Janie’s Secrets is a recycled novel. I wrote the original a dozen years ago as Plain Janie. It has been a slapstick comedy i.e. I Love Lucy style, an amateur sleuth similar to Janet Evanvich’s Stephanie Plumb series, check out One for the Money and Two for the Dough (a couple of my favorites and what influenced my writing for a while). But as I was copying other writers’ styles, I was still searching for my own voice.

When I first started writing The Leeward Files series, I never thought it would be more than three books. I wanted to tell Rae Lynne’s story supported by her friends’ stories. As I was writing Dana and Jenna’s books, I began to learn more about each character and the town of Leeward. I knew I couldn’t stop until the bad guys were caught and each of these characters had their happy ending (even if it didn’t last). But don’t worry, those of you who have read all the books, there is another happy story in the works for our characters but I do feel the need to torture them once in a while.

As I neared the end of The Leeward Files Series, I knew I still wanted to live in this town. I like it here. I wanted to tell Janie’s story and I wanted to bring in her crazy, somewhat dysfunctional family into the mix. So Plain Janie turned into Janie’s Secrets (there were other names for this book before I finally decided on this), and The Harrell Family Chronicles became a spin-off of The Leeward Files.

Follow me to Leeward.