BIO
I live with my husband, Todd, in a log cabin on a small farm in Indiana. My parents live just down the lane from us, at the end of a ridge above farm ground where our dogs and cats enjoy the good life. Our hound dog Griz, shown in the photo, is just as loveable and lazy as Chester. He’s the only character in the series based on a real being.
The other photos are of our small farm in Liberty, a quaint town roughly the same size as Artemis, Texas, my fictional second home. The open-fire fried chicken is part of an annual Labor Day party we host in the woods - camping and cooking and eating too much. Like Josie, I’d rather spend my time outside than in.
The family photo is my husband and I, and our daughters, Molly and Emily. In June of 2012, we took a research trip to West Texas and then drove up through parts of New Mexico, Arizona and Colorado. The cave was in Colorado, just outside Durango.
ABOUT THE SERIES
The Territory represents a three hundred mile strip of land along the West Texas-Mexico border that crisscrosses the Rio Grande. It’s a place where families on either side of the border once crossed at will: a place now lost to drug traffickers and cartels. The Territory is also the first book in the series, and it sets up the premise for all of the books: what is life along the border like, for the good people of Mexico and West Texas, who want a safe place to raise their families without fear of cartel interference?
The series is fiction, and so by definition takes the mundane and makes it more; however, the situations in any of the books could happen tomorrow. Our Border Patrol and local law enforcement along the border deserve incredible praise for the work they do, and for the level of security they provide US citizens. To the people who give the Border Patrol a hard time - take a look at the crime statistics in Juarez, Mexico. Then take a look at the crime stats for El Paso, Texas – the sister city to Juarez. Then go thank a cop.
I dislike politics, dislike talking about politics, and have no desire to write about it in my books. It’s the people in the region, facing the what-if’s of a country on the brink of disaster, that fuels the series. Cartel drug trafficking, illegal gun sales, human trafficking, kidnapping… conflict.