Many of my writer friends long for the day they can quit their day jobs to write full time. When people ask if that’s my plan, too, they’re often surprised when I say, “Oh, no. I love my ‘other’ job!” I’m a USCG-licensed boat captain and have been working for our local school system for almost 11 years. Several days a week, I take 5th graders out on Central Florida’s Silver River in a 33-foot pontoon boat and get to show many of them their very first alligator. It is such a fun job! (Well, except when it’s 38 degrees out and misty and windy. Then, not so much.) Is it a challenge to juggle two very different careers? No question. But over the years, I’ve realized that my captaining brings a balance to my life that would be missing if I was home all the time. Here’s what I mean: It Forces me Out of my Writing Cave Writers often tend toward introversion. Somehow, I’m a hybrid–an extroverted introvert, meaning, I need my alone time, but I also crave time with people. If I’m alone in my house for too long…well, let’s just say the places my unsupervised brain…

California Code of Cupid Regulations (CCR) § 100.01. (a) For purposes of this Act, the term “love” shall mean the sufferance by one person of affection for and attachment to another person or persons for any period, however brief. For more than twenty years, Eliza had been working on a list of things she hated more than Valentine’s Day. And finally, after decades of hard work and dedication, she’d narrowed it to the following: ? ?? ??? Okay, so it was still a work in progress. But to be fair, she had yet to encounter anything she despised as much as the onslaught of pink and red hearts that appeared each February. Not to mention, if your birthday happened to fall on Valentine’s Day, avoiding the slew of cutesy cards and pictures of diapered, armed babies was nearly impossible. And if you were a Descendant of Eros with the misfortune of being born on February fourteenth? Forget it. Everyone everywhere commented on how cute and coincidental it was that a “Cupid” had been born on love’s holiest of holidays. Eliza ducked her head as she made her way through Red Clover. Leaving her apartment always made her anxiety flare, but…

I’ll just admit it. I have a thing for a man in uniform. Having spent several years in the U.S. Marine Corps, I have a slight bias for Marines in general. And I love putting that service spin on my characters. In the Movin’ On series, the heroes (and a heroine!) are veterans. And not just Marines, which made the story even more fun. There’s something magical that happens when you group together people from different armed services—they talk a lot of smack. At the gym, Reid and his brother, Cash, are getting help from a fellow Marine and trainer (Gavin): “Reid, that’s pathetic,” Gavin said. “Lift like you got a pair, man. Or do you want people to think you were in the Air Force?” Next to them, an older man frowned. “Hey.” “Sorry. I meant the Army.” “What’s the difference?” Cash muttered, and Gavin did his best to calm a different older man down. When writing The Whole Package, I had the Marine Corps stuff pretty much nailed down. The other services I had to research, and I learned some interesting facts. Military Police (MPs) are called different things in the different services. The Marines and Army have…

I love the beginning of the year. I’m not one to set resolutions necessarily because I set goals monthly and quarterly, but I do love the idea of a fresh start. I am someone who loves a paper planner, and I use more than one, so there’s something renewing about closing my planners and opening up brand new ones with blank pages. All the possibilities of things to come is exciting. And one thing I love to prepare for is a great year of reading. I’m a writer and have to be pretty intentional about my reading because it’s a main source of writing inspiration and is a way for me to practice self-care. When I stop reading, things go south quickly. However, it’s easy to let reading slide when I’m under writing deadlines and there’s so much work to do running a business. So each year, I’m very deliberate about having a robust reading life. Here are five things I do to make sure that my reading year is going to be fantastic… 1. Choose or create a reading challenge. I love tracking things and checking off boxes. So what better way to do that than with a reading…

Cowboy Wolf Trouble is the first installment of my new paranormal romance series, The Seven Range Shifters. The second installment in the series, Cowboy in Wolf’s Clothing, will be released on June 25, 2019. In this series, seven shifter clans call the Montana mountains home. Ruled by The Grey Wolf pack, they must come together to fight a new evil in their midst. I think the best way to describe the series concept to readers is to say the characters are cowboys by day, wolf shifters by night. As an author, it’s been both fun and challenging to combine the paranormal and western romance subgenres. Both cowboys and werewolves are beloved romance tropes, so balancing the two well can be tricky, but I’ve certainly enjoyed the challenge. One way I’ve always kept my inspiration for my characters on track is to visualize what they would look like in real life. It helps to make them even more real in my mind. Below you’ll find my dream cast for Cowboy Wolf Trouble. I’ve always hoped that one of my books optioned for film someday and if I could pick the cast for Cowboy Wolf Trouble, these actors and actresses would be…

Although I had certainly heard of Fred Harvey and his famous Harvey Girls, it had never occurred to me how much these young women changed the frontier forever. With their pristine uniforms and fresh faces, along with the strict code of conduct Mr. Harvey demanded of them, they were a new version of femininity to cowboys and other males on the frontier. They are widely credited with introducing a new level of civility to what had once been the wild West. *** TRAILBLAZER by Anna Schmidt Cowboys & Harvey Girls #1 MEET THE HARVEY GIRLS: These real-life pioneering women were symbols of elegance in the wild frontier: taming rough manners, falling in love, and changing the face of the West forever. Grace Rogers is ready for the adventure of a lifetime. With her family’s farm falling on hard times, she accepts a position with the prestigious Fred Harvey Company and heads for Juniper, New Mexico. There she meets a handsome cowboy who quickly turns her head. Too bad the Harvey Girls are forbidden to marry… Nick Hopkins has a plan: buy a little land, marry, and raise a family in that order. But after meeting Grace, he can’t keep away….

What is your favorite characteristic in Tess? What about Shade? It’s always so hard to pick just one of anything, but I’ll do my best! Hopefully, having trouble deciding is evidence of well-rounded characters with several admirable traits 😉 Tess Bailey is our captain, rebel heroine…and a thief. She steals from those who have too much in order to provide for those who don’t have enough, but her primary goal is to accumulate vaccinations for populations, especially children, that don’t have access to the galaxy’s undersupplied “cure-all” inoculations, which are hoarded by the oppressive ruling regime and distributed only to soldiers and the wealthy elite. Tess is loyal, capable, compassionate, and determined, but I think the trait I like most about her is her selflessness. Here’s a little snippet from Nightchaser to illustrate that. “There are more people searching for our Tess than for a ghost,” Shiori said, looking across the table at Fiona but not quite hitting her mark. Her milky eyes landed somewhere between Fiona and me. “Exactly,” Jaxon agreed, turning a pointed look my way. His expression regained only enough life to look satisfied that Shiori had helped prove his point. “People everywhere—looking for Tess.” Well, I…

Hey everyone! So one of the questions I get asked a lot, is what’s my writing space like. And the simplest answer is EVER-CHANGING! I’m most definitely a creature of habit… until I’m not lol. For instance, I might move from my office desk to my office couch to the comfy chair in the living room to my bedroom, getting huffy at every stop until I find that spot that clicks and I finally drop into THE ZONE. I know. This sounds ridiculous, but it’s just how it goes. And once I figure out the spot that works…  I’ll ride it into the ground lol. I’ll go back to writing in my bed or at my desk while sitting on a yoga ball every day for as long as it triggers that free flow of flirty, sexy storytelling that is so much fun! This week, I’m all about the desk and the rolling, spinny chair lol. One thing that doesn’t change? All the crap I tote along with me lol. Soundproof headphones (regardless of whether the house is silent or not) Two, yes two mugs of gorgeous assorted pens and highlighters My project specific spiral notebook (it needs to be…

I had such a blast writing this book! I adore Mason and Tess and loved giving them amusing, settings, and witty banter, and writing scenes that were sexy and fun. There are so many great scenes in this book from the piggyback ride in the rain, to the serial-killer clown scare, to a sugar cube-encrusted kiss. It was hard to pick a favorite, but I really liked the scene with Mason taking another run at their first kiss. It shows them having fun together and you can see my klutzy, curvy heroine, Tess coming out of her shell a little and getting her flirt on. How many times have we wished we’d done something differently or that we could go back and get a do-over for an important moment? That’s the scene I gave these two as Mason tells Tess he wants another crack at their first kiss and it’s just adorable. Comin’ in hot… Mason James is the responsible brother, the one who stayed behind to run the ranch when his older brother left to play professional hockey. He’s always felt in his brother’s shadow and women have used him in the past to get to his famous brother….

Alone in her bedchamber later in the day, Gwendeline thought over what the countess had told her. Why had such a sought-after gentleman, the type her father had called a real out-and-outer, taken an interest in her? Why had he been the one to come and fetch her, or the infant he said he’d expected? If he was a leader of the ton, and Gwendeline saw no reason to doubt his mother’s description of his position, what was his interest in her? Friendship with her parents seemed the only possible explanation, but he never spoke to her of them or appeared eager to answer when she tried to do so. Quite the opposite, in fact. This thought reminded Gwendeline of a series of odd remarks she’d caught since coming to town. Both Lady Merryn and her son had made references she didn’t understand to her “situation.” Gwendeline hadn’t been aware that she possessed a situation in the sense that they used the word; seemingly, it was an awkward one. And she was becoming more and more interested in finding out exactly what it involved. She didn’t relish the thought that the people surrounding her knew more of her circumstances than…