One of the things I’m doing for 2026 is expanding the ways you/my readers can learn about my books and get access to deals and news and so on. So here I am, on the News page, for the first time in eek years. 
This post isn’t about everything I’m planning, though, that would be overwhelming for both of us. LOL Today I’m concentrating on the fact that I totally missed my 25th anniversary of the publication of my first book. (June 2025, FYI). I have no excuse.
What I’ve decided to do to celebrate is spotlight my backlist throughout the year. There will be some stories about each set of books I’m featuring for the month. Some books will be on sale or even free, and there will be NEW stuff, too!
The best way to keep up with it is to subscribe to my newsletter. I expect to post once a month and might also post here, but the newsletter is going to come straight to you.
January’s featured titles are my earliest romantic adventures, the books that really launched Love with a Shot of Adrenaline. Before that, I had a few contemporary romances published that are now out of print. But I always had difficulty sticking to a completely romance-focused story.
Authors do a lot of “what if” when they’re writing. Fight or Flight was one of those. I had this vision of a woman who had never exercised a day in her life, not seriously, but she stepped out her front door and began to run, changing her life forever. So, why? What made her do that with such drama? Her fiancé had been killed, and she needed to protect her daughter, of course! But what if 18 years went by with no problems? And just as her daughter goes out of reach (to college), the danger resurfaces? What kind of danger could exist like that?
A lot of my work was a hard sell to traditional publishing in those days. There was too much romance to be suspense (or urban fantasy) but too much suspense (or urban fantasy) to classify as a romance. But then digital-first publishing (in general) and Carina Press (specifically for me) opened up the world to those of us who like to blend things outside the norm. Fight or Flight was an EPIC Ebook Awards finalist, back when that was a thing.
Note: Pricing on the ebooks I’m featuring this month varies constantly. Keep your eye on them if you want a bargain (like fifty cents, which was Fight or Flight last week, or $1.99, which is Behind the Scenes as I’m posting this.). You may be able to get used paperbacks if that’s more your speed.
So after Fight or Flight, I sold Behind the Scenes to Carina Press. That one was pretty indulgent. I went through a phase where I was fascinated by the behind the scenes content they were including on movie DVDs. That sparked the ideas for this book, which is set on a movie set, where the heroine is the lead actor’s bodyguard.
Acceptable Risks was completely different. I had written The Color of Courage first, which didn’t get published until after Acceptable Risks. But in TCoC there was an almost throw-away line:
Hummingbird was a security company so large, successful, and secret that everyone knew about them.
I was immediately fascinated by what that meant. Yeah, I know, I wrote that line, but I didn’t mean to! LOL Hummingbird, in that book, was a very secondary assist to the superheroes of the story. But Jason, the character who helped them, became the hero of Acceptable Risks. He dies at the end of the first chapter, BTW. (But not really. I mean, you know I don’t do that! And that book won the EPIC Ebook Award, and you know that wouldn’t have happened without a happy ending.)
Fight or Flight and Acceptable Risks both also have subplots with a secondary romance and multiple point-of-view characters. I got away from that for a long time, but I have an upcoming series that returns to that approach. (Cue River Song crooning “Spoilers!”)
So there you go, some of the backstory behind my early backlist. Those books came out long enough ago that they may give you some nostalgia for the early 2000s. You’ll have to shoot me an email to let me know how they hold up.
Next month: Goddesses!