Would YOU marry a stranger for two million dollars? I totally would not. Definitely wouldn’t. No way, not happening. Not in a million years. Certainly not for something as trivial as cash. Unless… I could finally take that trip to Fiji I’ve wanted to take since watching The Blue Lagoon when I was an inappropriately underage pre-teen girl. But I loved that movie. Loved it. Fantasized about wearing a loin cloth and traipsing around carefree though lush foliage and abandoned caves. Dreamed of swimming underwater Brooke Shield’s-style with seriously cute Christopher Atkins (I might have been ten years old, but I noticed). Whatever happened to him, anyway? He was adorable in a permed-hair, blonde, native islander kind of way. Or if… I could hire the housekeeper I’ve dreamed of hiring since buying my first home fourteen years ago. I’ve basically lived in the slums since then. Okay, not really. But things would very likely be one-hundred percent better if someone would clean my toilets a little more often than I manage to do them myself. And don’t get me started on my windows. I’m pretty sure there’s a sun shining outside most days. It might be nice if I could…

On Thanksgiving Day, I’ll find out. The Basques are descending on my home for the holidays. My husband’s family is from the Basque country in Spain, and ten of them are coming for Thanksgiving. They love to eat Squid’s Ink Soup (it’s black) and clams with rice. My own family, which hails from Texas and Oklahoma, prefers the traditional turkey and cornbread dressing. We like beer; they like red wine. But on Thanksgiving, we’re all family. We will celebrate being together, even if we don’t share the same tastes. Fiction readers are like that, too, aren’t we? Some of us love dark mysteries, some prefer gentle romances, and some want to explore space or history. (Personally, I like to explore the lives of notorious women in history, like Jezebel.) Yet we’re all family. We can hang out on the same blog and celebrate what bonds us together: a story, well told. Readers and writers long for the beauty that a great story delivers. We all appreciate words and their power. That’s why this Thanksgiving, I am thankful for you. We may share the same tastes, or we might not. Either way, words have made us a family. And whenever a…

Animals bring joy to my life. Not just my own pets, but anyone’s animals. Even the big guys. Which is why, when I thought it was time to start giving back, I decided to volunteer at Lincoln Park Zoo. I’d been volunteering there for more than ten years when I wanted to do something more personal—socialize cats up for adoption at the then new PAWS Chicago. While I was volunteering there, the Humane Society of Illinois had a couple of informative meetings about getting legislation passed to help stop dog fighting. Which is how I came up with the original idea for ANIMAL INSTINCTS. I wanted to help spread awareness. I was soon convinced, however, that people loved their pets too much to want to read about such a troubling practice, so I made a left turn and transitioned dog fights to shifter fights—humans who shift into predators. And that gave me a whole new angle on my story. Skye Cross is the most like me heroine I’ve ever created. She’s an animal advocate. She even lives in my neighborhood, in my city 2-flat. I’d always wanted to have an animal rescuer heroine, and this was my opportunity. To make…