A Chaotic 3-State Family #Vacation - #BethanyBeach #HarpersFerry #Chesapeake

So, I've been living out of a suitcase for eight days now, staying at three different houses in three different states.  Of course I feel very fortunate to have been able to take a 10-day vacation full of stops to see family and friends.  But I'm starting to miss my house and my pets!  We've had a lot of fun so far, with many adventures along the way.  For most of the week, we've been with our best friends and their kids, combining two families of four into a chaotic group of eight.  At the beginning of the week, my girlfriend stumbled across an article in the Huffington Post that had us all rolling with laughter: Vacation or Trip? A Helpful Guide for Parents.  We had to all agree we were, most definitely, on a "trip".

The kids in the ocean at Bethany.
We all were in at some point,
trying to beat the heat.

But it's been a trip full of adventures, and long drives, with plenty of family memories forming along the way.  We began Sunday evening in Bethany Beach, Delaware, a beautiful town with a great book store that hosts me for annual book signings.  We stayed over on the bay side, packing our eight, one friend, and one dog into the house.  The weather was sunny and very HOT...a heat index of 104 degrees one day.  That was, of course, the day the air conditioning broke.

So our trip to take the kids to the Rehoboth Boardwalk was delayed one day, due to an emergency repair on the AC, but we did get them there, returning home with a ton of candy and cheap prizes from the arcade games.  In a strange coincidence, my younger son woke up the next day with a very upset stomach and threw up all morning.  Thankfully, it was not a stomach bug that traveled through the group!  He was on the mend by the time we arrived Wed. afternoon in Leesburg, Virginia, the beautiful hometown of our friends.  Aside from enjoying the pool and restaurants, we went into wine country to antique one day.  Oh, and we decided a visit to Harper's Ferry, West Virginia, would be a good opportunity to try our hand at white water tubing.  We should have learned our lesson after our previous visit to the same area for what's now known as the "Zip Lining Disaster of 2013".  All I can say is it's nearly impossible to keep eight people together without ropes, which are not permitted, on a river with strong currents and a mind of its own.  There was some panicked moments of missing the correct path, some frustrated moments of getting stuck, and a lot of hilarious moments involving trying to get back into tubes we'd abandoned after one of those panicked or frustrated moments.

One of my favorite stops - an antique market near the
setting of my YA novel DIVINE FALL

By Sunday, we were stopping in Potomac, Maryland, for lunch with more family members before heading to my sister's neighborhood on the Chesapeake Bay.  I get to enjoy time with my little nieces and try to sneak in a little bit of relaxation.  My sister and I love spooky ghost movies (and they help inspire the haunting mysteries in my novels) so we'll marathon a few (we watched "It Follows" last night).  Then our "trip" will be capped off tomorrow with a big soccer game at FedEx Stadium - Chelsea (my oldest son's favorite team) will play Barcelona (my younger son's favorite team), and I'm not really sure where we can safely sit with the boys wearing jerseys from opposing teams.  Wednesday will bring us back to Cape Cod...the end of the journey will be a little sad, but coming home is always a wonderful feeling as well!  Until I have to start on that giant bag of laundry...

Book Signing at #BethanyBeach! #amwriting #suspense #romance #beachreads

What a thrill to see my novels
in such esteemed company!

I'm thrilled to be headed back to Bethany Beach Books this May for another book signing!  Last year, this event was so much fun. I arrived in Bethany to see my books in the window, on the same shelf as Gone Girl and Cuckoo's Calling, two bestselling novels. Banners and signs advertised the event, and I got to meet a lot of people and sign a lot of books!  This year, I have a new book to sign - the Young Adult Paranormal Romance DIVINE FALL.

I grew up in Maryland, and I spent many vacations and weekends at the Maryland and Delaware beaches (Rehoboth, Dewey, Indian River Inlet, Bethany, Ocean City).  Now I live near a completely different set of beaches, on Cape Cod, MA.  During the summer, there's at least one wedding every weekend at the beach we frequent...the sand and sea make for a wonderfully romantic setting.  And at night, the moonlight playing over the vast expanse of endless ocean creates a mysterious and ethereal panorama.  Since my novels combine romance with spooky suspense, it seems fitting that two of them take place near the beach.

The ghost story/reunion romance SILVER LAKE is set on the sandy shores of a lake in Connecticut.  Another ghost story and steamy romance, the #1 Kindle Bestseller GULL HARBOR, is set along the Cape Cod National Seashore.

But DIVINE FALL is different, and not just because the protagonist is a teenager and the paranormal element involves Nephilim instead of a desperate spirit.  This book is set in the rural area of Maryland at the base of the Blue Ridge Mountains--an area rich in Civil War history, with wooded trails and horse farms spread out amongst the fields and valleys.  Growing up, my family was lucky enough to have good friends living on one of these farms, and many of my best childhood memories take place there.

So as the plot of DIVINE FALL grew in my imagination, the setting I pictured was the stable in which I spent countless hours of my childhood.  I loved horses, loved to ride, and 16-year-old Jamie finds her only solace at the barn where she boards her horse, Beau, after tragedy tears her life apart.  But when a mysterious new stable hand shows up, she soon becomes ensnared in his dangerous plans.  And Dothan, a Fallen angel with nothing left to lose, will soon have to make a choice...continue on his quest for revenge, or protect the human girl he's grown to love.

I'm hoping the Maryland setting will entice readers to take a quick break from the beach on Saturday and head over to the boardwalk to pick up a copy of my latest book!  If you're in the area, come by and say hi - I love to connect with readers and writers.  And you can always order any of my books--in print or for Kindle, Nook, or iPad, online!  Just click the book title tabs at the top of the blog, and the links are all there for all the major retailers.  Happy reading!