Because it’s FUN to make Nick into a jealous fool! Let me be clear on one thing—there will never, ever, EVER be infidelity in Sam & Nick’s marriage. I’m not interested in writing that, nor do I wish to destroy a relationship I’ve spent years developing. No one is going to cheat. Read that again: No cheating. However, a perfect relationship is a boring relationship, thus the need for characters and situations that allow Sam and Nick to grow as individuals and as a couple. One of my favorite lines in the entire series is when Sam tells Nick to resist the urge to lift his leg and pee on her when Hill is around. Without Hill, she never gets to say that. So let me have my fun, and don’t worry about cheating. Are we good now?

Who shot Skip?

I still don’t know, but won’t it be awesome when Sam and I finally figure that out?

What was with Arnie Patterson’s unexpected name change in Fatal Mistake?

Funny story about that (okay, not so funny...). I wrote him as Arnie Parsons in Fatal Deception, until we got to editing and I realized Parsons’s in the possessive was clunky, so we decided to change him to Patterson. Unfortunately, that last-minute change never fully registered on my mental hard-drive, and when I dove into Mistake, he was still Parsons to me. That was my fatal mistake! We updated the file, so you should be able to download a new version. Sorry for the confusion!

Did you really just make Nick the vice president?

I know, right?! Funny story about that too—I was about ten days from finishing Fatal Jeopardy and was out to lunch with my dad and husband. I told them what was happening in the book, about the White House seeming to leak the fact that Nick had been asked and putting some pressure on him to cede to Nelson’s wishes. So my dad asks me, “Is he going to become the VP?” I said, “I don’t know yet.” To which my husband said, “Isn’t the book due in two weeks? Shouldn’t you know that by now?” Me: “That’s just how I roll. Seat-o-the-pants, baby!” See? Sam and I have a lot in common! I was on the fence right up until the end of the book about which way it was going to go. Of course I look forward to hearing what you all think of Nick’s promotion and whether he and Sam can really make it work...