What was the first Western historical novel you remember reading?
There were so many great western romance authors in that way-back time!  I can’t remember the first one I read.  Johanna Lindsey was one of my early favorites.  I loved Brenda Joyce's Bragg Series.  Then of course there was Catherine Anderson's work.  In fact, it's because of Catherine Anderson's Cheyenne Amber that I moved my family from the East Coast to Cheyenne, Wyoming so that I could write western romances!

What do you like about Western Historical Romances versus other genres?
I like how raw and elemental characters can be.  Pioneer life in the Old West was ¾ survival and ¼ civilization.  You get to see people at their best...and their worst!

What made you decide to pick up writing again?
I’m not sure I ever really stopped writing.  At least, I never stopped telling myself stories even if I didn’t put pen to paper for long stretches of time.  Those stories are now seeing the light of day in my Men of Defiance series.  While my kids were little and I was building my programming career, I found I couldn’t be superwoman--Mom, career girl, author at night...  And then, when my son was in the Army and at war, I was too worried to be creative.  But when my son’s time with Army was finished and the kids were both grown and gone, I found I had lots of time to finally build my dream career.  I’m having a blast with the work now!

What part of the writing process do you enjoy most when you write—the research? creating the characters? developing the plot? providing the historical context?
All of it!  This might sound crazy, but I don’t create the characters I write about.  They exist, and I simply try to document them as truthfully as I can.  And boy, they let me know if I’m trying to cram them into a plot that violates their personalities!

Tell us about your new book, Audrey and the Maverick.
I loved this story!  Audrey is a sweet but tough woman born in the Dakota Territory.  Her father died of wounds he received in the Civil War.  Her mother died shortly afterward, leaving 16 year-old Audrey to raise her younger brother and the orphans her mother had started taking in.  By the time the story begins, she has eight orphans that she tries to hide from the hero, Julian McCaid (who, by the way, hates children!).  Julian has his own scars.  It takes these two a while to discover that they are meant to be together!

If you were to choose two actors to play Julian and Audrey, who would they be and why?
Julian is easy--he’s the actor, Clint Walker (remember the old T.V. series, Cheyenne?) Six and half feet of hunky half-Cherokee.  Oh yeah.  Audrey is a lovely young lady I encountered when she was working as a waitress in a restaurant here in Colorado.  I absolutely need a physical representation of my characters in order to bring them alive in my stories.  When I saw Audrey’s look-alike, I knew just how to write her.

This is a trilogy isn’t it? Can you tell us what are some of the challenges and rewards of writing a trilogy and a little about the final book?
The Men of Defiance is an on-going series.  I’ve just accepted an offer from my publisher for two more books in the series which will be out in 2011 and 2012.  I’m thrilled that the series gets to continue.  These stories are so alive to me, that even if had I not sold the stories, I would have had to write them so that I could get the characters to quiet down. 

But there certainly are challenges to writing a series.  The second and third books (Audrey and the Maverick and Leah and the Avenger) occur at nearly the same time.  It was tricky to make sure the pieces that needed to be seen in the 3^rd book were properly set-up in the 2^nd book.  All the books in this series can be read independently.  I think there’s nothing more frustrating to a reader than to come into a series mid-way and not understand some of the existing story lines.  I take care to make sure each story is self-encapsulated.  I love getting to see the previous books’ characters in each subsequent book.

What are some of your favorite western romances by other authors?
Anything by Catherine Anderson, Joan Johnston, Jodi Thomas, Linda Lael Miller, so many more...  I love any story with a strong emotional component, and those authors have that mastered!

And finally, western historical romances are unique to the American experience. Any lessons we could learn from those who tamed the Old West?
Absolutely.  Hard work is not only rewarding, it gets the job done.  You can do what you set your mind to.  A person’s word means something.  A handshake is as good as ink on paper.  Kindness to strangers goes a long way.  A fool is a fool no matter what you call him.  People of different creeds, cultures and religions give the world a little variety...  The list of homilies is endless--and elementally truthful.  In the Old West, wrongs happened, rights happened, and the world changed with mind-blowing speed.