When people ask Alice and I what ROMAN CRAZY is about, we tell them it’s a two-fold Second Chance Romance. What exactly is that, is usually the follow up question. . . Second-chance love stories are some of my absolute favorites to read, and to write. Yes, this is a story about Avery Bardot and Marcello Bianchi re-connecting after years apart. It is 100% a testament to their relationship as young adults and how as adults they’re working through what they had, and recognizing what they could have again but, it’s also about Avery finding herself again after putting someone else first for almost a decade. For us, making sure that Avery was happy with all of the changes in her life was so important. We wanted her to grow as a woman, as a lover and as a friend to Daisy, Marcello and this new life she’s uncovered. We wanted those friends and family surrounding her to watch and champion her decisions because they knew as well that it was necessary for her to accept everything she’s been given. I’m a firm believer in things happening for a reason and for Avery, what happens is a chance at a…
Travel! I spent two years between high school and college seeing the world. I helped bathe orphans in Mexico, saw the wall come down in Germany, rode a bike in snowy Denmark, slept in too many airports to count, sang on a stage in Poland, and so much more. Since then I’ve sailed to the Bahamas, climbed a light house in Bermuda, hiked the Na Pali coast in Hawaii, canoed in Venezuela, zip-lined a forest, and the list goes on… Travel! It’ll open your mind and soul to this incredible earth we live on. Be open to change. When your heart and gut tell you to take a less comforting choice, consider listening. Nine times out of ten your heart and gut are right. Learn a language. Be it Spanish, French, Farsi, or whatever, dig in and learn it. Be willing to travel to a country that speaks your chosen 2nd language and do total immersion. Be willing to take more classes than are required for a high school diploma. Knowing a second language is an irreplaceable skill. It’s okay to break up with a boyfriend. What’s not okay to do is choose boys over friends. Boys will come and…
Though many authors create imagined locations and history for their fiction stories, early on I learned that real locations and real history were going to be a foundation for my novels. The mystery in the first of my To Die For crime series was based partly on American Indian history many centuries in the past. That became story material simply because the presence of nomadic people in Arkansas after the end of the last Ice Age fascinated me, as did prehistoric drawings discovered in caves and bluff shelters in my area. After that, each novel and short story has included history relevant to my chosen story setting. The second series novel, MUSIC TO DIE FOR, takes place at Ozark Folk Center State Park–an area devoted to preserving Ozarks history and early music. A major secondary character in MUSIC is Mad Margaret Culpeper, 100-year-old matriarch of a family that has maintained illegal business activities in Ozark forests for several generations. Next I visited Hot Springs National Park. Again, early American Indian presence in the area was part of the story, but the novel’s criminal activity and murder is based on the shady history of Hot Springs. This was “Sin City” until…