I certainly remember the first medical thriller I ever read: Robin Cook's Coma. I had goosebumps and chills as I was reading it many years ago and just knew he would become a best-selling author. Reading Coma also showed me it was possible to be both a great doctor and a great author. It's a tremendous honor and thrill to now see my novels alongside Dr. Cook's on the best seller lists and I am ever grateful to him for being the trailblazer in our genre.

It all starts with feelings and conveying the fear/foreboding/mystery in my stories. Then I work with my cover artist to find graphics that fit with the story and will capture a reader's attention. Finally, we make the format and style of the covers similar enough so readers know in an instant it's one of my books, yet we vary them so each cover is striking and stands out from the others.

Robin Cook: Coma
James Patterson: Kiss The Girls and Along Came A Spider
Harper Lee: To Kill A Mockingbird
Patricia Cornwell: Postmortem

All these books with the exception of Mockingbird are fast paced thrillers written in a straightforward style with compelling characters - exactly what I love to read! Mockingbird is a wonderful story on so many levels of what it was like for Ms. Lee to grow up in the South, it's charms, innocence, and flaws. It is at once grounded in the history of the day and yet a transcendent, timeless story.

Thrillers, thrillers, and more thrillers! With love stories, biographies, and non-fiction mixed in. My tastes in reading are similar to my tastes in music; if something is compelling and well-crafted I'll give it a try regardless of genre.

I believe the most effective book marketing comes from writing the best stories I can, and delivering great characters, covers, descriptions, and taglines with those stories. Rather than spending a lot of time deciding how to market my books I put all my efforts into honing my craft, releasing my books to the widest distribution channels possible, and working on my next story.