Authors are often asked how they choose the setting for their stories to unfold. In my case, the answer is simple…because I live there. I’m a New Yorker.

I was born and raised in Yonkers, NY on the border of the Bronx—one of New York City’s five boroughs. I attended high school and college in the Bronx, and Graduate School in the heart of Manhattan. New York is my blood. Its heartbeat is my heartbeat. I've walked the neighborhoods and streets I write about, have gone to the restaurants, clubs and parks my characters do. My characters speak, act, and gesture like native New Yorkers, because like me, that’s just what they are.

A long time ago I took a creative writing class as a freshman at Fordham University, and one of the things I remember most was how my professor would repeatedly tell us, “Good writers write what they know.” So, there you have it.
Now, I also make sure that my characters share my love of travel and language.

Every destination, from the rocky coast of Maine to Manhattan's underground clubs in Hunter's Blood and Twice Cursed, to the European cities in Blood Legacy, book three in the Cursed by Blood Series, are places I have been, many times more than once. Language also plays a dimensional role in my books. So far I've included Spanish and French speaking vampires, and will introduce other nationalities as the series continues. Book four, The Lion's Den, will take us on a journey from New York to Mexico, to the Native American Tribes of Northern California and the Sierra Nevada Mountains, but regardless of where my books take us, our home base will always be the City that Never Sleeps.