Now is the time to tell of a couple of mistakes I made. I wrote a caper novel, a humorous telling of crime and mayhem. I loved the characters and what they were able to accomplish by fighting crime with crime. I titled it KIDNAP.org.

That was a mistake. Do you know what a computer does with a title like that? I do now. A search for it takes you to sites for human trafficking, not to fun little books about righteous rascals. I suppose I could do something about it, like change the title, but...

The Loser Mystery series, like my others, has a definite character arc. Loser begins with significant issues in Killing Silence and works through them a bit in Book 2, Killing Memories. In Book 3, Killing Despair, we learn how her suffering came about and who caused it.

While Loser isn't completely healed at the end of this entry, we can see that she is making progress. She may someday be fully back to being Beth, able to leave her Loser persona in the alleys of Richmond.

My publisher wanted...

The last book of the Dead Detective series is one of my favorites, because it ties up all Seamus' qualities, good and bad, in a compelling story. When she finished it, one reader wrote to thank me for bringing the series to what she called a "satisfying end."

For me, a series needs an arc. The main character should change in some way, starting in one place and ending somewhere else. If Seamus makes a change, it's going to be a big one, so the story has to support that.

Some really popular...