Anyone who’s read my historical novels up to now knows that I don’t write about handsome dukes or gorgeous duchesses. I am not wealthy, or beautiful, or even well-mannered; consequently, I find it challenging to relate to characters like that. In fact, with the exception of one book, my heroines have been plump, poor, or plain. Those qualities I can relate to. Perhaps that’s why I loved the Broadway musical, The Phantom of the Opera. I felt so sorry for that poor man with his blighted face and unrequited love. I was angry and disappointed with Christine Daaé, who chose the handsome and rich Raoul de Chagny over the artistic and longsuffering Erik. OK, so he killed a few people. Nobody’s perfect. Even after viewing the play seven times, reading the book by Gaston Leroux, and watching the film starring Gerard Butler, I found myself wishing for a different ending. I kept hoping that Erik would finally find the love he sought. Needless to say, the tragic ending was always the same. But through the magic of storytelling, we’re now able to glance into a world of might-have-been. Long after Erik was abandoned by the beauteous Christine, UNMASKED begins to…

A lot of authors are asked, where do you get your ideas? My answer is a lot of little things contribute and come together to make a story. But then again, sometimes the story surprises you. ASHES OF TWILIGHT certainly surprised me. The decision to write steampunk came about naturally. I write historicals as Cindy Holby and sci/fi as Colby Hodge so combining the two made a lot of sense when I was searching for a way to break back into the market place. The dome came from an old Star Trek episode that stayed with me all these years. “For The World is Hollow and I have Touched The Sky” is the name of the episode, and the line that haunted me. From this memory, came Wren, my heroine, and a vision of her lying on her back, staring up at a glass sky and wondering what was beyond it. But it wasn’t enough for Wren to be trapped in the dome; I took it a step further and made her part of a people who are trapped underground. She became a coal miner that provided fuel for the dome. This idea came from my history. Both of my…

I’m a huge fan of cowboys and a broad-shouldered man with calluses on his hands…that being said, why am I making the leap from Pleasure, Texas and those gorgeous cowboys (my series, The Secret Life of Cowboys finished up this past summer: TYLER, DYLAN and JESSE)? It’s simple, my editor asked if I’d be interested in writing a small town series for Sourcebooks. Why not take a change to spread my wings and test the waters that has an element that I grew up with: Small Town. The interesting thing about small towns is that one can grow up in an isolated neighborhood that seems like a town all by itself—which is exactly what my hometown, Cedar Hill, was…a group of 25 or so homes on dead-end streets… If you didn’t leave there, why go there? We always knew when someone didn’t belong, we knew our friends’ parents cars and that of the other residents. I’ve spent the last thirty years living in Lindy’s Lake a small lake community in New Jersey. We bought our first house here and have raised our family here. When we first moved in there were long-time residents and newbies, like ourselves. Five of us…

Whoo Hoo! I am so excited to be on Fresh Fiction. (I kinda feel like I’ve just gotten a party invite from the cool kids at school.) So before I go on, I have to thank Fresh Fiction so so much for having me here. J I want to tell everyone about the big thing that is going on in my life, which is…drumroll…the release of my first book in the Texas Fever series, TEXAS WIDE OPEN. I really am excited about this story because it is totally different from what I’ve written in the past. I like my romances dark and gritty, the more torture the better. This story started out as an escape, a little side action, from what I really wanted to focus on. This was supposed to be my cotton candy romance. You know the one that’s easy to whip up and goes down just as quick. In the end, writing my romance-on-a-stick became a lot more complicated than just adding sugar and food coloring, but, oh, it sure was fun. Katie is the young girl next door who has loved her cowboy neighbor for, like, ever. What I love about Katie was how easy she…

Ever since I can remember, I would pick up anything that had words on it and read. Whether it was the newspaper, a flyer, an advertisement, a billboard, a book or a magazine…I would read it. A thirst for knowledge, a desire to know what was happening in the world and the opportunity to experience other worlds, lives, and times was available to me through the written word. Move forward to the second decade of the twenty-first century and the internet is at my fingertips. Oh, what a delight for an author. To be able to research exotic places far away, to be able to verify facts and dates and to look at images of exotic settings. Stuck for a character’s name? Log on and research names. Stuck for a physical description? Log on and look at the millions of images available to you. Is this love of research a trait common to all writers? I’m not sure… My love of reading and research melded into a highly satisfying career when I left school and studied to be a librarian. During my twenty-year career with books and the written word… I worked in a variety of library settings. A university…

One of the most frequent questions that I have been asked since signing with Penguin Publishing is what is it like to go from being a self-published author to a published author? When you self-publish, you are in charge of everything.  I would have never thought it possible to write, design, format and completely build a book by myself.  I have learned more about formatting and design than I ever wanted to know! Probably one of the first things that an aspiring author does is open up a word processing program and start writing.  That is exactly what I did.  Only later did I figure out that I should be formatting the text a certain way for a book in e-book form.  Also, when I first started writing, I didn’t worry a lot about the grammar or the spelling.  Hey, I figured you could always go back and fix those things later.  What you don’t think about at that point is how hard that will be when you have written several hundred pages.  It soon becomes apparent as you attempt the editing process that you will need some serious help because you will never be able to do it on…

When we think of the struggle for women’s rights, the rights we most often think of are the right to vote, the right to property and the right to work and equal pay. These are all phenomenally important rights, and ones that women in the West have fought hard to secure. However I would argue that the most important right of all is the right to love. Many of the novels I’ve been most drawn to in this life – JANE EYRE, ANNA KARENINA, PRIDE & PREJUDICE, MIDDLEMARCH – have had at their heart these incredibly strong and courageous women; women who’ve battled the popular perceptions of their time and have courageously loved despite the obstacles and scorn flung their way. Now 150 years later, it may seem as if their struggle is antiquated. But what these women fought for in the nineteenth century is exactly what so many women in the Muslim women are struggling for now. 20 years ago I spent 12 months as an idealistic, young aid worker teaching in a school and an Afghan refugee camp on the outskirts of Peshawar, Pakistan. It was one of the most eye opening experiences of my life. I had…

Killing people on paper is terrific therapy.  We mystery writers are very, very lucky that way.  If anyone dumps us, hoses us, lies to us, annoys us or is rude, hostile or so much as gives us a dirty look in line at the supermarket we have a coping mechanism that most people who live outside of the federal penal system don’t have.  We can bump them off.   My newest Berger-Mitry mystery, THE SNOW WHITE CHRISTMAS COOKIE, is my ninth novel to feature the mismatched romantic duo of pudgy Jewish film critic Mitch Berger and beautiful black Connecticut State Trooper Des Mitry.  All of the books in the series take place in a picture postcard historic village on the Connecticut coastline that I call Dorset.  I’ve also written eight mysteries about the dapper celebrity ghostwriter Stewart Hoag and his faithful, neurotic basset hound, Lulu, including my Edgar Award-winner, THE MAN WHO WOULD BE F. SCOTT FITZGERALD, as well as a pair of thrillers. You know what? I just did the math and I must have bumped off at least forty people by now.  Pretty amazing, isn’t it?  I’ve shot them, stabbed them, bludgeoned them, nail-gunned them, poisoned them, drugged them,…

Many years ago, when I worked in a bookstore, a guy came up to me looking like he was on the verge of committing homicide. “How come I can’t find any J.D. Robb books?” he demanded. “You don’t carry them?” “Sure we do. Right over there.” I pointed to the aisle labeled, in gi-normous letters, ROMANCE. A mixture of terror and indignation washed over his face. He turned to me with a steely glare. “J.D. Robb does not write romance. Those books are mysteries.” J.D. Robb, of course, is the pen name of bestselling romance writer Nora Roberts. Still, the customer is always right, so I pretended to look alarmed. “Sorry, sir. Must be a glitch in the shelving system. I’ll look into it.” “You do that,” he snapped. Then he marched into the pink aisle, snatched up the latest J.D. Robb book and stormed out. “They’re not romance,” he insisted, on his way out the door. It’s easy to look back and laugh, but his attitude shines a spotlight on something most guys will never admit. Believe it or not, guys need good relationships in a story. It might not seem like it, but every good story is a…

In my mind, one of the best things about reading is the way books can take you around the world. As a little girl growing up in South Bend, Indiana—not the most exciting place on earth—I relied on this method to feel like I had experienced far more travel than I was likely to for a very long time if I had to rely on airplanes or even cars. It started with Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie books. How I loved them! I could picture the Wisconsin woods, wide prairies, Plum Creek gurgling in front of the dugout, and the deep snow of harsh Dakota winters. From there, I went south, as Margaret Mitchell tempted me to follow Scarlett through GONE WITH THE WIND and the red earth of Georgia. After that came England, first through Jane Austen and then Charles Dickens. As an adult, I started to travel more in “real” life, but I still haven’t seen Elizabeth Peter’s Egypt or Kafka’s Prague. I did, however, make a conscious decision to try to bring my readers the world the way so many authors have done so for me (although I would never, ever claim to have…