How did you get started writing?
Once upon a time, there was a little girl who sat down to watch a lovely afternoon cartoon about a little mermaid. Except it was the original story, you know, the one by Hans Christian Andersen where the little mermaid dies in the end to spare the confused but quite married-to-someone-else prince’s life. That little girl was utterly disgusted by this ending and vowed to rewrite it immediately!
She never did.
Actually, my first book was a Sesame Street masterpiece of construction paper and crayon dedicated to my one true kindergarten love: the little red-haired boy—co-authored by my grandmother over a weekend visit. Some days it doesn’t feel like the publication process has changed all that much over the years!
Where do you get your ideas?
Images from daydreams, leftover moments from the realm of the Sandman, impressions of what places must once have been. Ironically, the scene which inspired the book generally becomes the most wooden and awkward of the whole piece. Things that look beautiful as mental paintings don’t tend to flow all that well when populated by beings that are expected to behave rationally.
What do you find most challenging about writing?
Ah, that would be telling my ego to shut up, lie down, and hold still while my manuscript (read: my ego) gets ripped to shreds by brilliant and educated editors—who obviously don’t know squat if they can’t figure out what that scene is supposed to mean!
Yeah, still working on that skill set.
Which authors do you admire and why?
I don’t have authors I like. I have authors I hate. I hate them because they can make me laugh or cry so hard, because they immerse me so completely that I snarl at my children for having the audacity to imply that I should put the book down and cook dinner for them. Those are the authors that I hate.
Oh, and there are many of them! Charlaine Harris, Shana Abe, Suzanne Brockmann, Neil Gaiman, Galen Beckett, Nora Roberts, Stephenie Meyer, John Steakley…yeah, I could fill up the page.
Lately however, I have really loved to hate a BBC television writer: Steven Moffat (Coupling and Sherlock Holmes) and his various accomplices. I’ve not seen such a fine hand in getting to the crux of human absurdities in years. And on that side of things there is, of course, the incomparable Joss Whedon and the brief flicker of Firefly. A moment of silence, please.
Do you have any tips for new writers?
Yes, though it is bound to fall on deaf ears: Writing a book is not, at its core, a mystical undertaking. It is a straightforward set of skills that must be practiced and mastered. Once you understand how to build the shape of a story from scene to chapter to the megalith novel itself, then you can get all woo-woo and fill in the fine details with magic. But it’s kind of like blowing your first real job out of cocky pride, it seems like everybody has to fall on their face (and years worth of work) a few times before they get that figured out. Yes, some people pull it off the first time but they are a handful out of millions—certainly not me.
Are the legends and bits of folk-history in your books real?
I TRY to be as true to the original as possible when I weave these moments of culture and history into my work. Note however, that the fictional worlds have their own oral traditions that are, well, entirely fictional. Hopefully, the difference between one and the other will be relatively clear?
Are you Alyse/Kaitlin, etc?
Ha! Nope, not a shred of Laura Croft, Tomb Raider, in me anywhere!!!
Am I in your book?
Ah, does it offend you if I say…no? I’m just not good enough to capture a real person in the space of a character. A wise woman once told me that we can only see in others that which we first see in ourselves. Hmm. Now that’s something to ponder…
How many books will there be in the Shades of Venice series?
There are seven books planned for the series. The first is intended as a “pilot episode” of sorts and the plot threads will play out through the remainder of the books—miniseries style.
Will Kaitlin have another book?
I suppose it is possible, but that is not the current plan.
Have more questions? Please feel free to post them to my Facebook author page and you may find the answers appearing here! | 
