Can you tell us about your main character? Alison is a gentle quiet woman.  She loves her husband, adores her son, and enjoys her job teaching grammar school.  She is most of us:  thoughtful, kind, caring about her family and her neighbors.  She is everything special and nothing special.  She is familiar and easy to love – initially that is.

Who designed the cover? My cover was designed and shot by Dave Preciado a very talented Photographer/Artist who works regularly in the film world.

Will you write others in this same genre? I often think about writing another book in the thriller genre.  I have a loose idea that surfaces every now and then.  First I need to finish the two other projects I have working.  If I get a good response from Primal that might spark me back to thrillers.

Is there a message in your novel that you want readers to grasp? There is a psychological price to violence.  It changes the unconscious brain, where the thoughts that drive your behavior originate. We see depictions in books and films where protagonists must perform dreadful acts, and yet we never see the price of that.  The books ends, or the credits roll, and we are led to believe the characters go home to their happy families, a chicken pot pie, and a good night’s sleep.  Well, not likely. Vile bloody actions take a toll in the core of a person – especially a good person.  Whether or not the bad guy is coming back in Primal is fundamentally irrelevant, Alison would behave the same – she is forever changed.

Do you have to travel much concerning your book(s)? Yes, and this is a chicken-and-egg situation.  I love and need to travel and I love and need to write – I make sure they work together.

Who is your favorite author and why? Sounds like a simple question – it’s not.  Writers are so different it is like asking what is your favorite thing to eat?  I’d ask for which: breakfast, dessert, dinner, on a hike, a picnic?  You get the picture. I admire and appreciate so many writers for different reasons: if I’m reading history I love Thomas Cahill and I’ve read his hinges of history series several times; for essays, to my mind, there is not a living or dead writer who can match David Foster Wallace in psychological insight, humor, vocabulary, or erudition; for fiction, I will always read Ann Patchett and Barbara Kingsolver.  All that said, if I were forced to choose one writer, just one, I would choose Charles Dickens. Dickens is in a world of his own.  His fiction writing literally changed society, influenced child labor laws, helped to abolish debtor prisons, and gave a human face (however ugly) to both sides the French Revolution and Reign of Terror.  He makes me laugh and cry while composing some of the most beautiful and often recited passages in English literature.  Can anything more be expected of a writer?

Are you reading any interesting books at the moment? On my Kindle I’m reading Justine by Lawrence Durrell, on my iPhone I listening to Kafka on the Shore by Murakami, and in paperback I just picked up The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey by Walter Mosley.

Are there any new authors that have sparked your interest and why? Yes, I just read a book by Alice Albinia titled Leela’s Book.  Albinia is a British writer who spent a number of years in India.  This is a captivating modern take on an ancient epic text.  She is a beautiful writer.

Book Description:

The writer who made you laugh with Punky Brewster, who made you cry with Just Ask My Children, will now make you cringe with PRIMAL. This story was originally purchased by one of America’s most prestigious storytellers James Cameron.

What if the worst happens and you are not a cop, or a spy with weapons training and an iron heart? What if you’re a schoolteacher – a mother? In this gritty crime thriller a family vacation takes a vicious turn when a fishing camp is invaded by four armed men. With nothing except her brains, her will, and the element of surprise on her side, Alison must kill or watch her family die. And then – things get worse.

Buy Now @ Amazon

Genre – Thriller

Rating – R

More details about the author