When I'm beginning a new book, I go into planning mode. I always set up a 3-ring binder notebook, so I have my information in physical form where it cannot get lost or deleted. In this binder, I make up my main characters, my core conflicts, my theme and also the main points of the plot and setting. Once I have those in place, I map out the chapters which includes how the main characters develop and change as the story unfolds. Then, I simply go chapter by chapter and write the book. I'm always going back to previous chapters to plant bits and pieces that will come up later, to create continuity and forward momentum. My writing day is chaotic. I often get up at 3 am and write until 6 or 7 in the morning. I might write again in the afternoon or I might wait for the next day. The first draft is the most challenging for me. Once I have that first draft finished, editing is one of my favorite parts. I can usually complete a novel in 3-5 months.

I'm always prospecting for story ideas. Most of the time, they come from my own life events or events in the lives of my friends and family. Over the 30 years I have been writing, I have come to see that truth is really stranger than fiction. I love taking unusual and gripping events from real life, creating a fiction setting and fiction characters around that core idea and watching a multi-layered story emerge. The main thing I do to come up with ideas is to simply pay attention to what's happening around me.

Write what's in your heart. Learn the craft of writing by taking great writing courses and reading classic books on creating stories. For example, Story by Robert McKee. Then just write it. You will only learn how to write by writing. Another technique I teach to my writing students is to type out conversations from good books. If you type out the material, you get the feeling of what it's like to be a writer and create that caliber of writing. If you simply read the passage, you are approaching it from the vantagepoint of the reader. Type out the character descriptions, the beginnings and the endings that you find gripping. This is a writing exercise you will delete later, but type things out that strike you as good material and get a feeling for them.

My 43rd book is coming out in the fall. 27 of those are mystery novels and 16 of those were ghostwriting for clients. My favorite is Colorado, a 4 book series that contains my first book, Megan's Choice. I loved those characters so much that when I finished writing the series, I grieved. I missed them. They were that real to me. That series, Colorado, has been my biggest seller to date. 250,000 copies sold. I have won awards for other books and had books that sold 90,000 copies, but Colorado stays at the top of my list.

For my Christy Winner, Reaping the Whirlwind, the story is interesting. Between 1998-2000 I wrote this historical mystery, which took place north of Chattanooga in a small town called Dayton. It was 1925 Landmark case involving William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow, very famous people of the day. I was very active in my writing career at the time, rolling out one, two, sometimes three books a year. Our family was traveling at the time visiting family, and we had nothing to do one evening. Somebody called up to say, “There's a seminar over the University of Delaware that’s open to the public. Would you want to go?” We said, “Okay, we don't have anything to do and it would let our children see the campus. While we were there, the speaker mentioned as an aside, “The Scopes trial was a complete sham. Nothing that you see in the movie Inherit the Wind, or in the history books was true.” Now he had my full attention. I checked out the biographies of the three main players: William Jennings Bryan, Clarence Darrow and John Scopes, and I spent the rest of our visit reading those biographies. I found out that speaker was right. The case was a sham. All three biographies agreed exactly. The case was set up by the ACLU because Tennessee just passed the law against teaching evolution in the schools. This was the first time in the US that had happened. The ACLU put out an ad in the local papers in Tennessee saying, We're looking for a test case. If you taught Evolution in a public school, we want to talk to you to see if you could be our test case to take this to the Supreme Court. Dayton, Tennessee, is little town north of Chattanooga, and it was a failing mining town. The city fathers got together and they said, “Hey, we got a chance to bring this case to Dayton. Wouldn't that be great? Can you imagine all the excitement? We would have so many people in town and the media would be here. That could put Dayton on the map.” So they thought about who they could call in. First, the called in the high school biology teacher. He immediately said, “Absolutely not. I have children. If I put myself into that case, my family’s reputation would be ruined forever. I won’t do it.” So they said, “Who else?” The biology teacher said, “Well, John Scopes substituted for me one day, but he didn’t teach evolution. I didn’t even have evolution in my lesson plans last year.” They said, “It doesn’t matter. Let’s get John in here.” So, they sent a boy to fetch John from the tennis court. John Scopes was a first-year teacher. He was in his early twenties and he taught Physical Education. John Scopes came in all sweaty, and the men told him the wanted him to stand in as the teacher who taught Evolution in Dayton’s only high school. They reminded him that he had substituted for Biology class one time. He said, “Well, I didn't teach Evolution. I don't even know what evolution is about.” They said, “It doesn't matter. We're just going to set the case up, and all you have to do is sit in the defendant’s chair.” He said, “Okay. Can I have a soda?” and they brought him a soda. That man’s life was ruined when the case was over. He ended up moving to Brazil and started a whole new life in Brazil to get away from what he faced here in the US. John Scopes never taught Evolution. He was not a young idealistic activist. No he was just a young teacher. Also, the prosecution actually coached the witnesses to testify against John, to lie on the stand. That's validated. I saw the videos of the three boys who were coached. When those men were in their 60s and 70s someone in Dayton recorded a video interviewing them to record the history. Those men told about how they sat in the backseat of a car and someone coached them what to say on the stand because they have no idea what Evolution was. They never heard it before and they never had it in school. The defense wanted John to be convicted, so they can take the law to the Supreme Court. Of course, once word got out, the big names got wind of it. There was promotion galore and everyone wanted a piece of the pie. The ACLU didn't want Clarence Darrow. They had their own legal team, and they wanted their team to do it. Clarence Darrow went to New York and said, “I'm going to be the lead on this case because I said so, and they let him in. He was kind of like window dressing because their team was actually running the defense. Then William Jennings Bryan showed up. He wasn't even practicing law at the time. He was selling real estate in Florida. So, one of the humorous elements of the book is to highlight some of these people and why they were in town. I traveled to Dayton twice and met with Dr. Richard Cornelius who was the local historian at Bryan College. He's passed away now, but he took me he took me in his personal car and drove me to stop and point out certain locations, like “This happened at that spot and that person lived in this house.” He literally opened the world to me. He had files and files of original artifacts. He took me to his office and gave me advice about how to make it accurate because I wanted it to be absolutely accurate. Then, he read the entire four-hundred-page manuscript and wrote an endorsement for the book as well. I was so grateful to find someone of that caliber dedicated his life to collecting this history and preserving it who was willing to help me. Along with the factual events of the trial, I created a serial killer who was active during the trial for interest and to show the end result of this whole philosophy discussion. I several God movements in the whole process.

I write in the early morning hours when the world is quiet. Traffic is sparse and even the barking dogs quiet down in the hours before dawn. I need a desk chair that is comfortable because I spend hours and hours in it. I also need an ottoman to put up my feet when I want to. Comfort is important. Otherwise, your creativity gets derailed thinking about your aching back or your cold feet. I need space to lay open my various notebooks, printouts and resources. I always have an array of books and papers around me, including fiction books from the time period or the culture that I'm writing.