I always get asked – How did you come up with the idea for Sam?

Let’s start with what I was NOT going to write. I had just finished a historical romance, THE OUTLAW SEDUCTION. I did not want to write another romance. First, writing romances had bestowed on me the title of Most Rejected Woman. Not really what I wanted to put on my business card! Plus, the emotion of good character development required in romance writing had drained me. If any of you are interested in learning character development – study good romance novels. They excel at character development.

So what was I going to write?

Well, murder always interested me. As did humor and adventure. So I let my mind wander and eventually tripped on the thought: What if my life isn’t what I think it is? What if my husband isn’t at all whom I believe him to be? What if he’d been lying to me all these years and I had chosen to believe him? If all that happened to me – how would it change me?

The concept took hold in my mind. So I started thinking in terms of a book and fleshing out the original seed of an idea. I had a heroine betrayed by her husband.

Yawn – how many times have we seen that story line?

But wait, what if the heroine’s husband is dead when she finds out he’s lied, cheated, etc? But BEFORE she discovered her dead husband was a first class jerk, she went out and BOUGHT the very dating service she had met her husband at.

Now we have a betrayed heroine who is angry and swearing off all romance – but who is the proud owner of a dating service. (She’s also the proud owner of a new set of size C breasts, but that has nothing to do with my point here J ) What does she do now? She decides that she’s going to pull her head out of the sand, get smart and turn her run down dating service a success! Now we have a heroine who doesn’t believe in romance but her whole career is selling romance. That makes her interesting.

Let’s make this really tough on Sam. Like have Sam go to work one day and someone she thinks is client demands money she doesn’t have and threatens both she and her kids if she doesn’t get it for him. Let’s arm him with a stun gun and a black permanent marker that he’s not afraid to use.

Oh, and lets tie missing money to her dead husband.

Oh boy! Sam has only days to find the missing money and she’s tripping over a dead body or two in the process. And wait, let’s toss in a secondary plot that of missing video tapes featuring prominent town citizens engaged in…uh…private moments. Sounds like fun now!

At this point, I started typing. I have to write a couple chapters to see if the idea in my head will materialize onto the page. I wrote two beginnings. One in upscale Temecula, California and the second in blue-collar Lake Elsinore, California. The Lake Elsinore version came to life. Temecula is a beautiful place, called wine country for the grape growers, wineries and festivals, I highly recommend a visit. But for the book, Lake Elsinore has more character. It’s a tough, scrappy town with a rich history of grand plans and crushing failures, but the town endures. From a conflict point of view – Lake Elsinore has more to offer.

Once I put Sam in her restored T-Bird, gave her two clever sons, a retired magician with a new career in gossip grandfather and sent her off to be a businesswoman – the story came to life. Sam took over, doing things that completely surprised me.

Oh yeah, that part about not wanting to write romance? It didn’t quite work out the way I planned. Next, I’ll tell you about my biggest surprise. Gabe Pulizzi.