Before launching her career as an author, she was an assistant managing editor over features sections at large metropolitan newspapers. Many of those sections won national and state journalism awards. The Star-Telegram Life & Arts section was named as one of the Top 10 sections in the country during her tenure. She has edited real-life thriller stories that inform her writing, including a series on the perplexing and tragic murders of random girls and women buried in the desert in Mexico and another on the frightened women of domestic violence. Playing dead is her debut novel. She lives with her husband and son in the Dallas/Fort Worth area, where she is a free-lance writer and is at work on her second book, Lie Still, to be published by Random House in Spring 2013.