Been thinking about interesting people of late.   The things others do that make me wish I was doing that too.   I suspect that lives viewed from the outside always seem more exciting than they are.  I know when someone introduces me to speak and I hear all the stuff I’ve done, I always wonder who the speaker is –oh…me. It’s so easy it seems to let our lives get sidetracked into “what ifs” –instead of “I haves”.   Our pasts have a way of dictating our present.   And some (me included) can let that paralyze them into losing self-esteem.  Which is hard enough to come by in the first place. Conversely there are also people who are ruled by the future.  Must do this, must do that, and all of it before I reach a certain age or it just won’t count.   Again, I find that I am prone to this particular human weakness.  I often think why didn’t I start writing earlier in my life, then I’d be like so and so.  (Another trap we often set for ourselves — contrast and comparison). But you know the truth is the only moment that counts is the now.  It’s the only…

Thank you for inviting me back to Fresh Fiction! I’m a sucker for houses – big houses, stately houses, old houses, and even miniature houses. When we decided to move, I looked at more than seventy old houses before settling (of course) on a new one. When I asked my husband if he’d build me a dollhouse, it turned out to be a miniature gem from the Georgian period – a one-inch-to-the-foot equivalent of a small gray stone manor house with hardwood floors and copper flashing in the roof gutters and brick fireplaces and hand-thrown chimney pots. (You can see pictures of it at my website) But mostly I’m a sucker for fictional houses. The house in my new book, THE WEDDING AFFAIR, is called Halstead, and it’s the country estate of the Duke of Somervale. Though I made up everything on the inside, I tacked up a photo of the exterior of a real house to inspire me as I wrote. Here’s what Olivia – one of the three heroines in this triple story – sees when she arrives at Halstead: The central block of the house was a full four stories tall, built of red brick trimmed in…

Ever heard of the Air Force’s Pararescue Jumpers? PJs for short. If the answer’s no, I’m not surprised, since they don’t get much recognition in the media for all the amazing things they do. But, I have it on good authority they prefer it that way. PJs are Special Ops trained medic commandos that go into harm’s way to perform risky search and rescue operations, like extracting a downed air crew behind enemy lines. They put their lives on the line every day to save others, whether during natural disasters here at home or in combat overseas, and will protect their charges at all costs. Their motto “That Others May Live” is the ironclad code they live and die by, and it gives me goosebumps when I think of it. DEADLY DESCENT features a PJ hero and a Medevac Black Hawk pilot heroine. Writing about a Spec Ops hero is nothing new for me, but I felt strongly about highlighting what some of the women in our armed forces are doing in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. DEADLY DESCENT is the first in my Bagram Special Ops trilogy, and I’m giving away a digital copy here at Fresh Fiction. Any…

Whenever I’m asked what’s your favorite food, season, book, quote, whatever, I feel that pressure of “Oh, dear, I need to really think about this and get it right.” (Spoiler alert, or, actually, in the interest of full disclosure: I’m a firstborn child and a Virgo, which means I have double scoops of such unappealing—but ultimately very productive—traits like always feeling compelled to get things as right, as best, as I possibly can.) Then I remember, “Wait a minute, there’s no rule that you must have only one favorite. You can have lots! So just pick the first that comes to mind.” I hope you all, we all, have lots and lots of favorites of everything. Here’s what I love about taking a look at favorite things: the remembering, and celebrating, why they are such favorites…the emotions, memories, and happiness they evoke. For example, one of my (many!) favorite ice creams is peppermint candy topped with peanuts or cashews and smothered in chocolate sauce. There’s an obvious reason why I like this. It’s so good. For me, the combination of virtually any nut with any chocolate is a winner. But as I search for what this lovely indulgence evokes, it’s…

So many cool books to tell you about this month!  Some are departures–new things from established authors–and some are debuts, and some are just cool. PARANORMAL/SUPERNATURAL THE NAME OF THE STAR THE SHATTERING AFTER OBSESSION DRINK, SLAY, LOVE THE NAME OF THE STAR by Maureen Johnson (9/29/11 from Putnam) This one doesn’t come out until the end of the month, but I’m looking forward to it. Johnson’s voice is always engaging, but never fluffy.  The Name of the Star looks very genre friendly: Louisiana teen Rory starts boarding school in London the same day that brutal, Jack the Ripper copycat murders start, sending terror across the city. Rory is the only witness–literally, because only she can see the mysterious man the police consider the prime suspect. Rory will learn the truth about the secret ghost police (!!) and her own abilities… which make her the killer’s next target. Ghosts, mystery, murder, humor and romance, all in an Ripper-iffic thriller. Who can resist that?  It’s like she wrote this book with me in mind! THE SHATTERING by Karen Healey (9/5/11 from Little Brown). Keri is a planner, but she doesn’t know how to handle her older brother’s sudden suicide. When her…

I love romantic suspense, reading and writing it. There’s just something about two people falling in love in the midst of danger and chaos that I find fascinating. Writing the story to make it both romantic and suspenseful can be a challenge. It can also be a struggle to make the reader believe that once the danger has passed, the hero and heroine will stay together forever and the HEA is authentic. Even if the story was a good or fun read, if I close the book not completely sure of that happy-ending, I’m not going to be fully satisfied. Something else that can be a challenge is creating a convincing, believable villain—one who is a worthy foe for the hero and heroine to pursue. In SWEET JUSTICE, my September 6 release, the villain was an interesting one to develop. The hero, Seth Cavanaugh and the heroine, Honor Stone, are both competent professionals. Seth is a former cop; Honor is a former FBI agent. These two are savvy and experienced—experts in pursuing and apprehending criminals. The villain needed to be a good match for them. With two such proficient people, I knew the villain would have to be someone truly…

Many thanks to Fresh Fiction for inviting me to blog. Among other things, LADY OF THE ENGLISH is about two women and the struggle for the English crown that came to be a defining part of their lives. The better-known of the two, Empress Matilda was the daughter of King Henry I and his only legitimate heir.  The English crown was promised to her, but when her father died, her cousin Stephen seized the initiative and the crown and left Matilda out in the cold. She was determined to claim her rights and set about a campaign both military and diplomatic to regain her throne. The other lady is Adeliza of Louvain, second wife to King Henry I. She was  Matilda’s stepmother even though Matilda was older than her by a couple of years.  The women had much in common and would have known each other well. Unlike the Empress Matilda, Adeliza has been overlooked by history, but her story is one of quiet courage that deserved telling. Without her helping hand, Henry II might never have come to the throne. Adeliza was the daughter of Godfrey of Louvain, duke of Lower Lotharingia, now part of Belgium.  She married Empress…

The Serendipity series is small town driven.  The town of Serendipity in upstate New York is a fictional place filled with fascinating people, beginning with the Barron brothers, Ethan, Nash and Dare (oldest to youngest). In the Romance genre, we tend to talk about heroes in terms of type: Alpha – the strong, silent, take no prisoners, it’s my way kind of guy. Beta – the nice guy hero who doesn’t mind doing the chasing, the romancing, in southern terms, the wooing. Gamma – a rather new construct that mixes both. But at the heart of the matter, each hero is meant for one woman only and only she can capture his, up until now, elusive heart. I have never given too much thought to where my heroes fit in mostly because I write them from the heart and they are who they are.  In SERENDIPITY, however, Ethan was supposed to be the ultimate Alpha hero – and then he met (or should I say re-met) Faith – and everything about him changed for me.  She IS his heart and I think that made him more of a Gamma hero than anything else.  That said, he’s probably the most Alpha…

From junior high all through high school, my best friend and I used to go to the local movie rental place and rent the worst horror movies that we could find. Being that it was a very small town in Texas, the clerk didn’t seem to mind that we were under 18, just that we had the cash. We’d go into her room and watch four slicing-dicing, demon-resurrecting horror movies in a row, stay up until dawn, and get all hopped up on sugar. Then I would go home, strung out on candy and the Candy Man. The beginning concept of DIARIES OF AN URBAN PANTHER was what would I do if trapped in a dark alley with a shadowy beast, taking into account that I have seen this scenario over and over and over in the movies that I marinated myself with as a teenager. Would it change the way that I reacted to the situation? Would I scream or would I look for the nearest weapon? Would knowing whatnot to do help me? I don’t know how many times I’ve yelled at the main characters “Do not go up the stairs!” Would knowing never to say “I’ll be…

“Have you considered the absurdity of it all, Rafe?  That you, a son of Ireland, are traveling to America to impersonate a British minister in order to catch a fellow Irishman?”   Rafferty chuckled softly to himself.  Phineas’s summation was all the more preposterous given this particular would-be British minister was filthy with coal dust and stinking with the sweat of hard labor. I think maybe those two lines sum up the basis of REDEEMING THE ROGUE more than any other.  My hero, Michael Rafferty, is more accustomed to the back alleys of London’s underbelly than the fancy posh receptions of diplomats, yet that’s exactly what he’s been assigned to do – impersonate a diplomat to catch a killer.  The man’s going to need a little help here – and he gets it in the form of Lady Arianne Chambers, the sister to a duke who is well acquainted with the falderal of the aristocracy. Shame that the two met earlier and on the basis of mistaken first impressions hoped never to see the other again.  Have you ever noticed how destiny has a way of playing tricks on us, though?  The reluctant reunion of Rafferty and Arianne has them…