Callie, her curvaceous cousin Lovie, and Elvis, the King reincarnated as nothin’ but a hound dog. This time they’re finding a lot more than relics on an archeological dig that could truly be their ruin. . . Forced to choose between one man who wants to marry her and another who already did, Callie Valentine Jones can’t think of a better way to check out of her personal Heartbreak Hotel then to get way, way out of town. So when Lovie invites the whole Valentine clan to visit her brainy new beau’s worksite near Cozumel, Callie packs up her crooning basset hound and heads straight for the airport. But the moment they arrive at the dig, Elvis sniffs out T-R-O-U-B-L-E, in the form of a skeleton too fresh to be part of the research and too dead to spell anything but homicide. Suspicious minds blame ghosts and gods, but Callie knows…

Writing novels is surely the most portable career there is. The office cube farm is handily located right between my ears. Tools of the trade fit in the pocket of my oversize hoodie–a Clairefontaine notebook, a fountain pen filled with peacock-blue ink, and a smartphone that doesn’t actually get a signal at the house. The commute? My usual route is from the couch to the computer, and the only traffic I encounter is a sleeping dog or a teetering tower of to-be-read books. When you’re this portable, you have the ability to live anywhere you want. So why not pick the place that feels most like home in the world? My “anywhere,” as it turns out, is Bainbridge Island, Washington–a chunky green dot on the map, located a ferry commute away from downtown Seattle. This particular house has everything a writer could want–a nice big stretch of beach, privacy, a separate studio for guests, and a funky ’60s vibe that makes it a unique and creative space. There’s a timeless quality to life at the shore, where the work schedule is defined by the tides, and deadlines are dictated by the seasons. Blue herons, scoters and red-winged blackbirds inhabit the…

Tomorrow (9/4/12), Montlake Romance will publish my romantic suspense, EVERY BREATH SHE TAKES.  But it won’t be the first time this story has seen publication. It was first published in 2004 by Dorchester Publishing under the title LAUREN’S EYES, after it won Dorchester’s New Voice in Romance contest. I was thrilled to join the ranks of my mass market-published friends. Then I saw my cover. Actually, most of the romance writing community saw my cover before I did. It was unveiled at a Romantic Times conference which I was unfortunately unable to attend, but the lovely Julianne MacLean stood in for me and posed with my pretty cover on my behalf. And it truly was a beautiful cover, with gorgeous pastel colors, depicting three fantasy-type horses with long flowing manes. The problem? The book in question is not a pastel fantasy. It’s a sexy, gritty romantic suspense with a relatively slight – but key – paranormal element (psychic heroine). The upshot, of course, between the small print run and the lack of a genre-appropriate cover, was that the book failed to find its audience with Dorchester, and I subsequently reacquired the publishing rights. Fast forward to 2011 when I was…

They always say, “Write about what you know’, so I made the heroine of DEATH ON A LONGSHIP, Cass Lynch, a keen sailor. Well, more like obsessive – she ran away from home and education to join a three-masted sailing ship, and pursue a career on the water: teaching children in dinghies on the beaches of the Mediterranean, going to night school to learn navigation, sailing across the Atlantic, and living aboard her own boat. I’ve not quite done all of those. I grew up with boats, in holidays on the glorious west coast of Scotland, in a cottage three miles by sea from the end of the road. There were badgers, foxes, otters, seals, weird spiky caterpillars and double-winged dragonflies, a blow-up canoe for pottering round the rocks and our family’s twelve-foot wooden rowing boat. I still have her, and I can hardly believe two adults, three children and a Siamese cat really went for miles in anything so small. According to my mum, she was my first playpen: ‘I put you in the boat with a book, and you were perfectly happy.’ As the child starts, so she’ll grow! The first time I was in a sailing dinghy…