If you had a chance to change something you created a decade ago, would you take it?  I have that opportunity as some of my older books are being reissued, and since I’ve been asked if the reissued books are identical to the originals, I thought I’d talk about that here. The truth is, it varies from book to book.

I didn’t change The Courage Tree at all, so if you find an old copy somewhere, the story should be identical to the reissue.  In Breaking the Silence, though, I made a small but significant change that I believe heightens the suspense and makes the outcome more suprising. A reader’s experience will be different if she reads the original vs the reissue. I did no updating of the story itself, though, because the CIA Mind Control Experiments drive everything that happens. Since those experiments really took place, I needed to stick to specific dates in the book.  

Summer’s Child, which was just released, has minimal changes. I did update the story a bit so that the styles of clothing, cars, etc, aren’t jarring to the reader. 

Right now, I’m rereading Cypress Point to see what I want to change and I’m playing with this one a bit more than the others. First, I have to say I adore this book as much as I did when I wrote it. It’s an intriguing, twisty, and throught-provoking story, if I do say myself. So what am I changing? Maybe I shouldn’t admit this, but what the heck: as I read Cypress Point, I find that something relatively minor about one of the characters is really bugging me and I plan to “fix” that person.  It seems so strange to tamper with a character who’s existed in one form for so long, but it also feels great to be able to make the book better. When I wrote Cypress Point, I was perfectly happy with the character, so what’s changed? Me. And my writing. This character needs some tweaking to bring him or her (not giving the identity away!) up to my 2010 standards. I believe it makes the character more believable and more sympathetic. There’s something else I’m altering, and that’s a love scene. Too graphic for my current taste. So if you love a steamier scene, you might want to stick with the original version!

If you’ve followed my blog for a while, you know my publisher wants to change the title of Cypress Point. I had strong reservations about this and I know some of my readers still do. I hope you can get past it because I finally have. My editor came up with a title I adore: The Shadow Wife. It fits the story incredibly well, and  I’ll do everything in my power to be sure my readers know that it was previously published under a different title. 

And finally, the original Cypress Point cover has always been one of my least favorites and I can’t wait to see what my publisher comes up with for the reissue.

So how about you? Do you wish you had a do-over on work you did ten years ago?

I’m not much of a believer in the occult, but I do love Tarot, not in any small part because the 78 cards in a Tarot deck can be so beautiful. There’s something undeniably fascinating in the symbols and images, and it’s easy to get caught up the magic.

My first reading was done by a real pro: author Nora Roberts. We were at the Washington Romance Writers’ annual retreat at the fabulous Hilltop House in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, and Nora was doing readings for her friends. I think she told me my marriage was destined to last forever. The next reading I had was by another fellow writer, the late, beautiful Virginia Ellis, shortly after my divorce.  Ha! So as I said, I’m not much of a believer, but I do believe in taking brainstorming help wherever I can get it, and a good Tarot Card reading–for a writers’ characters rather than for the writer herself–can jumpstart a scene, or even an entire book. 

Like Nora, Gin Ellis was a generous reader. At a Novelists, Inc conference in Santa Fe one year, she read for every major character in my work-in-progress. I learned one character’s deepest, darkest secret, why another was afraid to be a mother, and why yet another  chose his particular career. There are many, many other ways to brainstorm, but none as intriguing or fun as Tarot.

I’m aware of one book on Tarot specifically for writers (Tarot for Writers, by Corrinne Kenner), but I’m sure there are more, because writers have turned to Tarot over the years (over the centuries, since Tarot’s been around that long) to help them develop characters and story lines. 

Tarot came into play with my upcoming novel, The Lies We Told. I didn’t use it to help me brainstorm, but my characters themselves use it to. . .  well, I’ll wait until the book comes out to tell you!

So how about you? Have you ever had a Tarot reading?

I couldn’t put it off any longer. It’s been two years (at least) since my last photo shoot, so John and I headed to his studio for an hour of torture. . . er, fun. The new photo will be up on my site in a few weeks and on the cover of my June release, The Lies We Told, though I think I’ll keep these other two out of the public eye after this post!

When I decided to set Before the Storm and Secrets She Left Behind on Topsail Island, I never dreamed how important this place would become to me. From my very first research trip,  though, I knew I’d discovered something special. It reminded me of my childhood at the Jersey Shore and of my early adulthood on the Outer Banks. Like most coastal areas, it has way too many houses crammed together along the beach, but now with the purchase of my own oceanfront condo I’m part of the development, so I guess I can no longer complain! In spite of the wonderfully eclectic hodgepodge of homes, Topsail retains its away-from-everything charm. Just a few restaurants and shops and only one stoplight. It makes a perfect setting for my books– an area where everyone knows everyone else and where a tragedy and a mystery have an impact on all.

This has been our first visit to the condo, which I purchased after seeing it for only 5 minutes. It’s wonderful! It needs a little TLC and I’m looking forward to making it mine. It’s less than three hours from our home in the Raleigh area and is a perfect getaway. Keeper and Jet had never seen the beach before and after three days here, they’re still a little perplexed, but at least their ears are no longer flattened against their heads! John hasn’t taken his camera from his face since our arrival. I doubt he’ll ever get tired of photographing the island.

As for me. . . I have a simple, incredible, unexpected joy. As my frequent readers know, I have rheumatoid arthritis. It’s under very good control, but my left foot and ankle have a great deal of damage sustained before the “good drugs” came along. It’s hard for me to walk and impossible for me to walk on uneven surfaces, such as the beach. But a year ago, I had a brace made which is built into my sneaker and guess what? For the first time in about ten years,  I can walk on the beach! I’ve been overdoing it like crazy the past few days, and enjoying every sandy minute.

The other night, I couldn’t sleep. I was thinking about my next book, and the characters wouldn’t settle down inside my head. I got up and went out to the deck and lay down on the broad bench you see here in this picture. I listened to the sea while staring up at Orion and the three-quarter moon and thought about how lucky I am to be able to have homes in two places that I love, to be surrounded by the people (and animals) that I love, and to be able to do the work that I love.  My hope is that you, my readers, feel equally as lucky in your lives.

During my twenty-eight years of writing, I’ve heard plenty of advice from other authors. One tidbit stands out: tighten the relationship between characters. I know exactly where (in Albert Zuckerman’s Writing the Blockbuster Novel) and when (1995, as I wrote Reflection) I read this suggestion. It’s stayed with me all these years and I draw on it with every book I write.

I thought of how critical that piece of advice is recently, as I read Diane Setterfield’s The Thirteenth Tale, which I thoroughly enjoyed. In The Thirteenth Tale, the young female narrator is tasked with writing the biography of a popular elderly author. I would have found it difficult to care about either character, strangers to one another, had Setterfield not found a way to tie them together. She did this by making each woman a surviving twin: the elderly author had lost her twin in a fire, while the narrator had been a Siamese twin at birth, losing her sister during the surgery that separated them. The powerful impact “twinhood” had on each woman links them together and makes the story truly work.

When I was writing Reflection, one of my central characters, Michael, was in conflict with the town’s mayor, a woman. That was fine. But as I read Zuckerman’s book, I realized I could make the conflict better than fine: I made the mayor Michael’s cousin, instantly upping the tension as they butt heads during the story. In my recent reissue, The Courage Tree, the aging actress and the lost little girl seem to have completely unconnected storylines until their stories–and their survival–become inextricably linked. In my most recent novel, Secrets She Left Behind, the links are everywhere! Some of them surprised even me.

In my upcoming (November) re-release, Breaking the Silence, the major link is a mystery: A woman’s dying father asks her to take care of a stranger, an elderly woman with Alzheimers. Readers won’t know what the link is between the elderly woman and the protaganist’s father, but they’ll know it must exist and (I hope) they’ll want to keep turning the pages to discover exactly what it is.   

I’m thinking about this advice now as I work on the revisions of  my June 2010 book, The Lies We Told. The two central characters are linked not only by virtue of being sisters, but also because they’re doctors and even moreso because they shared the same harrowing situation from their adolescence.

As a writer, it’s fun to come up with new and intriguing ways to tie characters together, knowing that each link will pull the reader deeper into the story. If you’re a writer, think of how you can create new links between your characters. And if you’re a reader. . . just sit back and enjoy the story!

For years, my readers (and I) have been hoping that some of my older books would become available again. Now it’s finally happened, and the reissue of The Courage Tree is only the beginning. Breaking the Silence will be released late in the year, and next year, Summer’s Child and Cypress Point will hit the stores.

The Courage Tree is the story of a little girl who disappears during a camping trip and the desperate race against time to find her. (And one of the characters lives in a very cool treehouse. Okay, I know that’s not as important as ‘the desperate race against time’, but I love that treehouse!). Those of you who’ve alrady read the book will understand why the little girl, Sophie, is holding a tulip poplar blossom on the cover. And just a little inside scoop: the art director had no tulip poplar blossoms handy, so he (she?) combined two other flowers to create one. A great job, I think!

You can find The Courage Tree at your local bookstore or at Amazon.com or BarnesandNoble.com.  I hope you enjoy it and that you’ll let me know what you think once you’ve read it.