Goddess of the Flowers follows a teenage girl living under the rule of the Mexican Cartel who witnesses a young girl being murdered and realizes she must escape or suffer the same fate. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?

Many years ago, when I was working at a family services group for “at-risk” kids, an after-school program to help them have some place to go rather than hang out on the streets, I met a 15-year-old gang banger who hadn’t yet gotten initiated into a woman’s gang. I was getting my “hours” towards my licensure as a therapist and she was one of the girl’s I counseled. I was only there six weeks, but in that time, I got to know her, help her get whatever was available for her, and listened to her life.

When I’d finished completing my hours, I got my psych license, then left and started my private practice in Beverly Hills, California. Twenty-five years went by and my husband and I were watching “America’s Most Wanted” on the television when suddenly a mug-shot of a woman, now 45-years-old came on the screen. I didn’t recognize her until John Walsh said her name and I almost fell off the bed! It was the little girl I’d counseled.

Her Picture was front and center and behind her was the white wall of a building with a long, red, bloody line striped down it and at the bottom of the blood line, lay a man, crumbled up like a fetus, dead.

John Walsh announced “looking for…..(I won’t mention the name here) for robbery and murder.” I couldn’t believe my eyes or ears.

Later that night I tried to reconstruct in my mind what might have happened to Xochitl between the time I first counseled her and currently when she is being sought for robbery and murder. GODDESS OF THE FLOWERS (the name Xochitl means Goddess of the Flowers) came out of those suppositions, imaginings. Oddly enough, only one week after I published Goddess of the Flowers, the real girl was caught in Mexico and extradited to the United States!! Talk about serendipity.

Xochitl goes from being complacent in her role of grooming young girls to desperately trying to save them and her mother. What were some driving ideals behind your character’s development?

Xochitl witnesses a little 13-year-old girl’s horrible execution for wondering what the cocaine packets were. She realizes her lover and his cohort have no heart, no ability to see that this is a child whose curiosity drove her to pick up a packet. These aren’t magnificent money-making men who can save Xochitl. They are murdering animals who are a danger to anyone in their path.

What was one scene in the novel that you felt captured the morals and message you were trying to deliver to readers?

I don’t want to give it away, but when Xochitl finally confronts Carlos and finds the strength to get even, she is able to realize violence isn’t justice and revenge doesn’t make you feel good. You need to practice your morality, your sense of right and wrong to do that.

What is the next book that you are working on, and when will it be available?

Oh, thank you so much for asking. I have two books, one and then another (I’ll never work on two books at the same time again, believe me!) and the first is called The Companion. It takes place during the dust bowl and is really party my husband’s story. It’s about a 13-year-old boy whose father dies and leaves him completely alone. In a dream, the boy sees he must go out on his own, make his own path. The father was a doctor and the boy wasn’t sure he’d follow in his footsteps, but as he takes his one suitcase and grabs a ride on a train heading west from North Dakota when the boy lived and helped his father. As he goes on his journey he stops to help various people in trouble along the way and comes in partnership with a doctor who shows him the tricks of the trade. Again, not to ruin the ending, but the boy finds himself alone again and finds himself capable of being a great doctor thanks to the ministering of the doctor.

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