This post from Lisa marks the end of her Blue Haven book tour! Want to check out all the stops on the tour? Head on over to Pump Up Your Book for a full list of the blogs. Thank you for joining us and don't forget to pick up your copy of Blue Haven from your favorite retailer. My newest novel, Blue Haven, is a twisty sci-fi psychological thriller about a young woman named Aloe who moves into the world’s newest and most exclusive tropical housing community, Blue Haven, where h

I'm a bit - quirky. I ride a motorcycle. A lot. I rode 100,000 miles behind my husband before learning to ride my own. I've since logged 100,000 miles on my two: A red BMW R100M named 'Elvis,' and a bumblebee yellow BMW R1100 named, 'Sting.' Oddly enough, motorcycling actually led me to writing. Back when I rode behind my husband, I'd prop a paperback on his back and read during the boring stretches. But you can only read so long, and eventually my mind would wander. Wisps of

Famed scientist Stephen Hawking has accelerated his estimate for the demise of the planet Earth and us. No, seriously, he did. Instead of a thousand years, he now believes we have one-hundred years to find a new home. A new home? Yeah, I guess I should have said a new world. He thinks we will destroy this one pretty soon. Now a thousand years was nothing to sneeze at. Ten centuries ago, we were still shooting bows and arrows and killing people with swords. However, I think it

I still recall the day I ran into a classmate in college and asked her why she was beaming a megawatt smile. She told me she had just officially declared her major: mathematics. She said, “You know how, when you study a foreign language and you reach a certain level of proficiency, you start thinking in that language? Well, last night I was lying in bed and I realized I was thinking in math.” Her description stayed with me. I had never before acknowledged the fact that I thin

A preamble, then we’ll amble: I’ve had what I consider to be four careers, and they’ve lain together haphazardly, overlapping in some ways and standing free in others. I was a newspaperman before I was a novelist, then I was both of those things together, then I ditched the newspaper life while I kept writing and started freelancing, then I became a particular kind of pipeline worker (1) while writing and freelancing, then I returned to journalism, this time on the digital si

The audience settles. House lights dim. The curtain opens. The stage lights come up. On the stage, an opulent den. Big cushy leather chairs opposite an ornate desk. Well-stocked bookshelves along the wall. A globe on a stand. A character enters stage left. He reaches into his waistband and pulls out a revolver. He slides open the drawer and places the gun in, and slides it closed. I guarantee you, from that moment on, everyone in the theater is focused on that drawer. The spe

Summer stories have always been significant in our lives—not just the ones in novels and movies, but the real ones, especially the ones we lived as teenagers. Whether good, bad, heart-breaking, cataclysmic, or cathartic, those are the special stories that often define the rest of our lives. Without doubt, the summer I was 15 shaped me forever. It was the year I lost my family. We spent most of that season at a cabin on a lake up in Canada. My parents were in the early stage o

Recently I spent some time with a young moms’ group. As I talked, toddlers swirled around us, and a few moms nursed babies. I’d had the chance to speak to this group in the past about raising healthy eaters, affording to eat organically, and keeping a green household. When their leader approached me to talk about writing, I was intrigued. I’ve talked to lots of groups about writing, but this wasn’t a group of writers. This was a group of busy moms who were in the trenches of

A few titles came to mind for this blog before I settled on “Hot Off the Desk.” I considered My Musings, Monthly Message, My Thoughts, and a few others that were just as awful. I like the chosen title as it gives a sense of what this blog will be. “Hot Takes” if you will. In the moment thoughts that hit me while sitting at my desk. Bam! That’s it. No more, no less. Hopefully these thoughts will encourage, excite, or edify! Time will tell. Also, I should probably admit up fron

A booth at a diner in Jersey, the knee knocker seat on the LIRR, or on my lap sitting in a chaise on the beach in Puerto Rico, even in a hotel room at a writer’s conference. All these admittedly non-romantic settings in which I have penned much of my 6 published novels, 4 number ones, and three pending manuscripts, have one thing in common. A space that, beyond everything else, allowed me to write, compose, imagine, edit, polish, and author a manuscript. That space can best b