I have a confession to make. I’m in love with someone other than my husband, and it’s a woman. Her name is Reine, and we’ve been spending a lot of time together. I’m pretty into her gargoyle boyfriend, too. When I started writing novels, I switched to a different main point of view character or pair of characters in each book in my series. With the Fae Files, I decided to follow one fascinating character and her love interest through the entire series. I originally had it planned to be three books, a trilogy, but as it turned out, Reine the exiled Fae princess was just too fascinating, so I’m currently working on book four. What makes Reine interesting? All of my books have themes of identity and self-acceptance, and Reine definitely struggles with those. At the start of the series, Reine is in exile in the Earth realm. She considers herself to be 100% Fae, but she doesn’t realize how much her time among humans has influenced her. I’ve enjoyed exploring this conflict, not only as it applies to her, but to her relationships as well. The slow burn romance also ended up being more complicated than I anticipated….

Starting in about April or May, one of the big questions in writers groups was, “How do we write about the pandemic?” or, “Should we write about the pandemic?” This was mostly posed in the romance writers’ groups, where people were wondering how sexy it would be to portray mask play, and is it too soon? You know somebody has decided it’s not, and hilarious complications will ensue due to ear strap tighteners. From the start of all this, I like many other authors felt the compulsion to address my own feelings about quarantine, social distancing, and the limitations we embrace to protect ourselves and others. For me, these emotions are magnified because as a mental health professional, I’m attempting to help others through them and the grief of losing jobs, regularity, and, most tragically, family members while dealing with my own struggles. I can’t imagine how tough it must be for our frontline medical workers, some of whom I’m lucky to count as friends. In fact, the first Fae Files book is dedicated to them. When I wrote that inscription back in March, I, like many of us, thought that this pandemic situation would be over by now. Surely…