A contemporary romance is built mostly around the romance. A romantic suspense is half romance, half suspense, where the couple gets together in the end, but the mystery is also concluded.

Also, the contemporary genre, in my opinion, doesn’t have a true villain, someone out to destroy the main characters, in a way that romantic suspense does. One of my favorite contemporary authors' books, Susan Elizabeth Philips, are a perfect example of this.

In the writing that you're doing, who'd you say has influenced you the most?

My mother, though she isn’t here anymore and died when I was 15, before I truly knew I wanted to write.

She wanted to be a writer but I never knew how much until I started reading her journals after her death. She got sick when she was young and she wrote, off and on, for years up until she died.

We lived in a small town and in that day and age, information was harder to come by. We never talked about our writing dreams, so I’m not sure why she never got around to publishing some of the things she was writing. A lot of people don’t ever get around to fulfilling their dreams because of the lives they lead and duties they have or their fears that they just aren’t good enough. That’s one of the reasons I decided to go for it... because I didn’t want to regret not pursuing my dreams.

How have your personal experiences influenced the direction of your writing?

Personal experiences are a huge part of my writing, not necessarily in what happens in my books but in what I’ve learned in this world. Creating characters, creating plots and subplots, creating emotions. I can always pull a part of my personal experiences into my writing.

I love to listen to people and consider learning about their individuality, a huge experience. I’ve taken aspects of the knowledge I’ve gained about people and put them into my characters. Most of my legal knowledge has stemmed from my full-time job, because I work for the district attorney and have done so now for nine years. Every experience can be a learning experience, if you let it.

What are your main concerns as a writer?

Time... if I’m good enough to sustain a writing career... getting my name out there and promoting myself (which is the hardest part of what I do because I'm very modest).

There’s always the fear that you have only one story to tell, and others won’t come afterwards (though the voices in my head don’t stop.) It’s difficult, because I actually have a full-time career and do my writing on the side, so it takes a lot of time management, self-discipline and giving up things you might want to do, like enjoying a summer day at the lake.