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Have you ever had one of those funky smells in your car, like someone left a chicken strip caked in dried Chik-Fila sauce under one of the seats? Like your teenage son’s six-weeks-worn sweaty gym socks jumped out of their bag and onto your floorboard? Like your husband waited until everyone was out of the car to pass gas, and then slammed the door on it, only you had to run back out to grab the lipstick you left in the console, and nearly fainted when you stuck your head in?

Usually that’s all...

Email from readers is the best. Here’s one I loved:

Yes, I have most of your books. What fun… now about that casserole…happen to have that recipe? Could you please share?

The thing is, I get that one a lot. I mention that stupid casserole in Going for Kona and in Hot Flashes and Half Ironmans. So here’s my answer to her:

Dear awesome reader:

Ah, the decadent tater tot casserole. Every time I give out this recipe I “make it up.” Someday I’ll be smart and put it in a cute file and send it. Or on my...

Once I upon a time I wrapped up 30-days-of-praying-for-Eric’s-happiness and rolled into another 30 days. The side effect of praying for his happiness is that he is happier. More confident. And feels loved extravagantly. That has resulted in a lot of closeness between us.

Uh oh. You know what that means.

So anyway, we were in Jacksonville for our very hard two weeks of helping his mother transition to a memory care facility and staying in her empty house. There are two bedrooms in that house in...

Warning! This gets all twilight zone on ya, so don’t think I’ve lost my marbles. Keep an open mind, and see if any of these feelings relate to experiences you’ve had in your life.

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Eric holds special memories of Carlsbad Caverns from his college days at the University of New Mexico. Way back then (30+ years ago), he spent two days there after an emotionally difficult time, soul-searching, often off-path — at least when no park rangers were around to see him — in the pitch darkness. He...

I don’t believe in zombies.

Sparkly vampires.

The Loch Ness Monster.

Big Foot.

I do believe in something though. I know there’s more out there than my eyes can see or my outer ear can hear. I feel it sometimes. I sense it. Do you?

It.

That which inhabits an invisible dimension.

The unknown.

The unseen.

Some people never sense it. Others of us have what I think of as an extrareceptive ear. A greater capacity to relate to the energy around us. The energies from living people, from formerly living...

For our 12th wedding anniversary—which we are spending “in” at our beloved Snowheresville in Wyoming—I wanted to take stock of how we are doing on our most important resolutions, and compare that with how I do day-to-day on other things I’d like to change.

Does Eric love and cherish me and do love and commitment differently than in his past life? I can’t speak for his ex-wife, but I can tell you I never dreamed this kind of relationship was possible. And this kind of relationship requires...

Not so long ago I left St. Croix, and my dream house, Annaly (fictionalized as Annalise in the Katie and later novels), for Houston. Well, in 2007 anyway. I wrote this piece in 2009, before we moved again, to Nowheresville, TX and Snowheresville, WY. Enjoy.

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What is it about Houston that makes it seem like the end of the line? It’s like when you say, “I’m moving from St. Croix to Houston,” you’re announcing a terminal illness. Houston, bless its heart, is not beautiful. If the heat and...

I was so excited, y’all! I got an email from Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing announcing that my novels were included in their Celebration of Great Writing #PoweredbyIndie.

Woot!!

Since I do this crazy story behind the story series, I decided to do one on the story behind my decision to become an independent author.

(The following is an adapted excerpt reprinted with permission from SkipJack Publishing from my nonfiction hilarious how-to, What Kind of Loser Indie Publishes, and How Can I Be One,...

If you follow me regularly, you are privy to my time in the Caribbean..but what you didn’t know is this: Once upon a time, I lived in the paradise of the U.S. Virgin Islands. St. Croix. A big yellow house in the rainforest. I had a best friend. Natalie. An actress/singer—with a Canadian father and Bahamian mother—who had recently returned from years performing and working in the states. We sang together, although I’ll admit hers was the high voice and mine the low and twangy. We laughed and...

Lately there’s been a lot of great dialogue in the writing community about the concept of cultural appropriation. Wikipedia, while not the world’s greatest source, defines it fairly well:

Cultural appropriation is the adoption or use of the elements of one culture by members of another culture. Often, the original meaning of these cultural elements is lost or distorted, and such displays are often viewed as disrespectful by members of the originating culture, or even as a form of desecration.

I...

No spoilers, so I’ll have to be a little cagey, but you’ll discover early on in these novels that Ava’s mother is a devout Catholic who dreamed of her daughter taking the orders and becoming a nun one day. Ava was raised in the Catholic Church and attending Catholic schools. Something(s) happened that pushed her away from the religion, but not from the faith. At the same time, something(s) hyper-sexualized her, but made it hard for her to achieve the ultimate in enjoyment from the act of...

A few years ago, I wrote three novels about a late-blooming woman named Katie Connell. Some time later, they were published, and the reaction to these books and their characters surprised the heck out of me. The question I was asked most frequently was, “When will you write another Katie novel?”

I’d left Katie in a good place at the end of her third star-turn in Finding Harmony. I was excited about the interest in her, and I suggested to my then-editor and...

We’ve heard the names people use for sexy, gorgeous women all our lives, probably mostly without thinking about it. We’ve maybe used the words ourselves, meaning them as nothing but complimentary (or maybe not). Having worked in diversity, respect, and inclusion most of my adult life, I’m used to analyzing words: meaning, intention, history, and context. Mostly my focus has been on analysis regarding demeaning or derogatory terminology. To my chagrin, I occasionally even discover words that I...

I am into the tactile when it comes to grounding myself in character. I’ve worn a big ass, bold labradorite ring while writing Maggie. For Michele, I wore a diaphanous white linen gown. Katie was all about yellow and pink “sleepy sheep” pajamas. For Ava, I wore a triskelion silver pendant. Emily—a silver fox totem pendant. Honestly, I found while writing Maggie that rings work better than anything to keep me muse-based, because I see it and feel it on my fingers as I type.

Music also helps me...

I was sick for the release of Sick Puppy, so I was hoping for the best for Dead Pile. Louise, our dog aka “Fucker,” did die last summer (RIP, Louise–we don’t know what got her up in Wyoming, but there are lots of critters bigger and badder than she was unfortunately), and the horse who inspired Lily, my Katniss, got caught in barbed wire and nearly died.

Then Eric—ok, I’ll admit it, Hank is largely based on Eric, more than any of my past male leads—was in a horrible car accident.

Y’all pray for...

In 2017, Eric and I came to accidentally own a third house, and in 2018, we acquired a fourth abode—an apartment—and realized that our lifestyle had become both exhausting and unsustainable. House One: our lovingly planned "forever" home, Nowheresville. House Two: our first Wyoming cabin, which we planned to sell. House Three: our impulsively purchased "forever" cabin, Snowheresville. Apartment: Eric's Dallas work nest, where we spend one-third of the time.

We'd been flirting with offering...

In the winter and spring of 2017, I learned the hard way to trust what my animals were telling me. I had a stalker. And one day I walked in on him in my house.

I should have known better. My gut had been telling me for months that something was wrong, but, since my husband Eric was traveling all the time, I worked hard at justifying away my paranoia. I didn't want anything to steal my peace.

My dogs told me. They would bark like crazy when the guy would show up and hide out to watch me. I...

The spring of 2018 was a black hole for me. I had huge plans but they were put on hold when I got sick and stayed sick for a few months. The kind of sick where you take meds that render you worthless, unable to do anything but lounge drooling and in pain in a favorite recliner with your blind Boston terrier.

So when I got a Facebook inbox message from USA Today bestselling author Judith Lucci asking me to contribute a romantic suspense novella for a multi-author box set called LOVE UNDER FIRE,...

Ask writers and they’ll tell you that their novels borrow liberally from real life inspiration, and that they put much of themselves in their characters, too. (I discussed this exact issue with Robert Dugoni on my show.)

Such was sadly the case with my most recent novel, Searching for Dime Box. As it has been with all my novels.

Last spring, when I was supposed to be writing Dime Box, I got sick. Really sick. In the hospital and then a month confined to a recliner kind-of-sick. It sucked. I was...

By now you guys know that I love me some everyday, practical magic. Magical realism some call it. In Going for Kona, the practical magic arose from Michele’s relation to her Papa and Mexican abuela/grandmother, who taught her Aztec mythology. Her father nicknamed her Itzpapalotl after a knife-winged butterfly goddess. Michele channeled Itzpa in her times of greatest stress.

In Fighting for Anna, Michele is starting to feel tired to her bones, despite being only forty-one. She is beginning to...