Hi, Dian!

Thanks for tuning in. I hope you're feeling better soon!

Yes, I do visit each place I write about. In "The China Conspiracy", there's a scene of an attempted kidnapping at Iron Bridge Park in Chesterfield, VA at midnight. I actually went to the park, scouted out the best place for the kidnapping to take place, took pictures, and recorded every aspect so it was depicted exactly as it truly exists. But I had several scenes at a ski resort near Staunton and Waynesboro, VA, where the resort didn't come off looking too well (a dead body found and a successful kidnapping) so that location was a composite of several ski resorts.

In a real twist, I asked Marc Woolverton of the Manassas City Police Dept to help me locate an area in Northern Virginia where a dead body would throw the government into beaurocratic wrangling over jurisdictions... And he found the perfect place for a body to wash up from the Potomac, and even sent me aerial photographs! When I wrote that scene, I even used street addresses so the reader could find their way to that exact location. It is in Fairfax County, but on federal property, so it would possibly fall into Park Police territory, but the FBI has jurisdiction over homicides on federal property, and the body had a laptop strapped to her that the CIA wanted desperately to get their hands on... So it was the perfect spot! I gave special thanks to Sgt. Woolverton for that information. I depend a lot on police officers, FBI, and CIA employees (past and present) to lend a lot of realism to my books.

You also asked how much of my personality is in the main characters. Very little. In "Kickback", the main character has a lot more guts than I do, and doesn't mind living life on the edge. In "The China Conspiracy", I don't know if I would have had the guts to do what Kit does in getting her son back... and then turning the tables on the bad guys.

In fact, because "Kickback" started with something that really happened to me, I originally wrote the story with a male main character. But when early reviewers read the book, they said it reminded them so much of John Grisham's "The Firm" that I should change the main character to a female. I have mixed feelings about doing that; I don't know why that was necessary, simply because it reminded people of Grisham's early works... But so many people love Sheila that I am writing a sequel about her now. In one scene, Sheila actually drives through David's Bridge and meets Bailey, Pamela June Kimmell's main character in "The Mystery of David's Bridge". We are in the process of collaberating on that scene; many thanks to Pam for allowing me to introduce her fantastic character Bailey, into one of my books!