I'm excited to announce that Echoes of Dust, the fourth and final novel in my Dreams and Secrets series, is now available! Banished to the Colorado frontier under the pretense of missionary work by the Catholic Church, Graham Cavendish expects little more than a quiet exile—and perhaps an untimely death. Instead, he finds himself caught between religious prejudice, deadly violence, and a love that forces him to question the life that was chosen for him and whether he has the courage to pursue...
19 days ago • 3 min read
Like many Americans, I found myself thinking about the founding of our country this past weekend. I remembered the well-known story of Benjamin Franklin leaving the Constitutional Convention. When asked what kind of government they created, he reportedly replied, "A republic, if you can keep it." As I thought it, I realized my mind had drifted somewhere it often does, wishing I'd been born in another time. I've heard many people say they feel they were born in the wrong time. Wishing they...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
Most readers see a book when it reaches the finish line. What they rarely see is how many times a story changes before it gets there. I have two books I am about to publish, and they are both those kinds of books: Take Dirtied Water, The Jeopardy Directive File 3, for example. The version you’ll be reading soon is actually the third incarnation of this story. The first version was called Pretense of Control. At the time, I was experimenting with a science fiction romance that leaned heavily...
about 2 months ago • 9 min read
The human mind is a strange and remarkable thing. Recently, I watched an old film again: Flower Drum Song. I remembered watching it as a young girl, and there was something about it I never truly forgot. It’s a musical, and there was one scene involving men in masks and a woman searching desperately for the man she loved. When I was young, that scene frightened me. I remember the feeling of it more than the details. Finally, she found him. He had no mask on. She was safe, and I remember...
2 months ago • 2 min read
Lately I’ve been spending a great deal of time wandering the cliffs and fog-covered shores of Dunbrae. Not literally, of course. Though after enough hours writing and thinking about a place, it begins to feel strangely real in the mind. Welcome to Dunbrae is my first full attempt at a murder mystery. Naturally, I’ve already turned it into a series called Sea Smoke, set in a small coastal Nova Scotian village around 1900. The story follows Richard Gauthier, a French-Canadian detective from...
3 months ago • 4 min read
Lately I’ve noticed how loud everything feels. Not physically loud, necessarily. But mentally loud. Notifications. Headlines. Algorithms. Marketing advice. Endless opinions. Constant urgency. Constant movement. It often feels as though the modern world is forever demanding our attention like a child tugging at a sleeve. Look at this. Respond to this. Worry about this. Promote this. Improve this. Hurry. Faster. More. As writers now, we are expected to be far more than storytellers. We are...
3 months ago • 1 min read
I have two whiteboards to keep track of my projects—one for what’s currently being written and published, and another for what still needs developing. This month, I had to switch them. The smaller board is now for what’s being written and published… and the larger one is for what still needs developing. You’ll be happy to hear—there are a lot of great books in the forecast in all the genres I write. *** I’ve been having some difficulty with the antagonist in The Banker Prince, so I’ve set him...
4 months ago • 6 min read
I was thinking this week about what it’s like after publishing a book. I just finished God of Revenge, Book 2 of the Jeopardy Directive, and sent it out into the world. By that point, I had gone over it far too many times—caught, as I sometimes am, in the quiet trap of it has to be perfect. (I even edit after the editor) And yet, even after all that, there is something I can only describe as a kind of post-publishing fog. It’s a mix of editing exhaustion and that lingering question that never...
4 months ago • 2 min read
Sometimes when I try to think about what I’ve been doing, I can’t think of a thing. I know I’ve been busy—very busy—but when I sit down to write it out, everything seems to scatter. I suppose the main things are these. I’m still working on The Banker Prince, Book 5 of the Barriers of Stone series. It’s coming along, slowly but steadily. I thought instead of trying to explain it, I’d simply give you a small moment from it—an excerpt from Chapter 7. Once the train had settled into its rhythm,...
5 months ago • 4 min read