My daughter and I are manga fans, and the series Fruits Basket by Natsuki Takaya is one of our favorites. The premise behind the series is that members of the Sohma family have been possessed by the Chinese Zodiac animals. One of the characters, Kyo, is possessed by the Cat, and he’s something of an outcast because as everyone knows, the cat is not a zodiac animal. In fact, one zodiac legend claims that Cat and Rat were friends until Rat tricked Cat out of his chance to be a zodiac animal. To this day, they are sworn enemies, so it’s little wonder that Kyo clashes with Yuki (the Rat), and is always trying to fight him for his position on the Zodiac. The characters of Kyo (Cat) and Yuki (Rat) sparked an idea for a hero and heroine. And then I got to thinking about cat-burglars. When my kids were small, their favorite story was Lynley Dodd’s Slinky Malinki, about a feline cat-burglar that stole anything from socks to clothes pegs: “What was he up to? At night to be brief; Slinky Malinki turned into a thief!” Hmmm. Cat vs Rat, and a cat-burglar of the feline persuasion? Voila!…

Good morning to all you wonderful folks at Fresh Fiction! Now that I’ve met you, visited with you and broke bread (fajitas do count as bread, don’t they?) with you, it’s even more special to be here today. Thank you so much for inviting me to visit with everyone about my newest release, RED’S HOT COWBOY, the second book in the Spikes & Spurs series. It’s on the bookshelves now in all the major book stores, online stores, ebook stores and Wal-Mart. Don’t you just love the cover with all those beautiful bright colors and that sexier than hell cowboy? Wil and Pearl take center stage in RED’S HOT COWBOY. Neither of them was ready for that Christmas Eve, let me tell you. It hit them both right between heart beats like cupid’s sharp little arrow. Wil Marshall wasn’t looking for trouble, honest he wasn’t. He was only looking for a place to stay after a winter storm knocked out the electricity at his ranch. The hunky cowboy had no idea that he’d get tangled up with a sassy red head or get himself messed up in a murder investigation that night. He might have endured the cold and the…

It seems a long time ago that I was single and dating.  That was part of the fun, though, of writing LUCKY GIRL, my quirky romantic comedy to be released September 6th by Entangled Publishing.  When writing the book, I mentally slipped on my three-inch heels, donned my slinky size 6 dress, and sashayed back through memories of when I lived and studied in England—the good experiences, the awkward, and the deliciously romantic.  Best of all, I got to relive once again my first date with the man I affectionately call “The Brit,” who later became my husband. The heroine of LUCKY GIRL, Jessica Devlin, finds herself single at twenty-nine, months before she was to be married.  Heartbroken, she takes an overdue vacation from her job as beauty editor of Orlando’s O Tart magazine and flies to England to be maid-of-honor in her cousin’s wedding.  Jess is anxious about the trip, and not just because her cousin is living the fairy tale romance Jess wanted so badly.  There’s also the embarrassing episode that took place two years ago after Jess’s grandfather’s funeral; it involved an English pub, too many drinks, and a handsome Brit who held her in his arms…

The most memorable e-mail I ever received from a reader was also the most emotional. There’s a scene in my second novel, STRIPPED, in which Detective Serena Dial interviews a woman whose child has died in an accident.  A reader wrote to me and asked if I had ever lost a child myself.  He and his wife had gone through that experience, and he told me that I had captured the emotions of that situation so well that he assumed it must have happened to me, too. Fortunately, I was able to say no.  In fact, I don’t have kids.  But I consider that e-mail one of the most meaningful compliments I have received as a writer, because it gets to the heart of what I hope to achieve in my books – empathy.  I want to get inside the heads of my characters.  I want them to reflect the moral and emotional depth of real people, not just hollow caricatures of good and evil. You can find thrillers around almost every theme these days.  Forensic investigation.  Corporate espionage.  Political intrigue.  Terrorism.  I’ve read plenty of those books and loved them.  I can remember reading Robert Ludlum‘s THE CHANCELLOR MANUSCRIPT…

One of the oft-asked questions in interviews, is “Tell us about how you came to be published.”  My response is the fairly generic, “Once upon a time I wanted to be a writer…” because I’m never quite sure if I should reveal the entire, seemingly endless angsty events. But, in the event you write or read an author’s response, I’m fairly certain that the timeline below is the behind the scenes, real deal. Here is the timeline of the journey to publication: 1. You have an idea. 2. You begin to write a book. 3. After the first two chapters, you are so smitten with your own genius, you pause to jot down the names of actors who will [consider themselves lucky to] portray your characters. 4. After chapter two and a half, you decide it’s time to dust the fireplace, crochet the twelve bedspreads you’ve been buying yarn to complete for the past ten years, and start a scrapbook for each of your children, your yet-to-be-born grandchildren, and the family pet(s). 5. You continue writing [or gazing at the monitor] and decide that repeatedly poking yourself in the eye with a hot stick would be welcome relief from the…

I’ve written four previous romantic suspense novels set among the Amish, and FALL FROM PRIDE begins a new trilogy.  Why do I like to use the Amish for my novels?  And what makes Amish books popular today? Let me try to answer that second question first and hope some of you “fabulous Fresh Fiction aficionados” are willing to weigh in on this. I think Amish novels are popular today partly because of good old curiosity.  We want to know how these “separate” people cope with the modern world when they chose not to be completely part of it.  It is said the Amish live “on” America, not “in” it.  Of course, for us modern readers, there is always the lure of nostalgia when we see the Amish way of life:  buggies, pioneer-style dress and hair; huge farms with horses pulling plows.  But I think there is a deeper reason modern, high-tech Americans are intrigued by the Plain People. The more high-stress and impersonal our lives become, the better the Amish look.  Their days are not run by the internet—not even phones, though some of them use cell phones for business.  No lines snake into their homes to tie them to…

From my childhood through my young adulthood, my mother wore the mask of the “Perfect Mother, Girl Scout Troop Leader, and Sunday School Teacher.” But her behavior when at home, away from the scrutiny of other adults, was anything but perfect. One of the first short stories for which I won an honorable mention from Spinetingler Magazine (yes,  horror!) was called Goody Two Shoes. I’ll let you read the story so as not to spoil the surprise, but it was my first public foray into exploring the roles women play and the masks women wear. My first full length erotic romantic suspense novel, DESIRE AND DECEPTION, explores these same themes. Similar in heat levels to noir movies like Body Heat and The Postman Always Rings Twice, DESIRE AND DECEPTION differs from these notable noir examples because it ends on an upbeat note. In DESIRE AND DECEPTION, polar opposites sex siren Isabel (Izzy) Ramirez and goody-two-shoes Sarah Wright-Rosen become fast friends and seem destined to be BFFs until Izzy’s terrible secret is unearthed–literally and figuratively. Convinced that she is unworthy of redemption, because she believes she cannot be anything but the “bad girl,” Izzy goes down a take no prisoners’ path,…

I have two left feet. And no rhythm. What does that mean? For one, I can barely walk and chew gum at the same time, and for sure, I can’t dance. Believe me — I’ve tried. Isn’t going to happen. I’m so uncoordinated I can’t even keep up with a workout video, even the ones that aren’t dance related. Zumba? Forget it. This is also the reason I didn’t make even the Pep Squad in high school. I just couldn’t shake all the different things that needed shaking at the same time — not without causing serious harm to those around me. I know. It’s sad. However, I’ve learned to live with my physical limitations and don’t think I’m missing that much. You’ve heard the saying, ‘Dance like no one’s watching.’ Well, what can I say? That’s the only way I dance! So, if you come by my house and the music is turned up loud, don’t peek in the window. You really don’t want to see it. Really. One of the advantages of being a writer is I get to live vicariously through my characters. In the third book in my Lothario series, LOVE ME TWICE, I had my…

Because it is summer, and because a woman at Oberlin College, Ma’ayan Plaut, gave me adjective sandwich recipes for THE ORPHAN SISTER, as I wait for the kids’ camp bus I am thinking of bread, and wondering what my mother used to do in the summer. There were three of us, my sisters and I, and mostly we didn’t go to camp, we went to the summer house and were creatively, actively, deeply bored in the sweet green timothy grass and lupines. We drew pictures and pretended moss banks were enchanted beds. We bickered and cleaned a thousand dead flies from the windows. Claudia and I made face paint from ground-up rocks: mica chips silver, iron oxide red. We read, and read, and read and made birthday ice cream with a wooden hand-crank machine and cream we got from working on the dairy farm. We grew. We used to ride up to Greensboro, Vermont from our house in Newton, Massachusetts, three girls, parents and the dog, taking turns in the way back of the Jeep Wagoneer, bouncing on the wheel well that sounded like going, going, going and made your bones buzz. Once we were there, dad would go back…

There are some authors I’m drawn to because of their smoking hot heroes. Yes, I like the heroines and secondary characters and I need a solid, entertaining plot but for some books, it’s the men that really draw me in. I don’t know what that says about me and I don’t plan on analyzing myself to figure it out either. I just know I love reading about hot, heroic, alpha men. So what makes a man heroic? In some cases it’s very easy to identify a hero and some characters’ professions have that heroic quality built right in. A firefighter for example. Men (and women) who run into burning buildings for strangers are definitely heroic, even if they don’t see themselves that way. People like cops or military men who put on a uniform every day and deal with less than savory people on a continuous basis so the rest of the public can feel safe at night—now those are my heroes. Aside from what I consider heroic professions, sometimes it’s the small things that make someone heroic. Even a hero who borders on being the anti-hero can have incredibly heroic moments. On the flip side, a normally heroic character…