… which I hope is good luck for both my readers and me! Thanks for inviting me to blog here again, Fresh Fiction. Since I last visited in January of this year, I’ve had four books published: TEACUP TURBULENCE, my last Pet Rescue mystery for Berkley Prime Crime; UNTAMED WOLF and LOYAL WOLF, both Harlequin Nocturnes in my Alpha Force miniseries about a covert military unit of shapeshifters; and now… LOST UNDER A LADDER, my first Superstition Mystery! LOST UNDER A LADDER is being published by Midnight Ink. It introduces protagonist Rory Chasen, who, with her adorable black and white spaniel-terrier mix Pluckie, visits Destiny, California, a town where superstitions reign. Why do they go to Destiny? Because Rory’s beloved fiancé Warren died a few minutes after walking under a ladder, and she needs closure. And the only way she can achieve it is to determine whether superstitions are real. Maybe. Soon after they reach Destiny, Pluckie insists that Rory enter the back room of the Lucky Dog Boutique. There, they find Martha Jallopia, the shop’s owner, lying on the floor. Martha is ill but conscious. She says she knows she is going to be fine since black and white dogs…

I last blogged at Fresh Fiction last September–about Animals, Novels and Me. I’m back. And I’m still at it–obsessing and writing about animals, that is. March 1 is the debut date for BEAGLEMANIA, the first in my new Pet Rescue Mystery series from Berkley Prime Crime. It’s a spinoff series from my Kendra Ballantyne, Pet-Sitter mystery series. Yes, both series contain animals. So do my Harlequin Nocturnes about Alpha Force, a covert military unit of shapeshifters. The protagonist of my new Pet Rescue series is Lauren Vancouver. She was introduced in the eighth Kendra book, HOWL DEADLY, and she also appears in the ninth, FELINE FATALE. She is the head administrator of HotRescues, a no-kill private animal shelter in L.A.’s San Fernando Valley. She doesn’t have to worry about funding, since HotRescues is under the auspices of Kendra’s new guy friend Dante DeFrancisco, who’s really rich. But she has plenty of other things to worry about. Worrying, and doing something about it, is at the heart of pet rescue. It’s also at the heart of being a protagonist in a cozy mystery series. When I tell you that, in the Pet Rescue Mysteries, “no-kill” means pets, not people… well, I’m…

Anyone who has been reading my novels lately may see a theme there. I’m currently writing both cozy mysteries and paranormal romances–two fun but different genres. What’s similar about them? They all involve animals! My cozy mysteries consist of the Kendra Ballantyne, Pet-Sitter mystery series for Berkley Prime Crime. Kendra is a lawyer who temporarily lost her law license because of an alleged–and untrue, of course–ethics violation, and took up pet-sitting to support herself and her dog, Lexie, a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel. She enjoys pet-sitting so much that she continues to do it even after she gets her law license back. Among the pets that she sits for are dogs and cats, of course, plus ferrets, pot-bellied pigs, macaws, iguanas, and even a ball python. Because these are cozy mysteries, Kendra becomes what she calls a “murder magnet” and has to solve murders in each of the books. I’m currently working on a spin-off from the Kendra series, the Pet Rescue mysteries, also for Berkley Prime Crime. The protagonist, Lauren Vancouver, runs a private no-kill animal shelter that is funded by a good friend of Kendra’s. The first, BEAGLEMANIA, will be published in March 2011. They, too, involve murders…