Historical romance author Lavinia Kent and I write an article every Friday for the USA Today HEA Blog about ARROW, one of our all-time favorite television shows. We re-cap that week’s episode but focus on the story and how well it’s told. ARROW is one of the best television shows out there for writers to watch, plus it’s just an all-around fun show! Both Lavinia and I enjoyed Season 3, which ended last May, but not as much as the first two seasons. The finale in particularly left us feeling … disappointed. But GREAT news! Season 4 is off to… Read More

In 2002, I had just started writing. I wrote every night from 9-midnight — after the kids went to bed. Yes, I had to give up television, but in hindsight it was worth it. (Some nights, when I was tired and crabby and the muse was being a bitch, I considered vegging out in front of the television … but usually I didn’t cave in to the doubt demons.) My first book was a mess, an epic romantic suspense that had every possible romantic suspense trope on the planet, from a serial rapist to a virgin heroine to a stalker… Read More

Those of you who know me know I’m a TV addict. I always have been. Yet, when I was working full time in the State Capitol and started seriously writing, I gave up television for THREE YEARS. It was difficult, but I love writing and books more than television, so it was worth it. Once writing became my full-time job, I added television back into my schedule. With kids, it’s even more fun … though because of my deadlines I often have numerous shows recorded and have to play catch up. Here are the premieres I’ve put on my calendar… Read More

I leave Thursday morning for the Writer’s Police Academy. I’m more than a little excited … I’ve been wanting to attend for the last few years, really since it began, but couldn’t make it fit into my schedule. This time they asked me to speak and I blocked off the week so I wouldn’t schedule anything. I’ll be missing my Anniversary, but it won’t be the first time … I’ll make it up to Dan when I get home. Two years ago I missed it because I was speaking to the New Zealand Romance Writers … and yeah, no way… Read More

Be the best you can be … the slogan sounds trite because we repeat it often enough, but when you really think about it, it’s deeper than most people think. Too often, we try to be the best. The best writer, the best mother, the best spouse, the best teacher, the best gamer. The pressure we put on ourselves to compete for the “best” slot is unbelievable. Or maybe that’s just me. I doubt it. I think we all put that pressure on ourselves at different time in our lives, or for different things in our life. Sometimes, I need… Read More

Today I’m blogging at Writerspace. I’m a bit contemplative this week. My 19 year old daughter is in Scotland for a month. She’s at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival through a program for Theater or English majors to see a series of plays (I think 18 plays in 2 weeks!) and then she’ll be spending a week in London on her own. Sort of on her own—she’s visiting her best friend, who is studying abroad for a semester. Kelly wanted to do this summer program to see if she, too, wanted to study abroad for an entire semester. But this is… Read More

Today is the day … Lucy Kincaid is back in BEST LAID PLANS, the 9th (can you believe it NINTH????) book in her series! Visit my webpage here for all the buy links for all your favorite vendors, from Amazon to BN to iBooks to indie stores! I’m very excited about this book … the last Lucy book was DEAD HEAT 14 months ago. So what’s been going on with Lucy?

Historical romance author Lavinia Kent and I wrote a series of weekly articles on the television series ARROW for USA Today’s “Happily Ever After” blog. (You can read them through the USA Today archive.) We started in the middle of season three, and plan to continue for season four. (As a side note, I’ll most likely also be writing about iZombie, my new favorite show!) The weak season 3 finale notwithstanding, I really love ARROW and it’s one of my favorite shows. This was really driven home to me this summer as I watched seasons 1 and 2 again with… Read More

I wanted to make sure you all knew about ways to get my books free books 🙂 Every month I run a contest through my website. Sign up for my newsletter using this form and you’ll be entered! This month I’m giving away a complete collection (to date!) of the Lucy Kincaid series — eight books! This is to celebrate the release of BEST LAID PLANS, the ninth Lucy Kincaid book. Even if you are already a newsletter subscriber, you can enter the contest every month. Enter here! And now through August 3rd, my publisher is giving away NOTORIOUS, the… Read More

Yes, it’s been six months since I’ve blogged. There have been a lot of reasons … and I’ve thought about shutting down the blog completely. But then I realized, I have a whole bunch of material I can post from the workshops that I’ve taught, articles I’ve written, and some original observations about books, writing, television, etc. And, I like this blog 🙂 So I’m back to trying to blog weekly … and see where we go from there. So why have I been busy? Writing and kids. Yes, nothing has changed. However, I had several back-to-back deadlines and went… Read More