As I write my books, I often find my heroines at odds with the prevailing culture, usually in a desperate struggle to free themselves from some impossible situation. It’s that feeling that I always try to understand and explain. That desperation that I want to capture in my novels. How do they get into these situations? And why does the culture want to keep them there?

As often as I tackle new eras and new topics in my historical fiction, I never fail to be amazed by two things: how different we are from our historical sisters…and just how similar we are as well. Though we’ve come so far in terms of social and political rights, our worst enemy in many cases is still that secret, inner self who focuses on personal weaknesses instead of personal strengths and wishes that we could just be like everybody else. But therein lies the key to our self-made prisons: there is no Everybody Else. Everybody Else is you and I and those just like us. Like my characters, we all need to learn that the only person you really have to be is you… Continue reading →