Welcome to Robin Cain

Good Morning. Just for today I’d like to get away from the paranormal and the build up to Halloween. I have a very special guest who has written a book that will intrigue and captivate you. One lucky reader who leaves a comment, links this blog with this guest spot on their blog or FB page and sends Robin a copy of their link to robin@robincain.com will receive a paperback of her book and a $10 itunes card. Wow, how fabulous is that!!! As usual, anyone new who comments and follows the blog will go in to a draw to win a thank you gift from me. (Make sure you leave your email in the post.)

Before we start here is a bit about her.





Robin Cain lives in Scottsdale, Arizona with her husband, daughter, three dogs, three horses and donkey. As a novelist and regular contributing writer for an online publication, she spends her days searching for the perfect words to amuse, enlighten and touch her readers.

A percentage of the proceeds of this book will be donated to the American non-profit organization To Write Love on Her Arms (TWLOHA), which aims to present hope and find help for people struggling with problems such as depression, addiction, self-injury and suicide.

To learn more about Robin or read an excerpt of her book, please visit her website:



Hello Robin, pull up chair and I'll pour you a cup of british tea while you talk about your new book, When Dreams Bleed.


“How did you come up with all this stuff?”

This is a question I’ve been asked more than once by people who’ve read my book, WHEN DREAMS BLEED. A brutalized body washed up on the shores of a lake in Washington and a gruesome suicide-by-firearm are just not the sort of things on which a ‘middle-aged, middle-America, law abiding woman’ like me would normally have any insights. But, as any author knows, the answer lies in the ‘research, research and more research’.

Writing a crime story requires great attention to detail – particularly if the crime is a figment of the writer’s imagination. It’s not an easy undertaking to create motivation, details, plausible events and the ensuing investigation. An author must think like a criminal or a cop and be convincing enough to ensure that the reader will ‘believe’. Since most authors don’t have firsthand knowledge of crime, creating a crime scene (particularly in the case of a homicide) requires hours and hours of research. Even though as it was mentioned here in a previous blog that crimes in real life, more often than not, lack real justification, readers still like to understand the rationale, what led the criminals to do what they did and how it all happened. Readers like to get into the minds of criminals. That’s what makes a good story. No one wants to hear about how some guy buried a knife in his wife simply because she read the Sunday paper first or that someone killed their neighbor over a badly trimmed tree. Though this is the stuff of real life, the fact of the matter is that engaging stories need to be far more complex.

Want to know about blood spatter patterns? What kinds of bugs infest a body a few days after death? What type of fragments are left behind by certain bullets? The criminal charges passed down in a certain city for negligent homicide? One doesn’t need a degree in forensic science or contacts in criminal law to ascertain these facts. All this information is within anyone’s reach as long as they have the time, inclination and research skills. The internet has opened the doors to a wealth of information. With a few clicks of a mouse, a writer can pull up sample crime scene done There are even sites out there that make searching easier. According to the info on its website, Crime Spider has ‘compiled the best crime/ law enforcement sites and categorized topics so one doesn’t have to sort through hundreds of sites to find the one that fits the bill’.

No, this ‘middle-aged, middle-America, law-abiding woman’ doesn’t have any first-hand knowledge about murder or suicide, but, like any good author, I’ve done my research. Every fact, event, character and motivation in WHEN DREAMS BLEED is a figment of my imagination, BUT they were all based on something I found somewhere during my research.

Though I suppose the similarities of blood and guts and motivations remain the same, the paranormal genre is something I have yet to tackle. While immersed in an entirely new world of facts and details – vampires, werewolves, beasts roaming the earth looking for their next victims – this author can’t help but wonder how paranormal authors do their research. The tables have turned and I, like my readers before me, stand in awe of how it’s done. Are some of you moonlighting as creatures of the night? Have some of you lived other lives? Is blood a staple of your diets? What I really mean to say is, “How in the world do YOU come up with all this stuff??”


Now that's a good question. Comment and let Robin know how you come up with your paranormal themes.
Thanks for stoping by Robin. Good luck with your book.