Writers are often told to “write what you know.” But I’ve always preferred to write what I want to know. I’ve never been an FBI profiler or moved to a remote Alaskan town to escape memories of losing my Army unit. I’ve never negotiated with a mass shooter or been held hostage in the heavily guarded compound of a cult. But I’ve written characters who’ve had all of these experiences. I believe in writing with as much realism as possible (with certain exceptions, like not detailing exactly how to build a bomb when my explosives expert is defusing one). And since I can’t write these experiences directly from what I already know, or my own lived experiences, I need to do a lot of research. But the research is half the fun. Quite often, my stories are born from what fascinates me. One of my most popular characters, FBI profiler Evelyn Baine, was created because I wanted to create a character who could tell you a lot about who committed a crime not from the physical evidence, but from the behavioral evidence (think of that as what a crime scene can tell you about who a person is, just from…

My bestselling K-9 Alaska series happened by accident. When my editor asked me if I’d write a book featuring a hunky hero and a dog, I thought, “why not?” But it had to be different. If I was going to feature a K-9 in a key role, I wanted it to be one that wasn’t seen all the time. So, I started researching. What I discovered were Combat Tracker dogs, specially trained K-9s who can actually track back from the site of an explosion to the person who set the bomb. And I knew I had my story. Colter Hayes, a wounded and grieving ex-Marine, and his Combat Tracker dog Rebel, are hiding away from the world. I put them in the remote town of Desparre, Alaska, a place with a small population where people come to disappear. So, of course, that’s where I also sent my heroine, Kensie Morgan, in search of the sister who’s been missing since Kensie was a child. That first book, K-9 Defense, was meant to be a standalone story. But before I even finished writing it, I knew I wanted to write more. Alaska Mountain Rescue, the story of Kensie’s long lost sister Alanna…

If you read my blog post last month, you already know about my Dec. 27 release, K-9: Tracking the Target (the duo book containing both K-9 Cold Case and K-9 Hideout), and the two heroes who have a desire to protect and a soft spot for their K-9 companions. Now, I’d like to introduce the heroines, Keara Hernandez and Sabrina Jones. At first glance, Keara (the police chief in the remote Alaskan town of Desparre) and Sabrina (a graphic artist on the run from a stalker) have little in common. Keara went from big-city detective to the only woman (and the leader) on a police force far from home. Determined to move on from the murder of her husband, she throws herself into her new job and wins the respect of a police force who initially doubted the outside woman. Sabrina is less practical and career-focused and more determined just to survive each day. She’ll do whatever it takes – even sacrifice herself – to prevent her stalker from hurting anyone else after he murdered her boyfriend. Cutting off all contact with family and friends for two years is as disheartening as the trek to stay one step ahead of…

It has been such a thrill to see the first two books in my K-9 Alaska series return as part of duo books (reprints with two books bundled together). First, K-9 Defense returned as part of Valiant Tracker (a duo with Elle James’s Six Minutes to Midnight), then Alaska Mountain Rescue returned as part of Tracking a Fugitive (with Nicole Helm’s Hunting a Killer). But now, it may be an even bigger thrill to see two of my own books bundled together! In December, the third and fourth K-9 Alaska series books, K-9 Cold Case and K-9 Hideout, will return as K-9: Tracking the Target. And I can’t wait to see heroes Jax Diallo and Tate Emory step back into the spotlight! In some ways, Jax and Tate are very different types of heroes and I love that they’re sharing a duo book. Jax, an FBI Victim Specialist, is a healer. His background is in psychology, not law enforcement, and he doesn’t carry a weapon or have the power to make arrests. He’s open and giving and a big contrast to the more secretive police officer Tate Emory, whose background is shrouded in mystery, even from the officers he works…

A great cast of characters is more than just a compelling hero and heroine, more than just a villain who readers can believe might actually come out on top in the end. To have a truly great cast, you need interesting secondary characters. Secondary characters fill out the world around your hero and heroine and make it feel more real. They’re the friends of the main characters, who help show you different sides of the main characters, whether it’s their secret dark sense of humor or how they’d drop anything to help someone they love or that they have an unexpected wild side. They’re the coworkers, who antagonize and befriend, and betray the protagonists. They’re the family who is estranged or super close or created from non-blood connections. For me, my hero and heroine rarely feel truly real or rounded until I know whom they surround themselves with – whether that’s on purpose or as a result of their job, or for some other reason. I love building the secondary cast in each book so much that often, those characters grow beyond their original purpose. Sometimes, that even means my secondary characters turn into heroes and heroines of their own…

I love the twists and turns of a difficult investigation, the danger and uncertainty of an undercover mission, the psychological complexity of profiling a suspect. I love knowing that my protagonists are bound by rules that my villains are not, that my protagonists will have to work harder and smarter if they want to prevail. I love that my protagonists are almost always working on behalf of someone who can’t fight this battle themselves, that they are in pursuit of truths and seeking to right wrongs. I love writing law enforcement heroes. Almost all of my novels feature a law enforcement character in a primary role. Occasionally, I even have a villain using the power and protection of a badge and a gun to do wrong. But usually, it’s my heroes who are connected to law enforcement in some way. One of my most popular series, The Profiler series, features an FBI agent who went through the FBI Academy, spent years as a regular Special Agent running investigations, but now tackles a different side of the process. As a profiler (or Criminal Investigative Analyst), Evelyn Baine spends a lot of time digging into case files and inside the minds of…

I love a good villain. Of course, every story needs a hero worth rooting for, someone you’ll want to follow for hundreds of pages. But the stronger, smarter, and savvier the hero, the more important it is to have a villain who can thwart them throughout the book. Because the best stories have that push and pull between the hero and villain, the sense that either one could come out on top and you need to keep reading to see who prevails (or at least to see how the hero could outwit such a worthy opponent). With every story I write, I spend as much time figuring out the villain as I do developing the hero/heroine. Because a worthy villain isn’t pure evil borne out of nothing. A worthy villain has their own backstory, their own motivations, their own belief systems. The villains have good qualities, too, even if the bad outweigh the good. And they all have as much of a desire to prevail as the hero. It’s why they continue to fight, even at points when the hero might seem to have an advantage. It’s why there are points in the story where it seems as though there’s…

When an out-of-town captain and a rookie K-9 handler team up to stop a bomber, the results are explosive…   I adore writing romantic suspense with lovable, courageous K-9s in the mix. My K-9 Alaska series has featured a Combat Tracker dog who had to retire early from the military, a therapy rescue dog, a Victim Specialist K-9 with the FBI, and a dual-purpose police K-9. I enjoyed writing those K-9s so much that I’m working on two more stories in that series, featuring a narcotics detection K-9 with the Alaska Bureau of Investigation and a search and rescue K-9 who does work with the FBI. But before those books release (sometime next year), I paused to be part of the K-9s on Patrol multi-author series. While all of my K-9 Alaska series heroes and heroines are big animal lovers, Ava Callan from SNIFFING OUT DANGER has no experience with dogs and never wanted to work with a K-9. She sees being paired with a K-9 instead of a human as a punishment for being the newbie who doesn’t fit in when she moves from Chicago to what feels to her like middle-of-nowhere Jasper, Idaho. But as soon as she…

She’s trying to rectify the past. He’s trying to forge a new future… I never expected to write Alaska Mountain Rescue. But when I was halfway through the first book in my K-9 Alaska series, K-9 Defense, a secondary character leapt up and demanded her own book. Alanna Morgan was kidnapped when she was five years old. She spent fourteen years with her kidnappers, who raised her (and her “siblings,” who were also kidnapped) as their own children. At nineteen, Alanna slipped a note to a store owner and changed the rest of her life. Her “parents” were arrested, and she was returned to a family she barely knew anymore. Five years later, when her “mother” Darcy Altier escaped from prison and grabbed another child, Alanna decides to return to Desparre, Alaska, to help police find her. It’s a hard journey back to Desparre. It’s where she spent her childhood, so in some ways, nowhere else feels like home to Alanna. But it’s also tainted by the knowledge that this remote town had been used to hide her from her real family for fourteen years. Returning to Desparre is her chance to redeem herself for not turning in her “parents”…

Alanna Morgan is no stranger to being in the news. As a former kidnap victim who turned in the “parents” who’d kidnapped her – and raised her from the ages of five to nineteen – she’s also no stranger to conflict. When she decided to turn in two people who’d loved her – and who she’d loved in return – it meant she’d be going home to a family she barely remembered. A brother and sister who had grown up without her. Parents who had given up hope that she was still alive. For the heroine of Alaska Mountain Rescue, it wasn’t easy to transition back into a life she’d been taken from when she was only five years old. Even harder was trying to reconcile the feelings of love she still had for the “parents” who had kidnapped her, for the “siblings” she’d grown up with, and the fact that she’d decided to break up that “family.” Since returning from an isolated cabin in remote Alaska to Chicago, she’s worked hard to rebuild her relationships with the family who thought they’d lost her forever. She’s also tried to maintain long-distance relationships with the “siblings” she’d grown up with. But…