A few reviewers of my books have asked, rhetorically, how I come up with such original characters. We, as writers and readers, know there is no such thing as an original character. My protagonists have all been written before in one book or another, going back hundreds of years. My only recipe for creating characters is to make them human, with all the flaws of real people, because, you know, no one is perfect. It’s challenging to write a character who might not be likable—an unrepentant, high-priced call girl ( Hooked ), a brooding, bordering-on-surly man who spent fifteen years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit ( Murder Déjà Vu ), a cheating wife ( Indiscretion ), or a con artist psychic ( Mind Games )—and make the reader like and even root for them. There are even times when my villain elicits pity, but not for long. Villains are people too, remember, and should be more well-rounded than just evil, though I have a couple of those too. Where do these people come from?...

Last July, I submitted my book, Indiscretion , to Amazon’s Kindle Scout program . Paraphrased from their website: Kindle Scout is reader-powered publishing for new, never-before-published books. It’s a place where readers help decide if a book gets published. Selected books will be published by Kindle Press and receive 5-year renewable terms, a $1,500 advance, 50% eBook royalty rate, easy rights reversions and featured Amazon marketing. If you do not earn at least $25,000 during any 5-year term, you'll have six months after the end of that 5-year period in which you can choose to stop publishing with Kindle Press and request your rights back. Same if you haven’t made $500 in royalties in a two-year period. Amazon’s criteria are for authors to submit their professionally edited books with a well-designed cover, short blurb, and catchy tag line. The Scout people take a few days to look it over, then, if accepted, you have thirty days to do everything in your power to keep you...

My book, Indiscretion , has been on Amazon’s Kindle Scout program for an entire week as of today. It’s been on and off the “Hot and Trending” list, which I guess is natural. This is measured by how many people read the sample and nominate my book during a thirty-day period. I’ve done some promotion, but there’s a fine line between promo and overkill. I try to be cognizant of where that line is. That said, self-promotion has never been an easy fit for me. So what is Kindle Scout, you ask? This is from the Kindle Scout website: “Kindle Scout is reader-powered publishing for new, never-before-published books. It’s a place where readers help decide if a book gets published. Selected books will be published by Kindle Press and receive 5-year renewable terms, a $1,500 advance, 50% eBook royalty rate, easy rights reversions and featured Amazon marketing.” Bloggers have debated the pros and cons of the program. From my point of view, the answer depends on where you are in the publishi...

As I struggle through the third book in my Diana Racine Psychic Suspense series, I thought about the finished book waiting in the wings that I never published. I’m sure it needs a good edit and updating. I never published it because the book is fiction written around a real event, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum heist, pulled off in Boston in 1990. This still remains one of the largest art thefts in history, valued at $500 million, and none of the 13 stolen pieces has been recovered. I’m from the Boston area, went to art school there, so the theft left a big hole in my heart, along with eleven empty frames still hanging in the museum. I’ll certainly add a line or two in the preface to explain the creative license I took to write the book. But twenty-four years is a long time for a crime to remain unsolved, and I’m willing to take the risk. It is fiction, remember. Another consideration was the arrest of master criminal, Whitey Bulger, a man thought to be involved, ...