“Second Chances” was a thing before it was a trope. I think everyone at some point or another has thought about that long lost love, the what-if’s and maybe’s. Whatever happened to that guy in high school that you used to date but eventually lost contact with? What about the random hook-up in college? Or more meaningful, what ever happened to your first love after the two of you broke up because of a silly argument? Even if we’ve moved on (hopefully) from the past there are sometimes when that little inkling of a feeling either sneaks up on us or comes roaring back with force. When I first began writing ON THESE PAGES I hadn’t intended it to be a second chance love story. It was just a contemporary about a girl who ran back into her college crush. But as the story progressed I realized that I had a trope! My first thought was to scratch the storyline and start over, but as the story progressed I couldn’t get around some of the animosity that the heroine, Toni felt for Ahmad (the hero). Just because I’d scrapped the info about them meeting before, Toni hadn’t forgotten about it…

I never thought much about cops until I started writing them. Sure, there were times when I sped past a radar-toting cop in a cruiser, and my heart leapt into my throat. A few times I’ve glanced into the rearview mirror and seen the red-and-blue flashing lights. I had to think about cops then. But until I started writing cop characters, I never thought about how they thought or felt. I never wondered what is was like to do the brave things they did, like burst into the home of a criminal with a gun or chasing a bad guy down an alley. The process of diving into cop characters lent me a new appreciation for their bravery and sacrifice. I wonder, though, what it is like to see the things they see, day-in and day-out. Not only the horrific and the senseless. But all the stupid things criminals do. I did a blog a few years back that included some of the dumbest of all time. There was the guy who stole someone’s pet monkey, then didn’t know what to do with it, so he tried to sell it back to the owners. Then there was the lady who…

When I was asked to give the perfect set of circumstances for a historical mystery, I didn’t have to think long. It’s just like putting together a perfect recipe. A GOLDEN CAGE, A Newport Gilded Age Mystery. Take one opulent era of history. Mark Twain called it The Gilded Age and it ran from around 1870 to 1900. It was an era of serious social problems masked by a thin veneer of gold. A time of industrialization, huge growth, incredible wealth and wide spread corruption. A time of power struggles in commerce, justice and morality. A time of conspicuous consumption by the haves and poverty and hard work by the have nots. Add in one seaside Resort town. Newport Rhode Island in 1895. Where the nation’s wealthiest families summered in sumptuous mansions they called “cottages”. Add a dollop of family. The wife and daughter of a prominent well respected judge threw him a huge birthday fete and invited all the richest families (among them, the Vanderbilts, the Astors, the Oelrich’s and the Fishes), mayhem ensued. Mix with a professional theatrical troupe. Hired away from their theater for the evening to present a play called The Sphinx. Stir in one ingénue…

One of the biggest perks of writing historical fiction is the research! I am a library junkie, and could spend way too much time digging through dusty old books. Getting to travel and see the places in my books is even better! Fontainebleau is one of the most beautiful palaces in Europe, with a fascinating history, and I enjoyed the chance to spend a little more time there with Kate Haywood (even if only in my imagination!) at one of its most turbulent times in history. The 1560s were an incredible period for amazing women, and I had a lot of fun incorporating two of them, Mary, Queen of Scots, and Catherine de Medici (one of my favorite historical figures) into Kate’s adventures. Mary Stewart (1542–1587) has, of course, been a figure of much fascination for centuries, the subject of endless stories/movies/plays, and it’s easy to see why. She was renowned for her beauty and charm, she was an adventurer at heart (even though those adventures ended in mayhem more often than not), and she died most tragically. She is a counterpoint to her cousin Elizabeth I’s great success. The only surviving child of King James V of Scotland (who…

I have been accused of being a bit of a domestic diva. That’s not surprising with books like THE DIVA SERVES HIGH TEA! But I like to keep things easy, and I love recipes I can prepare in advance. This is celebration season. Graduations, bridal showers, and family reunions are on the calendar. So I thought I would share a dessert that everyone loves and anyone can make. I’m not in the habit of promoting products. Recently, though, while I waited for something, I killed some time (and some cash) in WalMart where I found adorable little glass trifle bowls. They’re the perfect size for a single serving. At $2 a pop, you wouldn’t break the bank if you needed enough for a small luncheon. Imagine how they would dress up ice cream! This recipe is super simple. If you’re a domestic diva, use your favorite sponge cake or pound cake recipe. If there’s no time for baking (or it’s just not your thing), pick up a sponge cake at the store or look for Sara Lee’s pound cake in the freezer section. Kick this up a little bit by adding your favorite liquor for the adults. I’m fond of…

Do you ever glance at the windows open in your internet browser and realize you’d have a lot of explaining to do if someone walked up behind you? That’s an everyday thing for me as an author of offbeat romantic comedy. People see “romance author” in my title and assume any research I might do would involve fur-lined handcuffs or creative uses for butterscotch syrup. But for my newest romantic comedy, THE HANG UP, there were several unique bits of research required for me to tell the tale of a devout city girl and talented PR pro who hooks up with a sexy mountain man turned CEO. Here are five things that made my research list when I wrote THE HANG UP. Spelunking Contrary to what my city girl heroine believes, spelunking is not a sex act. It’s a fancy word for exploring caves, and it’s kind of a hobby of mine. In real life, I’ve been lucky enough to explore caves as far away as Slovenia, Mexico, and Greece, but my favorites are the lava tubes in Central Oregon where I live. I wanted to set a scene in THE HANG UP in one called Arnold Ice Cave, but…

I’m so excited to be here today talking about The SECRET LIFE OF A DREAM GIRL, my first ever Entangled Crush book. 🙂 It’s totally stand alone, but is part of the Creative HeArts series, a bunch of stories written by four different authors that all take place at a creative arts high school in my home town of Austin, Texas. Anyway, my main character—Dahlia—is pulling a reverse Hannah Montana. Instead of being an ordinary girl hiding her life as a pop star, she’s a world famous pop star masquerading as an ordinary girl as she tries to get her career—and life—in some semblance of order. She’s been under the thumb of her very overbearing manager/father for her entire career, and all she really wants to do is take a breath and spend some time pursuing her real musical passion of being a singer/songwriter. I had so much fun writing this book because it’s all about music—my hero and heroine talk to each other in song lyrics, there’s a great scene at Waterloo Records, Austin’s most famous indie record store, and there’s an awful lot of early, feel good Beatles stuff in there too. Which is why I thought I’d…

I kill people. And for the most part I make sure they stay dead. No, this isn’t an admission of guilt that will now land me on the front page of my local newspaper and maybe a few national rags. In fact, not only do I not bear any actual guilt, but I don’t feel guilty about killing people at all. Or killing dogs. Or cats. My killing sprees are wholly fictional and completely a product of my imagination. I kill people in my stories (and a few dogs and cats too). Well, to be fair, I don’t kill them; my characters do. But since I’m the puppet master controlling the strings, I guess I’m mostly to blame for the crimes committed in my books. And while I don’t feel bad or guilty about forcing fictional characters to perpetrate crimes against one another, I do need to be careful. Sometimes fiction can spill over into reality. To create believably bad dudes, I need to put myself inside the heads and psyches of those villains. I need to become them on a certain level. And that can be a frightening ordeal. I don’t want to be a villain, not physically and…

STEEPLEJACK: hybridity or when the books you thought you were writing turns into something else. I had ideas for two books. One was a faintly Dickensian murder mystery which centered on one of the boys who worked to maintain the tall factory chimneys and other high places in a Victorian city. It came to me as an image inspired by spotting one of those chimneys on my drive to work and noticing that a bush was growing out of the top. It got me thinking about the steeplejacks who—though rare and dying out—still existed in my native Lancashire when I was a kid. I could see the cover illustration. A boy on a rickety ladder a hundred feet above a smoggy industrial landscape… The other idea was for a fantasy novel. It centered on a girl who had a rare condition that allowed her skin to mimic the color and texture of her surroundings in the ways octopuses do. She had to hide her gift/curse, but then had to take in a baby sister who had the same condition. The book would be about how she juggled the perils of her predicament while learning to use them as a kind…

Research! For research purposes, I type “best fuel to use in an improvised explosive” into the browser search bar. Two hours later, I’ve read so, so many interesting things, but I still haven’t written the scene with the homemade bomb in it. Promo. Sigh. I start down the slippery social-media slope with the best intentions of spending five minutes (max!) updating my author stuff. Next thing I know, I’m blinking gritty eyes at the screen, trying to figure out what happened to the past three days. Darn you, Facebook—you and your time-sucking ways. How can I not watch the video of the cop rescuing the ducks trying to cross the Interstate? How?? Conference Call. I adore my editor. When we need to have an occasional chat over the phone, I don’t mind at all. We start with the issue at hand and usually find a solution in short order. Feeling smug, I say something like, “Now that we’ve solved that, I’d better get back to writing. Oh, wait! Before you go, what did you think about that revision on [whatever book I’m editing at the time]?” With that, our neat, tidy and short call goes off the rails. Pretty soon,…