A new year and a little Duck

Joyce and I went down to Duck, NC for a few days right after Christmas. It was a nice getaway after the holidays and neither of us had ever been to the Outer Banks. After seeing OBX stickers for years, we finally figured out it was the Outer Banks! We enjoyed the lighthouses and the huge sand dunes. Mostly we enjoyed just being together. There wasn't a lot open and we were glad our hotel room had a microwave for dinner a few nights. We cruised from one end of OBX to the other, wild horses to Ocracoke. There were certainly plenty of story ideas there.

And we talked about 2009. This is our tenth year being published. Our first book, A Family for the Sheriff, was published by Silhouette Books in February 1999. Ten years! How far we've come. And yet . . . there is so much more to do. I guess writers never run out of ideas for things they want to write, projects they want to do. We certainly haven't. And outside of being one of those lucky writers who have their first book sold at auction for $10 million, we are very happy with what we've done and what we're doing. We love working together (not so much on the bad days) and we love what we do.

We started out writing romance and gradually made the change to mystery (like many other authors). We are looking at other projects now too, other genres. We both read in many different genres and enjoy non-fiction too. Who knows where we'll end up?

For now, we are happy to be here and grateful to Jacky Sach for her help in getting us here. It's a good year to write something new!

Jim Lavene