Ah, New Adult…Man, I love this little genre. It’s the age where you’re finally making peace with not only who you are, but how you relate to the world around you. How do you get there? That age is a roller coaster of emotion, and there’s inevitably going to be a few mistakes. So doesn’t it make sense that our New Adult characters would make those same mistakes? New Adult is known for angst, for the drama that accompanies the age and keeps the pages turning. Heck, I can’t think of one New Adult book I’ve read that I haven’t, at one point, thought about smacking the heroine or hero for some idiotic choice they made that led to said drama. But you know what? They’re 18-25 years old or so. Who the heck has it together at that age? So while our characters are making mistakes, swimming through the drama, and hopefully coming out the other side with a better understanding of what went wrong, we’re along for the roller coaster ride. In romance, nothing can be sweeter, or more agonizing than the anticipation, the heights we climb with the characters before we know they’re about to fall. We…

I’ve heard that you just got back from The Jane Austen Society of North America’s yearly conference. What sort of things happen at a conference of this nature? We’d love to hear about it! The JASNA AGM (or Annual General Meeting) is like Jane Austen heaven! The meetings are held in a different city in North America every year, with about 750 people attending (they sell out quickly), and a theme related either to Jane Austen’s work, her life, or the world that she lived in. My husband Bill and I plan our travel calendars around them. There are three plenary speakers and thirty or so breakout speakers, who give presentations on a variety of fascinating subjects. There’s an Emporium selling Austen and Regency era-themed goods and books, special interest sessions, English Country Dance lessons, and tours of the local area. It’s great fun! The highlight is the Saturday night banquet and ball, for which nearly everyone dresses up in period attire. The ball is like stepping back in time or into a Jane Austen movie. Some attendees, like me, don Regency wear for the entire conference. (I now own six Regency gowns.) This year’s JASNA AGM was in Montreal….

The third installment of the Mystery in the Islands series, AGROUND ON ST. THOMAS, opens with a grand jury indictment of the sitting governor, his cabinet, and the entire VI Legislature. Chaos ensues as the FBI attempts to arrest those accused of corruption. The governor and two VI senators evade capture, leading to a chase through Charlotte Amalie’s narrow alleyways and steep streets. Competing conspiracies among the locals hamper the search, leaving a hapless Agent Friday to sort out who’s scheming whom. With the area’s regional airport, the seat of government, and a thriving cruise ship port, St. Thomas is the commercial center of the Virgin Islands. Everyone who lives or visits this part of the Caribbean spends at least a little time in the island’s main town of Charlotte Amalie, the primary setting for AGROUND ON ST. THOMAS The waterfront streets are mostly flat, but as the city moves inland, it curves upward, covering the lower slopes of several flanking hills. The result offers a surreal perspective of neighboring properties and the surrounding city. The densely populated landscape is both elevated and cupped within the side slope. The area around Government Hill, in particular, feels like a stage set…

Like cats and mysteries, cats and witches just seem to go together. Witches have had cat familiars for as long as anyone can recall. They were friends and companions through bad times, during the executions, and dark days when witches were killed for their beliefs. Witches and cats were both put to death during the fifteenth century and the reign of terror. Cats were thought to be evil entities that were feared by those weren’t witches. Cats were declared ‘dangerous beasts’ in France. People believed cats were witches in disguise. They were hunted and killed. There were many myths about cats in those days. Their bite was said to be poisonous, and their claws were lethal. Even farmers who had cats to protect their food storage were afraid of them. Many people have said the Black Plague had a contributing factor of fewer cats that were around to kill rats. Things began to change in the eighteenth century. Many people realized how foolish the witch trials were – as well as the deaths of thousands of cats. They began to understand the importance of cats again, much as the ancient Egyptians did. Nowadays, cats are everywhere – the most popular…

Currently I’m working on a new series called Lipstick and Lead set in the late 1800s. It’s about three sisters who are bounty hunters, which is very unusual for women of the west. In fact, I could not find any actual bounty hunters that were women. But my girls father made a living bounty hunting and because they don’t want to become saloon hussies they have taken up the profession after several mistrials at other occupations. But what about lipstick. When did lipstick become available to women of the west? Ancient Mesopotamian women were possibly the inventors of lipstick. They used crushed jewels to put color on their lips and around their eyes. Then Egyptian women used a dye from seaweed on their mouths to give color, but the stain from the seaweed made them very ill. It’s written that Cleopatra, crushed carmine beetles and ants and used the liquid on her lips. Gives new meaning to the word beetle juice. During the 16th century, Queen Elizabeth 1, popularized the look of blackened lips, by using beeswax and plant derived red dyes. But by the time Queen Victoria took the throne, makeup was once again taboo. Only low class women…

Carla Sinclair is the likeable TV sports anchor in Vancouver. She’s driven to do the best job she can and break stories before her competition. She does this well because she knows the Warriors inside and out. When defenseman Devin Miller gets traded to Vancouver, Carla isn’t impressed. She thinks the team is doing fine without him and his attitude. They first met when Devin was with a visiting team and Carla interviewed him. She didn’t like his cold personality and never forgot his cinnamon-colored eyes that made her stumble on her words. When Devin becomes a Warrior, Carla speaks her mind on-air about his extravagant paycheck. She wants an interview to find out more about his trade, and Devin is curious about Carla’s persistent behavior and why she cares about what team he plays for. As the two get acquainted, their chemistry builds and she can’t quite manage the fact that falling in love again isn’t in her future. After all, she’s still hung up about her divorce and the several miscarriages she had. She doesn’t think she’ll ever settle down again or be lucky to fall in love again. Devin is secretive about his upbringing. He hasn’t spoken…

Do you have any strange collections? Recently my husband cleaned out a cabinet under the sink and found that I’d been hoarding wet-ones without knowing. It wasn’t something I use excessively and I’m absolutely not an obsessive clean person. I think I just saw them in the grocery and thought “Oh, I probably need those”–about ten times or maybe twenty. My husband lined them up on the counter. These aren’t the little boxes of wet-ones. Nope, I seem to have an unknown fetish for the big round containers of Clorox Wet Wipes in various scents. Why had I felt it necessary to buy them over and over again? You’ll love this—because they kept disappearing. I would bring home bags of groceries which my family helped put away. Apparently the Wet Wipes belonged under the sink and hubby would stash them there without saying a word regarding the other boxes that were multiplying like crazy nor telling me where they were. I could never find them because I preferred to put them in another spot. My spot housed an empty container so I assumed someone in the family was burning through them like they were candy. Once I was informed of…

Most of the mysteries on my bookshelf, I confess, are cozy mysteries. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the genre, cozies are a subgenre of crime fiction where the crime and the detection takes place in a small town. Remember the old Murder She Wrote series? That’s a good example of a cozy. The detectives in such stories are nearly always amateurs (cue JB Fletcher) sometimes retired lawmen or women. The majority of the detectives are of the female persuasion, and often hold jobs that bring them into contact with the other residents of their town. More often than not they’ll have a contact on the local police force who’ll help them out with a clue or two. The killers aren’t usually hard-boiled serial killer types, and once unmasked, are most often taken into custody with little or no violence. If there is violence, it happens offscreen…no grisly murder scenes depicted in any cozies! Foul language is also kept to a minimum. The murders are generally members of or related to someone in the town wherein the murder occurs and the motives – greed, jealousy, revenge – often are deep rooted. Cozies frequently revolve around a theme –…

Drop from trees like overripe mangos, I should say! A couple of years ago, I began to plan my Key West mystery series. I had the idea for a food critic wannabe named Hayley Snow, but I needed other characters. As I wandered through the crowds at the Sunset Celebration at Mallory Square in Key West, I spotted a tarot card reader set up at a card table, wearing a deep blue turban with an enormous teardrop rhinestone bisecting his forehead. What if my protagonist, Hayley Snow, was addicted to having her cards read because she was insecure about her own decisions? And what if her tarot reader saw a card scary enough that even he got rattled? And what if she his reactions to dig herself into deeper trouble? And so Lorenzo the card reader was born as a character. Then, as I walked around the city, I noticed that homeless people were everywhere, including perched on the stone walls around Mallory Square watching the performers and the tourists. Though they blended into the scenery, they probably noticed all kinds of things that visitors wouldn’t see. And so Turtle and Tony became characters. And then I attended the Key…

Do you have a favorite fairy tale? Mine is Cinderella, but I am no Disney princess. While I love pumpkins, I’d rather turn one into a pie, cake, or muffin than a sparkly carriage. Unlike Snow White, I’ve cooked more birds than sung to them, and my snoring alone disqualifies me as Sleeping Beauty. My character Clare Cosi has the same suspicious view of perfect princesses. A single mom in her forties, Clare manages a thriving coffeehouse business and cherishes her grown daughter—the best thing to come out of her early, disastrous marriage. Now she’s struggling with a second-chance relationship. While NYPD Detective Mike Quinn is a very good man, he’s also a dedicated cop—maybe too dedicated. Between his career and Clare’s fear of going through the pain of a second marriage Fail, her happy ending is still a fairy tale. At the start of ONCE UPON A GRIND, Clare is living separately from Quinn, whose expertise in narcotics has landed him a temporary position with the US Justice Department in Washington. Missing him greatly, she throws herself into her work by helping her merry band of baristas give their shop’s coffee truck a Jack-in-the-Beanstalk makeover for a children’s festival…