Eileen: Normal work attire - let's see, I usually wear a nice suit, or sometimes a flowing dress ... okay, actually I have a rule that I have to get dressed by noon. Then it's jeans in the winter, shorts in the summer. Every now and then I enjoy putting on my grownup clothes and having lunch with friends, but mostly it's jeans and t-shirts.

My family is small. I have two daughters, one brother, two cats and a dog. Three of them live with me - bet you can guess which ones. My non-writing passions include gardening - you have to be obsessively determined to garden in West Texas - and painting. That used to be oil painting, but I'm into home redecorating these days and will paint anything that doesn't move fast enough.

Beaty: Was writing something you've always known you wanted to do? Was your first book an easy one to write? Has it been published?

Eileen: Oh, no. I've been a devoted reader as far back as I can remember, but I didn't think of myself as a future writer - although I wrote my first stories in the seventh grade. And every so often, though, I'd think I ought to try writing a book. I'd get to the end of the first chapter and have no idea how to continue. Prior to writing my first book, I'd been delving deeper, though - writing lots of scenes and one very bad short story. Then one night I woke up around 2:00 a.m. with the plot for an entire book burning in my brain.

This was a story I had to write. The story I was born to write. Over the course of a year, I wrote it - on yellow legal pads, because I didn't have a computer. Eventually I got that computer, input the story, printed it out, sent it out ... to twenty publishers, including one in England.

I still have all those rejections. That book never sold, and for very good reasons. I didn't know what I was doing. But in writing it, I was bitten by the bug. I couldn't stop.

Beaty: Has the Internet impacted your career? If yes, for better or worse?

Eileen: God bless the Internet. I do get distracted by e-mail sometimes, but sometimes I get distracted by dustbunnies or nutgrass or a desperate need to file my fingernails. This is mostly when the story's not going well, you understand. But the things I can find on the Internet! Did you know there's a Middle English dictionary online? A place to look up African names, and an English-Swahili dictionary? I've used all those resources in the past week, and more. I LOVE the Internet.

Beaty: One of your recent books was written for the Silhouette Desire series called Man Talk. It was written totally from the male point of view. What kind of new challenges did this story give you?

Eileen: I'd never written a book completely from a single POV, and that was the biggest challenge with MEETING AT MIDNIGHT. How do I get readers really engaged with a woman without ever dipping into her point of view? I decided to make her a mystery woman - this gave me a rhetorical basis for writing it in his POV, and suggested the structure for the story.

Doing a book from the man's point of view was fun, actually. There are places where I think readers will understand what's going on better than the hero does. And maybe snicker a little.

Beaty: Has writing paranormals been something you've wanted to do for a while? There was a touch of it in MEETING AT MIDNIGHT and very definitely there in ONLY HUMAN.

Eileen: I've loved fantasy and science fiction since I was thirteen. My first book - the one that shall live forever under the bed - was basically a science fiction romance. A bad one. *g* So yes, you could say that I've wanted to write paranormal for a long time.

Beaty: Tell us the story about how "Only Human" (from the LOVER BEWARE anthology) became TEMPTING DANGER.

Eileen: "Only Human" gave me fits. All my stories do in one way or another, of course, but this one really, really wanted to be a full-size novel, not a novella. I throttled it down ruthlessly, but after I finished and turned it in I couldn't stop thinking about the characters and their world. I asked my editor if I could turn it into a book. She agreed.

I didn't plan to make it quite as entirely different as it turned out to be. It just worked out that way.

Beaty: One of my favorite questions to ask writers is about the characters. I have visions of the characters being so alive in the writer's mind that they actually have conversations with them. Do your characters talk to you? Are they well-behaved? Or do they get carried away sometimes?

Eileen: None of my characters are well-behaved, but some are more talkative than others. Grandmother, from TEMPTING DANGER, is especially difficult. I've had several people ask me about her - a couple suggested I should write a book about her past, a sort of prequel. But she won't tell me anything. She thinks her past is none of my business. However, I did learn a little more while writing MORTAL DANGER. You might say I ran into someone who used to know her well.

Beaty: How does a story idea become a full-fledged book? What steps does it have to go through (in your mind or on paper) to become a real story?

Eileen: I'm continually puzzled by this myself. The start-up involves me wandering around the house muttering to myself. (Now that I think about it, that's what happens during the middle and end of the book, too.) I make notes, do research - getting the setting clear in my mind is always important. There are often index cards involved. I love index cards. Gradually the characters begin to take on life ... except for the times that the process is entirely different, of course.

Beaty: Now that you've written a full-length novel, which length do you prefer? Does writing shorter category stories and anthologies leave too much of the story behind or are they sometimes just shorter stories?

Eileen: With category books and novellas I try to start with a story idea that won't need 400 pages. Mostly I'm pretty good at this, though it didn't work with "Only Human," as I've said.

I enjoy writing both lengths. There's something splendid about finishing a book fairly quickly, but I also crave having the room to spread out more in a story. And I'm really loving being able to work on a whole series. I don't have to leave the characters when I finish the book. That's always sad for me when I finish a book, saying goodbye to those people.

Beaty: What's happening next? Will you continue writing for Desire? I know we've got the next story in Lily and Rule's life coming in November - MORTAL DANGER. Will the series continue? Are we going to see Cullen and Benedict getting their own love interests in the future? Will we be seeing more of Clanhome, Isen, Toby and Nettie?

Eileen: You'll see quite a bit of Cullen in MORTAL DANGER; Nettie and Benedict show up, too. The next book - no title yet - will have lots of Cullen, too. The guy's kind of pushy. I plan to work more with Benedict in a future book, but can't say right now when that will be.

I do plan to keep writing for Desire, as well. I love the line and think the change of pace will keep me fresh.

Beaty: I always end my interviews with a question to one of my favorite characters written by the author. I've always been partial to stories about gorgeous male strippers, so I'd like to talk to Cullen if I may.

"Cullen, did you ever master the illusion spell? What would a good application be for such a spell?"

Cullen: "Master the illusion spell? No one knows how to craft an illusion spell. No one. When I think of all the books that were burned during the Purge, all the spells lost - no, no, it's best not to think about that." (He waves away the flames that were beginning to flicker at the tips of his fingers.) "Don't want to ignite something accidentally. I do have an elegant little don't-see-me spell, though. It works best on stationary objects, but I've a notion I want to try ... traditionally such spells use a single field of relevance, the phsyical. If I can add emotional relevance - something like this, see ..."

Eileen: "Cullen."

Cullen: "Hmm?" (He looks up from the glowing lines he's writing in the air.)

Eileen: "You'd better get back to the story. If you'll recall, things were in pretty bad shape. Rule and Lily need you."

Cullen: "Oh. Right." (He looks longingly at the glowing lines, sighs, and banishes them with a wave of his hand.) "You will give me a chance to stop fooling around with all this save-the-world stuff so I can get some research done, won't you, love?"

Eileen: "Soon," I promise. "Soon."