With three books out in the Mattie Winston series and a fourth coming next fall, I am finally (belatedly) trying to update my author information here. And I thought I'd start off this blog with a story about how the whole Mattie Winston series came to be.

In the late eighties to early nineties I went back to school to get my bachelor's degree and I ended up taking an independent study sociology class. I was working as a hospice nurse at the time and I was both fascinated and fearful of death. So I decided to fashion my study around the sociological aspects and traits of people who work with death and dying on a day-to-day basis. It involved interviewing and spending on-the-job time with homicide detectives, medical examiners, funeral home workers, and hospice employees. The one that worried me the most was the medical examiner because I'd never seen an autopsy done before. I had seen and cared for dead people, and observed several surgeries during my nursing career, but I was afraid the inside of a dead body would smell so bad that I might wuss out and get sick, or worse, faint.

When the time finally came, I steeled myself for my reaction once the incision was made. I mouth breathed for a few seconds before taking my first sniff. Much to my surprise (and relief), the inside of this dead body didn't smell all that different from the inside of a live one.

In the next instant, my writer mind went, "Oh, my, that would make a great opening line for a book!" I tucked it away and saved it for when the moment was right.

It was ten years, three published thrillers, and a move to Wisconsin later before that first line grew into a book. It is the only one of my books written that way; all the others came out of a basic "what if?" scenario and the characters were added in where needed after the plots were developed. But the Mattie Winston series evolved from taking that one first line and figuring out what type of character would think it, and why. Everything else built from there, and it's been one heck of a fun ride for me ever since.