I knew when I started my new thriller, THE LITTLE GIRL IN THE WINDOW, I wanted to include the current pandemic in some way. By the time I began writing, I'd been living in the thick of it for a year and a half. At the very beginning of it, I was still writing my last thriller, THE LAST STAR STANDING, and just couldn't see my way to including the world's circumstances, though I multiple times considered how I could try to assimilate it into the story.

Now I was ready. In fact, there was no other way I could have written the story. It would have seemed extremely odd not to. Plus, it gave my characters the perfect excuse to flee the city and head to a town where a terrible past mistake haunts them both.

For those of you understandably thinking, "Oh god noooooo. I don't want to hear about the pandemic!" I like to think I did a good job of incorporating it as one might any setting or circumstances, as if the pandemic was an island, or a storm, or a university. It's in the background but also provides motivation and plot points, such as how my heroine, Romy, ends up with a dog.

So if you are wary about a book that incorporates the pandemic, I urge you to give my thriller a try.

The Little Girl in the Window is available on Amazon and other retailers Oct. 1.