"There's another part of me that feeds on this imaginary world--so traumatic I would never want any part of it to be real," she said. "I don't know how to explain that it's just fun to sit down with a laptop and a bunch of characters, find out who they are and what they'll do next, and go along for the ride as they conquer a monstrous villain!"

Although this is the first published work for Brady, who has a doctorate in music education, she has been writing for years--historical novels, mostly. And she developed an unusual way of organizing the files for her manuscripts.

"They are sitting on my computer under such document titles as 'Nuts,' 'Insane,' 'Crazy,' 'Ludicrous,' and so on," she said. "When I started my first one--an Elizabethan tome of 230,000 words--the computer asked for a document title and I sighed and thought, 'This is nuts.' So I typed that in as the title. For every novel I wrote after that, I have used a synonym for 'nuts.' I just never envisioned myself as a novelist, so the fact that I spent my spare time writing seemed a bit crazy to me.

"To this day, as my editor can tell you, I never have a decent title for a book."

She worked at an antiques auction house years ago and did research to flesh out her expert character in ONE SCREAM AWAY. But she said her favorite part of working with her characters was setting up obstacles for them... and watching them persevere.

"I like the fact that they are normal, flawed people with much to overcome. They each have a tortured backstory that colors everything they face, and they must triumph over their pasts before they can either foil the villain or fall in love," she said. "That doesn't mean another horrific criminal might not enter their lives later... Readers of ONE SCREAM AWAY will note that a certain murderer is due to get out of prison in a couple years, and Neil certainly won't let that go."

For more on Kate Brady and ONE SCREAM AWAY, visit her Web site at www.katebrady.net.

Contributing editor Gerry Doyle is the author of numerous short stories published in the United States, abroad and on the Internet. His first novel, From the Depths, was released in November 2007 by McBooks Press. He has worked as an editor and a reporter for the Chicago Tribune since 2001. He's also OK at ping-pong and has had cocktails on three continents. He doesn't put much stock in astrology but just in case: He's a Leo.