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Lots of readers love to hear where the inspiration for a book came from. For Dead Woman Walking…
>It wasn’t with the detective.
> It wasn’t even with the body.
😱 It started with a nightmare.
Yep, you read that right. The killer from this book came to me in my dreams! They even introduced themselves by name but, boy, did they ever freak me out! I knew I had to put them in a book—if only to keep them from returning to my nightmares.
From there, I imagined a plot where I could make this killer work. I wanted something different, that I hadn’t written before. Then the images started coming to me.
I saw a real estate agent alone in an empty house at night waiting for her clients to turn up for a late showing. The doors are locked as she’s waiting, and she’s telling herself she’ll be fine. Then there’s a noise—footsteps in the hall, a shadow in the doorway. Goosebumps trail her arms, her heart ticks up speed. No one in her office knows she’s here. She broke protocol, figuring it was going to be all right because what could possibly go wrong and she needed the sale. That quiet, rational voice we all have… right before something goes wrong.
That opening scene stayed with me, because it captures the heart of this book:
how desperation makes us take risks we’d never admit to out loud.
From there, Christine Lane was born. But that wasn’t enough. What conflict and challenges would Amanda Steele face with this case? I decided I wanted to explore what happens when a detective can’t keep emotional distance — when the suspect is family, the victim feels personal, and every decision carries a cost.
Amanda is someone who believes in doing the job right… but this case asks her to risk her career, her relationships, and possibly someone she loves, just to flush the truth into the light.
If you’ve ever been drawn to crime fiction where:
• the danger feels close and personal
• the lines between right and wrong blur
• and the stakes go far beyond solving the case
then Dead Woman Walking was written with you in mind.
You can find it here if you’d like to step inside the story:
P.S. If you’ve already started reading, thank you for trusting me with your time. And if a particular scene got under your skin, I’d love to hear about it!
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