1. Double—and triple—check your overnight accommodations. I learned this the hard way. When the heat is low, crashing at some dive off the interstate is okay. But when the bad guys are hot on your ass, you need something a little more low key. I crashed in an abandoned pet store one night last May, too tired to check the place out properly. Apparently there was a huge chunk of wall missing. I woke up to an unhappy forest dweller in my face—more specifically, a skunk. Let me tell you, keeping it lo-pro while smelling like skunk isn’t easy to do… 2. Always be prepared to bail. This should go without saying, as any situation could turn critical in the blink of an eye. But what about simple things like sleep—or taking a shower? My best advice to those on the lam would be to make sure your wardrobe consists of simple, easy clothing. Don’t even think about those cute wrap around tops or that killer pair of lace up boots… Fashion is going to have to take a back seat to practicality here. And for the love of God, don’t sleep naked. The last thing you want is to…

I should probably sub-title this post ‘My Favorite Heroine(s)’, but then I might leave one off the list and she might leave the pages of her books to haunt me through the night… There have been several heroines I’ve identified with over my lifetime, but two that are very special to me — that I sometimes still feel are part of me. This first is Laura Ingalls Wilder. When I was little I loved those books. I didn’t have sisters, I wasn’t the middle child, but I did grow up on a farm in the middle of nowhere with a bunch of animals and lots of places to explore. Our local PBS station was re-running all of the Little House episodes the summer I turned 9 and I was in heaven. For an hour every day I got to watch Laura get into all kinds of trouble — and I quickly realized she had some good ideas. Nothing to do on a hot day? Why not wander down to the creek (we had 3 of them) and fish? Too rainy to go outside? Why not explore a haunted house (or my basement) to see what I could find? Not too…

I must admit, I sure would. I absolutely hate taking my car in for repair—I freely admit I’m not the most knowledgeable about what goes on underneath the engine, but even if I was an expert on a car’s inner workings, I know I’d be made to feel lacking when facing what has got to be one of the last male bastions out there—at least in my town. The garage. In fact, it was my experience of taking my car in for a service at my local garage that gave me the idea of UNDER THE HOOD –a garage owned by three women mechanics. I hung around, waiting to hand over the keys, just inside a workshop papered with calendars of half-naked women, while a group of guys drank coffee and talked, perfectly well aware of me but taking their time. Because I was female. When they finally came to consult, before I’d opened my mouth, they just didn’t take me seriously. I imagined how different it could be. How great it could be to ask questions of the mechanics, without feeling like a complete idiot. A few months later, I had the idea to create a garage in my…

Do you have moments that remain in your memory, and you’re not sure why? I’m not talking about the birth of your child, or wedding day, I’m talking about a seemingly insignificant conversation, or a person you met once and then never saw again. Or a random moment that you witnessed, and though you didn’t know the participants it stayed with you, even haunted you. Do you have moments that remain in your memory, and you’re not sure why? I’m not talking about the birth of your child, or wedding day. I’m talking about a seemingly insignificant conversation, or a person you met once and then never saw again. Or a random moment that you witnessed, and though you didn’t know the participants, it stayed with you, even haunted you. Those are the things that this writer draws on. The most common question writers get asked is, “Where do you get your ideas?” The standard answer is from everywhere, and that is so true. I’m inspired by things I read, see, and wonder. Newspaper articles. Random comments by friends. Song titles. Everything. But sometimes… sometimes… I dig back into my memory file, the one that sits on the hard drive…

Who here knows a man like this? There were men Ryder had slept with and never thought much about again. Then, there was a handful whose memory always put her in a good mood, like a cool beer on a warm night. Standing before her was the one man who’d bypassed the pleasant-buzz setting and had zoomed straight into the hardcore, make-your-panties-wet, two-shots-of-Tequila-too-many danger zone. Oh my God, we should all know a guy like that. Seriously. Luckily—or unluckily depending on your viewpoint—Allegra “Ryder” Flacon knows just that guy and she’s done everything she can to ditch him. But where’s the fun in that? For a romance reader (and writer) there’s no fun at all. So of course, the one guy to get past her mile-high defenses is the one man she can’t avoid. And as for Devin Harris? Well, there’s nothing more he loves than a challenge and Ryder Falcon is “a walking stop sign.” I love writing the alpha vs alpha love stories. The kind where the hero falls in love despite the heroines curves, edges and perfect imperfections (to steal a killer line from John Legend). And the heroine falls for him right back. It’s the pledge…

My husband—in the middle of editing my manuscript—looked up at me. “You realize you’re living your dream?” he said. “You’re an author. A published author. ” I paused while wiping down the countertop, the damp rag in my hand. “I am, aren’t I?” “I bet it’s easy to forget that when you’re living your dream every day.” He was right. The hustle and bustle of deadline, preparing to launch my sophomore novel, THE MIDWIFE, being six months pregnant all while staying home with a toddler sometimes makes me feel like whirligig in a straight-line wind, no stopping point in sight. I am not as anxious about my June 1 book launch as I was with my debut, THE OUTCAST; I can actually enjoy these days leading up to it, instead of tossing and turning at night. Yet the anxiety, with THE OUTCAST, fueled both me and my mild case of insomnia. I wrote blog posts, arranged radio, television, and newspaper interviews, and finalized the details for book signings like I was hyped up on caffeine. I’ve done all of these things in preparation for THE MIDWIFE: a story about overcoming loss and learning to love again. But I am also…

Don’t you love summer? The sun, the sand, and oh…the beach reads! Okay, so some of us—me included—do not currently live near a beach. Still…the idea of long stretches of time curled up beneath a beach umbrella (or some other spot of blissful solitude) with nothing to do but read is so very wonderful, isn’t it? Even if none of the above scenarios are plausible in your world, finding a summer beach read is! While my criteria for a summer beach read does not require that the book actually be set in a beach town, I do love reading about these places. As I mentioned, I am currently landlocked due to love, a story for another day (or another book!), but during my childhood and most of my adult years I lived in close proximity to the Texas Gulf Coast. Stories of life in coastal towns are not only part of my past, but they are also part of the novels that fill my bookshelf. Because I loved to read about these locations, I decided to create a series of stories set at the beach—Vine Beach, to be precise—so I could also write about them. Working on all three of…

Tarot cards in a sci-fi novel? It seems kind of a weird mix at first glance, and probably second glance, too. Even in today’s society, tarot cards are met with a wide variety of responses. Some people swear by them… and just as many people swear that they’re nonsense. Then there is the group I fall into – the one who can’t really say one way or another. If you’ve ever had your cards read by someone who does it often, you know what I mean. It’s downright eerie. So how did the cards work their way into a universe so different from our own? It started, as most of my books do, with a “What if?” question. I read Ann Aguirre’s GRIMSPACE (which I highly, HIGHLY recommend if you haven’t picked it up yet). In her future, life after death has been proven not to exist. It’s done really well. But I started wondering what would happen if exactly the opposite were true. What if religion was king? It’s not a revolutionary thought, but the one thing that hit me and stuck was the idea that if there were gods, what if the various ways of fortune telling were…

Thanks for inviting me to hang out at Fresh Fiction today! I’ve been making the rounds, visiting different blogs since the second book in my Pawsitively Organic Mystery Series, A BISCUIT, A CASKET, came out in April, and I’m thrilled to be here. I love writing the Pawsitively Organic books. Why? Because I get to combine a love of writing murder mysteries with a love of animals and all things holistic health, which is so cool. In the books, my protagonist, Stan Connor, chucks her corporate life in the city after she loses her job. She moves to the small town of Frog Ledge, Connecticut with her Maine coon cat Nutty, for whom she cooks and bakes because of his gastrointestinal issues, and soon finds that the entire animal population in town is nutty for her treats. Which leads her down a path to her own business – baking organic, gourmet treats for pets. And, of course, stumbling over dead bodies and solving mysteries. Let’s get one thing out of the way – I’m not a chef. In fact, I can barely cook for myself, never mind my numerous pets. But I can write, I’m fascinated by crime and I…

Years ago, after my husband and I drove to Alaska, I wrote the Romantic Suspense, MIDNIGHT SUN.  A second journey generated the ideas for my three new Against novels, the Brodie Brothers of Alaska, beginning with AGAINST THE WILD. I love road trips, just heading out with no particular destination in mind, rolling along, encountering whatever life has to offer.  It’s a panorama of new vistas, different smells, different tastes, different lifestyles.  It’s dealing with flat tires and engine trouble, but also meeting people from every walk of life. In the tiny town of Tok, we met a group of Vietnam vets on a Holland America bus tour.  At dusk each day, they held a flag-lowering ceremony, and because my husband had mentioned that the body of a friend, a serviceman killed in Vietnam, had just been recovered, he was asked to do the honors that night of lowering the American flag. It was a special evening, the kind of experience that can make a road trip unforgettable. Being that both of us love history, we wound up in Dawson City, the Yukon, way off the grid, the original destination for Klondike gold miners at the end of the nineteen…