Young Dorothy wants to run away from home. Later, she’ll move heaven and earth to return home. Daniel won’t compromise his principles as an artist when he doesn’t like the way he’s directed to play a scene. When he’s later called to play an outrageous roll in order to be close to his children, he’ll perform in any way necessary. What happens to change the goals/outlooks/lives of these characters? An inciting incident. All good stories depend on an inciting incident to get them going. What distinguishes an inciting incident from other incidents in a story? The inciting incident, the event which jumpstarts the story and prompts protagonists to make lofty goals, is an event which will change a character’s life, his outlook on life or both. In the Wizard of Oz Dorothy wants to run away from home when a neighbor woman takes away Toto, her dog. Losing her pet is an “incident” in her life, but it isn’t a life changing incident. Landing in Oz is a major event, the inciting incident which is going to change everything about her outlook on life. In “Mrs. Doubtfire” Daniel gets fired from another acting job because he won’t follow the director’s…

A reading drought? Guilty! I never thought I would say that. I’ve been an avid reader all my life. On vacation, my suitcase hit the maximum weight limit due to the layer of books in the bottom. If I walk out the door, I have a book in my bag. Just in case, that line in the grocery is really long, or the dentist can’t see me quite yet, or . . . I haunt bookstores. Even when I was busy raising a family, I read, not only for myself but I read to my children, instilling a similar love in them. I started reading Golden books, Nancy Drew, children’s classics (I always wanted to go live with grandfather in the Alps, like Heidi, even though my lovely grandparents were firmly planted in Indiana and New York) and continued on into adulthood, with more grown up fare. Until recently. Oh, I still love reading good stories; I’m just not doing it much. I still love books, but I find it harder to get lost within their pages. For a proud bookaholic, that’s an embarrassing admission. I’ve been trying to figure out why the change, and what to do about it….

I was asked recently where I get my ideas for my books. Well, the short answer is: everywhere. The long answer is: I write the kind of books that I like to read, so I usually combine my favorite plot elements to create a fun/fast-paced story. For ROYAL CAPTIVE, I took one of my favorite islands, Cyprus, a handsome prince, a reformed jewel-thief, and tossed them together in an international heist. I like it when sparks fly between characters from the beginning. Makes my job as a writer so much easier. I really lucked out with this couple. Prince Istvan didn’t trust Lauryn as far as he could throw her. Once a thief, always a thief in his eyes. The second Valtria’s crown jewels disappeared, he was certain that she was to blame and went after her with a vengeance. I love writing these royal brothers. They are honorable, brave and would gladly give their lives for their country, family and the women they love. I even set up a special page on my web site for them, I never thought I would be partial to prince heroes, to be honest. Originally, I submitted an idea to my editor about…

When you write fiction as I do, you rely on your imagination to make the story come alive, creating a setting readers can visualize, characters people can root for, and a plot worthy of escape. But when you’re writing a series, you have yet another task—crafting characters that people want to follow from one book to the next. The creation of interesting characters is doubly important in my Southern Sewing Circle Mystery Series because the books, themselves, use relationships as the hook. Sure, these women sew, but it’s the coming together as a group—and the friendships that are formed as a result of a common interest—that’s truly at the heart of these books. Think about it… Friendships tend to form over a common interest—similar aged children, a particular sport or hobby, or even a favorite cause. These interests provide a common ground that often supersedes a host of other differences (age, ethnicity, religion). It’s this common ground (sewing) that I use to bring nine unlikely souls together, thereby giving myself a more colorful palate from which to work. Let’s take a look… Tori Sinclair is the protagonist in my series. She’s in her late twenties, hails most recently from Chicago,…

Friday night and it’s an author book signing night! And best of all, they had CAKE! Okay, maybe I’m a bit harsh, but let me tell all the authors touring out there, cake works! Have a signing, get the baby bottles of water and a HUGE cake. You’ll get people out of the woodworks. Honest! So, on a warm Friday night in June, we went to Legacy Books to meet the other half of Claire Avery. For background, Claire Avery is an author duo, two sisters: Michelle Poché and Mari Hilburn. Both sisters live in the area, which makes the cake more convenient. Am I talking too much about the cake? It was delicious by the way. A flat cake with two layers, very light and fluffy and Gwen gave the icing a thumbs up. She started checking out my slice to see if there was any left! She’s addicted to icing! But back to Claire Avery. Michelle is a screen writer and has worked in Hollywood as well as in Texas, Mari is an attorney. They left the chill of Chicago and settled in Texas, a familiar story for some of the people I know including me! It is…

I’m so pleased to be here with you all today at Fresh Fiction to share my latest release Seducing the Knight. Seducing the Knight is the second book in a new series that combines treasure hunting and those oh-so-fabulous Templar knights. For the series, I created a group of men that are based partly on historical fact and partly on fiction. In Scottish history, there were a group of men known as Robert the Bruce’s special guard. These men who were loyal to their king, went on a crusade for him after he died. Their mission, to cut the Bruce’s heart from his chest and take it to the Holy Land for burial in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre as their king requested. They never made it to the Holy Land. They were forced into a battle with the Moors and were destroyed. Five of the ten Templars lived through that battle, but hundreds of their men died. In the pages of the Brotherhood of the Scottish Templars series I explore how three of these surviving knights put the pieces of their lives back together. But along with exploring how to a man comes back to life after such…

No Shot was Fired, no Blood was Spilled (or even Sipped) in the Making of this Book That’s right, my dear friends. I write what we’re calling these days “straight contemporary romance.” There’s nothing supernatural, otherworldy, or paranormal going on here. No asses getting kicked. No highwaymen, no carriage accidents, no brotherhood of Regency spies. It’s life sort of like we know it. If we lived in California’s wine country. In the middle of a hundred-year-old vineyard. While struggling to keep the family winery afloat. And if we were nicknamed the “Nun of Napa” ever since a wedding-that-wasn’t five years ago. And finally, if we had to turn to the man-next-door, Penn Bennett, the star of Hollywood’s hottest home renovation show, to complete the work on the winery’s historic cottage in order to host a wedding there at the end of the month. It’s a hard job, this straight contemporary romance writing. Okay, so the research wasn’t so bad (reading about winemaking, drinking wine, spending a long weekend in Napa with my husband), but what do you do to get a reader’s pulse racing if there are no knives, no fangs, no men running around in the jungle with their…

I’m currently living in a small town in the Midwest. I’m not really a small town girl. I have nothing against small towns; I’ve just always lived in cities. I feel at home in the city. I like having a lot of things going on around me. I like choices. Lots of choices. I’m a shopper and need the stimulation of many different stores within a short distance from me that I can wander into on the spur of the moment just to see and touch pretty things. I’m a people watcher and love knowing that every day when I go out into my world there will be many new people to observe, in many different walks of life, doing many different things. I need an international airport nearby so I can fly off to exotic places. And I like city living because of the anonymity. I can be out in the city and never be seen. Never be noticed. I can live in the city and not have anyone else in my business. You can imagine then, my culture shock, when I find myself living in my husband’s hometown, population 12,000. I’ve learned to love many things about small…

In June of 1988, I created the beginning of the Morgan’s Mercenaries/Morgan Trayhern saga series. Back then, no one had done three books in a row and I was the first to do this with  Harlequin/Silhouette. Now over 50+ strong, I have set my sights on creating a second one. This is the Jackson Hole, Wyoming saga-series. It is about Wild West, stories about cowboys and the hardy men of this region. I refer to the second saga in short hand as JHW. I often get questions from readers about “How do you create a saga?” It’s not easy. There’s a tremendous amount of thought and planning that goes into it.  The first prerequisite is to have a backdrop large enough to put a whole cast of characters on. Secondly, there has to be a focal point that readers want to read. In Morgan’s Mercenaries, these were about men and women who were on the edge of danger as they fought and loved. In JHW it involves a fascinating town set beneath the shadow of the mighty Teton Mountains of western Wyoming. And forty miles north of Jackson Hole is our most well known park, Yellowstone. I spent many years…

I had a really successful May. I read and loved BLOWN AWAY by Sharon Sala. I have to be honest here, and say that I’ve been stockpiling Sala, but haven’t really had the desire to read them. However BLOWN AWAY was a wonderful book, and really reminded me about what had drawn me to Sala in the beginning of my reading journey. I also read the concluding book in the Chicks With Sticks trilogy by Heidi Betts. KNOCK ME FOR A LOOP was a fun romantic romp. If you haven’t yet read this trilogy I strongly suggest reading in order so that by the time you get to KNOCK ME FOR A LOOP you understand the relationship between the hero and heroine. I hope that Ms. Betts continues to write romantic comedies for a long time to come. I could go on and on with the titles that I read and had trouble putting down in May, but I don’t want to bore you. I will however tell you that I read THE LIES WE TOLD by Diane Chamberlain. I believe this book to be classified more as Women’s Fiction than romance, but was swept up in the story, and…