I created the first military romantic suspense in March 1989 with the publishing of CAPTIVE OF FATE, Silhouette Special Edition (SSE).  Since I’d served in the US Navy in the 1960’s, and was a meteorologist (AG3), I wanted to write about what I knew and loved.  As a vet, I wanted to have a “niche” romance like many other types already had one, but none were focused on military people and veterans and their stories.  With the above book, so many military families and vets loved it, and the military romantic suspense niche was born. Being in the Romance Industry for forty-one years now, I had wanted to write a lot more books than any publisher could keep up with my creative speed.  To date, I have roughly 225 fiction books published, 95% of them through the known New York City publishers, and 5% from my own small publishing company, Blue Turtle Publishing.   I have twenty-three military romantic suspense books in print/ebook in my DELOS SERIES. Now, in 2023, I have now created my next one:  SHADOW TEAM SERIES, a gritty, fast-moving military romantic suspense, has just been published.  So far, I’m in the process of writing seven books for…

TAKING FIRE and ON FIRE feature a story of US Navy SEAL, Mike Tarik, who is an American citizen, but 1/2 Saudi and 1/2 American, through his mother. His father is a world renown cardiac surgeon. Dr. Bedir Tarik met his wife, Annie, over in Saudi Arabia where she was an American school teacher. Bedir, who is Sufi, believes firmly that love is the only way to peace and harmony in the world. He falls in love with Annie, and they marry in Riyadh. Later, she gets pregnant with Mike and he is born in San Diego, California. Bedir takes his young son over to Saudi Arabia for three weeks every year. He has a charity in Riyadh, and he and Mike take a pickup and distribute clothes, food and money to the poor at the fringes of that city, as well as to many others. He teaches his son generosity, giving back and being grateful for what he has. Mike grows up wanting to become a Navy SEAL. Bedir has already shown him his family’s lineage and tells his warrior son that he has the genes of his warrior great-grandfather. Mike’s view on it is that he wants to…

I’m getting excited! My first ebook novella written and published by me, ZONE OF FIRE (Shadow Warriors series) is getting birthed right now 🙂 I have owned a publishing company, Blue Turtle Publishing, for thirty years. Before moving into being an Indie fiction author and publishing my books as Lindsay McKenna, I cut my teeth on publishing my own nonfiction books. I’ve published Medical Astrology, Path of the Mystic, and Homeopathy for Epidemics, among others. Now, I’m stretching my publisher wings to start including ebooks written by me under my Lindsay McKenna pseudonym. Same great stories, same quality of writing, just a different publisher. In this case: me. Which is terrific! I get into all aspects of publishing, which I’m very familiar with. I have a production team that consists of an editor, copy editor, proof reader, graphic artist, back cover copy writer, and formatter. We get ISBN numbers for each book, plus they are copyrighted before they are ever formatted and published. On December 11th, ZONE OF FIRE was uploaded to Amazon from Blue Turtle Publishing. The best news is it is .99 cents for my 11,000 word novella. ZONE OF FIRE is the epilogue to NEVER SURRENDER (HQN,…

Chief Warrant Officer 4 Sarah Benson, US Army, Medevac pilot, has fallen in love with Ethan Quinn. He’s a US Navy SEAL stationed at FOB (forward operating base) Bravo thirty miles from the Afghan-Pak (Pakistan) border. If you have read the first book, RISK TAKER, Harlequin Romantic Suspense, February, 2014, then you are now reading the sequel. These two characters were seminal for me in many ways. Each had a powerful story to tell in their own right. And then, to put them together in the war and combat environment in Afghanistan, was to test every resolve they owned and believed in. Ethan sees beneath Sarah’s courageous exterior of a Medevac pilot who will not leave those in jeopardy, to bleed out. She was never rescued in the hellish foster home she grew up in until age twelve. Because she was never saved, Sarah has made it her life mission to save others, never wanting them to know what it feels like to survive terror and abuse. He is able to reach her through is poems that he writes and leaves for her at her tent. And he’s the only male Sarah has ever, truly trusted. And they are deeply…

I have a great, personal love for the people of Afghanistan. Because I’m a GIA Colored Stones graduate, my hobby is creating beautiful gemstone necklaces, earrings and bracelets for my worldwide clientele. Every year I go to the Tucson Gem Show in Tucson, Arizona. It’s the world’s largest gem show! Nearly every country in the world flies in their lapidary items that are indigenous to their country to be sold to buyers like myself. There are thousands of buyers who flock to this stellar event. The Tucson Gem Show is so big that it’s not held in just one place. Rather, it is scattered all over Tucson at different venues, tents, motel/hotels. It’s the dim sum plate of the lapidary world. I love Lapis Lazuli, a dark blue stone that is indigenous to Afghanistan. Over the years, I have made friends with our dealers who come from that war torn country. These men are hospitable, kind and always offer to feed us when we come into their hotel room where they have their lapis on display. Afghans are some of the greatest ‘horse traders’ in the world, and I mean that as a compliment. This is a very poor country…

In June of 1988, I created the beginning of the Morgan’s Mercenaries/Morgan Trayhern saga series. Back then, no one had done three books in a row and I was the first to do this with  Harlequin/Silhouette. Now over 50+ strong, I have set my sights on creating a second one. This is the Jackson Hole, Wyoming saga-series. It is about Wild West, stories about cowboys and the hardy men of this region. I refer to the second saga in short hand as JHW. I often get questions from readers about “How do you create a saga?” It’s not easy. There’s a tremendous amount of thought and planning that goes into it.  The first prerequisite is to have a backdrop large enough to put a whole cast of characters on. Secondly, there has to be a focal point that readers want to read. In Morgan’s Mercenaries, these were about men and women who were on the edge of danger as they fought and loved. In JHW it involves a fascinating town set beneath the shadow of the mighty Teton Mountains of western Wyoming. And forty miles north of Jackson Hole is our most well known park, Yellowstone. I spent many years…

I love research. It gets me out in the field and I meet some of the most remarkable people in those professions. Research, to me, is more fun than writing the book! I get to travel, learn something new and look at what I’m being educated about and how it might fit into a brewing plot in my head. Every writer, in my opinion, should write what she or he knows. No matter how much your experience, you’re going to run out of books based upon your life knowledge. And then, moving to topics that make you salivate, is the next step. For example, using DANGEROUS PREY, my HQN that is coming out in December, 2008, will give you some helpful information. It is a book where the hero is a raptor rehabilitator. I can tell you that I’m not an expert on raptors or how to help them when they get injured. Sometimes kismet occurs and a writer gets lucky. I’m a member of the Flagstaff, Arizona Arboretum . I was up there about two years ago to do some photographing of their flowers. Imagine my shock and surprise when I saw this gorgeous blond haired woman with a…