It’s Thanksgiving and all through cyberspace you’re reading posts about Thanksgiving–the history, what people are thankful for, most better written than I can do while thinking of all the cooking I need to do today! I think Natalie on Tuesday wrote a great Thanksgiving blog, so scroll down and check it out. I was going to blog about writing, specifically book three in the prison break series which I started this week and why I think taking long breaks between books can be bad for the muse. But I’ll save that for next week. Today, because I know there are… Read More

My oldest daughter wants a MySpace page. The first time she wanted one, she was 12 and she did it on her own, then because she’s a basically good kid and a good Catholic, her guilt festered and less than 24 hours later, she told me. I praised her for her honesty, didn’t punish her (as I would have done if I discovered the page on my own), and promptly deleted her account. Now she’s almost 14 and she just learned I joined the ranks of MySpace. She doesn’t think it’s fair. She pointed out all the safety measures, that… Read More

I’m listening to Stephen King’s ON WRITING on my iPod in the car. It’s not something I can listen to while writing–too interesting and distracting. For writing, I mostly listen to rock-and-roll or Irish folk music. I have my iPod divided into music “tone” by that I mean “hard” (Led Zeppelin, Lynard Skynard, Dropkick Murphys) to “medium” (U2, The Police, The Who) to “soft” (Elvis Costello, the Beatles, Pink Floyd.) I have an “Irish” group, dominated by Celtic Storm, Enya and Tommy Makem, and a “Faves” group which is quite eclectic and mixes my groups around. But for driving, I… Read More

Last week I shared my UK cover for KILLING FEAR, which comes out in the UK and Australia in March of 2008. Today I also received foreign covers for others books–specifically, THE PREY and THE HUNT in German and Japanese. I thought it might be fun to look at the different focus of foreign covers. For example, Germany focuses heavily on the suspense and the Spanish translation focuses heavily on the romance. France is very “romantic suspense.” But for the “art” of cover art, I think Japan wins hands down. There’s something subtly sexy about the Japanese covers that I… Read More

Over at Novel Journey yesterday, they interviewed master storyteller Dean Koontz. I’ve been a fan of Koontz for years. Not only is he prolific, he has an amazing voice and the way he says things is almost as important as the story itself–except you don’t lose yourself in the words to the detriment of the story. He often inserts dogs in his books, and WATCHERS is probably one of my all-time favorite books. However, THE DARKEST EVENING OF THE YEAR may come up there because it’s another dog book, this one the protagonist rescues golden retrievers. Ironically, I hadn’t read… Read More

Added one p.m.: I meant to link up to the new excerpts on my webpage! Silly me. HERE is the first chapter to KILLING FEAR, and HERE is the first chapter to “Deliver Us From Evil.” ________________________________________________________ Today is a clean-up day for me, and I don’t mean the house (though it needs it!) There comes a time when I just have to put the book aside and spend the day catching up on all the little things I’ve put aside. First, I wanted to share my UK cover. I love it. It’s very subtle but suspenseful at the same… Read More

If you check out my blog over at the Fog City Divas yesterday, you’ll know that my trip to Tulsa had its ups . . . and downs. The conference was wonderful, but I spent about 15 hours traveling. Not fun. But, we always look on the bright side, don’t we? First, the book that used to be called SILENT SCREAM is done. I emailed the bulk of it to my editor last week, but needed to write the climax. It was just stumping me. Usually, I see the climax when I’m about halfway done with the book and I… Read More

Some of you may remember the movie with Richard Dawson and Arnold Schwarzenegger called THE RUNNING MAN. It was based on a Stephen King-writing as Richard Bachman novella of the same name. I never saw the movie–it looked cheesy. But the story I read multiple times. In a nutshell, it’s a game show with fatal results. Desperate people run for their lives–and money. If they win–that is, survive for 30 days–they get $1 billion. For every hour they stay alive, they earn $100. For every law enforcement officer and “hunter” they kill, they earn more money. That money is sent… Read More

I’m putting together my workshops to pitch to RWA National, and one of them is on pacing. Well, I think it’s going to be on pacing. Roxanne St. Claire and I were talking about doing a workshop together in San Francisco (the next RWA conference) and were flirting with the idea of romantic suspense. She writes very emotional, sexy, romancy-romantic suspense and I write darker, more suspency romantic suspense. We write completely different in tone and style, yet we both write romantic suspense. So we were playing with that, doing a workshop and the breadth and depth of the RS… Read More

I am so thrilled to post two covers for KILLING FEAR. These are not officially released, but they’re not going to change except for the tag line, which will become “Fight for your next breath” . . . if we have a tag line at all. But the final covers won’t be printed until December anyway. Ballantine decided to produce two covers, a blue one and a red one. If all goes according to plan, both will be available in stores, side-by-side. I have a favorite, but I like them both. I’d be interested in your opinions as well–blue or… Read More