In this time of #stayhome, even introverts like me are starting to go a little stir crazy. I love writing, of course, and reading, but I’ve needed something else to fill my days. So let’s talk hobbies! In my recent release, HONOR AVENGED, my hero Marcus loves to surf and watch movies. (He has an encyclopedic knowledge of movie quotes that he uses regularly throughout the series.) Now, I can barely walk across my house without tripping over my own feet, and I live in the cool and rainy Pacific Northwest, so surfing is no for me. And while I love movies, I don’t have Marcus’s memory for snappy quotes. So what’s a bored writer to do during quarantine? At first, I tried to keep busy with stuff that needed done around the house. I painted my bathroom. Power washed the front sidewalk. Ignored the pile of laundry sitting on my office chair. I filled my Amazon cart with all the stuff I want, then emptied it again when I saw the total. I tried working out, got through a full week of BeachBody On Demand, then got lazy for a week, then tried again. I walked the dogs. Cleaned…

Ever wonder where a writer gets story ideas? Short answer: Everywhere. Long answer: More of everywhere. For this post, I thought it’d be fun to give you a peek into the randomness that goes on in my mind. Be prepared to be amazed.  Or confounded. Horrified. Pick your adjective, any adjective. So here we go. My thoughts as I ate dinner last night: Ugh, dieting is hard. And expensive. No wonder rich people are usually skinny. They can afford to buy all fancy organic stuff. And they probably pay nutritionists to slap their hands when they try to eat ice cream. That would kind of suck. I like ice cream. I wonder if a nutritionist would slap my hand for these sweet potato fries. Probably. But do I care? Nope. Not at all. Take that celebrity nutritionists. Ha. Ha. Ha. Hey, do those nutritionists also go grocery shopping for the celebrities? Or do celebrities go pick up their own milk and bread like everyone else? I didn’t see any celebs in the grocery store when I was in L.A. Buuuut it was like, ten o’clock at night and nobody but me goes grocery shopping that late. That’s why I go….

One question I’m constantly asked at conferences: was I in the military? Short answer is no, although I have come close to joining several times. But, see, there’s an old writer’s axiom—”write what you know”—and because of that, people seem to assume that having military experience is the only possible way I can write my books. And, yes, maybe that was true back before the technological advances of today when research was much harder to do. Now, however, I think it’s the biggest load of hooey told to budding writers. C’mon, I’m a small town girl with a perennially boring life not at all conducive to writing the kinds of books I want to write. Lemme give you an example. I’ve spent the last several months doing research for BROKEN HONOR, the third book in my HORNET series, which is about human trafficking in Eastern Europe. Some of the topics I’ve delved into this month alone include the Navy SEALs (again!), NCIS (not the TV show), arms and sex trafficking, the countries of Moldova, Ukraine, and an unrecognized breakaway republic called Transnistria that’s still stuck in the Soviet era. Did you know that Moldova is the poorest country in Europe?…