BY WINTER’S LIGHT is an unabashedly holiday-themed novel. How did that come about? The concept was fortuitously created by the characters, rather than being a deliberate choice made by me. In the Epilogue of the preceding Cynster novel, THE TAMING OF RYDER CAVANAUGH, at the Cynster Summer Celebration in August of 1837, the older group of children go off in a group to discuss some subject – and the most obvious subject I could imagine them discussing  was where to hold their family Christmas gathering later that year. The older group is dominated by males, and the notion that they would vote for a Christmas in Scotland, where they could ride in forests and hunt, again seemed an obvious tack – and thus BY WINTER’S LIGHT, the Cynster holidays of 1837, held at Richard and Catriona’s manor in the Vale of Casphairn in snowy Scotland, came to be! Can you describe the Norse, pagan, Druid, and folk customs that feature in the story? Because we are looking back so far – in some cases possibly a millennia or more to the beginning of some of these traditions – it’s not always easy to say this custom derived from this tradition…

I often notice that writers who visit Free Literary Mentor, my blog about new fiction seem very aware of fear: fear of not being able to finish a novel; fear that the path to their goal is not clear; fear that publishers and agents won’t be interested … My heartfelt advice is: always remember that no work ever springs from fear—it springs from passion. If you believe in your characters, your message and your story, writing is one of the most inspired and inspiring things you can do, because readers can sense that passion at the core of what you offer them. Passion makes everything possible, even a journey that at first looks too daunting for words. Once upon a time I lived and worked in a beautiful French château, with the pleasant job of looking after the little daughters of a marquise. Being with them in their elegant heritage home made it easy for me to imagine the glittering world of their ancestors. A few months later I found myself in the nearby town of Chevreuse, teaching English at three primary schools, and there I met a new friend, a teacher who had been born in Martinique and was…

October is here! It’s time for scary movies, spooky books, and creepy TV shows. And with the recent success of AMC’s The Walking Dead and SyFy’s new series, Z Nation, more and more people are giving a zombie entertainment a try. For the newcomer, the world of the undead can be confusing. Are they fast? Are they slow? Are they all after one thing: braaaaains? Here’s a quick guide to some of the more common zombie types you might encounter this October. Classic Zombies Classic zombies are brain dead, semi-lethargic cannibals. These corpse creatures populate George A. Romero’s 1968 film Night of the Living Dead, and today’s mega-popular series, The Walking Dead. Remember: classic zombies are especially dangerous in large hordes. Fast Zombies Over the last decade, zombies stopped shambling and started running. And to be honest, zombies are a heck of a lot scarier when they can haul tail. If you’re ready to check out some terrifyingly fast zombies, try 28 Days Later or World War Z (the movie, not the book—the zombies in Max Brooks’ awesome novel are of the classic variety). Romantic Zombies We knew it would happen. We had a rash of devastatingly sexy vampires (Hello, Edward…

Have you ever taken a bite of cake and been transported to heaven? I bet your answer is yes. For me, it was a slice of my mom’s strawberry-lemon cake served chilled on a hot summer day in Oklahoma. All I remember is the taste of cool lusciousness when the fork met my mouth. When Joy Talley, the main character of my newest novel, WAKING UP JOY, wakes up from a coma, it’s not in heaven, but she creates heavenly desserts in her kitchen to make herself and others feel happy: “Strawberry-lemon, of course—chocolate, carrot, you name it, I wanted it. So, during the weeks after my coma, I cooked up a storm. Baking was my thing. And we’re not just talking cupcakes, although I made my share of those. We’re talking oodles of five-layer cakes with fresh flowers on top, French-looking pastries with Momma’s secret frosting, and even donuts, which Miss Donna’s shop bought to sell at her place in town every Monday morning at 5:30 am.” I wish I could tell you that baking is my expertise, but sadly I’m much better at eating cake than making it. That’s what I love about being an author. If I…

It’s never easy being a middle child, and that’s kind of how I think of book 3 in my McCauley Brothers series. RUINING MR. PERFECT deals with Cameron, the youngest McCauley sibling, but the book is sandwiched between two books that made me cry at times when writing them. It’s a challenge to write a story about four brothers and not have them all be the same. They’re raised in the same house, by the same people, but must have different flaws and vulnerabilities. Yet they can’t be so polarizing that they’re caricatures instead of characters. Big difference. In book 1, THE TROUBLEMAKER NEXT DOOR, Flynn is a charming, decent guy who hasn’t found Ms. Right yet. Enter Maddie, stage left. In book 2, HOW TO HANDLE A HEARTBREAKER, Brody has some secrets that have molded him into the man he is today. He’s sexy and funny, but wounded emotionally. Abby is just the woman for him, because she won’t take less than she deserves, and that she knows he can give. Book 3, RUINING MR. PERFECT, pits Cameron against a stubborn woman with a hard heart and a troubled parent with a hard head. Cam has always been the…

As an author, I’ve found that inspiration for books can come from anywhere. And I truly mean anywhere. For example, the idea seed for the Magic Potion mysteries sprouted at a rest stop off I-75 in southern Georgia. More than a decade ago, my family was making its way from Ohio to Florida (16 hours in the car—have mercy!), and we were somewhere in southern Georgia—the part of the trip where slap happiness and delirium sets in and snacks have run out—when we knew it was time to stop for a bit. Walk around. Guzzle caffeine. Restock Peanut M&Ms. We’d just begun looking for a place when we spotted a roadside attraction billboard that contained the magic road-trip words: Clean Restrooms. It was called Magnolia Plantation, and I’m not even sure if it’s still there. Back then, it was a delightful oasis of sights (aisles and aisles of stuff) and smells (pecans, mostly) and sounds (love a Southern accent), and it did, in fact, have clean restrooms. As we wandered around, our delirium slowly wearing off, I spotted a small section of books. And I found this gem (see picture!). I knew immediately that it had to come home with…

So much about the Christmas holidays is wonderful. We get together with friends and family we might not see at any other time of year, cook our favorite foods, decorate the whole house, sing the good old songs, give and receive thoughtful gifts…. Even if we also sometimes wish we could find a place to hide and take a three-day nap. Then there’s the weather, which means we can be traveling at the least convenient time of year. And the budget, which must accommodate travel expenses, holiday shopping, holiday meals (with libation), holidays guests, and holiday heating bills. And the folks who react to the holidays by over-imbibing, or channeling Attila the Hun in the mall parking lot, or the children who MUST come down with the flu on December 20th, or the relatives who revive the feud that should have died a quarter century ago (the feud, not the relatives….). And that’s all before Christmas itself. The holidays, in other words, can be stressful. Really, really stressful. The characters in my Scottish Victorian holiday romance, WHAT A LADY NEEDS FOR CHRISTMAS, have added to their yuletide stress by becoming engaged. Dante Hartwell is a Scottish mill owner who seeks…

For me, writing Victorian mysteries is pure joy! First of all, I love the Victorian age. There was so much going on then; so many new discoveries. Transportation was fascinating, going from the horse-drawn age into the age of the horseless carriage. Gaslight was slowly giving way to electricity. Fashions had great variety, both women’s and men’s. Manners – now so many lost – were de rigor. The class system was alive and well, for good or evil, yet there were endless opportunities for anyone with ambition. Without question there were many dark sides to nineteenth century life, yet for the writer this can only be considered a plus. One can certainly focus where one wishes and the very knowledge of aspects of the darker side of Victorian life play well into the potential plots and stories of the mystery writer. My protagonists are Bram Stoker and his assistant Harry Rivers. Stoker is very much the fount of knowledge while Harry is the ever-willing partner/associate. The relationship falls somewhere between Holmes-and-Watson and Wolfe-and-Goodwin. Stoker, coming from Ireland, has a vast store of occult knowledge – together with a belief in leprechauns, ghosts, magic, and the sixth sense – and finds…

If the question is where I get the ideas for the stories I write the simple answer is…people. All of my writing is pretty much character driven. That is not to say that I’m not concerned with the other elements of literature…plot..setting etc. but these things concern me fundamentally in how they interact with the characters in my stories. Description as in the case of a beautiful sunset i.e. the watery glow slipped beneath the sea causing the last light to radiate across the shimmering water turning the world for that brief moment into an impressionist painting-works to my mind much more when seen through the eyes of a character. What is the mind-set, the emotion, the internal conflict going on? How does this visual effect or affect the character? I try to create characters in the context of the story that are believable and real. Even with their quirks, they are the kind of people that you could meet in the course of everyday life. My favorite bumper sticker is…we’re all dysfunctional deal with it…or as Virgil Dalton, the central figure in DEATH AT THE BLACK BULL says, “We’re all broken just in different ways”. I’d venture to say…

For me, the main difference between writing YA (young adult) and adult romance is the narrative voice. When I write romantic suspense, I use what I call “deep point of view” — every scene is written from the perspective of one of the main characters in the story. So in each scene, it is as if the reader is inside one character’s mind, sharing his or her thoughts as he or she describes what’s going on in. And of course, since the main characters in my adult romances are, well, adults, that means every scene is told through a filter of adult priorities, adult vocabulary, and adult experience. But when I co-wrote NIGHT SKY— my first YA novel — with my daughter, Melanie, we wrote in an entirely different narrative voice. First of all, unlike any of my adult romances, we decided to create NIGHT SKY in the first person. The entire story is told by our main character — sixteen-year-old Skylar Reid. And there’s another huge difference: NIGHT SKY takes place in a paranormal futuristic world, where certain young women — including Sky herself — have been targeted for abduction because they possess super-human powers. Most of my adult romances feature…