About
A Hoosier born and raised, Monette still lives in the heartland near Indianapolis, Indiana. Married to her college sweetheart and soul mate, she has one son.
After many years of practicing law, Monette found that all the clients, opposing counsel, and the problems she handled ignited the need to write fiction. So she started writing – first, romantic suspense/thrillers, then adding a touch of paranormal and scifi and, eventually, a sexier side (as Rae Morgan).
Q: How do you choose what to write about?
News articles. Nonfiction books. Magazine articles. I read a lot of everything. Something I see or read will start the “what if this happened” string and then I’ll think about what kind of heroine and hero would fit into that particular plot line.
And my stories always have suspense and danger, so I take what I read or see and “up” the danger quotient by a huge factor. I can not write about small town life and every day romance. It’s not what I read. I like murder, mayhem, and extreme danger as the external conflict in my novels, because it places my hero and heroine into a combustible situation and they need to learn to trust one another very quickly in order to survive.
Q: How did your writing style evolve?
I started by writing legal and medical-legal mystery/suspense. Vested Interests, Death Benefits, and Blind-Sided, all had aspects of “write what you know.” I’m an attorney with a science background and my husband is a pathologist. Then I took some writing classes and the instructor urged me to leave my “safe place.” In other words, she urged me to write what I didn’t know. I plotted Fatal Vision, a romantic suspense with paranormal elements (the heroine was psychic), and then wrote Green Fire, another romantic suspense (the heroine was a lithomancer, one who controlled stone energy). Both books were well received (back in the early days of e-publishing), and Green Fire was even a 2003 Dream Realm finalist in paranormal romance at ArmadilloCon.
Now, I write what I like to read: books with strong alpha-males, heroines who stand up to them, and lots of action and danger.
Q: Do you do a lot of research for your books?
Yes. Tons. Each book has its own little set of research notes whether it is about magic, paranormal topics, guns, branches of the military, maps of the area in which the books are set, or whatever. I try to be as accurate as possible about real life objects, but have been known to use artistic license when needed to fit my plot.
Q: Do you accept ideas?
Sorry, no. I have so many of my own ideas that I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to get them all written.
