Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
I’ve been madly in love with comic books and with romance novels since I was barely a teenager, and that led to writing comic book stories for DC Comics and then coloring many stories for Marvel Comics as well as attending to many editorial and business tasks in my staff stints at both companies. Yes, I really did work with Stan Lee.
But that’s just the beginning. I moved into the romance publishing world as a freelancer for Harlequin, Bantam, and Berkeley, to name a few publishers, and MyRomanceStory.com, where I also wrote romance graphic novellas. Was that enough romance for me? Nope.
I started writing novels in earnest thanks to the wonderful online writing site, NaNoWriMo, which gives novelists companionship and encouragement as we challenge ourselves to write fifty thousand words in the month of November every year. I have written a dozen novels so far.
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
Crisis at Comicon is the sequel to Temporary Superheroine. Chloe learns a lot about her amazing powers and her mysterious father in the first book. In the sequel she’s coping with bumps in her career and her love life while trying to stop the mayhem at the Chicago comicon. With the mysterious Mistress Miraculous causing one problem after another in the crowded convention center, Chloe must be a superheroine again and use the superpowers of the Dimensional Diamond–powers that only she can access, but that she knows little about. Chloe is a superheroine who fights outsize villains while at the same time attempting to find herself as an adult. Each story ends with a satisfactory conclusion but Chloe herself still has more growing and learning to do. I think back to how confused I was in my early twenties, like Chloe, for the inspiration of where to take her next. And of course as a comics fan, I want her adventures to be what comics fans are interested in. What’s more fannish than a supervillain who menaces a comicon?
What authors, or books have influenced you?
Early authors who influenced me: Mary Stewart, Mignon G. Eberhart, Virginia Coffman, Emilie Loring. More recently: Diana Palmer, Elizabeth Lowell, Jackie Merritt, Jennifer Crusie. Love their stories.
What are you working on now?
I’m working on the sequel to Captive of the Cattle Baron. Baron’s younger brother, JD, has come home from Iraq a wounded warrior with a bleak attitude. The Selkirk family ranch needs him desperately but he won’t get on with his life. Paula, the independently wealthy young woman who appeared in the first book, is unabashedly in love with JD and commits a daring act of abduction to keep the vast Wyoming ranch from being sold.
Do you have any advice for new authors?
I always advise new authors to respect themselves. That means not selling off rights to their precious creative work in bad deals, and also making the effort to travel the road to writing improvement. Don’t settle.
What’s next for you as a writer?
It’s hard to predict what I’ll want to write years from now. Right now, I want to finish the arcs of the series I’ve started, perfect and publish the stories I’ve already written, and then go on to complete some cycles of stories I’ve got in mind but haven’t written yet.
If you were going to be stranded on a desert island and allowed to take 3 or 4 books with you what books would you bring?
My desert island books would be a mixture of Superman and Lois Lane comics and romance novels by Diana Palmer, with some mysteries by Mignon G. Eberhart or Charlotte MacLeod thrown in. But it would be far more practical to have a copy of Mysterious Island by Jules Verne, which is a how-to that would allow me to build modern conveniences and live comfortably on that island–or escape!
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