Welcome Cindy to A Romance Review. I'm happy that you are taking the time for this interview out of your busy schedule.

Let's begin with something easy. Will you tell us a little about yourself?

Well, I grew up in Michigan on a horse farm. I got to ride and show beautiful horses, but I had to earn it by mucking stalls! I dropped out of high school when I was fifteen to go to the University of Michigan, which was one of the best decisions I ever made. I loved the intellectual stimulation of a college. One of the worst decisions I ever made was not staying there for five or six years to study more things that interested me.

But, I was in a hurry and ran off at 19 to become an Air Force pilot. I wanted to be an astronaut. However, after meeting a number of astronauts as I entered that pipeline, I decided I wasn't willing to devote twenty or thirty years of my life to getting four or five days in space. All in all, the Air Force was a great experience, however. I saw the world, met and worked with many amazing people (mostly men…which helps me write about them today), fought in the First Gulf War, and met my husband.

The Air Force did a reduction-in-force in 1991, and hubby and I were both forced out of the military. So, he went to fly for a major airline and I became the assistant to the CEO of a major oil company. After my security clearances expired, I started submitting the books I'd written over the past few years, and the rest is history!

For those that might not know about your military career can you tell us briefly about that as well? What you flew and maybe some of the places you were able to see?

I went to pilot training in Columbus, Mississippi. Flew T-37's, which look and fly like Volkswagens with wings, and T-38's, which are sexy, supersonic jets. Was the Top Stick in my class. Then I headed off to Andrews AFB in Washington D.C. and flew VIP airlift for three years, which is to say, I flew generals to their golf games…oh, and business meetings. Then, I headed for Dover, Delaware and became the first woman ever in my squadron to fly C-5's. The C-5 is a gigantic cargo airplane-we're talking bigger than a Boeing 747, here. Huge.

I've been to 42 countries on five continents at last count. I've seen everything from great world capitols to the poorest, most out-of-the-way corners of the world and everything in between. I've flown relief supplies to hurricane and earthquake victims, airdropped Navy SEALs out of my plane, been shot at in wars, and flew the very first mission of the First Gulf War. It was some adventure, let me tell ya.

Will we see any of these places in your books? If so, have we already? Can you tell us which places they are and the books?

Most definitely! I write all the time about places I've been and people I've met. I just looked up at the shelf where I keep a copy of every book I've written, and honestly, I think I've been to just about every location I've ever written about. I've been to South American jungles, London, Paris, Moscow, Geneva, you name it.

My favorite place in the world? I have two. Scotland and Alaska. I guess I'm just a cool-climate and mountains kinda girl…Favorite city? Hands down, Berlin for the people and Paris for the museums. Place I'm most dying to go see? New Zealand…especially the part Viggo Mortensen lives in!

The Medusa's are an elite group all unto themselves. Where did the concept for this book come about and these fascinating ladies?

I got the opportunity to fly in the test program where Navy SEALs learned how to do all sorts of airdrops out the back of C-5's and we got to learn how to do what they needed us to do. I think the Air Force stuck a woman pilot on the team just to bug the SEALs. :) At any rate, I spent months working with them and watching them operate and wondering what it would take for me to become one of them. Of course, the giant and ultimately insurmountable obstacle is the physical strength of SEALs versus the fittest woman on the planet. There's no contest.

But, eventually it occurred to me that if the Navy were to put together a team of all women SEALs, then they'd all have about the same strength and missions could be profiled to fit their physical capabilities. And the Medusas were born! It took me 19 days to write THE MEDUSA PROJECT-the first Medusa book-but I'd been thinking about that book for ten years before I ever sat down to write it.

Did you know you needed six of these women or did they just grow? And the professions for each of them, it seems a mixture that will cover almost any circumstance thrown at them.

Six to eight is a standard number of operators to send out on a small team mission. Also, I figured if I developed more than about six characters, I'd confuse myself and my readers. As for the mix of their skills, that's standard ops for a team like this. Each person has a specialty, like sniping or explosives or breaking and entering (a personal favorite of mine), and then they pick up various skills on top of that which they'll need to do a wide array of possible missions.

I wanted a wide mix of ethnicities in my team, first and foremost because American society is made up of a wide mix of ethnicities and I wanted to reflect that. But also, I want my team to be able to blend in anywhere in the world that I can cook up a mission for them as I continue to write about them!

MEDUSA RISING is the second story of these amazing Medusa women. This story is about Aleesha the doctor of the group and her difficulties coming to terms with being a doctor and having to kill someone if necessary. Was this story hard to write because of her personal conflicts and her nature to help and heal?

Heck no. It was that conflict that made the story easy to write! The more internal conflict a character has, the easier it is to tell their story and make it exciting and tense and compelling. The stories I really struggle to write are the ones where everything's okay for the characters and their lives are already perfect. Somehow, I have to find some profound life lesson for them to learn and that can be a real stretch.

I enjoyed meeting you in St. Louis at RT during the booksigning. And I was very happy to hear that we will be seeing more of the Medusa's. Will each of the women have her own story?

And I enjoyed meeting you, too! As for my snake ladies each getting their own story, that's the plan. I just submitted the proposals for Medusas 4, 5, and 6. Now I'm crossing my fingers that they all get approved-and bought!

I also have plans for expanding the team and adding new members to it. But I've got a few more books to write between now and then, so that's still on the horizon by a year or two.

You also mentioned your then upcoming Athena book, TARGET. And how it could be read as a stand-alone and you didn't have to have read the books prior to it to understand what was going on. How much say did you have in the storyline of the book?

When the bible for that series was written, each plot was detailed extremely thoroughly. Too thoroughly, in fact, The authors weren't getting enough room to wiggle and make the books sound like their own. I wrote the 11th book out of 12, and by the time they got to me, the editorial folks in New York were telling everyone to keep the main continuity elements from the bible and beyond that to plot whatever they wanted.

Bombshell editor, Julie Barrett, suggested I give the 24-hour format of TARGET a try, and it was perfect for my story. I was told to keep my love interest as the President-elect of the United States, my heroine as a conspiracy theorist for the Army, the bad guys from the series had to try to kill him, and she had to save him. The rest of that book is my own (except for the heroine's family, which the amazing Catherine Mann and I cooked up together. She wrote about my heroine's sister in her wonderful book, PURSUED.)

From being in the military to a romance writer was the transition from one career to the next difficult?

Nope, not at all. All the business skills I learned in the military-punctuality, taking criticism well, working to deadlines-apply directly to writing. I think the hardest part of being a writer is having the self-discipline to sit down and do it. Had I not been in the military, I don't know that I'd have ever had enough self-discipline or stick-to-it-iveness to have broken into this career field and stayed in it.

And you gotta admit…I collected a ton of great war stories to write about!

Were you writing stories before you left the military? If so, have any of them been published?

The first book I ever wrote became KILLER INSTINCT, my first Bombshell. I wrote that puppy well over a decade ago. I had just spent a summer working on a special project with a former sniper, and he was a really interesting head case. When I bet my mom a dollar that I could write a book, he naturally came to mind to write about. But, I decided to turn that sniper on the downhill slide into a woman, and voila, KILLER INSTINCT was born.

After I wrote that one, I messed around with trying to write various category novels to 'break into the market.' They were horrible as a group and were rightly rejected when I was eventually able to submit them. When I finally quit chasing the market and wrote another book just to entertain myself, it rapidly turned into my first published novel, BEHIND ENEMY LINES.

Cindy I want to ask about the group of writers that have served in the military, but I can't figure out exactly how I want to ask the question. So with that being said, can you tell us about this group of ladies that have served? And are there men in the group as well?

You mean the ROMVETs. About a half-dozen of us bumped into each other kind of by accident at a writing conference several years ago. The Internet and chat groups were just starting to blossom, and Merline Lovelace and Lindsay McKenna got the idea to start a little list for romance authors who used to be in the military. It's grown to well over 40 authors so far. Only requirements for membership are that you are a female military veteran and write romantic novels.

To date we've just been a chat and support group for each other. We find that we all have a common frame of reference on life and writing. We're still trying to figure out how to parlay the truly awesome talent of this bunch of ladies into a writing project together someday. But, in the mean time, they're bar none the kindest, most supportive, coolest bunch of women I've ever met. And if anyone whines on that list, they'll sympathize for about five minutes and then kick you in the butt like nobody's business!

I've looked at your website and I've noticed you have several books coming out in the next few months. Can you tell us about them and the expected release dates?

Well, MEDUSA RISING is out in September and early October, of course. I'm really psyched about it. I loved writing about a mouthy doctor from Jamaica!

Then THE MEDUSA GAME comes out next February in conjunction with the Winter Olympics. It's the third Medusa book and it's set at a fictitious winter Olympics. It centers around a Middle Eastern girl who has qualified to figure skate at the Olympics and the efforts of certain people to stop her from skating. The Medusas are called in to act as her bodyguards-male bodyguards on this girl would no doubt further enflame the situation. It's possibly my favorite of all the Medusa books so far! But then, I expect each subsequent Medusa book I write will become my favorite. L)

In May 2006 (good grief where does the time go?!), the fifth Charlie Squad book comes out..it's called HER ENEMY PROTECTOR…Don't ask me where they cook up these titles from. I like to think of Charlie Squad as my boy Bombshells. They're a fictitious, and truly yummy, male Special Forces team I write about for the Intimate Moments line.

Then, in August next year, we'll see my continuity novel for the MADONNA KEY series. Holy cow, where to begin on that? Seven books, six authors, it's about a group of amazing women who basically have to save the world. They're mystical and mysterious and dangerous and empowering…really wonderful stuff. A bit of a departure from my military stories, but I got to use some of my background in Medieval reenacting to capture the mood and tone of that book, and it's been a ball to write. I even have a ghost in it…

After that, I expect to see several more Medusa books in quick succession. I don't have release dates yet, but I'd guess late next year and into 2007.

What advice would you give to anyone that would like to write a book, whether it be a romance or not?

ABC! Apply Butt to Chair! The only way to learn how to write or how to write better is to do it. I teach novel writing classes at Southern Methodist University, and I never ask my students to turn in homework assignments. I tell them it's their first and most important test of whether or not they have what it takes to be a writer or not. They have to be able to sit down and do the work, to discipline themselves to write day in and day out without anyone else hanging over their shoulder making them do it.

It's all well and good to want to write a book, but nothing's going to happen until you sit down and just do it.

I've heard a lot about critique groups, just how important are they to an author?

For me, they're not terribly helpful. I write so quickly that it would be a full-time job for a critique group to keep up with me. I have a couple readers who do read my stuff before I send it to New York, and their inputs are always incredibly valuable and make my work better.

In my experience, critique groups were extremely helpful to me when I was in the midst of learning the basic of how to write. They were a great measure of what worked and what didn't as I experimented with different styles and techniques of writing.

The key to any critique group's success in my mind is that each writer be able to maintain their own unique style and voice within the group. The worst case scenario would be for every member to start writing like everyone else in the group.

What is an average day like for you? Do you have a set time that you write?

Chaos pretty much sums up my life! But, in general, I get my daughter out the door to figure skating first thing in the morning (my mom plays chauffeur most days). Then I write for 2-3 hours while the house is quiet. When my daughter gets home I feed her lunch and we home school for a couple hours. Then, I drive her to gymnastics and I write for three hours there. I've trained all the other moms at the gym to leave me alone if I've got my laptop with me. Took about a year of me snarling, but they understand now that I'm working.

After kiddie bedtime, I usually edit a little, answer e-mails, and maybe outline a bit of the next day's writing. Then, I veg out and have a little grown-up time. That's when I read or watch TV or catch up on the news. It's really important for me to have some time every day to take in new information. I mentally go stale if I don't, and then my writing goes stale.

The last question is there anything you would like to say that I've not asked about?

My most recent epiphany about writing has been coming to the understanding that if you're not moving forward as a writer, you're sliding back. The writing process is marked by constant learning, ongoing evolution, and always stretching and reaching for something new and better.

If a writer loses that forward movement, they've typically got about three books in them until the writing goes totally stagnant. Once I got published, writing in many ways took on the feeling of being a job. But, part of my job is to never lose sight of that growth process and to keep pushing my stubborn, lazy, sometimes dim-witted self forward with every book I write.

If you don't like that struggle to dig deeper or find something new every time, then writing is not for you as a career. I see many pre-published authors who seem to think that once they sell that first book they'll have cracked the code or somehow found the formula. Then, all they'll have to do is repeat that formula and writing will become easy. (I readily admit to having been one of those folks!)

Not so. That same struggle to get good enough to sell continues after publication. I struggle with every single book I write to become a better writer. That IS the writing process. The trick, of course, is to actually succeed at steadily improving!

Thanks again Cindy. I'm looking forward to reading about the Medusa's and the problems they give the other Special Ops as well as your other upcoming releases.

Thank you! I've had fun answering these questions, and I look forward to chatting more with all of you online!