This and That Living on a cruise ship full time is often cheaper than living in NYC. Would you do it? Talk about living minimalist. Next Thursday would have been Frank Lloyd Wright’s 150th birthday. His buildings are getting lots of well-deserved recognition. Here is a Chicago-area tour. And MoMA in NYC is having a …Read More

Here it is the end of November already, and only today did I realize I didn’t do a wrap-up of events for the publication of The Abandoned Heart and the paperback of Charlotte’s Story. Can I blame wanting to get back to work on the next book? I did have a fabulous time bringing out The …Read More

  Trust me when I say that the next best thing to putting out a new book is to have your BFF putting out a new book. J.T. Ellison and I both had our thriller novel debuts in 2007, and I have had a front row seat to her meteoric rise ever since. Soon after we …Read More

There are so many reasons I love being a writer. One I could never have anticipated was how much I would treasure the time I get to spend with other people who love books: editors, agents, other writers, and readers. To me, writing was only about telling the story. The publishing part was secondary, and so …Read More

This summer, one of my dearest writer friends, J.T. Ellison, told me about a book she’d just read called Bohemian Gospel by fellow Nashvillian, Dana Chamblee Carpenter. “You must read it. It’s fabulous!” Now, J.T. is a voracious reader, and she doesn’t throw the word fabulous around lightly. She added, “By the way, it’s out from your publisher, Pegasus …Read More

Until last week I hadn’t been to Thrillerfest, the annual gathering of International Thriller Writers, in several years. Many of my friends refuse to miss it, and I understand why: it’s great fun. Plus, it’s always held in New York City at The Grand Hyatt at Grand Central Terminal, so there are endless things to do if …Read More

Oh, good! I’ve been tagged. Welcome to the latest stop on The Next Big Thing Blog Hop. This particular blog tour invites writers to answer ten questions about their current Work in Progress, or forthcoming project. Each tagged writer answers the questions, then tags five or more writers to answer the questions on their blog, …Read More

My son (not the one pictured above) started listening to Christmas carols back in September. That is not a typo. Yes. September. We told him that those songs were NOT ALLOWED until after Halloween, and then they could only be listened to in his room up until Thanksgiving. But thirteen year-old boys are notoriously unreliable …Read More

You know how I hate to send you away from here, but I’ve been busy at a couple of other places around town. The good news is that you can win goodies. Books, specifically. My books, very specifically! The Horror Writers Association is doing an entire month of Halloween blogs. Halloween Haunts kicked off on …Read More

What a blessing it is to have talented friends. When I called up J.T. Ellison to ask if she would write us a ghost story for Surreal South ’11, she said “yes!” immediately. And what a story it is. It’s not just a ghost story, it’s a deliciously gruesome demon story. Yet, there’s so much …Read More