Look back on your life for a moment, okay? Just close your eyes and remember the people who were most influential in helping you become the person you are. Your parents, who may or may not have been role models you could follow. That special third grade teacher who realized you needed a little extra help learning to spell. The librarian who led you to novels you still remember with a catch in your throat. And the friends. With sixty-something books to my credit, one day I realized that I’d never really written about friendship. Sure, there were lots of friendships in my novels. That person a main character tells her life story to. That person who insists a main character get his act together. The walk-ons who serve a limited purpose before they stroll into the sunset. Lots of friends, but never a novel about friendship. Enter the women of Happiness Key, a shabby beachfront community on Florida’s Gulf Coast who don’t know they need friends, don’t recognize each other’s potential, and are reluctant to spend more than a moment in each other’s presence. Ah, a writer’s dream scenario. Happiness Key, the resulting novel, explored the ways women come…

He can be swathed in a Victorian cloak like Heathcliff, a Regency jacket like Darcy, or a short sleeved shirt with a pack of cigarettes rolled into the sleeve like James Dean, but we all know him for who he is – the quintessential bad boy. He’s the one we want to hate, or at least to shun. He woos us, then drops us, hurts our feelings, then asks for forgiveness with those appealing little boy eyes. What is it about bad boys, anyway? Are they born knowing they can get away with a lot because they have long eyelashes? Do they figure it out in kindergarten? Sixth grade? Because they sure know it by high school. It’s a fascinating character type, and one I had no intention of exploring in my debut mystery, MURDER IN THE ABSTRACT, which came out in late June. But I invented a back story for my protagonist, Dani O’Rourke, so she would fit into the high society world, but as a bit of an outsider: She was once married to the scion of a wealthy family, a young man with two Porsches, several hundred million dollars, and a roving eye. Okay, that got her…

People always ask me where I get my ideas for stories. The second most asked question is ‘where do I get my characters?’ Generally the questions instill a measure of discomfort within me. Because the truth is hard to explain. Or maybe, I just don’t have enough faith that the answer will be well accepted. Or believed. And, after all, they’re aren’t many of us who want people to think we’re weird. My answer to both questions is usually some sort of vague ‘Oh, they’re just there.’ Not much of an answer, I know. And yet, it’s the complete truth. I don’t have a trunk in my attic filled with ideas, or people, or even costumes for people to wear. I don’t have a diary, or a ledger, where I make lists. I don’t go anywhere or look anyplace for the stories that fill my pages, or for the people who live and breath between the covers of my books. They’re just there. They always have been. I believe that the ideas, and the people who fulfill them, are given to me by a source that is greater than I am as an individual – given to me as a…

My third romantic suspense with paranormal elements, The Wild Irish Sea, hit the shelves this week. I certainly had quite a time mixing together the plot, characters, mental telepathy, beautiful Irish scenery and a few Celtic legends. I’m thrilled that readers and reviewers are enjoying this story. If you haven’t heard about or picked up your own copy of the book yet, I’d like to give you a brief glimpse of some of the things you can look forward to when you read The Wild Irish Sea. Being a late night person, I occasionally tune in the various talk shows, so with a nod to David Letterman, here are my Top Ten Things You Will Love About The Wild Irish Sea: 1.The cover – I really can’t take much credit for this. I love all my covers and they are all the work of the fantastic Sourcebooks Art Department. I will say that I did suggest the seascape on the bottom of The Wild Irish Sea. I’ve always loved… seascapes! Yes, that’s my story and I’m sticking with it! 2.Kevin Hennessey — Okay, what’s not to love about a tough, but vulnerable Irish hunk of a hero? Kevin is my…

Welcome to Susan’s Money, Honey Blog Tour in which she will heroically address the Top Ten Responses Commonly Heard when An Ill-Groomed Stay-at-Home Mom Announces her Secret Career as a Romance Writer. (If you’re dying to see all ten responses, check out my website.) Hello, Fresh Fiction! Welcome to the blog tour! Today we’re discussing Response #9: The dreaded “Don’t you get tired of writing the same story over & over?” Okay, this one kills me. Really, it does. People who don’t read romance seem to have this incredible misconception about the genre. It’s like they think that because romance novels feature a love story and a happy ending, they’re all the same book. This is like saying all detective novels are the same because the plot revolves around a crime and we get to find out whodunit at the end. Or that all thrillers are the same because the hero gets to foil a Plot to Destroy the World As We Know It. That’s not a formula–that’s a contract with the reader. It’s the reason we read genre fiction in the first place. If I want a happy ending, I read romance. Exquisite world-building? Science fiction. A near miss…

As a thriller writer, I’m always searching for the idea that sends a chill slithering up my spine. A decade ago, I felt just such a chill when I came across a news article about an incident that had occurred thirty years earlier. The year was 1968, and it happened in mid-March, in a place called Skull Valley, Utah. It was chilly that afternoon, with patches of snow on the ground. While doing chores in his yard, Ray Peck developed an earache and decided to go to bed early. When he woke up the next morning and stepped outside, he was stunned by what he saw. His yard was littered with dead birds. It seemed as if they had dropped from the sky struck down in mid-flight. Not far away, a struggling rabbit was twitching in its last death throes. Over the next few days, the local university began receiving frantic calls from farmers across Skull Valley. Thousands of their sheep were lying dead in pastures, a death toll that eventually mounted to over six thousand animals. No one could explain it. No one admitted any wrongdoing. Thirty years later, the answers were finally revealed when the U.S. government declassified…

I’ve been hearing a lot from readers about the secondary story in my latest contemporary romance, CRUSH ON YOU. Gil Marino and Clare Knowles are best friends and have been so since childhood. Unlikely friends, on the face of it, as he was the school jock and she was the geeky girl who was treasurer of the Science Fiction Society. But he attended every one of her birthday parties, starting when the invitations came with Barbie on front through her Sweet Sixteen when he was the shy girl’s support and escort. When she gets engaged and asks him to be the “Man of Honor,” what’s a buddy to do? Except Gil doesn’t feel like her buddy anymore. Some time in the last year his feelings for his BFF have changed–and he doesn’t know what to do about them. A friends-to-lovers romantic theme is one of my very favorites (and is the subject of two fun movies, “Made of Honor” and “Some Kind of Wonderful”). It’s delicious to watch the couple struggle with emotions that appear to come out of the blue. For his part, Gil can pinpoint the exact time when Everything Changed (on a road trip, three nights they…

Junior! Don’t chain your uncle in his coffin again! The Dark Forgotten series is about a lot of things: passion, adventure, mystery, and learning to live with a world that’s gone in an utterly unexpected direction. It’s also about families, whether we’re talking blood relatives, vampire clans, or a pile of hellhound puppies. At the centre of the stories is the Carver family. They’re witches who have served the people of Fairview for hundreds of years, but tragedy has scattered the current generation. One of the themes of the series is how the Carvers reunite and heal. Of course, every family member does this on their own unique terms, and you wouldn’t believe who some of them bring home to dinner. Kids these days! At the beginning of Ravenous, Holly Carver is the one left running the family ghostbusting agency. Her parents were killed in a car accident, and her sister, Ashe, has gone to live in Spain. Holly’s grandmother, though still full of spit and vinegar, is in a seniors’ residence. It’s up to Holly—and her scrumptious vampire partner, Alessandro Caravelli—to save the day when a portal to another dimension starts spewing demons, hellhounds, and other surprises into their…

Hi Fresh Fiction readers, this is my first time here… People ask me why I wrote dogs as central characters in both my romantic comedies for Berkley Sensation: my debut book LOVE IS A FOUR-LEGGED WORD and its follow-on title HOME IS WHERE THE BARK IS (to be released on July 6). I didn’t actually set out to be a “doggy” writer. But animals are such an important part of my life, I guess it was inevitable that they would also be important in the life of my fictional characters. Besides, writing dogs is such fun. And I get to have cute dogs on my covers! In LOVE IS A FOUR-LEGGED WORD, Brutus the millionaire mutt is a very greedy, naughty little dog who inherits a lot of money. He is as important a character as the hero and heroine, feisty chef Maddy and lawyer Tom O’Brien who are thrown together because of Brutus. In HOME IS WHERE THE BARK IS, the “cover” dogs Mack, a sad-eyed black mutt, and Bessie, a purse-sized Yorki-poo, play an important role in bringing together lovely dog nut Serena Oakley and hunky PI Nick Whalen. (Serena is Maddy’s best friend in the first book.)…