About Me

I've been writing since I jotted down a story about a talking hamburger on the pages of my father's day planner when I was six. During college, I was published as an academic and as a short story writer.

Now I write technothrillers. But I'd like to think they're not just thrillers. They're a touch literary, because that's how I started. A little feminist, because I apologize less these days. Very technical, because details are important.

I genuinely believe well-written stories are a tool for self-reflection and improvement. We never see ourselves clearly, but sometimes we get a glimpse of ourselves in a character. Stories let us process our emotions, wrestle with hard decisions, and explore the consequences of our actions.

The stories we tell ourselves matter because that is how we make and remake ourselves. Telling (and reading) meaningful stories is how we get a better understanding of experiences we haven't lived.

And that matters a lot.

Because 2020

I'm still not sure how I can best help, but I do know one thing. I don't need the royalties from my books to live on right now. For the next five years, I will donate all of the royalties from my books to one of the charities below. I've made my own donations already, and my royalties aren't a lot.
But it's something. And if we all do a little something, maybe things will get better.

About My Books

Currently, I'm writing in the Navy Trent series. I write each book so it can be read standalone, so don't worry about jumping to whichever book interests you most.

Latest book

Humans, Practicing (a Navy Trent book)

Navy didn't know if Min Gyu deserved to be saved. She didn't know if Min Gyu could dismantle North Korea's nuclear weapons program. All Navy knew was right now she felt like she was drowning. If Jackson died, it would be her fault. Just like Sara and Moss almost dying had been her fault.

***
Jackson knew he couldn't be saved.

The soldiers were ten feet away now. Jackson wondered whether he should turn his gun on himself, and in that second a thousand hands pressed down and held him to the floor.

A North Korean defector and cyber warrior, Min Gyu, decides to use Navy Trent as his ticket out of the backwards regime. Min Gyu promises he can destroy North Korea's nuclear weapons program. But only if Jackson retrieves him. Navy must decide how much she's willing to risk for a stranger, and how many of her principles she's willing to sacrifice to bring Jackson home.

Previous books

From Hackerville with Love (a Navy Trent book)

The problem with killing her enemies, Navy Trent learns, is there's no one left to fight. So when Byron Macalester asks Navy to go undercover to save his daughter, Navy says yes. Because she owes him. Because the story of a woman falling in love with the wrong man echoes her past. Because the men she killed a year ago have never left her. She'll go even though it may cost her the one worthy thing to come into her life in the past year, her relationship with Jackson. In Hackerville, Byron will discover the man he thought was a monster is just a victim. Jackson will discover the woman he loves might actually love him back. And Navy will discover survival is about more than knowing how to kill.

Trap and Trace (a Navy Trent book)

A sabotaged CIA operation makes Navy Trent a captive. But surviving the kidnapping is just the beginning of her ordeal. The CIA will kill her if she doesn't stay quiet. The saboteurs will kill her if she does. Navy is forced into a high-tech, high-stakes game of cat-and-mouse where only her wits - and a little bit of luck - can keep her alive.

Sarina, Sweetheart - Quarterfinalist in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award 2014 contest

Her name is Sarina Wocek. Her breath is poison. She was not born out of love.

Twenty-three years ago, government officials traced the budding epidemic of hemorrhagic fever HF186-2A in south Florida to the Wocek family and their adorable six-week-old daughter, Sarina. Her father, Gregory, admitted his role in genetically engineering a biological weapon with pride. She was taken to a lab hidden in a rural area of New Hampshire. She hasn't left since.

Her government keepers could cure her, but they won't. Genetically engineering a child to be a weapon of mass destruction, that's unethical. Refining a weapon of mass destruction that someone else created? That's just being clever.

After twenty-three years of captivity, she escapes. She crosses an ocean to put her father and the lab behind her, but it's not enough. When she sees the first bleeding sore, she knows she didn't leave the virus behind either.

The only way she'll be free is by destroying every trace of the lab. She only has one advantage; she doesn't care if she makes it out alive.