The clouds are low and dark. The wind whips hard. An oil well blows in west Texas, kills two, and almost no one notices. The Boston Marathon is bombed, kills three, and the world notices. A former Texas judge and his wife are arrested for the murder of three, and the United States notices. The town of West, Texas blows up, and … My stomach knots. My heart pounds and hurts. It’s April in the United States. Are we numb

I wish I saw things the way other people do. I really do. The other day, I was driving down the highway when I noticed a firewood stand on the side of the road. For most passersby, they’d simply see a man standing by the road selling wood. That’s not what I saw. Not at all. I saw a young couple buying kindling to burn the body of a man they’d murdered. In truth, there was no one there. Not a single customer. So why d

“It’s a paradox, this act of writing,” she wrote. “I read once that Hemingway referred to writing as putting black on white. Simple. Just put the words on the page. He made it look easy with his taut masculine prose, all of the emotion coiled beneath the words. So why then did he train like an athlete before each book?"

Kate Douglas has been writing erotic romance for the Aphrodisia imprint of Kensington Publishing* since 2006. So when Publishing Perspectives asked me to do a story on the erotica market, Kate was one of the first authors I contacted. My email interview with her about the erotic romance market was so informative that I decided to post it here, just as I did with my interview with Anne Rice. So now I give you Part I o

The other day I was looking at my blog stats and noticed that the post “Regina, Kim, Justin and ‘Wasted’, Again” is by far and away my most viewed post. In fact, I often sit astounded at the way Wasted, my very first true crime book, affects people, sticks with them, and causes readers and TV viewers to search for more information on Regina Hartwell, Kim LeBlanc, and Justin Thomas. Indeed, jus

A while back, I read a Tweet about 10 Things I Never Thought I’d Do as an Author. I thought that sounded interesting, so I clicked on the link only to learn that the 10 things were about self-publishing, building a website, building an audience through social media, etc. Man, that wasn’t what I’d expected, so I decided to write my own list of 10 Things I Things I Never Thought I’d Do as an Author. They are totally di

  It’s a hot Tuesday, two days before Valentine’s Day, and I’m sitting in Gilda’s Club in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. I’m so happy in this 1930s house full of deep reds and laughing images of Gilda Radner that I’m almost in tears. If you don’t know what Gilda’s Club is, it’s a cancer support community created in honor of actress, comedian, and original Saturday Night Live cast member Gilda Radner. Gilda died

"I set out to write something otherworldly and elegant and deliciously fantastic where men and women could both play passive or dominant roles, and enjoy all the subtle and exquisite pleasures of the S&M motifs, and yet never get into anything dark or horrible." -- Anne Rice

"When I first published The Sleeping Beauty trilogy, feminism was not all that kind to S&M erotica. ... Now we've seen a generation of fully empowered and emancipated women, and they have no hesitation about declaring their love of S&M fantasy."