Like Katie Capwell, the female protagonist in my new new novel, MAYBE SOMEONE LIKE YOU, my path to following my dreams wasn’t a straight line. No, it was more of a wild zigzag, like a trail made by a frantic mouse in a maze. The idea of becoming a writer was always teasing me with its alluring pull, but writers were “other” people—fancy people who wore blazers with elbow patches. (Okay, so my childhood idea of a writer stuck with me through adulthood, even though I knew better.) Upon graduating from UCLA, I began working in television casting. It was a (relatively) seamless flow from interning at NBC to working as an assistant to a casting director. The first show we cast fizzled, but the next show we worked on—one that people mistakenly called The Exiles in its infancy stage—became a huge hit. Soon, people were no longer calling it anything but its correct name, The X-Files. Through the years, I was promoted, and then I moved to a different casting company as a casting director. The job was amazing. No other position would’ve allowed me to meet so many individuals from all walks of life. They told me their…

Writers are like magpies. They gather their own experiences, couple them with tons and tons of research, and come up with a distinctive realm that they hope will draw readers into their stories. How do they do it? The old adage, “Write What You Know” holds a lot of merit. As an author, I try to follow it whenever I can. For example, I don’t set my stories in Paris, because I’ve never been there. I couldn’t do the city, or the people, justice. And as much as I love to read Regencies, I’ve only been to England once. That doesn’t make me an expert on all things British. However, I do know the United States, especially California. Being a native Californian, I’ve travelled up and down and all around this state. Coincidentally, that’s where my latest release, UNDERCOVER WITH THE NANNY, takes place. The heroine, Kate Munroe, lives in a little beach community near the border of California and Mexico. I haven’t been down that way in a long time. When I did my research, I found that the town of Imperial Beach was the closest to the Mexican border. I scoured pictures of it on the internet, and…

I’ve been fortunate enough to do a lot of traveling, and my travels have heavily influenced my writing. My first book, INTO THE SCOTTISH MIST, was a time-travel romance that was inspired by a road trip in Scotland in 2005. Okay, I didn’t time travel, but when I looked upon the sapphire-blue expanse of Loch Ness with the ruins of Urquhart Castle standing sentinel over it, the mist-enshrouded hills of Glencoe, and the numerous standing stones on Orkney, I thought that if magic was possible anywhere, it would be in Scotland. My second book, A STAR TO STEER HER BY, is a romance set on a schooner during a semester at sea program. It was inspired by my own experiences in a similar program in my sophomore year of college. My new book, UNDER A STORM-SWEPT SKY, came about after I hiked Scotland’s West Highland Way, a ninety-six-mile trail that runs from Milngavie, just outside of Glasgow, to Fort William. I’d been to Scotland a few times since that road trip over a decade ago, and in 2015 I decided I wanted to see that incredible landscape on foot. Research led me to a company that does guided treks on…

By Susan Gorman Samantha Chase is my favorite contemporary author. I love her Montgomery Brothers series featuring a matchmaking uncle and his sons, nephews and nieces. William Montgomery’s charming personality and his schemes captivated me and I couldn’t wait to see which couple would be featured in the next novel. I was thrilled to have the opportunity to share breakfast with Samantha Chase when she visited The Boston area last weekend! Over orange juice and omelets, we talked about the Montgomery family… Susan Gorman: I was surprised to learn that the Montgomery series was a trilogy—WAIT FOR ME, TRUST IN ME 
and STAY WITH ME featuring Lucas, Jason and Mac Montgomery— and that it was indie published! It seems like a lifetime ago that I first released WAIT FOR ME! Oh my goodness, I had no idea what I was in for when I introduced the Montgomerys! This was the series that really was the breakout for me. Susan Gorman: Can you tell us how the series developed into nine books, and about the journey from indie to traditional publishing? Honestly, I never envisioned the series going beyond the original three. That was the plan – a trilogy. Readers were very…