How does a professional animal communicator end up writing romance novels? It’s a fair question, because the two interests—animal communication and romance writing—don’t seem at all related. In fact, many well-meaning people have advised me to choose one and let the other go. Their point: It’s hard enough to succeed at anything when you’re laser-focused and giving it everything you’ve got. It was entirely possible that such a divided focus would doom both ventures to failure. But I’ve always believed that my passions would provide a roadmap to the next right place. So, as I honed my skills of animal communication, I honed my writing skills too. While I built my business as an animal communicator, I wrote a how-to book about animal communication, and several novels (some that are still under the bed, taunting me like Edgar Allan Poe’s telltale heart under the floorboards). But my romance writing and animal communication skills all came together one day at a romance writer’s conference, when a writer who knew my work said, “You should pitch something to Deb Werksman at Sourcebooks. She’d love your writing.” My truth-meter went off in a big way.  I knew without a doubt that some channel…

He turned on the lamp, pulled up a footstool, and sat in front of her. Reluctantly, it seemed, he held out his injured hand. “Ow!” Abby commiserated. That bird had taken a chunk out of Quinn’s pointer finger, just below the middle knuckle. “You need stitches.” “I’ve fixed worse cuts than this with duct tape.” He dug through the kit and handed over a tube of Neosporin. “Just get on with it.” “How did he get you so bad?” As gently as she could, she smeared the antibiotic cream over the open gash. “Made the mistake of leaning my hand on the aviary wire when I poured the food into his bowl.” He handed over a fresh Band-Aid. “I won’t do that again.” “I’m sorry. I hate that you’re having to do all this for me.” She wrapped the Band-Aid around his finger and smoothed down the adhesive edges. “My fault, remember?” He replaced the bandages and Neosporin and snapped the lid shut. “Can you please stop apologizing?” “I’m sorry.” He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “How does your foot feel?” The throbbing pain from earlier this morning now burned with the heat of a thousand suns….