Home in Time for Christmas isn't your typical time-travel romance and is a departure from your edgy romantic thrillers.  What about the story most appealed to you?  Do you plan more stories like it?

It's not really a new or different direction. Years ago, I wrote a Christmas book about Babe Ruth coming back to life to try to make a better Christmas for a little boy without a father. Spirit of the Season. And then there was A Season for Miracles, when a dysfunctional family goes to a Virginia farmhouse to try to put their lives back together. They realize that they must appreciate one another--and life itself--when they find themselves in the midst of ghosts caught in the conflict of the Civil War and now, only on Christmas may touch one another, even in death.
 
I did kill people in The Last Noel. Ah, but still! For the Christmas season, the family learned to forge together to survive the killers who had stopped in for turkey dinner.

Tell us about Home in Time for Christmas.

I love Christmas--or the holiday season. It's a beautiful time of the year, and most of my friends--Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, and Wiccan!--celebrate the same emotions and thoughts. Home in time for Christmas was a great deal of fun. A soldier, about to be executed during the Revolutionary War, is saved by his sister who is something of a witch. She just wants him home, back in their house in time for Christmas, so she casts a spell. She saves his life, but casts him onto an icy road near their house in contemporary Massachusetts where he suddenly finds that everyone thinks that he's a crazy historical interpreter, once he's saved by the confused young woman who nearly runs him down. She brings him to his home--in a far different time. Old world values meet new, and a family must come together to find out the true meaning of home--and love.

What's up next for you?

I do have a bit of a different book out this year--There Be Dragons. It contains a CD of Christmas songs, half original, by the family band, and stunning "mixed media" illustrations by Fortin and Saunders. Now that was fun! I was able to use my family for characters (my oldest son laughed and asked me if it meant anything that I did away with him so quickly!) and got to be extremely evil myself.
 
In December, I have out a book called Night of the Wolves. That one was lots of fun, too. Vampires in the wild, wild west!

At the moment, I'm working on a series of paranormal suspense books that take place in Key West. It's one of my favorite places. People are crazy, in the nicest way. Diving, history, great stories, gorgeous Victorian buildings--and, of course, free flowing spirits of many kinds, and wonderful music. Research is certainly not at all difficult, heading down just a bit south to get the real feel!

You are known not only as a prolific author but also as an incredibly diverse author.  Is there any kind of book you haven't tackled yet that you want to?

It's strange to be asked "will I ever?" I'm hoping to be around a while longer, and I don't know what the future will bring. I love what I do--and I love going off in different directions and doing different kinds of books. I read everything--horror, romance, suspense, mystery, paranormal, funny, serious, non-fiction, you name it. If nothing else is handy, I will read cereal boxes. Brilliant authors inspire those around them, and I'm blessed to know a lot of brilliant authors and read those I don't know as well. I really have no desire to retire--and I'd like one of my children to discover that they are a writer at heart when they finish my last book for me because I've keeled over on the computer. I also love adding all kinds of crazy media into what we're doing, illustrations, teasers, bands, and theatricals.

Where can readers find you on the web?

I'm at theorginialheathergraham.com (damn that blue-eyed actress! Sadly, I am the original) eheathergraham.com, and heathergraham.tv facebook, myspace--and I'm trying to remember to twitter as well.

As a pediatric ER doctor, CJ Lyons has lived the life she writes about in her cutting edge suspense novels.  Her debut, LIFELINES (Berkley, March 2008), became a National Bestseller and Publishers Weekly proclaimed it a "breathtakingly fast-paced medical thriller."  The second in the series, WARNING SIGNS, was released January, 2009 and the third, URGENT CARE, in November, 2009.