1–What is the title of your latest release? THE VALKYRIE’S SHADOW   2–What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book?  The Valkyrie’s Shadow is a YA Sapphic Fantasy about Valkyries, who are warrior women on horseback. In this sequel to The Valkyrie’s Daughter, Sigrid rises to the challenge of being a leader on Sleipnir, the eight-legged war horse descended from Loki. But the way his power affects her threatens to destroy her friendships, her relationship with Mariam, and much more.   3–How did you decide where your book was going to take place?  After deciding I wanted to write about Valkyries, which are part of Norse mythology, it was a matter of picking which of the nine Norse worlds they should live on. I did some research and ended up choosing the beautiful world of Vanaheim, which was home of the Vanir gods.   4–Would you hang out with your heroine in real life?  Yes! I’d love to hang out with Sigrid and go riding together.   5–What are three words that describe your hero? Soft, ambitious, dangerous.   6–What’s something you learned while writing this book?  Writing this series has involved fun research into Norse mythology and Vikings. I…

An interview provided by the author for FreshFiction.com – You’ve written novels set in many places around the world (and you’ve traveled to even more!). How do you capture the nuance of a place in your writing, in order to create such vivid settings? I resist writing stories about places I don’t know well in terms of both setting and culture, which is another way of saying: I need to have spent a lot of time in a place before I write about it. My current release, Fire on the Island, set in Greece, is the best example of that. My first job after college was in Greece, to which I’ve returned to numerous times, cumulatively spending some seven years in the country. For the last fifteen years, I’ve gone every spring to the same village on the island of Lesvos where Fire on the Island is set. Prior to becoming a full-time writer, I had a very exciting career in international development that took me around the world many times. In Poland and Jerusalem, I worked on long-term assignments (meaning over two years), so naturally those became settings for two of my novels. In only one case, Cooper’s Promise,…