He won't hurt me. I have a secret weapon.

For each book, there's a back story of where the idea came from. Sometimes it's derived from a current event or topic of discussion. Often it begins with a character. And often, I have NO idea what sparked the idea. It's just there.

Life was precious. Life was fragile. Here one moment, gone the next. Every second should be milked for all it's worth because you never know when the bottom was going to drop out.

Even knowing the ending was sad, I wouldn't have deprived myself the beauty of the story.

She shook her head slowly. “I don’t believe you. You can’t be a cop.” “Not a cop.” “Federal agent?” “FBI.” “Even more unlikely.” “J. Edgar rolls over in his grave every day, but that’s the way it is.

People don't care how smart woman is as long as she's charming and gay and pretty.

I try to weave a secret into each plot. It's the thread that holds the rest of the story fabric together. In fact, it's the reason for the story. I hint at the secret early on. Immediately I want the reader to get the feeling that something here isn't quite right. It helps maintain the suspense if a puzzling element is introduced in the first few pages of the book, but the answer isn't revealed until the final ones. Hopefully, readers want to know what the heck is really going on, and it's the desire to find out that keeps them turning pages.