We all love him. You know the one – the hero who likes to whisper things that make both the reader and the heroine melt. He always knows the right thing to say to set panties aflame, and he’s doesn’t hesitate to go the extra mile to take you there. The man should really walk around with a warning attached to him, because his heroine isn’t going to stand a chance once he starts talking. Up until this point, I’ve only ogled him from afar in other authors’ books. I was so sure I could never pull off that kind of thing without my hero sounding like a fool. And then I met the hero of MISTAKEN BY FATE, Garrett Reaver. He’s big and has a striking resemblance to a certain Norse god, and he’s got a whole lot to say—most of it X-rated. Really, really X-rated. I’d be sitting there, writing, and suddenly things would start coming out of his mouth that had me looking to open a window and get some cold air circulating. I’ve always kind of laughed it off when people ask me how a character I created can surprise me, but Garrett did. The man…

Like so many other authors, most of the time I have some sort of playlist ready to go while I’m writing. Pandora is totally my BFF during those times. But, every once and awhile, a book decides it’s going to be different. Sometimes it demands total silence (or what passes for it in my house) and sometimes, like QUEEN OF WANDS, it’s something else altogether. How was this book different? It wanted horror movies as a background. Seriously—horror. It took me ages to figure it out. I flipped through more songs than words, and finally just ended up putting on Scream 4 as a distraction. And, suddenly, the book was magically cooperating. I cannot begin to express how weird it is to write a sci-fi romance to the chorus of screams in the background. Or the fact that I’m not even particularly a horror fan. I like slashers and thrillers and scary stuff that makes you think, but overall I’d rather hit up an blockbuster action movie or a romantic comedy. But horror it was. Luckily, Netflix had a variety all ready and waiting for me. I wrote my heroine and hero into all sorts of trouble while characters on…

Tarot cards in a sci-fi novel? It seems kind of a weird mix at first glance, and probably second glance, too. Even in today’s society, tarot cards are met with a wide variety of responses. Some people swear by them… and just as many people swear that they’re nonsense. Then there is the group I fall into – the one who can’t really say one way or another. If you’ve ever had your cards read by someone who does it often, you know what I mean. It’s downright eerie. So how did the cards work their way into a universe so different from our own? It started, as most of my books do, with a “What if?” question. I read Ann Aguirre’s GRIMSPACE (which I highly, HIGHLY recommend if you haven’t picked it up yet). In her future, life after death has been proven not to exist. It’s done really well. But I started wondering what would happen if exactly the opposite were true. What if religion was king? It’s not a revolutionary thought, but the one thing that hit me and stuck was the idea that if there were gods, what if the various ways of fortune telling were…