I have now had my 5th genre published.  I am excited about that. More so by the competition I am running in relation to it.  Sam King the 'author' of my novel is an anagram of masking.  This is in relation to the signature serial killer in the novel.   The novel is inspired by Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, Tam O'Shanter by Robert Burns, Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose and much more.…

   I'm primarily an author, but I enjoy working in business, too. My husband and I buy closeouts from major U.S. manufacturers and resell them to discount stores. When the dollar stores gained popularity years back, U.S. manufacturers couldn’t compete with the off-brand imitations being sold for a…

We’ve all heard the saying ‘life imitating art’ and it definitely fits some instances.  I’d like to think that we’ve only scratched the surface of original fiction stories, but sometimes reality beats us to the punch.

I’m going to take you back a few years, before I wrote my first crime fiction novel…

It is often thought that police forensics has been a relatively new contribution to interpreting, reconstructing, and solving crimes in our society.  Quite the contrary, police forensics, or more accurately described as forensic science, has been a part of history for more than a hundred…

At a recent author event, an audience member asked me how I keep upbeat when most of my writing revolves around troubled souls who get into trouble.  The most obvious answers come to mind. I have a husband who pulls me away from the computer. I have kids to attend to. I have a great group of friends to have fun with. The most honest answer, however, comes from deep within. Simply put: I don't think delving into darkness is a bad thing.

Have you ever met someone who you know…

The next installment in the Award Winning Emily Stone Series.  It's a stand alone novel, even thought it's part of a series.  Special pricing through the holidays.

A Serial Killer Plagues an Island Paradise

Vigilante detective Emily Stone continues her covert pursuits to find serial…

DNA is extremely complex, but we hear the word “DNA” almost on a daily basis in the news and on crime shows.  In 1986, DNA was first officially used to solve a crime of two young girls raped and murdered in the English Midlands.  Today, DNA is commonplace in criminal investigations and court proceedings to link a suspect to the crime and to exonerate the innocent who have been wrongfully…

From any crime show that we’ve viewed on television or in the movies, there is that moment where the evidence matches and the suspect is then brought to justice.  They make it seem so easy and it only take a few moments.  It’s definitely much more complicated than it looks and the forensic professionals who make that positive distinction are nothing less than exemplary in their…

As our forensic scientists continue to develop new technology that will aid in accurately identifying the perpetrators of violent acts, we can hope that the guilty will face the day of justice that they deserve and the innocent will remain free.  However, even with…

One of the most common complaints about mystery novels is that they’re unrealistic. It’s just not believable, the nay-sayers say, for an amateur sleuth to solve a crime that baffles the experts. But a 1980s case from the Australian Outback shows the assumptions upon which that claim is based, and disproves them.

Uluru, also known as Ayers Rock, is a huge sandstone…

The men and women who work in the field of forensic science are always discovering new ways to use available evidence and piece together clues that will bring criminals to justice.  What we are able to learn using DNA samples was unheard of a generation ago, and is allowing us to revisit some cases that have gone unsolved for decades.  This is certainly true with…

It is often thought that police forensics has been a relatively new contribution to interpreting, reconstructing, and solving crimes in our society.  Quite the contrary, police forensics, or more accurately described as forensic science, has been a part of history for more than a…

Most commonly, it’s the perpetrator’s fingerprints that land him or her in jail. But in the kidnapping of Charles Urschel, it was the victim’s fingerprints that lead to the capture of a notorious Prohibition era gangster.

The crime

Charles F. Urschel, oil millionaire and philanthropist, and his wife Berenice were entertaining their friends, the Jarretts, at the Urschels’ Oklahoma City home with a game of bridge on July 22, 1933, when two bandits armed…

TV shows like CSI are entertaining, but they give an unrealistic impression of how evidence is really collected and how crime scenes are managed. Catching crooks isn't easy--it takes a lot of work and effort on the part of the police and the lab.