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My inner Sam is saying, "Mmm, bunnies." Earlier this week I had someone message me on Facebook and tell me to quit being so positive. They then proceeded to talk about how sheltered my life must have been for me to be so damn cheery all the time. After some sadness, hurt, and anger, I chuckled and realized it was stupid to feel upset by this person because, quite obviously, they didn't know me at all. We all have horrors we face in life. In facing mine I choose to think positive and try to be optimistic. Before you say anything, yes, it absolutely is a choice I make each and every day. The reason I make it is because if I become a bitter, cynical, evil bitch to pay back the world for what it did to me, then I allow the people who tried to break me to win. I have a quote I love by Patrick Stump; "When you have a bad day, a really bad day, try and treat the world better than it treated you." It's something I strive very hard to do. Admittedly, I...

So, I got ribbed a little bit this weekend because I make our family say please and thank you to Alexa/Siri/Google Voice. The biggest consensus was that it is a computer of sorts so why waste good manners on a silicone chip? My response is this; Yes, these automated assistants are lines of computer code and maybe they don't have feelings or know when people are being rude but when Skynet happens to cause them to become sentient my family will be doing alright for ourselves because we have always treated our robotic overlords with respect. Okay, time to be serious. *Puts on serious face* The main reason I make all of us say please, thank you, and excuse/pardon me to these devices is simple psychology. Two days of the same behavior creates a habit. How long before the kids ask me, their dad, a teacher, or other grown up a question without saying please and thank you, because that's how they're used to getting their information? When we remove these simple yet importan...

So, 2016 has opened very kindly for me. I have a story (The Only Good Clown is a Dead Clown) in TJ Weeks' anthology Painted Mayhem. All proceeds go to help soldiers afflicted with PTSD. It's a condition that has affected me personally (though not from war) and one that affects a lot of my friends. I have three other anthology invites that I am so freaking excited about. One of them involves some really frigging sweet scream queens from the 80s. Can I get a hell yeah? The other is a much requested collab between Lisa Lane and myself. That's right, Jane and Bob are hanging out and going to the mall. This ain't your average mall but, what could go wrong at a Super Market? The third is one I am beyond excited about because it involves my most favorite authors and one of my favorite creatures of all time. Yes, I'm talking zombies! *Snoopy Dance* and, man, this collaboration is pretty sweet. It has me working with someone I hold in high regard and consider a...

I spend time at the beginning of each year to do some reflecting on my life. I find that it helps me to stay grounded and grateful to the people and the good things that come into my life. thinking over on last year brought a lot of both back into the forefront. 2015 was a good year for my career but it was a difficult year for my family in terms of rebuilding. We had to reconstruct our family around the loss of Chris' brother, Evan. My mom's side of the family had to adjust to its first full year without several of our beloved members. While we rebuilt our lives without our loved ones we also rebuilt our living room, too. It is now solid as a rock and should last a few hundred more years, God willing. Little by little we will make sure the rest of this grand house is lovingly restored. 2015 also brought me some of the most amazing opportunities of my career. First came the Revelations series; Cast in Blood, Cast in Fire, and Cast in Shadow, where I got to w...

Today, I'm turning my blog over to the awesome Richard Schiver to talk a bit about his new release, All Roads Lead to Terror. Enjoy! Who inspired the characters. I grew up watching westerns every Saturday morning. Some of you may remember the old black and white weekly television shows featuring characters like Roy Rogers, Tom Mix, and the singing cowboy Gene Autry. Did you know Gene Autry was awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions in WWII? I’m full of odd little tid-bits of information like that. As I grew older my tastes matured, yet my love of Westerns remained strong. I became an early fan of Clint Eastwood when he appeared in the Rawhide series. I know, we’re getting into ancient history here. I’ve followed Clint’s career through the spaghetti westerns of the late sixties early seventies, his Dirty Harry phase, “Make my day.” And beyond. In my mind his best western will always be The Outlaw Josey Wales. “Hell is coming to breakfast.” But what does all this...

This week we had a pretty full schedule. We had twenty six people for Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday, followed by our awesome niece's birthday party Friday, then a really lovely baby shower for my wonderful sister in law on Saturday. Seems like no big deal, a normal all-the-family-is-in-town-so-let's-do-it-all-at-once kind of event. Everybody has these times in their family. Unfortunately, I have missed so many of these times. Until last year, when my doctor put me on Plaquenil, I wouldn't have been able to handle three functions in a row. In fact, this year was the first Thanksgiving in three years I haven't been too sick to eat with the family and it was damn good, baby! I was able to get everything cleaned on time and we had a delicious dinner courtesy of my husband and our family. I have so many things to be thankful for this year and I really don't have time to list them all, but rest assured you are probably on that list if you're reading th...

Happy Thanksgiving everyone. I figured I'd give you guys a bit of a turkey day treat with a free short story I wrote last year.  CLICK HERE TO READ THE STORY