Origins

Let me tell you how David and Emma, the lead characters in my novel Push , came to be.

Like many good things in life, David and Emma grew from someone’s imagination, and I feel damn lucky that that someone just happens to be me. David and Emma’s story spiraled out of my head over the course of eight months, and the blame is to be placed squarely on the shoulders of my friend Melissa, to whom the book is dedicated. She’s the one that egged me on. She’s the one that encouraged me, chapter-by-chapter, to continue telling David and Emma’s story. She’s the one who listened and inspired and praised. I owe her more margaritas than there are boots in Texas. Seriously.

But, to tell the full truth, a version of David’s story began long before I even met Melissa. Years ago, when middle-of-the-night inspiration struck and there just happened to be pen and paper on the nightstand, I wrote a few notes on what would become David’s story. I had never written fiction before, and I thought the character might be too dark to explore, so I shoved the paper into the bottom drawer of my nightstand and didn’t think about it for a very long time.

Then along came Melissa and her love of books. She introduced me to the romantic suspense genre, and before I knew it, I fell into its can’t-stop-reading grip. Melissa knew I was a writer (albeit of non-fiction), and she baited me into trying my hand at spinning a story of my own. When she proposed the idea during a lunch date, those notes jammed into my bottom drawer popped immediately into my head.

From that one page, came both Push and Pull .