I always wanted to be a writer. When I was a little girl I lived with my grandparents in a 3 story house my grandfather built. One rainy day I went up into the attic to look for something, not sure what. Keep in mind that was before phones, before TVs and certainly before computers. I found a wooden crate full of old books—Gialli, that’s what mysteries are called in Italy. The books had been left there by my uncle Agostino who migrated to Canada. From then on I spent my weekends in the attic, reading. Agatha Christie, Rex Stout…I loved them all. In school my best grades were in Literature. My teachers liked my writing, often would read it out loud. Then my parents moved to Belgium, and I said goodbye to my grandparents, the attic and the books. In Belgium I had to learn French, and I did. Soon my teachers liked my French essays. I still dreamed of becoming a professional writer. By the time I was fourteen, not today’s fourteen, mind you, I entered a short story contest and won! A French newspaper published my story. Pretty good I guess, except, my parents didn’t read French,…

Many authors begin writing each book knowing exactly what their hero looks like. Tall and dark. Scruffy and broad-shouldered. Wears a leather bomber jacket and has a killer smile, etc. Often, the author has a particular actor or visual of that hero in mind. I’m not one of those authors. Many times when I’m starting the book, I only know the basics: hair color, eye color and build. Until this book, COUNTERFEIT COWBOY. When brainstorming the idea for this novel with one of my critique partners, she suggested the perfect hero for the book—Matt Bomer, who plays Neal Caffrey on the USA Network show WHITE COLLAR. She recommended I DVR a couple of episodes to get an idea of Neal’s personality and how it could play into my hero in my book—and I got hooked. Not only is Neal the perfect example of a hero—torn between two worlds, a guy with a questionable past, wants to do the right thing but doesn’t always pull it off—he’s one gorgeous man. And the hero of my book COUNTERFEIT COWBOY was born. The cover designers at Harlequin did a fabulous job of finding a model that looks like Matt Bomer with a cowboy…

My heroine from my new holiday romance JANE’S GIFT has only two simple wishes for the upcoming Christmas season. She wants to be surrounded by her family, and she wants to create new holiday memories for her young children. You see, Jane suffered terrible burns in a house fire—and lost her husband in the fire. Widowed and slowly recovering, she’s had a rough time of it. That’s why she’s come back home to Lone Pine Lake, the small town where she grew up, where the majority of her family still resides. It’s a place for her to reconnect with her siblings, her parents and her friends, send her children to the same elementary school she attended and open herself to new possibilities. Jane certainly doesn’t expect to fall in love again, especially with the handsome fire captain who happens to be one of her younger brother’s best friends. Christian Nelson is kind, handsome and he seems interested in Jane, despite what she worries is her emotional baggage. Soon, Jane’s falling for Chris…and her wish list grows to include allowing a special someone to become a part of her life—on a permanent basis. I hope if you get a chance to…

THE BRIDEGROOM WORE PLAID is my first venture into Victorian romances, and writing it necessitated spending many, many hours researching the period. I came across all manner of tidbits I couldn’t widgie into the book, but would love to share: 1) Part of the reason the Thames hasn’t frozen solid since 1815 is that when the Victorians put the London sewers to rights, they narrowed the river’s channel, thus making the water flow faster. (And we haven’t had the right sort of cloud ash, either.) 2) Queen Victoria, sometimes referred to as the “Grandmother of European Royalty,” was also the source of hemophilia in several of the royal houses. 3) We have daguerreotypes of the Duke of Wellington as a handsome older gentleman. This surprised me—Waterloo was nearly 200 years ago, and yet, we have photographs of its hero!? 4) Queen Victoria’s reign saw the first official air mail, which in 1890 used homing pigeons to carry messages between the islands of New Zealand. 5) Victorian doctors were the first to introduce women to the use of vibrators to achieve orgasm. Yes, you read that correctly. 6) The Great Stink in 1858 (before those sewers were put to rights) was…

Fourth-generation cattleman Ty Parker looks into his childless future and wonders what will become of the ranch he’s worked so hard to preserve.  His answer might be a five-year-old boy abandoned on DCF’s doorstep, but only if the rancher convinces a jaded social worker that he’s good father material on a two-week cattle drive through Florida’s version of the Old West. Wait a minute.  “Florida’s version of the Old West?”  Did I hear that correctly?  Why yes, yes you did.  While Florida is better known for its orange groves and theme parks, as a setting for a cattle drive, it’s more fitting than a lot of people might guess. Cattle ranching has been a staple of Florida’s economy for a long, long time.  We can blame Ponce de Leon for that.  He brought seven head of Andalusian cows with him on his second visit in 1521.  And, despite the mosquitoes and the floods and the heat, people have been ranching here ever since. Did you know that today Florida is the third-largest beef-producing state east of the Mississippi?  Or that 1.1 million head of cattle graze its pastures?  We use term “Florida Cracker” when we’re talking about someone who was…

No this isn’t a story about Christmas shopping gone horribly wrong. This blog is about research and the writer. Never in my life did I expect to get up close and personal with a handgun until I wrote TOO CLOSE FOR COMFORT. But there came a point in the story when I realized my heroine, Joy, needed to learn how to use a gun, so in the name of research… Off I went (uncomfortably) to my local gun shop (filled with guns and ammo and other scary things) where I discovered they had a handgun gun safety class on Friday nights.  I was nervous about my first lesson and was sure I’d be out of place with the group. To my surprise, there was diversity in age greater than I’d expect in the class from young women and men to geezers and beyond. As the evening went on I felt a bit like Grandma-with-a-Gun as we handled many different types of guns and learned to shoot in front of each other. Turns out I preferred the Smith & Wesson 38 two inch revolver for the size and feel, and it suited my hand strength. Surprisingly, Joy in TOO CLOSE FOR…

“Pluck” is a word I usually associate with chickens. On the other hand, Booklist was kind enough to describe my amateur sleuth as having pluck (a valid observation because Clare Cosi may be many things, but she is no chicken). A divorced, single mom in her forties, Clare is a coffeehouse manager by day, a relentless snoop by night, and she displays quite a bit of pluck in HOLIDAY BUZZ, the brand new release in my Coffeehouse Mystery series, already an Amazon bestseller in mystery, a Barnes & Noble Holiday Mystery Pick, and a Mystery Guild Featured Alternate Selection. At the close of a glittering winter charity party—known as the Great New York Cookie Swap—Clare finds the bludgeoned body of a pretty baker’s assistant. The murder victim is an illegal Irish immigrant, a young woman Clare knew and liked. When the detectives in charge of the case pursue the wrong suspect, Clare begins to ask her own questions. In the course of her investigation, she must dodge a pair of reality show divas, hoodwink a randy hockey player, outwit a conniving Cajun cook, and butt heads with one of the biggest forensic freaks in the New York Police Department. Clare’s…

My debut novel, SHE CAN RUN, starred a police dog reject, Henry, who was originally intended to add a bit of humor to the storyline. But Henry evolved, as characters sometimes do, into much more than just a dog. He nearly stole the limelight from my hero. My kids were annoyed that I wrote a fictional dog into my book when we had two perfectly good dogs in our house. They demanded that I write one of our dogs into my next book. So, Bandit (photo) received a starring role in SHE CAN TELL (releasing December 4th). Bandit is a dog of many breeds we rescued from the local animal shelter two years ago. There’s a large dog trapped inside his small body, a Rottweiler crammed into a spaniel’s skeleton. At a mere 18 pounds, he would fight to the death to defend any member of his family. He might be small in stature, but his heart and soul are enormous. Bandit is devoted to his family and hates strangers with equal passion, just ask the USP man or those people who came to deliver a religious pamphlet last week. He scared the bejeesus out of them. I had a…

Lucky Harbor is one of the most favorite settings for Jill Shalvis‘s fans and she has a treat in store with her shorty holiday story, UNDER THE MISTLETOE. In the meantime, Jill stopped by with a Top Five list: the Most Interesting Gifts she Ever Received.. 1.   Once I asked Alpha Man for an overnight trip, just us.  I was thinking somewhere warm, maybe even with a beach, drinks, and room service.  What I got was tickets to the NCAA finals.  Note to self: be more specific 2.   Then there was the year my daughters got me a lizard.  Yes, you read that right.  I don’t know why.  But Lily the Lizard was sweet if not a bit challenging.  Rest in peace, Lily. 3.   Several years ago my mother bought me a house cleaning service for one month.  I’m pretty sure she was trying to tell me something… 4.   My favorite presents are always plants.  But unfortunately I kill them.  So one year my family bought me a huge, fake plant.  Only they didn’t tell me it was fake.  I watered that thing every day until it molded.  Yes, I’m still living down the fact that I killed a fake…

About fifteen years ago I was invited to my first white elephant gift exchange party. The first rule was that we had to bring something from home—we couldn’t spend any money. The second rule was that our gift had to be awful as possible. I can’t remember now what I took, but I do remember that what one person thought of as “trash,” another person saw as a “treasure.” The party was a blast. We had so much fun competing over gifts that at first glance wouldn’t seem that valuable. For instance, one woman brought a broken sewing machine. Another woman fought to get it because she wanted a sewing machine and knew her dad could fix anything. I “won” this kitchen utensil. Can you guess what it is? I couldn’t either. Turns out, it’s a tomato slicer, a quintessential white elephant gift. I wasn’t writing books at the time, but knew I wanted to attempt to write a mystery someday, so lots of my everyday experiences went in my mental “that’s interesting” file. The white elephant gift exchange party went in that file. Fast forward thirteen years or so. I had written six Ellie Avery mystery series by then…