I've always wanted to be interesting, but apparently I lack the drive or the internal resources for it. I'm ruthlessly average, a bit on the nerdy side, and my life is so ordinary it even puts me to sleep.
So how on earth did I come to write romantic thrillers for a living?
I figure, the next best thing to doing something exciting is writing about it. I'm too afraid of heights to stand on a chair, but that doesn't keep my heroines from dangling thirty feet from a truss bridge in a hallucinatory state. Fire scares the heck out of me, but I've been known to stick a hero in a burning house trying to open a nailed-shut trap door to save the heroine.
When I was a kid, my play time was all about pretending to be something I wasn't. I guess writing books is the grown-up equivalent to playing pretend for me.
I've always thought of writing as a fun sort of therapy, in which I deal with my neuroses by living them out on page and winning. I get thrills through my characters, who get to do the interesting, exciting, and important things that I'll probably never get the chance to do. Like take on a Mexican drug lord and fall in love with a smokin' hot cowboy.
My December story, "Wyatt" is part of a Harlequin Intrigue Christmas anthology called THREE COWBOYS. My co-conspirators, Julie Miller and Dana Marton, wrote the first two stories, and mine wraps up the overarching mystery. It's a tale about three brothers, estranged by time and circumstance, who join forces when the little sister they never knew existed is kidnapped by a ruthless drug cartel just a few days before Christmas. There's plenty of danger and thrills, but there's also a heart-warming story about a family finding its way back together at a time of year when family and forgiveness take center stage.
I also have three indie e-books available now, books I chose to publish myself in order to help them find an audience. Talk about living vicariously—one of them actually features a former President's daughter seeking help and protection from the former Secret Service agent who once protected her. Check them out on my website:
So here's my question for you. Do you read books to meet interesting people?
