Unknowns and gray areas have always raised anxiety for me in real life, yet those places are where everything interesting happens in fiction.In Rosemary’s Baby, which I wrote about last week (and which is one of my favorite books), the antagonists clearly fall into the evil camp from the readers’ perspective, no matter how they try to justify their actions to themselves.In contrast, in the most well known virgin pregnancy story in the western world, that of the Virgin Mary, the reader ...

Of all her family members, my protagonist Tara’s stepdad, Pete, struggles the most with her supernatural pregnancy. When I was writing early drafts, though, Pete was so supportive that it made for dull reading.One suggestion I got to heighten the conflict was to show Pete feeling frustrated that he was raising this child who was not “his own.” This view would lead to him to be more impatient and disbelieving when Tara claimed to not know how she became pregnant.That would’ve been an easy place t...

I use a lot of real places—like the St. Louis Arch and a student hotel in Yerevan, Armenia—as settings in the Awakening Series.My favorite setting, though, is one I created: a former chapel known as the cloister. Danger looms there in Books 2 and 3 (no worries, no major spoilers below).A news report about snake handling, a visit to Pennsylvania, my family history, and a garden near the Art Institute in Chicago inspired it.Hidden PlacesMy dad grew up in Pennsylvania. One of my favorite thing...

Collyridians supposedly offered fresh-baked bread to Mary.Last week I wrote about the inspiration for the fringe religious order that plagues my main character, Tara, throughout The Awakening Series.Research and reading into traditional and controversial beliefs about the Virgin Mary also influenced The Awakening, though Tara's journey diverges widely from Mary's.(For one thing, Tara's not religious, and the series is not a religious series. Also, so far as I know, there are no ...

When I started The Awakening Series I had two “What Ifs” in mind:What if a (non-religious) young woman today claimed she was pregnant but had never had sex? What if a traditional religious group became convinced she would give birth to a messiah, but then learned the young woman's child would be a girl?While each of the four books in The Awakening Seriesfeatures a specific individual character as the antagonist, the real antagonist for the entire series is that religious group, the Brot...

We're not supposed to judge a book by its cover.All the same, I'm really pleased that the cover for The Illumination, the fourth and final book in my Awakening supernatural thriller series, was included in Kobo Writing Life's 10 Finalists for the Best Science Fiction and Fantasy covers of 2017. (Thank you to cover designer Chrissy from Damonza!)This poll also reminded me of a book I've been waiting for: Map of Shadows by J. F. Penn. I love Penn's London Crime Thriller se...

Please join me to celebrate releasing The Illumination, the finale of The Awakening series, and embracing life as a full-time author. We'll have an appetizer buffet, an Awakening trivia quiz, and a drawing.Prizes include an Amazon gift card and a chance to have a character named after you in my new Q.C. Davis mystery series.All four Awakening books will be available for sale.Where:  Sopraffina Market Cafe, 10 N. Dearborn Street, Chicago, IllinoisDate:   Thursday, September 21, 2017...

More than the other books in The Awakening Series, writing the fourth and final book, The Illumination, required pulling together many threads. It was like a giant puzzle as well as a novel.That made it fun. And challenging.It was also exciting because at last Tara Spencer comes face-to-face with the forces that caused her supernatural pregnancy. She learns the truth about her child's origin—and her own—and everything rests upon what she decides to do about it.Completing and launching the bo...

Did The Virgin Mary Influence The Supreme Court?In 2014, three corporations argued to the United States Supreme Court that paying premiums for health insurance made them a cause of abortions. Everyone - the Court, the government, and the corporations - agreed that the insurance didn't cover abortions. But it did, as the Affordable Care Act required, cover IUDs and emergency contraception.The shareholders of the corporations believed those methods of birth control were the same as abortions a...