Good Afternoon and welcome to Coffee Time Romance. Thank you for taking the time to be interviewed as I’m sure your fans will enjoy learning a little bit more about you. Thank you for taking the time out of your busy schedule to answer some questions.

Thanks so much for having me! I’ll try to behave!

We would love to know a little bit about the woman behind the stories, can you give us a glimpse into your daily life?

I like to savor a cup of morning coffee, dwell on what I’m going to write for the day and the churn out a decent word count, flawlessly edited, of course.

Then I wake up, slug back my java, sprint around administering nebulizer treatments, getting kids to school, walking the beagle, arguing with insurance companies, cable companies, phone companies, washing a mountain of laundry, cooking dinner, all while trying to recall what I’d started working on the week before.

If you are married we would love to know all about your first meeting with your spouse and was the magic there immediately?

Nope, not at all. I thought he was a geek, actually. But he’s my geek.

What is your ideal romantic night out?

Nothing says lovin’ like Italian Cuisine, a bottle of Rosa Regale and a hot tub.

What do you do when the characters ‘tell’ you to change the story line?

If I’m smart, I go with it. When I fight them, they clam up on me. Drue from Redeeming Characters would sulk for months at a time because he didn’t want to be a selfish jerk anymore, he wanted to get the girl. I kept telling him, “No, we’ve got twenty thousand words to go, I can’t resolve the conflict yet.” And he would grumble at me and I would grumble at the monitor and nothing got done. Eventually we compromised which is why there is a really long love scene at the end of the book! 

What inspired you to create your very first book?

Unrequited love. I thought I could write a book on the subject, and I did. It’s horrific, angsty as all get-out. Even then I wrote the hero with the “I’m not worthy” complex. Those are my absolute favorite kind of men, the ones who want their women, yet felt they don’t deserve them. 

What’s the strangest inspiration you ever got for a story idea?

An incredibly vivid dream, it’s actually a story idea in Redeeming Characters and I plan to work on it during Nation Novel Writing month (Nov)

Who was the first person to tell you to reach for your dreams?

Probably my husband. He supports me so I could first stay home with my children and now write as my full time job. After this interview he’ll probably go pick up an application at the supermarket for my ungrateful self though. 

Do you have any advice for aspiring authors?

Know what you want and go after it. The face of the publishing industry is changing, technology making more things possible at the same time shutting doors to the traditional system. You have to know what it is you as the writer want from your work.  

What is the secret to finding a balance between your family and your writing?

I don’t know, but when I figure it out I’ll get back to you!

What do you like to read? What books/authors were your faves as a child and what characters stand out in your memory from them today?

This is horrible to even think but I didn’t like books as a child. My mother kept foisting religious oriented kid books down my throat and I absolutely hated it. My boys get to pick out their own books, regardless. 

What is your writing routine?

I’m a panster who keeps fighting her nature. If I sit down to write an outline, I feel compelled to stick to it. Then I hit roadblocks where characters go mute on me. The downside to being a panster, you delete a ton of stuff, maybe even good stuff before you get it right. 

Can you introduce us to your hero and heroine in “Redeeming Characters”? What makes them tick?

Drue is an incredibly angry guy, with good reason. He’s had a horrific childhood and his people skills are seriously lacking. During the milder seasons he lives out of a rucksack in the wilds of Colorado and only works when the cold weather drives him back to his brother’s couch. The straw that breaks the camel’s back though comes when he discovers that Dakota sells his story idea out from under him.
Drue in Redeeming Characters is the master of the snide one-liner. Dakota can keep up but she’s a bit more civilized and tactful. Drue is the kind of guy who doesn’t have a filter between mouth and brain. He thinks it, then he says it. 

Dakota is all about family. She’s been burned before, her husband was an unfaithful jerk and now she’s stuck raising their two children plus his mistress’s adopted daughter all on her own. To make matters even more challenging, the baby has a heart defect and Drue is demanding his comeuppance.

What in your opinion makes good chemistry between your leading characters?

The verbal bantering. It’s foreplay for the brain. There is a close connection between laughter and arousal.

When writing your description of your hero/ine what feature do you mainly start with? Eyes, age, hair color, etc? 

Always the eyes. I believe they are the most telling feature on anyone and each set is truly unique.

Your stories seem to be character driven. Can you explain why you prefer this over plot?

Plot is new to a reader only once but with truly complex characters, a reader can find something new to love and laugh with every time. Don’t get me wrong, plot is essential to a story but characters are what makes me come back for more.  

What is an interesting fact that has stuck in your mind?

There are freshwater jellyfish in Lake James. I’d never heard of such a thing and had to include it in Redeeming Characters.

If you could make your story three dimensional, which sense would you bring into play? Sight, Sound, Touch, Smell, or Taste?

Smell. It’s linked the most closely with memory and that’s what experiencing lie is all about, making memories. I write pretty places because most of my early memories involve the smells of sickness and hospitals. 

If you weren’t an author, what do you think you would be doing instead?

Do you want fries with that? LOL!

Can you please tell us about any special upcoming works?

I just finished a short for an anthology I’m creating with a few of my talented writer pals. This is a new step for me, a whole new explicit world.

Where can fans get more information? Do you have a website? Any social networks that you belong to?

Best pace to find me is my website or Laundry Hag (Same site) Everything here links up with my blog, the Laundry List, as well as my twitter and facebook accounts. 
 
Thank you again for answering my deluge of questions. I hope you had fun. Is there anything you’d like to add?

Thanks so much for having me, this was a blast! Just FYI, I’ve scheduled the Redeeming Characters blog tour for the first full week in December. Starting December 5 on the Laundry List, I will be blog hopping and giving away prizes all over the place.