About the Author

I worked as a journalist, mostly in Paris, France for many years, but I always wanted to write fiction. Finally, I decided to go for my dream and write a novel. I was thrilled when An Affair to Dismember, the first in the Matchmaker Series, was sold at auction to Ballantine.

Story ideas come to me day and night, and I’m inspired by my imagination and the news, especially weird news. I’m a plotter. I map out chapters, but sometimes characters have a mind of their own. That happened in book two of the Matchmaker Series, where it ended in a surprise. (Oh, have I divulged too much?)

I wish I was one of those superhero authors who write five or ten thousand words everyday, but I write in bursts. I’m trying to get more organized and increase my word count, but I’m not a fast writer. I regularly hound very productive authors to try and learn their magic recipes for high word counts, but I haven’t managed to learn the technique, yet.

I write either at my desk in my office or in my bed. I listen to music while I write romantic or scary scenes, but for the majority of scenes, written (hopefully) with humor, I have the television on in the background. I love TV, and I write well while listening to the rhythm of banter.

Otherwise, I’m an overwhelmed single mother of two boys in Southern California.  I’m an avid traveler, a beginner dancer, an occasional piano player, and an online shopping junkie

How did you start writing?

I was working as a private investigator, and a lot of my work was done at home on the phone. My office is located at the front of my house, and the office’s windows overlook the street. While I was on the phone, investigating people, I would stare at the house across the street, and slowly a story came to my mind. The story really took shape while I worked late at night (which I did every night) when the house was dark and everyone was asleep. It was the perfect environment to let my imagination turn to “what ifs” and murder mysteries. That was the beginning of my first book, An Affair to Dismember, and you can see the influence in the first passages of the book when the heroine Gladie is looking at the house across the street:

The house across the street caught my attention. It had a falling down, shingled roof. The house sat directly across from my grandma’s, right in line with the office window. I had memorized its roof during the last three months in my new profession, in my new house, in my new town. A bunch of shingles had fallen off and some had been repaired haphazardly. I counted twenty seven crooked shingles, and one downright hole. I often pictured the family inside lining up buckets during raining days.

Why do you write?
Where do you get your ideas? Are the characters real people?
How long does it take you to write a book?
What is your writing process?
What advice do you have for aspiring writers?