I need to talk to you now!” I punctuated this last word by laying on my horn as a bald guy in a convertible cut me off then had the audacity to give me the finger. This is a serious code red, 911 emergency. But please, please, please call me back as soon as you get this message. “All right, I guess you really aren’t there. “Dana, please, please, please pick up? Please?” I paused. I switched my cell phone to the other hand as I changed lanes, narrowly avoiding a collision with a pick-up that had “wash me” carved in opaque dust, before continuing my desperate pleas into my best friend’s answering machine. “I swear to God if you are screening me I am never speaking to you again.” And, after that first singularly awkward experience in the back of Todd Hanson’s ‘82 Chevy after junior prom, I have been meticulously careful.

I carry just-in-case condoms in the zippered section of my purse. I took copious notes in 6 th grade Sex Ed. The kind of late where the 99% effective warnings on the side of condom boxes flashed before my eyes as I white knuckled my way down the 405, silently screaming, why me? Why, oh why me? I’m a new millennium girl. Gemma now makes her home in the San Francisco Bay area where she is hard at work on her next book.And I don’t mean the kind of late where I spent too much time doing my hair and was now stuck in traffic. Her books have hit both the USA Today and the New York Times Bestseller lists. Since then, Gemma has written several mystery novels and been the recipient of numerous awards, including a National Reader's Choice award and three RITA nominations. She worked as a film and television actress, a teddy bear importer, a department store administrator, a preschool teacher, a temporary tattoo artist, and a 900 number psychic, before finally selling her first book, Spying in High Heels, in 2005 and deciding to be a writer. Gemma had a hard time figuring out what she wanted to be when she grew up. Gemma now makes her home in the San Francisco Bay area where she is hard at work on her next book.

Spying in High Heels by Gemma Halliday