Cindy Dees's Blog, page 3

What ARE those pesky Russians up to?

This article from Reuters, which is the gold standard in journalistic excellence, reports that Russian submarine has had a fire and 14 crew members died.

So far just a tragic accident. However…

Seven of the dead were Captains First-Rank. One officer of this rank would usually command a nuclear submarine or atomic cruiser in the Russian Navy. Why seven on board a tiny “research vessel”? Then there were three Captains second Rank, a couple of captains third rank. The lowest rank officer who died was a medical officer, a lieutenant colonel. That’s a WHOLE lot of brass for one little submarine that normally gets towed around slung under the belly of a much bigger nuclear submarine.

The sub, named the Losharik, was designed for ultra deep-sea diving. The official line from Russia is the vessel is for “deep-sea research.” Riiiiight.

Make that maritime reconnaissance, trying to tap into enemy Internet and communication cables, picking up debris from other military’s crashes, missile launches, et al, and delivery of elite, classified units to stealthy places.

The Losharik reported directly to the GRU–Russian military Intelligence, and belonged to Division 45707, which is one of the most secretive and classified units in the entire Russian military. Cue the conspiracy theories…

It was in the Barents Sea when it reportedly had a battery fire. That’ Russian territory. It was close to a repair depot, so it’s possible it was recently repaired and possibly running test checks of some kind.

But then there are the conspiracy theories. That’s a hell of a lot of senior guys. Did we just witness a The Hunt for Red October moment where a bunch of officers tried to defect? Or did they in some way cross Putin and end up all in one place to die? Or, was there some sort of foul play from within the crew, a la mutiny? Or was some sort of elite unit on the vessel enroute to be delivered somewhere? Hmm. The Barents Sea is north of Scandinavia.

This is also the sort of vessel that could drop mines. It could plant limpet mines. It could lay surveillance equipment to monitor any other submarines passing by. It could just sit on the seabed and listen and watch whatever goes by.

Regardless, Russia is being increasingly aggressive in the Arctic Ocean. As the polar caps melt and more and more water, sea bed, and resources under the sea bed–aka oil–become accessible, expect there to be more jockeying among the Arctic nations. (The U.S. Canada, and Russia being the big three.)

The bottom line is, this is no innocent submarine, and no innocent crew. They may have been on an entirely innocent mission the day their battery room caught fire, but it’s worth noting that Russia has deployed these super secret vessels for super secret missions and with no friendly purpose in mind.

Make no mistake about it. Russia perceives itself as our enemy. We’d be wise to do the same.

I have a new title!

It’s always a waiting game for me to find out exactly what name my publishers are going to attach to my babies. Contrary to popular opinion, most authors in the traditional publishing world do NOT get to choose the titles of their books.

If I’m lucky, the publisher asks me for a list of possible titles, or of words I might like to see in a title. But then it’s left to a marketing gurus to figure out which title signals the genre and type of book most accurately, and which draws the kind of reader who would love my story to it.

Captured on July 04, 2014, in GLACIER NATIONAL PARK, USA. Photo: Andrew Gosine

Okay. So my latest book. First in a new series. Hero is an ex-Navy SEAL whose unit was wiped out in an ambush. Heroine is a widow whose husband died under suspicious circumstances.

Coming home. Secrets. New starts. Putting lives back together. Family. Oh, and someone’s trying to kill them both.

The name of the series is Runaway Ranch.

The name of the book is Navy SEAL’s Deadly Secret.

Here’s a pre-order link for Amazon in case you’re already interested. I’ll add other links on my website as other online retailers put them up.

PRE-ORDER NOW ON AMAZON

Undoubtedly, the cover will have some sort of Montana ranch vista on it, and a scared looking woman with a buff guy (We’ll see if I’m right in about five months when I get the advance cover flat!)

I don’t know. You tell me. Does the combo of the series name and the book name signal a romantic suspense about a veteran, a scared woman, a small town, and a bad guy?

Charlie’s Angels Finally Grew a Pair

Speaking as the book mama of the Medusas (the first-all-female Special Forces team) and the Valkyries (the first female SEALs)…

It’s about damned time Charlie’s Angels’ grew a pair.

Don’t get me wrong. I had a good time watching Farrah Fawcett, Kate Jackson, and Jaclyn Smith (and let’s not forget Cheryl Ladd) break all kinds of gender barriers in the original television show. And I had a great time watching Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore, and Lucy Liu bomb around being over the top, ridiculous, and campy.

But I’m over the whole, pretty girls do movie stunts and wiggle their asses version of women secret agents.

I’m hopeful that this new version of the franchise–featuring Ella Balinska, Naomi Scott, and Kristen Stewart–finally steps up to deliver strong, smart women acting like serious special operators. Women who use their hardcore training and high-tech, actual cool gear to take out bad guys in a marginally plausible way.

But then, maybe I’m biased. I don’t think film makers have to make jokes of women secret agents to make people like them and come see them in theaters. I happen to think women can do most of the things men can, with a few exceptions based on the extra strength men bring to the table. But I also think brains and teamwork can work around the need for brute force in most situations.

That’s what I write about in my Medusa books, and that’s why I think women SEALs are coming, and coming soon, to a SEAL team near you. (which I’m writing about in my Valkyrie Ops books…and now I’m done plugging my stories.)

But in the meantime, I’ll be at the theater on opening night for this one, praying that I’m not disappointed and that women are not let down one more time in their search for badass role models who show that women can do anything the boys can.

Oh, and the new Charlie’s Angels theme song from Miley Cyrus, Ariana Grande, and Lana del Rey is pretty effing epic, too! Here’s a preview …

The Medusas have arrived!

I’m delighted to announce that he Medusas are BACK. The first book in the new Mission Medusa series, SPECIAL FORCES: THE RECRUIT dropped on May 7th and is still available online pretty much everywhere. If smart women, sexy men, snarky humor, sexy romance and a dash of suspense are your jam, check it out!

BEYOND THE LIMIT on Sale

It’s available in book stores now… Look for it in the tower (the round, spinning bookshelf) at the front of your local Barnes and Noble, at most book stores nationally, or online here…

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It’s Beyond the Limit’s Book Birthday!

I am so excited I could…be completely undignified. There. I didn’t swear…

It only took me 63 published novels, 6 publishers, writing unofficially for 24 years and officially for 17 years, making the NYT and USA Today lists, and a bunch of other awards to finally get to publish a major, single-title military romance novel!

Call me a wee bit stubborn, but dammit, I got there. (Okay, now I’ll swear.)

I know a bunch of you will ask me why I didn’t just self-publish this book of my heart, and believe me, I seriously considered doing it. But at the end of the day, I had to make a hard business decision about what shape of career I want to pursue in this wild and wooly publishing business we live exist in, now. And my decision was to go hybrid–keep one foot in the print publishing industry and another in the self-publishing world.

Honestly, my goal since I wrote my very first published novel has been to get to a place in my career where I could write single-title romances that would sit on the shelves in bookstores. Yes, I admit it. I’m old, and that’s an old-school publishing goal.

It has been a long, long road, but I’m so happy to share this journey with you, my dear friends, fellow book lovers, brilliant readers. I couldn’t have done any of it without you, and I remind myself of that fact every single time I sit down to write. It’s a gift to be able to create stories for a living, a gift you gave me. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

If smoking hot Navy SEALs, smart, snarky, badass women, impossible odds, steamy sex, battle of the sexes, and a touch of suspense are your jam, I’d love it if you check out my special baby, BEYOND THE LIMIT.

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Geeking out on Leather Books

The British Museum just put on display one of the oldest surviving books in Europe, the St. Cuthbert Codex. For my fellow book geeks, here’s a quick history of the written word in one paragraph. And go…

Words were carved into stone first, then inked onto animal skins, and later onto papyrus. Sometime in the several centuries after Christ, somebody got the bright idea to put stacks of papyrus or vellum between hard covers. These little beauties were called codexes. Then monks started handwriting manuscripts and sewing them together, and my hero, Guttenberg, in an act of supreme subversion, invented a machine to mass produce manuscripts. Today, we call them books.

Boom! One paragraph. Which is to stay, story-telling hasn’t changed much since the dawn of time, and neither has the act of writing down stories and ideas.

Back to the British Museum. The St Cuthbert Codex, a Latin copy of the Gospel of John, looks shockingly like books today. Which is actually pretty cool. Its cover is crimson-stained goatskin over wood. The design was tooled on the leather, and the raised design is clay on the wood panel that the goatskin is pressed over. The goat skin was wetted and wrapped around the wood. It shrunk as it dried and clings to the wood on its own.

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Here’s the library my daughter studies in at Cambridge University in England. It was built in the 1700’s and looks exactly the same today as it did, then. And yes, that pukey peach color is original. No wonder America split from England—it had lousy taste in décor! My point is, many of the books on those shelves casually pre-date America. 

(Don’t you just want to explore these stacks, find a cool book, curl up in a comfy chair, and discover new things?)

And here’s my library at home and a portion of my personal book collection:

Not much difference in 1300+ years. Which connects us all, if you think about it. The human experience of holding a book in your hand, of being transported out of your everyday life into a different world, of being exposed to new ideas, of experiencing the world through the lens of another person’s mind—it’s still exactly the same. 

As an aside, I’ve read about two thirds of the books in my library. I’m currently starting a project to read all of the ones I haven’t read yet. I figure it’ll take me a few years. I have a couple of collections of books where I don’t necessarily get to read each book the moment I buy it. 

For example, I have biographies of every president of the United States. (Some interesting reading when you hit the 20thcentury, lemme tell you…) I confess, I skipped most of the 1800’s the first time through.

I have Shakespeare’s collected works. Honestly, I’ve only read the big plays. I haven’t plowed through his more obscure ones. But the sonnets? Dude. Some seriously hot stuff in there. That man KNEW how to seduce a woman!

I have a bunch of science fiction books, and I’ve read almost all of those, same for the fantasy novels, although they’re hard to find in leather. I’ve read most of books I categorize as classics of literature. I’ve read most of the children’s books, although I’ve just acquired a set of books by a guy named George Henty, and I’m just starting those. The main character is always a teen boy experiencing a great event in human history through the lens of a young observer. Fun books. Good history lessons.

The trick with modern books to get them to last a long time is to make sure they’re printed on acid-free paper, that the pages are sewn in and not glued into the cover, not to expose them to direct sunlight, and to take proper care of the leather covers. Oh, and wash your hands before you handle a nice book so the perspiration on your fingers won’t degrade the book with its acids or introduce bacteria into your library. 

While I may have a small addiction/obsession with collecting leather books that has arguably gotten out of control, I do encourage you to invest in a really nice copy of your all-time favorite book or two. There’s something really special about holding a copy of a beloved book that you know will outlive you by centuries. It’ll make a heck of an heirloom to pass down to your descendants, too. Although I pity my daughter for having to inherit my entire library someday. Maybe she can stick my books in my coffin, too, like the St. Cuthbert codex.

China Lit and the New Plagiarism

China Lit (and similar plagiarists) are among us, folks.

What’s China Lit, you say? It’s a Chinese company that hires native American English speaker authors (rumor puts their staff at 1000 writers) to plagiarize classic American genre fiction novels. They seem to be targeting romance first, but I expect they’ll plagiarize everyone they can get away with, eventually.

They do this to avoid plagiarism search engines, which work by comparing passages of one book to databases containing the text of thousands, or even millions of other previously published books. A common way to check quickly for plagiarism is to copy a few paragraphs or pages of one book into a search engine like Google. Changing words in most sentences will prevent these search engines from popping up with a match to another book.

Here’s how they get away with it. They take an old manuscript that was good quality and ask their writer to change a word or two in almost every sentence. They likely change the names of the main characters, and possibly change the genders. 

China Lit then creates pen names and profiles for fake “American” authors, and then they publish these minimally tweaked stories…mostly on Kindle Unlimited for now. But they’re expected to start “self-publishing” via these fake profiles very soon…if they haven’t already

They will destroy KU, which, as an aside, is no loss to the publishing industry. It’s a broken mess that spammers and stuffers have all but completely taken over. When China Lit gets up to full steam–which should happen very soon, China Lit authors will take over the platform, using click farms to hire people to “read” the China Lit titles.

It also appears that a number of corrupt individuals are also engaging in this practice. I’ve heard it called “wordplay”, as if that somehow makes it less plagiaristic or less illegal than it is.

The only way to defeat this kind of plagiarism is for a reader to recognize a familiar story and then to do a side-by-side comparison of the original story against the plagiarized story. It’s insidious and nearly impossible to spot unless readers happen to recognize the original story.

The day is coming soon when readers will need to verify that any self-published author is real in addition to trying to verify that the story is original.

How we, as authors, will prove we’re “real”, I have no idea. But it’s worth thinking about now before the China Lit/plagiarism storm overtakes us all.

BEYOND THE LIMIT excerpt

Griffin Caldwell groaned as his buddy—his exceedingly shitfaced buddy—Axel Adams stood up, waving around a flimsy plastic champagne glass in his meaty fist and slurred, “A toast. To the groom. The greatest guy ever to shove a grenade up a camel’s—”

            Griffin leaped up and slapped a hand over Axel’s mouth in the nick of time. But the sudden movement made his own shitfaced head spin and his stomach alarmingly threaten revolt. “Sit. Down,” he hissed to Axel.

            On Axe’s other side, Trevor Westbrook yanked on Axel’s massive arm. Between Trev and himself, they managed to wrestle the mountain of a SEAL back down to his seat.

            Axel grinned lopsidedly at him. “You look like a—“ he let out a yeasty belch that made Grif rock back in his seat, grimacing. “—like a jackass in that clown suit.”

            Grif grinned down at his powder blue tuxedo, complete with a chest full of blue edged ruffles. His baby blue bow tie hadn’t survived much past the wedding ceremony and hung, untied around his neck. He would’ve tossed the stupid thing entirely, but they had to return the rented tuxes tomorrow and he wanted his deposit back. It had been a joke for them all to show up at their teammate, Leo Lipinski’s wedding wearing the ghastly things. 

Janine, the bride, had been annoying bordering on bridezilla about the whole shindig, and they hadn’t been able to resist an urge to poke that beast. She’d been anal retentive about planning the wedding down to the last detail. Well not the very last detail. She’d forgotten to tell the groom’s brothers on SEAL Team Reaper to behave themselves.

            Wait till she climbed in Leo’s car and got a whiff of the vanilla extract they’d poured into the car’s air conditioning system. Every time the car ran for the next month or so, it would smell overwhelmingly like chocolate chip cookies. Or when she got her groom naked later and discovered that, after he’d passed out at his bachelor party, they’d doused his entire body with blue shoe dye. Only his face and hands had been spared. Poor bastard looked like a smurf and would for a couple of weeks.

            Chuckling, he raised his champagne glass to Leo, who scowled back from the head table, obviously worried at what else they had in store for him. Smart man.

            A vibration in Griffin’s pants pocket made him rock his front chair legs down to the floor and dig out his cell phone. His workcell phone. The other guys at the table were abruptly reaching for phones, too.

Crap. They were supposed to be off-duty tonight.

He looked at the caller ID. Their boss, Commander Calvin Kettering.

Either the old man was doing Leo a solid and pulling them out of the wedding reception before they could raise more hell, or the world was coming to an end. Off duty SEALs were, well, offduty, except in the most dire of emergencies.

“Aww man,” Ken Singleton complained from across the table. “I was just about ready to bust out with a new song.”

Ken was a wannabe country singer/songwriter and actually had a decent voice. But the guy’s talent for lyrics…that was another matter. Griffin grinned. “Let’s hear the chorus.”

Kenny drummed a snappy rhythm on the table and sang, “Run, Leo, run. Look what you have done. Don’t mean to be rude, but dude, you’re screwed. Janine’s knocked up and her daddy’s got a shotgun.”

The team’s baby, Sam Dorsey—barely into his twenties and straight off the gullible boat—gasped. “Is that why Leo married Janine?” 

Grif guffawed, registering with amusement the glares from guests around them. His cell phone vibrated again. Insistently.

“Party pooper,” Axel complained, glaring at his own phone, housed in a black leather case with a chrome skull mounted on it. “Reaper Team’s on leave.”

Griffin stood up, hauling on the larger man’s arm. “C’mon, big guy. We gotta go.” There were two kinds of SEALs: the lean, fast ones, of which he was one, and the slower, strong as an ox ones, of which Axel was the poster child. The guy wore a long beard, leather vest, and rode a chopper when he was off duty or not wearing a blue tuxedo at his teammate’s wedding.

“Don’ wanna go…”

Trevor picked up an unopened bottle of champagne. “C’mon gents. We’ll take the party with us.”

Griffin nodded gravely. “Now you’re talking. This is why you’re my favorite Red Coat wanker.” Trevor was a crossover guy from the British SAS, handsome, elegant in bearing, and a hell of a fine operator.

Joaquin “Jojo” Romero staggered to his feet, causing Griffin to double take. Jojo was a freaking incredible athlete—hell, he’d been drafted by the NFL—and was never clumsy. Although, come to think of it, Griffin couldn’t remember ever seeing the guy drink before, either. 

With his free hand, Griffin snagged the open bottle of whiskey Kenny had smuggled in earlier. Ken was the team’s ALPO—alcoholic libations procurement officer—and hella good at his job.

In a gaggle of baby blue, they piled out of the officer’s club and into the crew bus the text had said would be waiting for them outside. Passing around the bottle, they polished off the whiskey while the bus drove them to an airplane hangar on the Whidbey Island Naval Air Station flight line. It was raining tonight in northwest Washington state, and headlights and taillights sparkled outside like white and red jewels. Or maybe he was just more drunk than he knew.

With a start, Griffin realized this wasn’t just a ploy by Kettering to get them out of Leo’s wedding. A crew chief waved them over to a sleek Learjet parked near the hangar entrance. It was hooked up to a ground power unit, and the interior and exterior lights were on.

WTF? They were going somewhere tonight?

But…their kits…a mission briefing…their support team…crap, he was confused. And his head was starting to pound. He needed more hair of the dog.

“Welcome aboard gentlemen,” an Air Force pilot who looked about twelve years old boomed.

“Hush. Not so loud.” Trevor enunciated with breathy care. “We’re all very drunk.”

The copilot grinned. “So I gather. Technically, it’s illegal for you to bring that liquor aboard a military aircraft.”

Griffin winked at the kid. “If you don’t tell, we won’t have to kill you.”

            The copilot’s smile widened. “We’ll turn the heat up back here so it’s nice and warm for you guys. You’ll have a few hours to sleep it off before we get to our final destination.”

Grif jumped on that. “Which is where?”

“Classified.”

The copilot paused in the act of pulling the accordion-fold door across the cockpit entrance and bellowed, “Sweet dreams, ladies.”

Somebody launched a plastic champagne glass in the kid’s direction, and he retreated, laughing.

The engines wound up, their high-pitched scream splitting his eff-ingskull in two. A collective groan went up around him.

“More champagne, gentlemen. That’ll fix what ails us,” Trevor announced.

The jet taxied out for takeoff, and they passed around the bottle, taking turns chugging from it. As the plane lifted off the ground, climbing into the night, Griffin closed his eyes and passed out.

***

Sherri Tate looked around the World War II era army base and artillery range. It had long ago fallen into disrepair and was well on its way to derelict. Better this, though, than endless rounds of press conferences and cocktail parties with handsy senior officers and drunk Congressional staffers pawing at her. 

When Calvin Kettering had approached her a few months back and asked if she would consider trying out for the SEALs, she’d been all over any assignment that would get her out of Washington, out of nylons and high heels, and out of range of men who assumed that because she was attractive she was also stupid. 

She was stoked to finally experience the real military. She wanted sweat and dust, bugs and sunburn, honest physical exertion. Maybe here at this secret training facility, she would finally get a chance to be more than just a pretty face.

Two insanely fit looking women came out of the rusted Quonset hut before her, wearing tank tops, shorts, and athletic shoes. One was tiny, blond, and gymnast shaped. The other was of medium height, brunette—maybe of South Asian-Indian heritage, and ripped like a bodybuilder.

“Ladies,” Commander Calvin Kettering said briskly, “this is our newest trainee.”

The two women stopped in their tracks and jumped to attention as soon as Kettering spoke.

He continued, “This is Sherri Tate. Sherri, these are Lily VanDyke and Anna Marlow. They’ll show you the ropes.”

No ranks. Interesting. She got that rank didn’t much matter in the SEALs, but she was startled—and secretly pleased—that he’d ignored military protocol completely. Without another word, Kettering turned, climbed back into the Hummer, and drove out of sight. Only a trail of dust marked his passing.

“Welcome to the weirdness, Sherri,” Lily said brightly. Even in combat boots, the woman barely came up to Sherri’s chin.

Anna added in a husky voice that would be sexy as hell if Sherri rolled that way, “Is that your only bag?”

Sherri glanced down at her duffel. “Commander Kettering told me to pack light.” Truth be told, he’d emailed her a packing list so detailed he’d even told her how many sports bras to bring and had specified no thongs.

“Did he forget to tell you to pack tampons, too?” Anna asked laughingly.

Sherri rolled her eyes. “Do either of you know what he has against thongs?” 

The brunette rolled her dark eyes in response. “Did you pack some, anyway?”

“Of course. Out of general principle,” Sherri retorted.

Laughing and joking about male fixations on female undergarments, they stepped into the Quonset hut. The back half of the space was stuffed with stacked, rusted metal bed frames, wood desks, and office chairs straight out of the 1940’s, the vinyl seats shredded and mildewed stuffing hanging out.

The front half of the space was appointed like a typical military barracks, the walls lined with single beds, a footlocker at the bottom of each, and a center aisle down the middle. Six beds were neatly made up.

“Are there other women here?” Sherri asked, looking around for more candidates to fill the beds.

“Nope. Just Anna and me,” Lily answered. “Our guess is Kettering plans to end up with a half-dozen women here.”

As she claimed a bed and footlocker, into which she transferred her uniforms, plus plenty of workout gear, she asked, “What did Commander Kettering tell you about this program? I know practically nothing except the Navy wants to train women SEALs.”

Anna replied, “Lily has the dirt on that.”

Sherri looked expectantly at the petite blonde who said shyly, “My brother works in the office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He heard a rumor that the new Secretary of Defense, Rita Chilvers, ordered the Navy to let women into the SEALs. Apparently, she declared it past time to tear down the last male bastion.”

“The SEALs can’t be happy about that,” Sherri replied. 

Lily snickered. “Oh, they’re livid. If they got their way, they would never let a woman play in their sandbox.”

Sherri privately disagreed with Lily. If a woman was strong enough, fit enough, and mentally tough enough to play with the big boys, there wasn’t much the SEALs could do to keep a woman out of their hallowed ranks…except kill her. 

Which she might not put past the SEALs to do, if push came to shove.

“Personally,” Anna added, “I don’t mind getting paid to run around in the woods for a few months. I was already training for the CrossFit games. Now, I’m getting paid to do it full-time, and with a bunch of hot guys thrown in. Win-win for me.”

“What hot guys?” Sherri asked in interest.

“Kettering says a SEAL team is going to help train us.” 

“As in they’re going to run us through BUD/S here?” Sherri asked, startled. Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training was onlytaught at Navy Base Coronado in San Diego. 

“That’s what I hear.” Anna’s dark eyes sparkled as she flipped back her luxurious black hair. “Most of the SEALs I’ve seen are hawt.”

Lily leaned forward. “What are they like? We don’t get them on army posts. I mean, we have Rangers. And they’re all gung ho about blowing stuff up. But I hear SEALs are even tougher.”

Sherri sighed. She’d met plenty of Special Forces types. Or at least wannabe special operators. They bathed in testosterone and actively worked at being arrogant jerks.

Anna replied, “I hear SEALs don’t talk much and can go all night.” She waggled her eyebrows suggestively.

Sherri grinned. “In other words, they’re perfect one-night-stands.”

Fair-skinned Lily blushed, which made Sherri and Anna laugh.

Lily lowered her voice. “Cone of silence?”

Sherri and Anna nodded and leaned in close to her. Lily murmured, “My brother overheard the Chief of Naval Ops say the fix is on. They’ve decided to graduate one woman from BUD/S regardless of how she does, just to shut up SECDEF. They’re going to create a recruiting poster for publicity purposes and never use her as a real SEAL, then they’ll wash out all the other women who try for the teams.”

Lily might as well have kicked Sherri in the gut. Nausea rolled through her as Kettering’s plan became crystal clear. 

Sherri had been a pageant queen. She was willowy, blond, blue-eyed and beautiful. Furthermore, she was a public affairs officer, accustomed to speaking to the press. She could deflect the hard questions and diplomatically redirect the rest. Heck, she was even training for the Olympics in heptathlon and was in ridiculously great physical condition. Of course, Kettering had chosen her to be a fake SEAL and silence the Powers-That-Be. 

Great. 

Just great.

Calvin Kettering didn’t intend to let her—or any other woman—be a realSEAL. Was she never going to shed the plastic beauty queen image? 

Scholarships from the pageants had paid for a college education she could never have afforded on her own. But no one had warned her she would never live down being a beauty queen. Pageant promoters might call them ‘talent’ contests or scholarship competitions, but to most people they were still about hot babes in bikinis.

She asked, “If they’re not going to let any of us be actual SEALs, why did Kettering bother hauling us to some secret facility to train? Why not just toss us in the regular SEAL training pipeline and let us go down in flames?” 

Lily shrugged. “No idea.”

Sherri sniffed a mystery.

Anna said seriously, “Lily and I have a pact. Regardless of who’s chosen to make it through, and regardless of how they try to pit us against one another, we’re going to remain sisters and refuse to backstab each other.” 

Thank God. “I’m in,” Sherri declared. “We stick together no matter what.”

The three of them traded fist bumps to seal the deal.

Anna added, “Speaking of which, there’s a decently equipped gym down the street. Lily and I have been working out around the clock in anticipation of the SEALs kicking our butts when they get here. We were just heading over there. Wanna come?”

Sherri grinned. “Hell, yes.”

***

Griffin was the first to wake up. The pressure change of the descent crammed ice picks in his ears, and he cleared them quickly. He shoved up the window shade and a shaft of brilliant sunlight blinded him. He slammed the shade back down. Crap on a cracker, he felt like death.

More prudently, he eased the shade up an inch to peek outside. Sunlight glittered off patches of water winding through forest below. Da hell?

He kicked Trevor’s foot and reached over the headrest in front of him to tap Axel on the side of the head. “Rise and shine, kids. We’re getting ready to land,” he announced.

The others roused, Axel slower than the rest, but then he’d been drunker than the rest. Griffin still didn’t feel entirely sober, but he could fake it if he had to.

Kenny groaned. “Remind me never to mix whiskey and champagne again. I feel like my ex ran over me with a truck and backed up to make sure she killed me.”

Griffin snorted. Kenny’s ex-girlfriends were exactly the type to do that. The man liked his women wild.

His watch said it was five a.m. That would be West Coast[CC15] time. Given that the sun was up, they’d obviously flown east through the night. But to where? And why?

He waited impatiently while the jet completed its descent and landed. He didn’t see a single building outside. Just trees and more trees. He felt naked going into an unknown situation without at least a sidearm—but Janine had insisted: no guns at her wedding. And Leo had reluctantly backed up his bride.

The interior of the jet went silent, abruptly watchful, as the aircraft pulled to a stop. No one moved as the smartass copilot opened the hatch, lowered the steps, and announced sarcastically, “We’re here. You can go now.”

What the hell? Today was as good as any to die. Griffin scowled and, hunching over in the low-ceilinged aisle, made his way to the exit. The bright morning light was excruciating, but that wasn’t what made him squint in deep displeasure.

Nope. That honor was reserved for his boss and the trio of women standing with him on the tarmac, all of them smartly turned out in uniforms—one in navy whites, one in Marine beige, and one in Army green—all spit–polished and standing tall.

The other guys piled out behind him in a disorderly jumble, and he was suddenly acutely aware of what a disheveled mob they made, slouching in rumpled lounge lizard tuxes, all of them in need of a shave and a shower, smelling like booze and stale sweat, cringing away from the sun and their hangovers.

As one, the women burst into gales of laughter. 

They were laughing at him and his guys.

Laughing.

He was a United States Navy fucking SEAL, for crying out loud. The pride of the American armed forces. The best of the best. Embarrassment started a slow burn in his gut.

The smoking hot blonde on the end who honest-to-God looked like Malibu Navy Barbie gasped at Calvin Kettering, “Good one, Commander. Where’d you scrape up these losers to masquerade as SEALs? You really had us going there…” she dissolved into another fit of laughter.

Griffin indignantly straightened to his full six-foot height, but he supposed it was hard to take a guy seriously when he looked like a bad impersonation of Dean Martin and smelled like a sewer.

Kettering looked even more grim than usual. “It’s not a joke. These… degenerates…are SEAL Team Reaper. The hand-picked team I’ve chosen to turn you ladies into the first platoon of female Navy SEALs.”

A bucket of ice water couldn’t have sobered up Griffin faster.Female SEALs?

Female. 

SEALs. 

“Come again, sir?” he choked out.

“Welcome to Operation Valkyrie, gentlemen.”

Special Forces: The Recruit

EXCERPT FROM THE FIRST MISSION MEDUSA BOOK

“Walk with me,” Beau murmured.

He sounded tense as heck. What on earth was going on with him? He’d actually been reasonably pleasant during the meal. Admittedly, neither of them had talked much as they devoured their steaks.

Perplexed, she followed him out to the porch. He strolled around back to face a narrow canal that stretched away into the blackness. They were alone out here. Citronella tiki torches provided the only light, their flames flickering weakly against the dark. A cacophony of sound wrapped around the pungent odor of the swamp rising from below. Beau propped his elbows on the waist-high rail and stared into the bayou beyond.

Just being alone with him out here in the dark like this was a turn-on. She’d never, ever been alone with a guy so hot, nor so deadly…which made him even hotter.

“You’re right about one thing,” he said low enough that she had to lean down in a similar, elbow-propped pose to hear him. “The military is never going to publicly stand for women in the Special Forces.”

She huffed in exasperation. “That horse is dead. You don’t have to kick it for fun.”

“But you’re right about something else, too. There is a place for women in special warfare. More to the point, Torsten agrees with you that we need women in the field.”

“No freaking way. He hates women.”

Beau snorted. “He hates everyone. But he loves the Special Forces. Wants us to be the best we can be. Male or female, he doesn’t care.”

“Why are you telling me this? He already booted me out.”

Beau didn’t answer her directly. Rather, he changed subject abruptly, asking, “Did you notice how publicly women are being tossed out of the various Special Forces courses?”

She snorted. “It’s hard to miss. Every time a woman fails it practically makes national news.”

“That publicity is intentional. We need the general public, hell, the world, to believe there are no American women operators and there will never be American women operators.”

“Well, yeah. That’s because there are none.”

“That wasn’t true once. There used to be an all-female Spec Ops team called the Medusas. Highly classified bunch. Operated for years and were wicked effective.”

“What happened to them?”

“The original team worked together for about ten years and gradually retired from active duty. The second generation team was lost.”

“As in they died?”

His voice no more than a sigh, he answered heavily, “Yeah.”

“How?” she asked quietly.

“Not my story to tell, and too classified to discuss here.”

Yikes. “And now? What’s next?”

“Next, we’ll try to build a new team.” He glanced at her and then back out at the bayou. “Starting with you.”

She stared at him. “Come again?”

“Torsten thinks you’ve got what it takes. He wants to train you to be a full-blown special operator. Not just a support type. A completely qualified combat specialist. That’s the purpose of Operation Phoenix. To raise the Medusa Project from the dead.”

She laughed in disbelief. “Right.” She added sarcastically, “And that’s why he threw me out of training and sent me across the country to a swamp.”

“I’m serious. Do you want to be a Medusa or not?”