In the scheme of things, I haven’t been writing very long. Though I majored in English with a creative writing emphasis in college many moons ago, I didn’t start writing seriously until 2007. In an epic case of ‘be careful what you wish for; you just may receive it,’ that manuscript was named a 2009 Golden Heart finalist, won a paranormal Daphne, and sold to Sourcebooks as part of a three-book deal. Though it took me a long time after college to scrape up the guts to actually put pen to paper (or set fingers to keyboard) I like to think I was…in training, preparing for publication all along—by reading other people’s books. Following are some of my favorite teachers: Anne Rice: The world-building in “Interview with the Vampire” absolutely knocked my socks off.  Rice’s New Orleans was lush, dark and dank. You could smell the rot and the perfume. She had a new take on the vampire legend, and her languid, sensual vamps had a distinct homoerotic edge that I hadn’t previously been exposed to. Marion Zimmer Bradley: Reading “The Mists of Avalon” was a transformational experience for me. As a college student in the 80’s, I found her…

When I sit down on my stationary bike to exercise, I like to read. In fact, a good book can keep me pedaling long after my time is up! Of course, I like to read at other times, too – pretty much any time, really. And when I do, I want to learn something. I’m not talking about textbook learning, but learning interesting pieces of information from whatever fiction I happen to be reading. Maybe it’s a tidbit of history that leads me do an internet search or look through my own library of books to expand on that information. Or it might be an interesting quirk of law. Sometimes it’s a bit about a region of the world I’m unfamiliar with. I’ll check out google maps and google earth just to see the location the book is set in, or the place the characters are talking about. I don’t think I’m the only one, either. When I read the Steig Larsen books (THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO, etc) I wanted to know more about Sweden. I kept a map open while I read, and a conversion table for Swedish money. (How much is 1.2 million kroner, anyway?) I…

Hello, Fresh Fiction, and thanks so much for inviting me to chat to you about my latest book, STAYING AT DAISY’S. To start with, it has yet another stupendous cover (I love my Sourcebooks covers so much!). Secondly, it’s pretty much the only novel I’ve completely set in a real place. Castle Combe is one of the prettiest villages in the UK and I live close by. The original Dr. Doolittle film starring Rex Harrison was filmed there. The Manor House Hotel in Castle Combe is one of my favourite places to visit – it’s just amazing, and the restaurant is fab too. (This is not an advert, it’s just true!) I did of course change the name of the village and hotel for the book… I absolutely love using a hotel as the setting for a novel. So much can happen, and anyone might turn up. Before writing this book, I interviewed a couple of hoteliers who told me some truly amazing stories…of guests stealing the curtains and curtain poles in their rooms, of a guest dying and having to be carried down the stairs and out of the hotel whilst a wedding party was in full swing, of…

A soft thud in the night. A creak in the hallway outside your bedroom. A lonely road cutting through a dark forest. All of these can cause fear. However, fear need not be felt in these creepy, eerie locations. One can experience fear when going in for a job interview, on the first day of college, or even writing your first novel. We fear the unknown. What made the thud upstairs? The creak in the hall–just the house settling or something else? What if the car stalled on the road? You wonder if you can present yourself professionally to the prospective employer or if you’ll make friends on the new campus. Writing is no different. It’s a scary process. I’m not even referring to writer’s block, but it, too, can be an unsettling experience. I remember somebody turning the word fear into an acronym. False Evidence Against Reality. Basically, what that means, is what happens is usually totally different than what was originally imagined. I’ve experienced this countless times in my life, usually when asking a woman to dinner. Okay, my fear about their rejection usually held true, but never in the ways I imagined it. There are many aspects…

I was grocery shopping and trying to figure out what I wanted to write next when I ran into a guy in Army gear in the cookie aisle.  Be still my heart.  He had dark sunglasses on, absolutely no smile, and testosterone was pouring off him. He ultimately choose two packages of granola bars instead of cookies, which nearly killed the fantasy but I recovered.  By the time I’d gotten to my car, I’d concocted a whole back story for him.  And just like that, ANIMAL MAGNETISM (2/1) was born. Brady Miller doesn’t smile much because he hasn’t had anything to smile about in a very long time. He’s an ex Army ranger, now a pilot for hire for organizations like Doctors Without Borders, back in the states at the request of his foster brothers.  They run a large animal center in the middle of Nowhere, Idaho, and need his help. He agrees to stick around for unusually complicated reasons, even though he’s lived his life as purposely uncomplicated as possible.  Fact is, he’s not much of a family guy.  He’s always been a wanderer, no roots, no home base. Maybe even a guy who can’t be saved. It takes…

Several years ago, someone in the blogosphere referred to me as a “veteran author” of romance fiction. This term caught me by surprise because even after a decade and a half as a published writer, I regarded myself as a newcomer, someone who still felt astonished to be doing this for a living and still a bit awed by her own favorite authors when she chanced to meet them at conferences. But when I began counting books and years, I realized (with some chagrin) that the moniker “veteran author” had become true. I’d been too busy writing to notice. Genre fiction is a relentless form of creative endeavor in the sense that the next book always looms on the horizon, whether you are ready to write it or not. Output is measured in pages per day, not pages per month. Books are counted, not by how many one can write during the course of a career, but how many one can write in a single year. For those of us with major publishers, genre fiction is also very specialized, with reader expectations and preferences always paramount, impelling the writer to weigh commercial considerations at least as heavily as creative ones….

It was a dark and stormy night… Beginnings. I know so many writers that love beginnings. They love them so much they have drawers (really files since most of us don’t keep our writing in actual drawers) full of story beginnings. It’s nothing for them to whip up a new proposal and send it off to their editor or agent. They love the excitement, the freshness, the limitless possibilities. Me? Not so much. And that’s really putting it mildly. I hate beginnings. It’s not that I don’t love all the possibilities, that’s great, wonderful, even. I mean that’s why brainstorming can get a bit addictive. I get the whole newness thing, I can see where they’re coming from, but I can’t feel it. Getting and shaping the idea is one thing, but when it comes to the actual writing, I’m a bundle of nerves. Well, I’m nervous and stressed pretty much the whole time I’m writing, but the beginning, especially. (And the ending, but that’s a whole ‘nother blog) The way I look at it, I’ve got a blank canvas with two people I don’t know at all (regardless of how many things I know about them, it’s way different…

Twenty five years ago when I first started writing, my goal was to become a successful author.  I wanted to be able to quit my real estate job and write full time.  Fortunately, with my husband still working, I was able to make that happen fairly quickly. Still, when I finally I sold my first book after months of trying and numerous rejections, I earned the whopping sum of four thousand dollars–not much money for a year and a half of working ten hours a day!  But I never lost faith.  I thought, “I can do this.  I know I can.” I think one of the toughest things about being an author is continuing to believe in yourself.  Insecurities swamp you.  Is this book any good?  Is this book as good as the last one?  Will my readers like it?  Will the publisher renew my contract? After twenty five years, those questions remain.  It’s only sheer force of will that keeps a writer pounding the keyboard, sheer determination that keeps an author from quitting. So when I hit the New York Times printed list (as opposed to the extended list, which I had been on a number of times), it…

I last blogged at Fresh Fiction last September–about Animals, Novels and Me. I’m back. And I’m still at it–obsessing and writing about animals, that is. March 1 is the debut date for BEAGLEMANIA, the first in my new Pet Rescue Mystery series from Berkley Prime Crime. It’s a spinoff series from my Kendra Ballantyne, Pet-Sitter mystery series. Yes, both series contain animals. So do my Harlequin Nocturnes about Alpha Force, a covert military unit of shapeshifters. The protagonist of my new Pet Rescue series is Lauren Vancouver. She was introduced in the eighth Kendra book, HOWL DEADLY, and she also appears in the ninth, FELINE FATALE. She is the head administrator of HotRescues, a no-kill private animal shelter in L.A.’s San Fernando Valley. She doesn’t have to worry about funding, since HotRescues is under the auspices of Kendra’s new guy friend Dante DeFrancisco, who’s really rich. But she has plenty of other things to worry about. Worrying, and doing something about it, is at the heart of pet rescue. It’s also at the heart of being a protagonist in a cozy mystery series. When I tell you that, in the Pet Rescue Mysteries, “no-kill” means pets, not people… well, I’m…

Hi, everyone (sending a big cyber-wave!) I’m thrilled to be here and want to thank the Fresh Fiction gang for inviting me. Some of you might recognize me from the romance community. These days you’ll find my keyboard planted in the mystery world, thanks to a reluctant amateur sleuth named Anastasia Pollack. Anastasia took over my life and my writing and hasn’t let go, so I had no other choice but to write about her. ASSAULT WITH A DEADLY GLUE GUN, which debuted in January, is Anastasia’s story, but because there’s so much to tell, it’s also the first book in my new Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mysteries series. When I made the move from romance to mystery, I found I had to switch up my writing style. Romance readers and mystery readers have different expectations when it comes to their preferred genres. In a romance the story centers around the hero and heroine, but mysteries don’t have heroes and heroines. They have protagonists, whether amateur sleuths or law-enforcement professionals, and those protagonists may or may not have a love interest. If there is a love interest, the love story is subordinate to the mystery. Usually way subordinate, often only a…