I want to thank Fresh Fiction for the review of my latest book, TALLIE’S HERO. As a writer with only three books in print, I am flattered to be in the company of romance writers, whose work I have long enjoyed. For almost forty years I have lived with a writer, and I have come to accept that he goes into his office, sits down at the computer and within a couple of months he has another book done. Over the years I have started many books and I have even finished several of them, but when I look at my time frame I see five years for this one, three years for that one—well you get the picture.  I have learned that writing on a deadline is hard work.  Sometimes the bed doesn’t get made, or the clothes don’t make it to the drawer, or the plants get a little droopy.  All that I can justify. But now I have found another distraction—research. The three books that I have on the market are all historical romance.  They have been set in the West, but I can’t classify them as specifically Western.  One reviewer has classified them as Americana, and…

A PLACE BEYOND COURAGE is the story of a Medieval knight, soldier and baron called John FitzGilbert, who, if you look him up online, had something of a reputation as a hard man of his times, willing to sacrifice his small son in order to hold onto one of his castles.  I was interested in finding out more about  his life, and to discover what really happened.  Did John really say that even if the boy was killed by the men who held him captive, it didn’t matter because he could beget better sons to replace him? John FitzGilbert was also known as John the Marshal. His second name was his job description.  So what exactly did a marshal do in the Middle Ages – and specifically the royal marshal, answerable to the king?  What were his responsibilities and duties? The name Marshal derives from Marescallus, which meant ‘Stable hand.’ So essentially the original job had to do with horses.  It was the marshal’s job to ensure there was stabling and fodder for the horses in the royal household.  From there, the duty spread out into provision and responsibility for the hounds in the kennels and the hawks in the…

This is Frank “Boss” Knight.  And his nickname says it all.  He’s the man, the head hancho, the big Kahuna.  And at Black Knights Inc., the custom motorcycle shop that provides the cover for his clandestine government defense firm, the buck stops with him – much to our heroine Becky’s intense chagrin.  A former Navy SEAL, Frank may spend his days as a simple motorcycle mechanic, but his nights are filled with the kind of missions too hot for Uncle Sam to handle.  With the help of his wickedly sharp KA-Bar knife and his custom-made Harley – appropriately named Boss Hog – he’s not the type of guy you want to cross.  Gruff, tough, and built like an Abram’s tank, Frank is all man.  But in the arms of our heroine, his hardened exterior softens to reveal a sweet and tender heart. If you asked Frank why he takes the jobs no one else would touch with a ten foot pole, he’d mutter, in that booming base of his, “Because somebody’s gotta do ’em.”  And if it’s not obvious from the hard line of his jaw, the scars on his face, and the grit in his eye, he’s done more…

When I was a child reading my grandmother’s Louis L’Amour books, I was always impressed by the author’s note that said if there was a stream mentioned in the book, that stream was really there. When I started writing books of my own, I realized that, while it was one thing to write about a geographical landmark or historical saloon, it was another to write about modern businesses that changed hands or names or even disappeared in the time it took to write a chapter. It was still another to write about unsavory characters doing unsavory things in real-life establishments owned by actual people who might sue you. And what if the place you need to write about doesn’t actually exist—but for the sake of the story, ought to? My detective, Jared McKean, operates in and around Nashville, Tennessee, and if I need him to go to a place that exists in the real world, all I need to do to describe it accurately is go there and look around. In A CUP FULL OF MIDNIGHT, the second book in the series, I needed a place for Jared to take a woman in whom he has a romantic interest. I…

Writing novels is surely the most portable career there is. The office cube farm is handily located right between my ears. Tools of the trade fit in the pocket of my oversize hoodie–a Clairefontaine notebook, a fountain pen filled with peacock-blue ink, and a smartphone that doesn’t actually get a signal at the house. The commute? My usual route is from the couch to the computer, and the only traffic I encounter is a sleeping dog or a teetering tower of to-be-read books. When you’re this portable, you have the ability to live anywhere you want. So why not pick the place that feels most like home in the world? My “anywhere,” as it turns out, is Bainbridge Island, Washington–a chunky green dot on the map, located a ferry commute away from downtown Seattle. This particular house has everything a writer could want–a nice big stretch of beach, privacy, a separate studio for guests, and a funky ’60s vibe that makes it a unique and creative space. There’s a timeless quality to life at the shore, where the work schedule is defined by the tides, and deadlines are dictated by the seasons. Blue herons, scoters and red-winged blackbirds inhabit the…

Tomorrow (9/4/12), Montlake Romance will publish my romantic suspense, EVERY BREATH SHE TAKES.  But it won’t be the first time this story has seen publication. It was first published in 2004 by Dorchester Publishing under the title LAUREN’S EYES, after it won Dorchester’s New Voice in Romance contest. I was thrilled to join the ranks of my mass market-published friends. Then I saw my cover. Actually, most of the romance writing community saw my cover before I did. It was unveiled at a Romantic Times conference which I was unfortunately unable to attend, but the lovely Julianne MacLean stood in for me and posed with my pretty cover on my behalf. And it truly was a beautiful cover, with gorgeous pastel colors, depicting three fantasy-type horses with long flowing manes. The problem? The book in question is not a pastel fantasy. It’s a sexy, gritty romantic suspense with a relatively slight – but key – paranormal element (psychic heroine). The upshot, of course, between the small print run and the lack of a genre-appropriate cover, was that the book failed to find its audience with Dorchester, and I subsequently reacquired the publishing rights. Fast forward to 2011 when I was…

They always say, “Write about what you know’, so I made the heroine of DEATH ON A LONGSHIP, Cass Lynch, a keen sailor. Well, more like obsessive – she ran away from home and education to join a three-masted sailing ship, and pursue a career on the water: teaching children in dinghies on the beaches of the Mediterranean, going to night school to learn navigation, sailing across the Atlantic, and living aboard her own boat. I’ve not quite done all of those. I grew up with boats, in holidays on the glorious west coast of Scotland, in a cottage three miles by sea from the end of the road. There were badgers, foxes, otters, seals, weird spiky caterpillars and double-winged dragonflies, a blow-up canoe for pottering round the rocks and our family’s twelve-foot wooden rowing boat. I still have her, and I can hardly believe two adults, three children and a Siamese cat really went for miles in anything so small. According to my mum, she was my first playpen: ‘I put you in the boat with a book, and you were perfectly happy.’ As the child starts, so she’ll grow! The first time I was in a sailing dinghy…

There’s a special closeness involved in “small town” books. When I set out to write LUCKY BREAK, I knew I wanted to write about a small town—but with big people. What I mean by that is characters you’re able to get close to. Characters who are full of personality and easy to relate to. First, I needed the perfect town. I thought and thought and nothing came to me. That’s when Sidney popped into my head. No, she wasn’t the town I needed, but I loved her character right off the bat. What’s more fun than a down-on-her-luck actress…wait…luck? Hmm, that was something to work with. I played around with the word “luck,” but nothing jumped out at me and said, “I’M YOUR TOWN!” What ways could I tie luck into it? Oh! Shamrocks are cool. I like them (I secretly want a shamrock tattoo). From there I played around with shamrock until Shamrock Falls was born and I KNEW that was my town. You see, I grew up in a small town. I became best friends with a great boy in our small town high school, and we fell in love. I wanted to recreate some of that in…

Have you been to a coffee shop lately? Sometimes I know exactly what I want. Salted caramel, light, no whip. But sometimes, if it’s really hot I’m in the mood for a frappacino. But which one? There are so many choices. Recently, I took my kids to a smoothie shop. We had never been there before, and it took us thirty minutes to decide what to get. How do you choose from strawberry mango madness and peachy keen? It reminded me of when we went to Baskin Robbins recently. Thirty-one flavors and counting. Not to mention all the shakes and stuff on the menu board. What happened to chocolate and vanilla, with an occasional strawberry thrown in? Could we ever go back to those simpler times? I don’t think so. And I’m not sure we would want to. I like my buttered pecan. So what about the book market? The choices are astronomical and often overwhelming. So do we really need another Vampire story? My hope was to create a vampire story that wasn’t like any other vampire story out there. And the wonderful RT Book Reviews review I received attests I have done exactly that! 🙂 Really, who would…

I knew that title would grab your attention! Before you read further, let me assure you that I do not intend to describe intimate details of the Amish or any other people group in this article. I’m going to talk about some of the interesting practices and beliefs I discovered while researching the books in the Amish of Apple Grove series, THE HEART’S FRONTIER and A PLAIN AND SIMPLE HEART, which I co-authored with the fantastic, the awesome, the incredibly talented Lori Copeland. When an author performs research for a story, she unearths all sorts of facts and fascinating details, most of which never make it into the book. That’s because a good novel focuses on characters and action, with just enough historical detail to lend a sense of realism. But some things are just so much fun to talk about! Here are a few tidbits I found interesting that didn’t make it into A PLAIN AND SIMPLE HEART: Amish People Don’t Drive Cars Amish people travel from place to place in a horse and buggy. Some communities are permitted to own bicycles, though not all of them. None are permitted to own or drive cars. For longer trips that…