My new novel, Death Island, will be released on October 1, 2011. It is the story of a reality TV show in the imaginary present–or future–a show featuring condemned inmates whose grisly deaths constitute entertainment for the jaded TV audience. The hero is innocent, of course, though he has been very effectively framed, and he has an unlikely champion, a home viewer who is watching the show with her girlfriends and finds herself falling for him, convinced that he is innocent.

I took the idea from something my mother once said, that the government should take all the convicted rapists and murderers and drop them off on a deserted island to let them fend for themselves. As for choosing a minister’s wife as my heroine, I know something about that life, because I was one. I thought she would be the least likely to help a convicted felon, but also the most likely, if she had a strong sense of right and wrong.