From Lord Byron’s Don Juan (1823) “Tis strange-but true; for truth is always strange; Stranger than fiction.” In our quest to ‘get it right,’ authors are natural researchers and lifelong learners with a penchant for discovery, and as we satisfy our curiosity, the quest for truth builds and enhances our tales.  When I began writing […]

Have you ever wondered what, exactly, cracking a secret code involves? Wonder no more. We’re going to dive into the world of spycraft. Sorry, I won’t be giving away any secret code books or nifty decoder rings. But I am extending an invitation to dive into the intriguing world of spycraft, a subject that takes […]

The classic answer to the perennial “Where do you get your ideas?” question is that ideas are everywhere. They truly are. The fun part is when the idea pops up when you least expect it and you know it’s good, and because of some very special event, the result of that idea is going to […]

My number one reminder when writing a cozy? Keep it cozy. It must have a comforting feeling, much like a cup of tea, a warm blanket, a good book, or a relaxing dinner with friends. In fact, one of the main reasons readers say they return to a series is because the characters feel like […]

Autumn leaves show us their fall colors first and then they flutter to the ground. Oh, how I enjoyed jumping into leaves as an adult. That’s right. Down where I grew up, our trees are mostly deciduous. Fall was something I read about and saw pictures of but never experienced until I was grown up. […]

I’m often asked what compels me to write mysteries. I know I’ve always been interested in crime fiction because that’s the genre I’ve read from a very young age. Devouring the Nancy Drew mysteries quickly evolved into reading Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot, and Dorothy L. Sayer’s […]

You’d think a multi-author anthology titled Larceny & Last Chances: 22 Stories of Mystery & Suspense would only include stories of mystery and suspense. And it does. Kind of. By that I mean, just like Debra’s “It’s Not Always a Mystery” tagline for her website (where it kind of is, but isn’t), several of the […]

The Luther Hotel is located on the Texas Gulf Coast in the small town of Palacios. You can walk out the front door across a lush, green lagoon and, a few seconds later, have your feet in the water.  In 1999, my husband and I hugged the coastline from Rockport to Galveston. When we drove […]

Audiences have a seemingly endless appetite for ripped-from-the-headlines plots, as thirty years and multiple iterations of the Law & Order franchise will attest. A faux newspaper headline even features in the opening credits of Law & Order: SVU, in case viewers missed the point. These shows typically open with an incident reminiscent of a notorious […]

The third and final book of my Art Center Mysteries just came out, and it is designed to end a three-book set. I’d never designed a series with a specific length before, and these three books create an entire story that begins with Death in a Pale Hue, continues through Death in a Bygone Hue, […]