Where did the idea for the cliffhanger at the end of book 1, Raw Mistakes, come from?

It wasn’t exactly a stroke of genius. About halfway through writing the book, it hit me like a ton of bricks – that’s where I was headed all along.

The cliffhanger event in the book was actually inspired by a real-life experience that almost happened to me. I was on my way to pick up a bottle of champagne from my friend’s restaurant to celebrate signing my divorce papers (trying not to give it away to those who haven’t gotten that far yet) when I stumbled upon a scene straight out of a thriller movie: candles, an unmistakable smell, and a whole lot of rain. 

I ended up standing out in the rain for hours, watching emergency services do their thing. They told me that if it had happened just half an hour later, the outcome would have been very different and gone the way it did, which is what I later chose to write about in the book.