After roughly a year of looking at the story in the form of a Word document, I now get to see the pages as they'll appear in the final product. For the uninitiated, these are called galley proofs and they're the final step in the editorial process before the next Zoe Chambers Mystery hits the bookstore shelves in March! I get one last chance to pick over the words, searching for typos, spelling, and punctuation errors. FYI, I hate proofreading! But it's still a thrill, even six books in, to see another novel become something more than voices in my head. Release date: March 27!

My fabulous publisher, Henery Press is having a giveaway now through November 14. Grand Prize is 32 awesome e-books and a Kindle Fire on which to read them. First Prize is 32 awesome e-books. And there will be FOUR second-place winners of 8 awesome e-books! One of the 32 books is my Lost Legacy (Zoe Chambers #2) so that you haven't read it yet, you'll have a chance to meet Pete's dad Harry before Uneasy Prey comes out in the spring. Click HERE to enter! And good luck!

I want to give a HUGE thank you to everyone who donated to the Alzheimer’s Association, either through my page or individually. My team raised $650 this year for the Walk to End Alzheimer’s, which is a personal high, one I hope to top next year. Part of that donation came from my pledge to give a portion of my royalties from the sale of Lost Legacy to the Alzheimer’s Association. For those of you who don’t know why this is my pet charity, I lost my dad to Alzheimer’s over ten years ago and lost my mom to a nasty cousin of Alzheimer’s, Vascular Dementia, almost a year ago. Speaking of Lost Legacy , in it I created the character of Harry Adams, Pete’s father. He was a labor of love since Harry has Alzheimer’s and I infused him with bits of my own dad. Creating a character with a disease that touches so many was a huge risk. I wanted to be true to the illness, but I also wanted a character that readers would want to spend time with. I guess I succeeded because I’ve been gett...

Every November, a large population of writers participate in something called NaNoWriMo AKA National Novel Writing Month. The idea is to write a 50,000-word novel in ONE MONTH. There are forums and support groups, badges to be won... It's all about accountability. Even if you don't make your goal, you'll probably write more than you would have without all the other participants encouraging you to write write write. I've never done an "official" NaNo. But I always try to ride the wave of creative energy to bolster my considerably smaller word-count numbers. This year, I'm doing my own thing again, but this year I'm looking at it differently. My next deadline is early February, which is coming sooner than you think. I still have a little over 100 pages to go on my first draft. So instead of NaNoWriMo, I'm declaring a personal FiNoWriMo. Finish the Novel Writing Month. Yes, I'm sticking close to my writing cave and pounding out pages wi...