From Chapter 1 White Night February 1994 Lynwood, Louisiana The bald tires of Frank Daniels’s corroded pickup rolled over a shallow bed of popping gravel and stopped next to two men in pointy hoods. The men huddled together, shifting around an imaginary fire and stomping their feet now and again. Their hoods were for show, not warmth. The other conspirators waited inside the clapboard frame house. Daniels got out of his truck and acknowledged the security detail with a half salute, which was all the formality he could muster given the late hour. With a rocking gait and fixed grin, he waddled up to the house in oversized boots worn to accommodate his swollen feet. The sentinels followed, hoods now in their hands. He wasn’t yet much of a Klansman, not compared to Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest, but Daniels soon would fix that by leading his own white night. The residents of Lynwood wouldn’t know it right away, but the town’s coming racial reckoning would be the doing of the Klan’s new grand dragon. All revolutions started somewhere, and that Friday evening Lynwood would join Fort Sumter as a cradle of insurrection. He closed the door behind him and…

The world needs more female leaders, that’s for sure. But bringing a strong female leader to life in my latest book Echoes from the Veil wasn’t always easy for me. In this book my half-Fae main character Elizabeth Tanner has to learn how to trust herself and her abilities to lead a Fae rebellion. I didn’t want to write a cliché “kickass female heroine,” though. I wanted readers to see her development, her struggles, and her insecurities. I’ve recently finished Brené Brown’s book Dare to Lead and she says that one of the most defining factors of a good leader is being able to lean into vulnerability. It seems a bit counterintuitive in our hyper-competitive, “show no fear” kind of leadership culture, but for Brené Brown, true leadership comes from understanding one’s values, strengths, and weaknesses. It means coming to terms with fundamental truths about who we are, and in order to do that, we must make ourselves vulnerable. In Echoes from the Veil, I wanted readers to experience that journey with my heroine as she struggles to carry the heavy mantle of leader of a resistance movement in the Faerie realm. Because she doubts herself and her abilities, she…

Blake suspected Clay was going to be trouble no matter what they did. Give him a room. Don’t give him a room. But Blake liked that Nicole was willing to allow the guy the opportunity to remain there and do his investigation. Hopefully, Clay would stay out of Nicole’s way. Blake knew Nicole would love to complete the task, and he and his brother and sisters would do anything they could to aid her in finishing it. He thought the world of her for being good-natured enough to be okay with Clay solving the case so she could spend more time with Blake. Besides, staying with her while the guy was here was definitely a good thing. At least he hoped so. He remembered going on a trip with his siblings to Grand Cayman Island once, and Roxie talking to a middle-age couple about why they were there. Was it a honeymoon? Anniversary? She learned the couple had dumped their spouses and were doing a trial vacation in paradise. They were each paying their own way, but this was like a honeymoon before the marriage, if it went that far. Blake wasn’t surprised Roxie would talk to the woman. She…