Slinging Spells with Broken Ribs Isn't Easy

Jonathan Harker, mage and life-long demon hunter, wakes to find himself tied to a chair and severely wounded. His captor, a demon in service to a summoner who wants Harker alive.

Armed with impossibly powerful magic and a gang of demon toughs, the summoner has snared Harker in a deadly trap. Nothing is ever easy, and being new in town has left Harker with few allies. However, with help from a Fortune-Teller named Clover and a self-described "Kitchen Witch" named Momma Dee, Harker fights back.

To prevail, Harker must walk unprepared into a pit of demons and black magic - and come out alive on the other side.

From a young age, I loved reading and hearing stories. My mom would read to me each night, even when I was in elementary school – only she didn’t read me children’s books. My mom read out loud books by Terry Brooks, Anne McCaffrey, and others.

I grew up on tales of Allanon setting fields of grass alight with Druid’s Fire and Lessa’s quest to bring back the missing Wyers.

In the fourth grade, there was a local contest for children writers. My teacher led our class in the exercise of writing a short story. She submitted several of the stories for consideration, and I won the contest.

And then I was hooked.

The rest of my life, even my career choices, were guided by a desire to write and tell stories.

I have written several Non-Fiction books, under a pen name or as a ghost writer. Hunted: A Jonathan Harker Novel was my debut novel.

Jonathan Harker was my inspiration. He is a vital part of the literary world, and yet he is often forgotten by pop culture. As I considered what would happen next for the character, the story grew up around him.

Corey Cooper, the new guidance counselor at all boys prep school, St. Leasing, discovers nothing is what it seems, especially the mouthwatering coach, Dominic Hardy.

EVERYTHING SHE NEEDED...

Looking to change her life, Corey Cooper moves across the country to a remote town in Colorado to become the new guidance counselor at St. Leasing, a prestigious all boys prep school. But soon she learns her attraction to the gorgeous head coach, Dominic Hardy, is more than the usual chemistry, and that her students are more than the typical randy teenage boys.

WAS WRITTEN IN HIS SOUL

Dominic Hardy loves his life at St. Leasing. As head coach, he's fulfilled by his career, and in the small Colorado town outside the school's gates he has all the entertainment a man could desire. No complications, no attachments, life was good. Then Corey Cooper comes to St. Leasing and Dominic's instincts kick in - she is his, and that's for life. Throw in a troubled teen, a tyrannical parent, and a mysterious disappearance, and all of a sudden everything at St. Leasing has become a matter of life or death for his kind.

I can remember lying awake when I was little and making up stories in my head. I was always daydreaming, but my daydreams were like mini-movies. I’d have conversations with my characters and create tiny dramatic conflicts. I still do this, all the time. I think story telling has been a part of who I am from day one.

Mouth Watering in the St. Leasing series was my first book. I wrote Mouth Watering after the characters forced me to tell their story. I’d always wanted to write, so one day I sat down at the computer and started to type. Three weeks later? It was done and I was addicted. I can’t imagine giving it up now. It’s part of who I am. Writing makes me, me.

The characters and ideas for the St. Leasing series came from a daydream. I was at work, with a lot of time to think during a long case. I started to let my mind wander. The school was born, then the men the books focus on. It was like a snowball effect. For days, I couldn’t stop thinking about these characters and St. Leasing. It was like a weight was lifted off my shoulders when I finally sat down and started to type out their stories.

I’d say that Keller is most like me. I am perpetually laid back, almost to a fault. Not much rattles me and I tend to be good at calming other people’s nervousness. I also feel like I can read people well, how they are feeling.

My mother was a librarian and she always brought home interesting books from the library. So as far back as I can remember, I’ve always been interested in stories, both fiction and non-fiction. My father liked Robert W. Service and Rudyard Kipling, and through those writers, I became interested in poetry—especially descriptive poetry.

My first book was a non-fiction book about the history of the Boeing 737. It was published by McGraw Hill in the Aero series. I’ve always been interested in planes and writing about an airliner seemed natural to me.

For some years I’ve had an idea of a novel with a male and a female protagonist on opposite sides of the environmental/climate debate. I plan for more of these books with the same characters, including the French-speaking dog, in other locations in the world. Over the last several years I’ve worked on outlines of these various stories. I don’t know why Alaska floated to the top first.

Dan Richardson, the male protagonist and I share have a lot of common experiences, war veterans, helicopters, survey work, and environmental impact statements. I think he is most like me in that he is very solution oriented, much more interested in solving problems than being stymied or frustrated by them. I think it is pretty common among writers in that you write best about which you know best, like yourself.

As a child, I had a severe case of over imagination and would not shut up. I wrote my first romance in fifth grade (I vaguely remember it also featured a cat). In high school, I wrote angsty poetry and had a sketchbook where I drew just parts of people. Then I found sci-fi and began to express the weirdness in my head on paper. But after a half-completed sci-fi/paranormal novel drew confusion from a class of general fiction writers (is your heroine an animal or an alien?) and consternation from a sci-fi group (why is there sex in this?), I lost my gumption and stopped writing for a long time.

My first story published was in 2012. On Par with a Fairy by Lyla Bardan is a young adult fantasy novella about a fairy who sacrifices immortality to become human and date a teen boy.

My dreams. All my books are inspired by my weird, lucid dreams.

None of the characters are like me. The heroine has a number of traits from my daughter though, my son pops up in a couple of the secondary characters, and whenever I needed the hero to be a moody poop, I relied on my husband. LOL.

They meet on a dark back street in Los Angeles where even cops and gangs fear to tread, and are surprised as heck by seeing another "being" there.

The wolf in this city (Jared ) is a sexy werewolf. The female he meets (Kit) is a feisty young vampire. As a most unlikely pairing, they might have to join forces and exchange some body fluids in order to see if bridging the "species" gap is in any way a viable option. Really though . . . who can better understand the problems an "Other" faces than someone who is also "Other"?

Weres and vamps have long been enemies . . . so the relationship that unfolds burns slowly, but fiercely.

My characters, whether wolf or immortal, all have an innate sense of justice and are on a mission to help to right some of the supernatural world's wrongs. So though the main character Weres, vampires, and immortals in my books might be anti-heroes according to human society they try to blend in with, they are ultimately dangerous good guys.

Oh boy, when wasn’t I interested in storytelling? At the age of four, I told my mom I would no longer watch Sesame Street because it was an insult to my intelligence, grabbed my doodle pad, and started drawing something I wanted to watch. I’ve heard this story from my family many times. I don’t know what I drew, and I’m sure I heard Sesame Street was an insult to my intelligence from one of my four older siblings, but my mom swears this was the beginning of writing for me. It may have been through pictures, but she says I always lived in my own little world.

Waking Up. It’s the first of a two book story for Tucker and Adriana and the beginning of the Healing Hearts Series.

Sevyn was inspired by 7 Years by Lukas Graham. The first time I heard the song I didn’t hear all the words. It just sounded like a song about a boy growing up, but it stuck in my head, and suddenly an idea sparked. In the twenty minutes I waited for my son to get out of work, I had this dark, twisted story played out in my mind.

I don’t know that any of the characters in Sevyn are like me. I definitely didn’t see myself in them as I was writing it, but if I had to pick something I would say it’s that many of the characters are fierce in the love they feel for their family. I am a total homebody who has never broken the law, so I am in no way like the characters in this story. I don’t like killing bugs. I’m not sure how I even came up with this one, but I’m glad I did. Kevyn’s story needed to be told.

I first had an interest in writing when I read Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut. The characters and world he created fascinated me, and ever since I’ve been writing and creating my own worlds and characters.

Lady Knight is the first novel I’ve published. It was released this year in January.

Cameron, one of the main characters of Lady Knight, came first. I had the idea for her, and after that, everything kind of fell into place. That tends to happen with me, I’ll have an idea for a character and they inspire the story they want to tell.

I believe I’m most like Ryan, Cameron’s ex-husband. We’re both intelligent people who have an interest in academics. He’s a professor, which I would love to be able to do at some point.

I’m least like Vee, the primary villain of Lady Knight. Her cruelty and carefree attitude couldn’t be farther from what I am.

I used to play by telling stories so pretty much as soon as I could talk.

Fate Knows Best the first book in the Kindred of Arkadi.

I identified with the heroine of this book and wanted to see if I could do her justice.

Ironically my personality is nothing like the heroine of this book even though I identify with her on another level. 

I’ve been writing since I was a child actually. As I child I loved reading stories. It was an escape from my hectic childhood. With that, I started writing plays, poetry, shorty stories and the like. I didn’t start writing seriously until I finished graduate school. I put off completing my Doctorates to write. I felt like doing something I was passionate about as opposed to continuing my studies. Writing makes me feel good.

My first book is a horror novel derived from a collection of stories that I wrote when I was a teenager. Since that book I’ve transitioned to romance/paranormal as I feel this genre suits me better.

One night at 3:30am I was sleeping in my bed dreaming about a story of a human woman and a male vampire who were not allow to be together. I woke up immediately and created a note to myself via email of the idea. The next morning I developed the plot to the story from what I could remember from my dream and it just took off from there. The more I wrote, the more ideas for other stories in the series came to me. Therefore, I guess you can say Courting Moon came to me in a dream.

I don’t believe any of the characters are like me. I wrote them in the realm of people who I have interacted with. I guess Sebastian would be an outward projection of what I would like to be. He’s passionate in what he wants and is willing to give up everything to have it just the same as his love interest Kyra. I believe they both mirror what people in general would like to become.

I’m sure my parents would tell you that I’ve always been a storyteller, but I had never seriously considered writing as a profession up until two years ago. When I was in high school, we were made to undergo career assessments. Numerous questions were asked to decipher which career path would be best for us on an individual basis. In a fate I couldn’t understand, my results came back for creative writing. Ignoring the assessment, I studied social work, power engineering, and medical transcription instead. I’ve always written along the way, completing multiple novels that I didn’t ever take the leap to publish.

When I had just hit junior high, I wrote a story about a penguin that played baseball. (It was cool back then, I swear - ha!) It won first place and was published for a local festival, but that was just something I did for fun. I’ve written a handful of novels over the past few years, but Hell Will Rise will be the first one I officially publish.

One night around a campfire, me and a few buddies were discussing which superpower would be the coolest to have. A little bit of an odd conversation for a group of twenty-five year olds to be hung up on, but we were.

The most common answer was the cliché of invisibility. Someone said X-ray vision. Another said the art of flying. I chose teleportation. I would take myself wherever I wanted to go with a snap of my fingers. Could you imagine the uncomfortable conversations a girl could avoid with that superpower?! But I would want myself to be so skilled that I could bring anything I was touching with me. I would show my friends the world!

While considering it, someone suggested seeing numbers in people’s eyes (their bank pins, driver’s license numbers, stock holdings etc.) so they could steal identities for fun. The friend who gave that answer had eaten one too many Bailey’s centered marshmallows that night, but it got me thinking. It was then that I told everyone I was going to write my next book about exactly that.

I have always been interested in writing stories from a young age. I really developed a love for it in high school and am now fulfilling my dream.

My first published work was a historical romance, Dark Rider.

Blurb: When Brianna married, she always thought it would be for love, soul shattering love. Now this warrior is demanding her hand. Against her own wishes she finds herself before the altar beside Laird McGregor.

Has fate played a cruel hand or is he the love she has always wanted?

Only time will give her the answer.

He is known as the Dark Rider and feared by many. Already he has lost three betrothed and will not lose another.

Torin likes the feisty lass and Brianna will be his… heart and soul.

Frankly, I can’t remember a time I wasn’t interest in storytelling. I started yapping and telling tale tales from the moment I could talk. Apparently, I never shut up. Except at school because – duh! – total nerd here.

Unforeseen Consequences was the first book I published. I wrote it years before I actually published it. The hubby deserves credit because he pushed me to try this newfangled self-publishing thing.

In all honesty, I wanted to write another romantic comedy because the first one I wrote, Molly’s Misadventures, sold fairly well and received some good reviews. But I also wanted to tell a story close to my heart. As a diehard yo-yo dieter, writing a book about a supposed fat girl was totally up my alley.

Most like me is easy – Everly. Everly is a workaholic who weighs too much and sporadically diets. Sounds uncomfortably familiar. As far as female characters go, Everly’s best friend, Blaze, is not like me at all. She’s a kindergarten teacher and I am terrified of children (only slight exaggeration there). She’s also a total fitness fanatic. Although I may be a fanatic when it comes to my tennis game, that’s where it stops.

In 1995, I read a book called High Fidelity by Nick Hornby and was blown away. The first person narrative was so real, like being inside the main character’s head. It reminded me of The Catcher in the Rye, but the subject matter was so much more relatable to me (the trials and tribulations of dating and relationships). It was also very funny. This made me want to write about my own experiences but first I had to learn about how to go about formatting a story.

The e-book short read, Loot (2015). Loot was inspired from my childhood experiences. Growing up during the seventies and eighties in a NJ town transitioning from a farming community to suburban commuter zone, I got the best of both worlds. There were a lot of fun places to hang out and things to do but there was also open and wooded areas to explore with my friends without parental supervision. The story was written in the spirit of Stand by Me and The Goonies.

The Girl from the Woods was inspired by my love for romance and the paranormal. I’ve always been a hopeless romantic so that aspect of the story flows quite naturally. I grew up in the eighties, which were a scary time to be a kid. Every summer the theaters were invaded with horror films like Friday the 13th, Halloween, and A Nightmare on Elm Street. The films used familiar settings, which lead to a lot of sleepless nights for me. But I also fell in love with horror and the paranormal.

Probably when I was a little girl. I used to listen to my favorite aunt tell endless stories about things that happened to her. She’s the one who should write books; she’d be a best-seller. I started writing for fun after high school one summer when I took my manual typewriter outside to our picnic table under the trees and wrote a Civil War love story.

The first book I published was Wellington Cross, the first book in my historical romance series. I self-published this book after many rejections from literary agents and after revamping the book probably four times till I finally got it the way I wanted it. One of those literary agents did give me some good advice about the beginning of the book, developing a character more, and I took that advice and she was right; it made the story better.

Wellington Beaus is book five in my Wellington Cross series. Originally, I wrote three books in the series plus a little Christmas novella, and that was all I wanted to do at the time. I then wrote two paranormal romance books, and then decided I wanted to come back to the Wellington series and add a few more books. I had new stories that came to my mind. Wellington Beaus picks up right where book four ends. This book focuses on the two Wellington brothers, Bertie and Godfrey. Godfrey, the older one, is married and expecting his firstborn child, but when tragedy strikes, his whole life is turned upside-down. Meanwhile, Bertie proposes to Amanda Adams, but when an old flame comes to live and work at the boarding house, trouble follows her and being the deputy, Bertie gets involved.

I am a lot like the character Amanda in that she is the jealous type. She doesn’t like to see her fiancé talk to his old girlfriend, and when she discovers a secret between the two of them, she gets mad enough to give Bertie the engagement ring back. I would be the same way. She gets pretty sassy too, and my good friend, also an author, gave me the new nickname of sassy, ha ha.

Ever since I can remember, I have loved story telling. I wrote my first story when I was in grade school, based on a dream I had. Although I didn’t get serious about publishing until recently, I have written stories all my life.

Eolyn, Book One of The Silver Web, was released in its first edition by Hadley Rille Books in the spring of 2011. At the time, it was a stand-alone novel. Later, after crafting the sequels, I re-released the trilogy under the title The Silver Web.

As with all the books of The Silver Web trilogy, Daughter of Aithne was inspired by the amazing women I’ve known and also the women I’ve read about in history; in particular medieval women, and how they managed to wield and manipulate power in a society so steeped in patriarchal values. In writing Daughter of Aithne, I asked myself, “What would happen if barriers to power were removed and women could rule kingdoms and even wage war just like men?”

Once you’ve been through this many novels with the same characters, they become independent entities, and it’s hard to see yourself in any of them. Though we are not really all that much alike, my favorite character to work with in this book was Taesara, the woman who leads the war against Eolyn.

Taesara makes her first appearance in Sword of Shadows, and many of my readers did not like her. This kind of surprised me, because I’ve always sympathized with Taesara. Yes, she can be unpleasant, but only when she has good reasont. As a result of my readers initial reaction to Taesara, I wanted to come back to her in Daughter of Aithne and let her be seen in a more sympathetic light. I think I succeeded in doing that.

I have always been an avid reader and found it to be a useful escape from everyday problems. As I got older, my imagination began to play up during my school lessons, constantly leading me into new worlds and never giving me a moment of peace. When I was eight, I decided to try and write down the things that came to me. One idea sparked another and soon I had three short stories before me. Sadly, I do not own a copy of my first attempts at storytelling as the computer spontaneously combusted.

Quite ironic that I discovered 3 ½ floppy disks a week later. A week too late.

Although I self published novellas when I was younger, these were only for me and were always kept private.

The first story that I published since growing into adulthood was the first edition of my Fantasy novel, Phoenix, which was originally entitled Sweet Surrender and published with an Indie Publishing Press. Unfortunately, the company I had joined turned out to be bad news and so I chose to leave, with any royalties I had earned with-held from me.

When I first began drafting Phoenix, I had recently suffered a devastating break up. The person I had been seeing had appeared sweet at first, with a kind heart. Then, after time began to pass, they seemed to transform into someone else.

First, it was like another personality was bleeding through the mask they had created, then it began to take over. This is how I came up with the infamous yet charming Emperor Ryore. He is a tortured soul who wants to feel love, but is only able to feel obsession. Violetta's story is in part the journey I went through to learn that not everything is as it seems and that each of us is stronger than we might initially believe.

Prince Arlas of the Air Realm is probably the least like me out of this cast of characters. He is crude, cunning and has the appearance of a folklore vampire.

Along with being immortal, Arlas has incredible power at his disposal and uses it for his own sadistic purposes. He doesn't care who he hurts, as long as he gets what he desires.

I’ve always enjoyed writing – I was the weird kid in school that enjoyed essay assignments! Dark Angel is my first full length novel, but I’ve tried my hand at screenplays and short stories (which will remain hidden in the dark recesses of my hard drive!).

Dark Angel is my first published book – it had a long and winding path, but has finally arrived!

I’ve always enjoyed the idea of good vs. evil and what makes the bad guy bad – so naturally the biggest, baddest fallen angel of all seemed like a good jumping off point. 😀

That’s a really great question…and a tough one to answer! I don’t think I can pinpoint one specific character because there are pieces of me in all of them…I’m bookish like Sergei, and stubborn like Luc. I’ve also searched for who I am like Katya and been the joker like Bataryal. It’s fun when people who know you well read one of your books and come across a line that’s “so you.”😀