Meet Emily Burnet

Back in 2016, when I was getting ready to release Double Played, the second book in The Cassie Morgan Series, I wrote a post that introduced my main character, Cassie, to people who weren’t familiar with her story. Now that I’m preparing to release the second book in my second book series in the next month, I thought it would be fun to introduce you to my other main character – Emily Burnet.

The process of creating Emily was such a different process from creating Cassie. When I first started writing Cassie’s story, I was fourteen and didn’t know how to make characters stand on their own. Cassie gets a lot of herself from me. Emily stands out more.

Now, I’m a believer that we give a little bit of ourselves to all our main characters, and Emily is no different. We both have lived in Texas (Austin specifically) and Emily’s hometown of Anna, Texas is about thirty miles from my hometown of Flower Mound, Texas.

Emily’s a journalist at a news station here in Austin, reporting stories before she gets caught up in trying to solve them. It’s a new angle to explore for solving a crime – something more hands-off than actual law enforcement but still almost as vital. Without journalists, there would be no one to get the story out to the public.

Emily happens to be one of the sweeter characters I’ve written. While Cassie has a healthy dose of snark, Emily doesn’t. That was one big difference I struggled to really capture. While Emily is much nicer than Cassie is to people, there’s this point I feel I need to emphasize – she’s nicer, sweeter, sure, but she’s still a strong woman with flaws.

Over the past few years, I’ve realized that writing strong women that are flawed and multi-dimensional, that’s become my underlining mission – to create real women. This wasn’t always my mission with writing stories, or at least I didn’t realize it.

Emily and Cassie are both – strong, flawed, independent (to a fault – they both get that from me) but at the same time, personality-wise they’re different.

Emily Burnet is the kind of woman you’d be friends with, easily. With her job, it was important to make her likable in a way that Cassie Morgan wouldn’t be.

If you’re wanting a lighter, more fun mystery series, Emily’s series is definitely for you. The first book shows her trying to navigate an aspect of a story she hasn’t experienced before – the law enforcement side.

This second book that I’m currently working on sees Emily trying to focus on her job and just work while moving past the events of the first book. There are also timely situations in regards to #metoo and topics of the same.

This book series has come together so fast and I’ve loved getting to know Emily and I hope you will, too.