I recently wrote an essay for the wonderful CrimeReads site about my experience moving from writing romance to writing suspense. It's been such a treat to stretch my wings and hone new skills in an unfamiliar genre. But it wasn't quite as unfamiliar as you'd think.

"Love stories and scary stories are opposites for a reason: They're flip sides of the same coin. They each tap into the most basic human drives: to survive and to mate."

I don’t have a good story about the first inappropriate book I read at too young an age. There were so many books around my house from so many genres, I couldn’t even tell you what kind of inappropriate it might have been. It was probably a steamy historical romance, but it could just as easily have been a Stephen King novel or an intense Dean Koontz thriller clutched in my twelve-year-old hands at 1 AM on a school night. My mom loved reading both horror and romance, so I had plenty of access to both...