Karen's story
Out of Ideas started as a hedge. No, not as a line of closely-spaced shrubs. It was meant to be insurance, in case Amy Painter didn’t gain much traction – a love story evolving out of abuse and despair. But, let’s start at the beginning.
A friend and I were attending the airshow in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. It is held every year, an enormous undertaking involving hundreds of airplanes, thousands of people and – truth to tell – one giant aviation party. We had been there a few days when an aircraft crashed off the airport grounds, killing the pilot. Tragic.
We were driving back to Denver when it happened. What if…a police woman in an abusive relationship, stuck in rural Wisconsin when she’d prefer to be back in a big city, arrives first at the crash. The NTSB investigator, a divorced guy, sees this as straightforward loss of control. She believes there is something amiss. Is she grasping at straws?
AMY's story
Amy Painter is a small-city police supervisor in fictional Flatiron Valley, Colorado, a woman at peace with herself. Her stable, fulfilling marriage, rambunctious four-year-old son, and meaningful, exciting job provide all of the thrills and chills a girl could want – who wouldn’t be happy? Unfortunately, her husband Ken, a successful aerospace engineer, isn’t the only person who longs for her.
CICI's story
It’s hard enough to be twenty-six and wonder if you go to work every day to do your job, or to invest in a career. It’s quite another to be faced with a dilemma that continues to haunt law enforcement and military alike – when is a lawful order impossible to follow.
Cici is that, and more. Athletic, strong-willed, and an introvert comfortable in her own skin. Her future is far from secure. She’s trying to fit in at a profession that doesn’t exactly bend over backward to respect women. A past relationship poisons her desire to let love find her. She refuses to give up, even under extreme conditions, until she can take no more.
I wanted to create a character who would put principle above her own needs… Up to a point. Does she wait too long, or buckle too soon. It is up to the reader to decide.
Writing is a solitary pursuit where introverts pretend to be extroverts just long enough for others to reveal themselves. Then we retreat into our own little worlds.
One might reasonably conclude, given the biographical information contained on the back covers of my books, that I am outgoing, superbly confident and, when the mood strikes, raucously gregarious. I am. It is all an act.
In fact, I am a painfully shy introvert
