Simply Cheris. . .

Once upon a time, I used to love him. Thought about having his last name and his babies. It didn't work out that way. This happened twice. People say the third time is the charm, but I'm not sure I want to try it again. Whoever said it's better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all told a damn lie. It seems as if the harder you love, the more you hurt. And then that hurt turns to anger and you wish that you could amputate your heart. Then when you realize that you kind of need that thing to live, you put the rusty butter knife down. But these dastardly bastards did teach me one thing: How to write an amazing villain! 1. Damien from Cautious Heart was inspired by the first heartbreaker. Favorite thing I did to Damien: Shot him after he had a one night stand with a stranger in a Charlotte hotel room. He never had a chance to survive. Made my peace with the heartbreaker. 2. Robert from Rumor Has It  and I Heard A Rumor. ...

I'm looking for the right title for the Cautious Heart update. Here's what it is about: Caprice Johnson Wallace has stumbled on the biggest case of her career. But hiding her pregnancy from her husband to solve this mystery could cost her more than her marriage, she could lose her life. Nathan Wallace knows how important being a police officer has always been to his wife, but he wants a family and this baby. So, it makes sense that he wants his wife to give up her position in the vice/narcotics unit. But when he starts getting threats against his life, Nathan has to keep his wife safe at all costs -- even if it means lying to her. It was about six a.m. when Caprice walked into her house, her body yearned for bed, but she wanted to kiss her husband first. The sound of the shower alerted her that Nathan was up ready to start his day. She probably had two hours before she had to return to the department.             “Nath...

It's hard for me to believe that my first romance novel, Revelations, is about to be 10 years old. The publisher had my manuscript in December and I waited for the process to begin. Since I'd never had a serious edit of a novel, when I got my marked up manuscript back, I was confused. I had the nerve to think that my book was perfect as it was. Thank God for editors. Here are some things that taken out of the book because it made no sense at all! I'd written a scene where Shari (the heroine) found a letter her dead fiance wrote -- some three years after his death.  Shari's mom is a bitch and I never showed why she was. I just made her mean for no reason. I learned what an info dump was. I had written paragraphs upon paragraphs telling a characters back story rather than show how things shaped these characters into who they were.  I can't say it enough. Thank God for editors. So, to mark my upcoming decade of romance I'm giving away some of my out of...

Lady GaGa sang about a bad romance. But a bad romance inspired my first romantic suspense, Cautious Heart . Caprice Johnson is a highly respected detective. She's one of the few women in the Charlotte Mecklenburg Police Department's elite Vice/Narcotics unit. Caprice does her job with precision and expertise; her entire life is built around being a police officer. But it wasn't always that way. When Caprice lived in Chicago, she was a police officer on the fast track with the Chicago Police Department, but she was also in love with the man she thought she was going to marry, Damien King. But Damien's wandering eye and lack of self-control when it came to women sent Caprice flying out of the Midwest forever. Determined to protect her heart and her emotions from the pain she felt in Chicago, Caprice stops dating and refuses to let anyone get close to her. While her career flourishes, she has no personal life at all. Inspector Nathan Wallace fell in love wi...