about my moon series

Here's where I get to explain something important about my Moon series. I never planned to write a werewolf series.

About eight years ago, an idea grabbed me by the throat and wouldn't let me go. I kept thinking, what if a private detective were a werewolf, and he used his wolf senses to solve crimes. But that was way back before paranormal was hot, and I also kept thinking, "who would buy a werewolf book from me."

Finally my good friend Mary Kirk told me that she was tired of hearing me talk about the idea, and I should either write the book or get on with my life. I accepted the challenge and started writing a synopsis for what would become KILLING MOON.

I was pretty sure I'd have to write the whole book to sell it. So I stole time from my "day job" which was writing for Harlequin Intrigue. While I was working on the book, my agent retired. I made it a priority to get a new agent who would like my werewolf book.

We got two offers on the book and sold it to Cindy Hwang of Berkley. She wanted more paranormal stories from me, and she wanted at least one more werewolf book. While I was writing KILLING MOON, I fell in love with the police detective, Jack Thornton, who worked with my werewolf--and also suspected him of murdering a serial killer. I desperately wanted to write Jack's story--which is how I came up with EDGE OF THE MOON.

Of course, Jack wasn't a werewolf. But he still kept working with Ross. I've been asked why the second book in a werewolf series doesn't have a werewolf for a hero. The answer is, "It wasn't a series."

But the Marshall brothers and cousins kept their hold on me. Next I wrote WITCHING MOON, about Ross's brother, Adam. Writing a series when you planned no such thing is difficult. I've had to add new twists and new kinds of heroines for my werewolf heroes. CRIMSON MOON is about Ross and Adam Marshall’s brother, the one they thought was killed in a bar fight. He escaped from the hospital morgue and took the opportunity to create a new identity for himself–as Sam Morgan, a kind of Robin Hood thief who delights in robbing rich men whose companies rape the environment. He meets his lifemate, Olivia Woodlock, because she tricks him into robbing her father’s house–so she can blackmail him into pulling off a major heist for her. But Olivia Woodlock has secrets of her own, secrets that can destroy both her and Sam. I knew I had to make Sam different from his brothers, because I want my stories to be different. And I wanted to make the conflict in the story different, too. Sam has issues to deal with that his brothers haven’t faced.

But I don't want to be known as "the werewolf lady," so I took on another paranormal subject in BEYOND CONTROL, my novel which will be out in August. It's a story of sexually linked telepaths who find that the more intimate they become, the more their paranormal powers grow. And as they make these very personal discoveries, sinister forces are out to control or destroy them.

Now I'm working on my fourth werewolf book, SHADOW OF THE MOON. It's about Lance Marshall, an investigative journalist probing the secrets of an S&M club in Washington, D. C. That's certainly new territory for me. And I've done some really interesting research for the book. No, there are no more Marshall brothers. Lance is a cousin of my original Marshall brothers--who end up playing an important role in the climax of the story.