“Love is a striking example of how little reality means to us.” -Marcel Proust As an author, I read a lot. As a reader, I think a lot. As a romance reader, I think about love a lot – an unfortunate amount, my friends might say. What is it made of? Hormones? Pheromones? Something less tangible? How reliable is it? Does it fade over time? There’s no limit to the number of questions a love-addled brain can produce in a single episode of insomnia, and no end of disastrous love stories that have failed to answer them correctly. So, why do we keep trying? C.S. Lewis wrote about four different types of love and how they intersect and fluctuate across the human life cycle. His essential conclusion was that familial love is defining, spiritual/religious love is necessary, passionate love (aka lust) is powerful yet fleeting, and companionship is forever. Thus, since companionship is the one that lasts, we should all marry our best friends, right? Admittedly, if we did, the divorce rate might go down. The birth rate might also go down since many of us, myself included, have exactly zero desire to see our BFFs naked. What’s the answer,…

Are you a fan of cowboys? I mean, who isn’t a fan of the western man, usually silent but solid, dependable but with a little bit of “bad boy” around the edges. So if you are a fan, you should be downloading a copy of COWBOY JUSTICE. Available tomorrow at all your favorite e-tailers for only 99¢. About COWBOY JUSTICE Get your TWELVE Cowboy Lawmen who are so hot it’s criminal. The COWBOY JUSTICE 12-Pack includes fresh novellas by twelve New York Times and USA Today Bestselling Authors! JUSTICE FOR LAINE by Susan Stoker – What began as a favor turns out to be fate when Laine meets sexy Texas Ranger Wes and falls for him. JUSTICE BURNING by Elle James – Hard-nosed sheriff’s deputy, Nash Grayson, places his family and hometown in danger when he rescues a desperate runaway bride LAYING DOWN THE LAW by Becky McGraw – Doctor returns to hometown when mother takes a fall and falls harder for new town Sheriff…her first love. TEXAS JUSTICE by Cynthia D’Alba – First-term Sheriff is torn between duty and love when sexy Chief of Surgery is accused of medical malpractice and homicide. TEXAS LONE STAR by Sable Hunter –…

You might not be able to relate to someone who only wears Prada and drives a Maserati, but let’s face it, as human beings, we all have at least one thing in common: We must eat in order to survive. Whether it be the humble PBJ or French cuisine, something must fill our stomachs. But eating isn’t just about staying alive. Nearly every holiday we celebrate is associated with a particular food or meal—just imagine celebrating Thanksgiving without the dinner!—and the sharing of food is deeply ingrained in every culture. You wouldn’t invite someone over to your house without providing them with some sort of refreshments. It simply isn’t done. By the same token, refusing what is offered could be seen as a major insult. Cooking is also a terrific means for expressing creativity. The combinations of foods and flavors are endless, particularly if you don’t limit yourself to one particular cuisine. Tina Hayes, the heroine of MUST LOVE COWBOYS, does this by searching for recipes online and then adding her own personal touches. Food can be beautiful as well as tasty. Whenever I’m out with friends and someone orders a particularly awesome dessert, someone nearly always posts a picture…

The London Season – famous in fiction (and still happens today, amazingly!) – was the ideal marriage market for the Regency Miss. With Parliament in session from mid-fall to early summer, the court and the gentry alike left their country estates to flock to the capital. By day some made laws, by night all made hay at a glittering round of parties, concerts and balls. Eager mamas thronged the best venues, hunting a good catch for their daughters. Romance flowered, and not just for debutantes. Marriage could be little more than a property deal, so for married women flirtation spiced up a life of sheltered respectability. Naturally all had to be hidden. A whiff of scandal could ruin even the most powerful, but women, with so few rights, suffered most. Saffina’s passionate romance with the mighty Earl of Endale, her rakish guardian, travelled a rocky road. They quickly become lovers, sharing his taste for erotic discipline. In SAFFINA’S SEASON they’re now settled and married but Lord Endale treats his new Countess to her long-promised London Season with mixed feelings. He knows her beauty and wit will make her a star, but his reputation is checkered. Worse, he dreads a rival…

Baseball has always been a sport I’ve loved. I grew up collecting baseball cards, watching the Boston Red Sox whenever a game was on TV, and playing with the boys in the schoolyard. And still after many, many years, the love of the game is still embedded me. So much so, that my home office is riddled with pictures and memorabilia of the game. My inspiration for DARE TO KISS goes a bit deeper. As a little girl I fought hard to play baseball on a boys’ city league. But back in the late sixties and early seventies, girls weren’t allowed to play on boys’ team. It was then I came up with the plot for DARE TO KISS on how a high school girl breaks through barriers to play on an all boys’ baseball team. It didn’t take me long once I started writing. The protagonist, Lacey Robinson is a girl, who is a lot like myself. She loves the energy of the ball field. She loves hearing the crack of the bat and the roar of the crowd. She loves striking a batter out, but most of all she loves the game, and no matter the consequences, and…

In addition to my love for romantic suspense, I have a fondness for non-fiction. Really, truth can be stranger than fiction. I think research is fun, but more importantly, I wanted my story to feel as real as possible. SURRENDER AT THE BORDER takes place mostly in Cuidad Juarez, Mexico, and my research led to some fascinating and scary things that really exist. Here are six things about SURRENDER AT THE BORDER that are real: The Feds vs. the Librarians. Surrender opens with B.J., an ATF agent, investigating a case by getting information from library computers. This is in opposition of everything Callie, the head librarian, believes in. This conflict comes directly from my own days as a librarian. Even before the Patriot Act, law enforcement officials targeted the reading habits of people who were, for one reason or another, suspicious. Librarians saw this as a violation of every citizen’s constitutionally protected right to privacy and developed policies and procedures to handle just this kind of situation. So if you see a television program where a cop goes up to a librarian and asks what so-and-so has been reading, a real librarian would refuse or at least make a fuss….

The adage that life is a juggling act is a cliché for a reason. It’s true. It’s so stupendously true that it’s a joke. I mean, seriously, is there anyone out there who is actually on top of said ball, at least without the stupid thing periodically rolling out from under them and putting them on their butts? (Exercise balls, I’m looking at you.) The truth is, we juggle. And my juggling goes something like this. Monday: I have all week to do all the things. I make a schedule…on a spreadsheet. Writing, homeschooling, meal prep, housework…it’s all neatly partitioned by day and allotted with help from the weather forecast. Beautiful day? The kids will spend it outside, so that is when I’ll write all the words. I’ll get ahead, I will! Cold rainy day? Homemade soup it is! I got this. Tuesday: I spent Monday making that pretty spreadsheet. I’m behind, a little, but all is not lost. Only the kids can smell “flustered” like they can smell burgers grilling, so suddenly I’m the most popular person in the world. Even my teenagers won’t stop talking to me. This feels like one of those awesome parenting wins, so I…

A run-down motel in a small town isn’t the most likely place for a romance novel to begin. But the moment I saw it, I knew it was the perfect starting point for GETTING IT BACK, the third book in my Red Hot Russians series. One thing I love about being a writer is that thunderclap of inspiration, when vague ideas suddenly crystalize into characters, scenes and conflicts. In the spring of 2014, ideas had been turning in my head for weeks. I knew GETTING IT BACK’s hero was Misha, an Olympic champion skater whose post-skating life hadn’t gone as planned. But I didn’t know much else. A road trip, on a dark and stormy day—on my way to a wake, no less—provided the answer. A detour took me off the interstate onto a two lane highway running through Midwestern farm country. The weather was ominous—dark, low hanging clouds that can spawn thunderstorms and even tornadoes. Listening to static-y country music on the radio, I drove into a small town, and passed an old motel. Its sign was lit and glowed against the gloomy sky. An empty swimming pool was surrounded by a fence and looked like it hadn’t been…

This may be the one and only time our name are ever mentioned in a New York Times article ! Now isn’t this just too cool? And it’s for such a great cause: helping our vets. The three of us couldn’t be prouder. Plus, Laura Holson, the reporter who wrote the piece, was VERY kind in putting up the info on the charity. She didn’t have to do that—but bless her, too. Read down to the part about the making of a cover and find Chris Keniston and myself, Lindsay McKenna — we worked jointly on the cover. Susan Stoker, in the meantime, was on an ocean cruise, unavailable, so the task fell to us to create it without her valuable input. We chose Jason Baca as our model. Tammy Seidick of TammySeidickDesigns.com, took our direction and did a fabulous job. We made a good team. Chris should be lauded for making the cover what it looks like in the final presentation — I just put in ideas, suggestions here and there ;-). We almost forgot to put the dog tags on Jason—that was my biggest add to the cover, haha. We all think it’s a great cover! Fingers crossed…

I’ve always dreamed of traveling to New York City. Ever since I set my Historical Romances there—Edge of Freedom Series (Bethany House Publishers)—I’ve imagined what it must have been like to walk the streets a hundred years ago, to see the ships sail into the harbor and witness the eager faces of the people as they stepped into America from Ellis Island. Alas, life intervened, and the trip I’d thought to take was pushed to the back burner. The desire to travel to the places I wrote about stayed with me, however, which is why I was so excited when my husband offered me the chance of a lifetime…the chance to choose where I wanted to go on vacation. Anywhere. Just the two of us. A second honeymoon, of sorts. While I appreciated the offer, I really couldn’t believe that my hubby was going to let me choose our destination with entirely no input from him. “I get to pick?” I asked, a trifle skeptically. “Anywhere at all?” “Absolutely,” he said. “Anywhere you want to go.” With a broad spectrum of places to choose from spread out before me, I found I didn’t even hesitate. I knew where I wanted…