Well, hello there everyone! I’m excited to be here for the first time. I probably should have waited until my next book, TWO LETHAL LIES, is out. But that won’t be until October and frankly that was too long to wait. So here I am now, inspired by the fact that when it IS released it will be my eighth book.

Compared to some, eight may not seem a lot, but back when I was dreaming about becoming a published writer, even one book seemed impossible.

Persistence in the face of great odds is not an easy thing to maintain. At least, not for me. I had many years where I didn’t believe I could ever finish a book, let alone get it published.

One day I saw an ad in my local paper for a group called “Music City Romance Writers.”  Bucking up my courage, I ventured forth. In those days, the group met at a local library, which should have given me a clue, but didn’t. I was so nervous going to my first meeting, I didn’t think about much of anything. Authors were like Olympian gods to me: larger than life and entirely unapproachable.

Imagine my surprise when I walked into the room and saw perfectly ordinary-looking people sitting there. No one wore a size 2 mini-skirt. No one looked like they’d stepped out Vogue. In fact, most looked as though they’d dashed home from work, threw some kind of dinner on the family table, left the dishes in the sink, and ran to the meeting.

Just like me.

That was the beginning of my seeing that writing and publishing a book was possible. If these women, these down-to-earth, smart, welcoming women could do it, maybe I could, too.

I met many of my closest friends at that meeting. Together we’ve journeyed through the ups and downs of our writing careers. Many us eventually realized our dream: seeing our book displayed in Borders or Barnes and Noble.

I still get a thrill when I see my books in the store. My seventh romantic suspense, One Deadly Sin, came out in 2008. It has a prickly tough-gal biker chick heroine with a secret heart of gold, and a sexy small-town cop whose world falls apart when her scheme for revenge goes wildly and horribly wrong. It’s still getting raves (here’s a recent review)--  so I hope you’ll check it out.

As mentioned at the start, my next romantic suspense, Two Lethal Lies comes out in October. It’s a tense story about a man carrying a secret so lethal, its discovery could put everyone he loves in the crosshairs of a maniacal killer. Can’t wait until the fall? It’s available for pre-order at Amazon.

If you want to know more about me or my books, stop by my website . You’ll find excerpts there from all of them.

And I hope you won’t give up on your dreams. You never know what’s waiting out there to help make them come true.

Two readers who comment on the blog could win signed Advanced Reader Copies of my upcoming October release, TWO LETHAL LIES.

When I was a little girl living in Queens, NY, I desperately wanted a pet. We were too poor for one, so my parents gave me brothers.  Being a resilient child, I readjusted my perspective on life and decided it would be cool (before this word meant something other than a drop in temperature and a reason for my mother to put a sweater on me) to have a huge family. Again, poverty intervened and curtailed my plans to be the oldest sibling in a dynasty.  Two brothers was all I was getting. 

Once again, I readjusted, finding solace in an imagination I didn’t even realize was fertile.  To me, it was just the way things were. You didn’t like something, think your way into something else.  So, at the age of eleven, I began spinning the saga of Anna Marie Anders, Adventurous Girl.  The adventure here was that Anna Marie, firstborn of large a pioneering family, crossed the wide country in a covered wagon filled to capacity with, yes, you guessed it, siblings.  Siblings who grew and were eventually left to settle in different parts of the country as the journey continued all the way to California (prophetically where I eventually wound up living). I took Anna Marie through 23 siblings—pity the poor mother—and from the age of sixteen to her death decades later.  I tied up events neatly by having her husband swiftly pine away and die two weeks later, calling for his “Adventurous Girl.” (Looking back, I realize now that was an unwitting case of plagiarism inasmuch as I had earlier read the biography of Annie Oakley, otherwise known to a few as Phoebe Ann Mosey, whose husband, at least in the book, was said to have died two weeks after she passed away, calling for his little sharpshooter.

That was the beginning of my love affair with large families. Over the years, as a writer, I have come up with regular sized families here and there, such as  THE CUTLERS OF THE SHADY LADY RANCH (for Silhouette’s Yours Truly line), four brothers and a sister who took the reader through different stories about life in Montana. There were The Sinclairs, my first family in the Romantic Suspense line (then known as Intimate Moments). I’d do each story and then, like a mama bird shoving her babies out of the family nest, I’d watch them leave and fly away.  End of saga. 

Until I began writing about the Cavanaughs. 

The Cavanaughs began as a five book series, the five
adult children of a retired chief of police, Andrew Cavanaugh. The five were all on the police force and woven through all five books was Andrew’s dogged determination to find the missing wife that everyone else presumed was not just missing, but dead.  Andrew found his wife and all his children found their soul mates as well.  End of saga—except I just couldn’t let go. I really liked this family too much.  So, with an eye out to the future, I’d introduced Andrew’s younger brother, Brian, as well as mentioning his late brother, Mike.  Both of the men had families. The rest is mini-history.  And now, once again, we appear to be almost at the end. This month, CAVANAUGH JUDGMENT  is on the stands. After that, I have one more Cavanaugh sibling waiting for his story to unfold.  After that, the saga will finally be over.

Or will it? Anna Marie Anders would have been greatly disappointed if I didn’t have one trick left up my sleeve . . .

Hello, everyone! I can't believe how long it has been since we last met on this page. Life just keeps happening at warp speed.

Right now I'm all excited about the publication of DEATH ECHO on June 8th! 

The story of Emma and Mac, danger and death, life and love, begins in the Pacific Northwest AND unfolds against the gorgeous backdrop of the Inside Passage between Vancouver Island, B. C. and mainland Canada. The people in DEATH ECHO are like the water itself--quick and sometimes treacherous.

Mac and Emma don't know each other, have never met, and must trust each other with their lives. Deciding if such trust can be possible is a delicate thing. Rather like porcupines making love.

Here's a taste of what's in store for you with Emma and Mac:

Emma chewed over the fact that she’d made a mistake. Blackbird's captain enjoyed her crop top, but it didn’t affect his IQ. A hard man in every way that counted.

Time for Plan B: Honesty.

Yeah. Right.

“So much for light conversation,” she said clearly. “I’m Emma Cross and I’ve got a qualified buyer for Blackbird.”

“She’s not mine. I’m just delivering her.”

“So the owner is in Seattle.”

Mac didn’t answer.

“News flash,” Emma said crisply. “Being rude will just make me more pushy. I have a job to do and I’m going to do it, with or without your charming help.”

Mac almost smiled. “Charming, huh?”

“Yeah. Bet no one has ever accused you of that.”

This time Mac did smile. “No bet.”

Emma almost stepped back. The difference between this man with and without a smile was enough to make a woman think about doing whatever it took to keep the smile in place.

“Wow. You should try smiling more often, Mr. Whoever.”

He shook his head and decided he was going to find out just what kind of trouble Emma was. Give her enough rope and she might just tie herself up.

Now that was an intriguing thought.

“MacKenzie Durand,” he said. “If you want me to answer, call me Mac.”

And a day later, when they still haven't decided who is going to do what and with which and to whom:

Emma glanced at her watch. The time she could safely ignore Blackbird was ticking away. Since Mac kept pushing the ball into her court, she’d take it and ram it down his coy throat.

“My boss would like to hire you,” she said.

“The boss with more money than sense?”

“Have you ever heard of St. Kilda Consulting?” she asked calmly.

Mac frowned and searched through his memory. “Civilian. Private. International. Kidnap security.”

“Among other things.”

“What do they want me to do?”

Emma looked at Mac’s clear dark eyes and wondered why she kept thinking he was laughing at her.

“You’ll have to ask Joe Faroe,” she said.

“What do you do for him?”

“You can ask him that, too.”

“I’m asking you,” Mac said.

“Do you know if or when Blackbird is leaving port?”

“No.”

“Can you find out?” she pressed.

“Why?”

“Why not?”

Then she closed her eyes and took a better grip on her temper. She knew how to recruit someone.

This wasn’t the way.

“If you’re interested in making some honest money,” she said, “I’ll put you in touch with Joe Faroe. Whatever St. Kilda wants from you will be legal in whatever country you do it in.” So far, anyway. “They don’t play politics, they’ve been honest with me, and they pay on time.”

“Do they work for the good guys or just anyone who pays?”

“Find me some good guys and I’ll let you know,” she said. Then she met Mac’s dark eyes. “They’re more trustworthy than the government.”

“Faint praise.”

“In this world, that’s as good as it gets.”

His expression changed. “I left that world.”

She laughed, as much at herself as at him. “Sorry, babe. It’s the only world there is.”

By the time you read this, I'll be off cruising on a beautiful piece of ocean known as the Inside Passage. I hope to be in WiFi range on June 8th to respond to your posts. If not, know that I'll read and enjoy each one of them as soon as we're in port.

Until then, enjoy reading descriptions of where we are in DEATH ECHO!