Pamela Clare's Blog - Posts Tagged "pamela-clare"

Welcome to the DEFIANT Release Day Party!
Who stayed up late last night to see the release of the live-action trailer? I don’t know when I’ve felt such anticipation. Thanks to those of you who shared the experience with us — me, my son Benjamin, Jenn LeBlanc of Illustrated Romance, Karl Biermann, Derek Hutchins, Cora Kemp, Kate McDermott and Mike Gamache — last night on Facebook. It was epic fun!

If you haven’t seen the trailer, click here to see what all the excitement is about, or scroll down to the post prior to this one.

If you want to blog hop, you can visit Happy Ever After Reads , where I’m guest blogging today. Or you could stop by USA Today’s Happy Ever After blog for a guest post I wrote about the making of the trailer. You could also stop by Romancing Rakes for the Love of Romance for Kati R’s review of the book. Or you can head on over to Romantic Historical Lovers where Emery Lee and Jill did a tandem review. I’m thrilled to say the book is Jill’s FIRST full five-star review for 2012.

There are also several reviews up on Goodreads already. Click here to view those. There are also discussions about the series going on in my Goodreads fan group, and some Goodreads members are joining together to do a buddy read of Defiant .

If you’ve read the book and want desperately to talk about it, you have a few options. There’s the fan group above. There’s also the After the Epilogue Video Chat Party on Shindig Events on July 12 at 8 p.m. ET/7 Central. Follow the link to claim your free spot. And if you really want to discuss the book page by page, you can join me in the private Facebook Defiant Discussion Group . We should be revving up to talk about Connor and Sarah’s adventure by this weekend.

In the meantime, let’s party!

I can’t tell you what it means to you that this book is finally in your hands! It’s been a long wait since Untamed came out in 2008, and there was a dark year when I was afraid I would never get the chance to give Connor his story. But those worries disappeared when Penguin bought the MacKinnon’s Rangers series, and now we get to enjoy Connor’s story at last.




What did I love about writing this book? You mean besides hanging with a very sexy shirtless model all day while shooting the trailer?

For one, it’s the first MacKinnon’s Rangers book I’ve written since my visits to Fort Edward and Rogers Island (Ranger Island) in upstate New York. Though I think I did the location justice before, I could really see it when I wrote Defiant because I’d actually been there.

I also loved all the people I got to meet in the course of researching this series, people like Gary Zaboly, whose map of Rogers Island is published in both the book and ebook versions of the story; Eileen Hannay, who was the executive director of the Rogers Island Visitor Center and who is now a good friend; and Tim Todish, the researcher who annotated Robert Rogers journals. There’s nothing more satisfying than sharing a deep interest with other people.

Most of all, I loved being able to lose myself in the wilds of upsate New York again, to see the forest, feel the vastness of the wilderness and spend time in the company of the MacKinnon brothers and their wives again—not to mention Lord William and Lt. Cooke.

Lady Sarah was a real discovery for me, with her love of music and the terrible shame that drove her from her family. I love exploring the strength of feminine women, and Sarah has courage to spare. Her coming together with Connor felt to me like the liberation of her soul — and the salvation of his.

Being able to give Connor his story was such a joy. I hope you enjoy it, too! Which brings us to...

BOOK GIVEAWAY TIME!
I’m giving away FIVE signed copies of Defiant! To be entered into the drawing, help me spread the word about the book via Twitter and/or Facebook. Then comment below, telling me what you loved about the first two books in the series — share quotes, snippets of sex scenes, your favorite story moments. Be sure to leave your email address so I can contact you if you win! The deadline to enter is 12 AM on July 6. I’ll use a contest randomizer to pick five winners on Friday morning.

Have fun!

And thank you so much for sharing my excitement about this book!

Things have been pretty crazy at Casa Clare. Let’s see...

I had a major book release, a MacKinnon’s Rangers Christmas novella deadline, and got a lot of really fabulous news. My sister, who is a dual US/Swedish citizen, arrived from Stockholm to celebrate my mother’s 70th birthday and spend Thanksgiving with us. And in the middle of all of this, my poor blog went without an update for a very long time.

Sorry about that!

I’ll start with the good news.

I learned the Unlawful Contact has been picked up by J’ai Lu and will finally be published in French. This comes as good news to my French readers, who’ve been waiting forever for the I-Team.

Also, BookPages, a national publication for librarians and booksellers, featured Striking Distance (I-Team 6) as Christie Ridgeway’s top romance pick for November. That was a huge honor.

Publishers Weekly featured Striking Distance in its article about the popularity of military romance. (I’d post a link, but unless you have a subscription, it wouldn’t do you any good.)

Close on the heels of that announcement, I found out that Striking Distance was nominated by the reviewers at RT Book Reviews for Best Romantic Suspense of 2013. RT had given Striking Distance a 4.5-star Top Pick review in its November edition, and I was thrilled to see the story in such fabulous company.

And then today, I learned that   Striking Distance  made the USA Today Bestseller list!



As Javier would say, “¡Wepa!”

I got the news from New York Times bestselling author and friend Thea Harrison, whose book Kinked , also made the list. She tweeted me, beating my editor and agent to the punch. Within seconds author superstar and friend Jill Shalvis, whose novel Rumor Has It hit both USA Today and the NYT, sent me the link. Then author/photographer Jenn LeBlanc, my bestie, posted on Facebook, and I knew it was real.

I was, of course, ecstatic. Squealing may or may not have occurred.

I immediately tried to call the two people who’ve done the most to support me — my sister, Michelle, and my younger son, Benjamin — but couldn’t get a hold of either of them. That’s exactly how it would work out, right? I had always imagined telling them to their faces. In the end, Benjamin, who is in Europe, saw it on Facebook before I could reach him. I did manage to tell my older son over the phone and then caught my sister later in the afternoon.

It means so much to me to hit the list with this novel. As most of you know, this story was very personal for me and took pretty much everything I had. It’s the first time I really explored the inner landscape of surviving trauma, in particular sexual assault. Sometimes we choose which stories we want to write, and sometimes those stories choose us. This was definitely the latter. It wasn’t easy to write, forcing me to dig deeper into myself than perhaps any other book I’ve written.

Ultimately I wrote something that I, as a survivor of childhood sexual assault, physical violence, and PTSD know to be real — while doing my best to give both Laura and Javier all the love and happiness they deserve.


I feel incredibly grateful to have had the chance—and to have had so much support along the way.


Thanks to my sister, Michelle, and my son Benjamin, for their encouragement, weeks of handholding and long hours of listening me bounce the story off them.

Thank you to Arlene and Beatrice Rios and Wilson Cruz for the 15 months they spent working with me to help me get the Puerto Rican aspect of Javier’s character right. Any time they swear in their mother tongue, they will think of me.

Thank you to Officer Bryan Bartnes of the Loveland Police Department for his help in understanding explosives, the work of EOD teams, and the way authorities investigate bombings. Is it wrong that I was amused by people’s nervous glances as we talked about how to blow stuff up?

Thanks to Diane Grimaldi Whiting for walking me through the world of broadcast journalism. I’ve been interviewed on television, but I’ve never been on the other side of the camera. She helped me understand how a studio operates, essential information for a key scene in the story.

My heartfelt thanks to the active-duty SEAL who spent time between work-ups and deployments helping me understand the work and life of a special operator. His input and perspective over a period of almost two years were so essential to Javier’s part of the story. How he found time to answer all my questions and read the manuscript, I don’t know. But I am so very grateful both for his help and his service. I dedicate the book to him and feel honored to know he has a copy.

And, of course, a huge weepy  thank you  to the wonderful members of the I-Team Facebook group and all of my fabulous reader friends who have sent emails, posted on Facebook and tweeted to let me know how much Laura and Javier’s story mean to them. You make it all worthwhile!

I celebrated this evening by watching Raylan Givens get into trouble in Justified and enjoying some European chocolate with my dear sister — truly precious time for me.

As for that novella...

I hope to have a sweet MacKinnon’s Rangers Christmas story ready for you by the day before Thanksgiving. But more on that in my next post.

Barely Breathing is out!
Barely Breathing , the first novel in my Colorado High Country series, is out in ebook today! Watch for it in print later in the week.


Barely Breathing is a full-length contemporary romance with touches of adventure and tiny bit of suspense. Have I mentioned that it’s sexy-hot? Set in Scarlet Springs, a small mountain town, it follows the lives and loves of the men and women on the Rocky Mountain Search & Rescue Team.


The series will have an estimated eight books, each one featuring characters from Rocky Mountain SAR and the eccentric residents of Scarlet Springs, Colo.


As a lifelong Colorado resident, I had a lot of fun writing this story, sometimes laughing out loud, even during the sex scenes. It brings to life the Colorado I know and love—and the men and women who keep the mountains safe for residents and tourists alike.


Here’s the blurb from the back of the book:
A hot contemporary romance from the author of the acclaimed I-Team series…
Lexi Jewell left Scarlet Springs twelve years ago, vowing never to return to the small Colorado mountain town where she grew up. Now, here she is—over thirty, out of a job and with little choice but to move back in with her eccentric father. Lexi knows it’s just a matter of time before she runs into Austin Taylor, her first boyfriend and her first heartbreak. She’s determined to show him she’s over him—until he steps out of a pickup truck and back into her life, looking sexy as hell in his mountain ranger uniform.


As far as Austin is concerned, Lexi can turn her snazzy little convertible around and drive back to Chicago. After all, she ripped his teenage heart to pieces and turned her back on the town he loves. But from the moment he sees her again, he can’t get her out of his mind. Even her smile messes with his head.


When an evening of conversation turns into something else, Lexi and Austin agree to be friends—with benefits. But as Lexi starts making plans to return to the big city, Austin realizes he’ll lose her a second time unless he can show her that what she’s searching for has been right here all along.


Click here to read the first two chapters of the story online.


The book is available now for Kindle, iBooks, and Nook. Watch for it on Kobo and in print later this week. The audiobok release will likely be sometime this fall.


I'm so excited to share Lexi and Austin's story with you! To grab your copy right now, follow these links.

Kindle US Kindle AU Kindle UK Kindle CA iBooks Nook 
Smashwords

Deadly Intent (I-Team #8), the first I-Team full-length I-Team story since Seduction Game in 2015, is out! It tells the story of Pulitzer Prize-winning I-Team photographer Joaquin Ramirez and former US Army Captain Mia Starr, whose paths cross one night at a crime scene, changing their lives forever.

Here’s the blurb:


Secrets buried in the sand…

Former US Army Captain Mia Starr has built a new life for herself in Denver, far away from camel spiders and sand—and the terrible secrets of her first deployment to Iraq. She isn’t looking for a relationship, especially not with an intrusive photojournalist. Joaquin Ramirez might be sexy, but in her experience, photojournalists only want to make a buck off other people’s suffering. Still, the universe must have a sick sense of humor because it keeps throwing her together with Joaquin, making the desire she feels for him harder and harder to resist.

An undeniable attraction…

As a Pulitzer Prize-winning news photographer, Joaquin has everything a single straight guy could want—except the right woman. When he meets Mia while shooting a crime scene, he immediately sees beyond her cold exterior to the vulnerable woman beneath. Though the police consider her a suspect, he’s sure she’s innocent. Someone is killing soldiers—and trying to pin the blame on her. Unable to resist the pull between them, Joaquin stands by her only to find himself snared in the killer’s net as well. 


A twisted soul hungry for revenge…

Mia can’t help it when the heat between her and Joaquin melts away her preconceptions. As their passion explodes, danger draws ever closer. When it becomes clear that Mia is the killer’s true target, she must trust Joaquin with a secret that could ruin her … or risk losing the love of a lifetime.


The story is available at all major ebook retailers. It will be out in print next week. At this time, I have no plans in motion for an audiobook.


Kinde: http://amzn.to/2FhEfWS

Kindle UK http://amzn.to/2C9EX9Z

Kindle CA http://amzn.to/2okk02C

Kindle AU http://amzn.to/2GsViEP

Kindle DR http://amzn.to/2BE8wPB

Nook: http://bit.ly/2C9Lfq4

iBooks: https://apple.co/2C9RmdJ

Kobo: http://bit.ly/2sIq1LP

Smashwords: http://bit.ly/2ETVcso




Q: I thought you said Dead By Midnight was the I-Team finale. 
A: At the time, I thought it was. I was unable to write romantic suspense because of contractual limitations. I terminated my contract last year, leaving me free to write romantic suspense again. Joaquin's story hadn't been told, and there were so many I-Team fans who wanted him to get his HEA that I knew I had to give him a story. 
Q: Does that mean the I-Team series is going to continue?
A: Yes, though I'm not sure how many more books there will be. I have several novellas in my head, and then there's Matt Harker. He needs a story. Alex Carmichael, too. And now there's a new I-Team member, introduced in this story, Anna Hughes, who will need an HEA as well.
I will be launching a spinoff series this year focused on Cobra International Solutions, Javier Corbray (Striking Distance, I-Team #6) and Derek Tower’s security and black ops business. Derek will get his story first. We'll see beloved I-Team characters in that series. Holly and Nick (Seduction Game) work there now. There is a major shake-up coming in the life of one I-Team hero, and he might end up there, too.
Q: Oh, a new romantic suspense series!
A: Yes! I can't wait to sink my teeth into it.
Q: What can you tell us about Joaquin’s story?
A: Joaquin has changed tremendously from the first book. By the time we get to Breaking Point (I-Team #5), he's already starting to go through some big transitions. The Joaquin we meet in Deadly Intent is the Joaquin who survived the cartel attack and the hostage crisis in Dead By Midnight. In real life, you don't go through violent, traumatic events without changing. He is not the kid brother kind of character any longer. Also, we learn things about him we didn’t know before.
Qualities he has always had — the ability to see deeper into people, empathy, etc. — become clearer in this story. We know where they come from.
He is the perfect man for Mia, who doesn't like him at first. She has a hard-earned grudge against photojournalists from her time serving in Iraq.
Q: Are characters from the other I-Team stories in the book?
A: Yes. We see everyone, even if some of the appearances are more like cameos. It's hard with such a big cast of characters to have everyone play a meaningful role in every story. I try to make the connections realistic. We are not in touch with all of our good friends or family every day. We move in circles that overlap. Today, we're in this circle. Tomorrow, we shift to that circle. I try very hard to make any appearance by a character from a previous book meaningful, and not just “fan service.” 
The couple known as Marcangelo have prominent roles in the story, as does Holly, and the entire West clan at the Cimarron. (If you don’t know what the Cimarron is, you've missed the I-Team After Hours novellas — Skin Deep and Soul Deep — and need to catch up!)
Q: Can this book be read out of order?
A: Yes, this can be read as a stand-alone. But I highly recommend you read Seduction Game and Dead By Midnight first. There are events and characters in this story whose lives are deeply impacted by those two books. If you haven't read them, Deadly Intent will be full of spoilers.
Q: What about your straight contemporary series — the Colorado High Country series?
A: I’m going to keep writing that series. There are so many characters whose stories we haven’t heard. I can’t just drop them and leave them behind. Writing straight contemporary has been a challenge for me. My heart is more romantic suspense. But there are some suspense elements that leak into these stories. (I can't seem to help it.) So we'll be back in Scarlet Springs soon! 
In fact, I have a novella planned for this year that will bring some of our favorite I-Team heroes together with the Rocky Mountain Search and Rescue Team crew and Hawke’s crew of firefighters. That's going to be a very high-octane story.
Q: That sounds exciting! So, what's next?
A: I'll be starting the next Colorado High Country story next. I need to bring poor Conrad home from Nepal, where he lost his climbing partners in a summit bid for Mt. Everest. Megs is going after him. He will connect with search-dog trainer Kenzie Morgan, who will wisely give him a puppy to train. That puppy, and Kenzie's love, will ultimately save our hero from his crushing grief.
After that, probably the novella, and then Derek’s book in the new Cobra series.
Q: That's a busy year you have planned for yourself.
A: Yes, it is, but also exciting. I love these characters as much or more than my readers do. 
Q: Is there anything else you’d like to add about Deadly Intent?
A: I think Joaquin will surprise you. He is one of my most sensual heroes. Anyone who thinks he isn’t really hero material is in for a shock.

I had hoped Deadly Intent would be out in paperback within a week of the ebook release, but that didn't happen. It is finally out as of this afternoon and available on Amazon.

So what happened?

I had to prove to Amazon that I am Pamela Clare and that I wrote this book and that I have the right to publish it.

I'd heard of this happening to other authors. Amazon suppresses a release until they are satisfied that the book hasn't been stolen and that the author is who she says she is. I had gotten my documentation together — the registration I file with the Colorado Secretary of State to use my name as a business and the signed document proving that I had terminated my contract with Penguin Books.

And that's where the efficiency ended.

I was told in an email that it would take three to five business days for Amazon to review my documentation and reach a decision. When I asked whether they would keep my materials on file under my account so that I wouldn't have to do this again, they told me they would not. Which is just stooopid! A company as tech-saving and cutting edge as Amazon ought to have a system for retaining this information and attaching it to our author accounts so that we don't have to lose momentum on a book release.

Finally, about an hour after cc-ing Jeff Bezos on my reply email, I got a message from Executive Customer Service telling me that my documentation was good and that the book would go through content review (again!). That took about 24 hours. Then I clicked the button to make the book go live.

So, rest easy, readers of the world. I am Pamela Clare, and I wrote this book. And now — finally! — it's out in paperback, as well as ebook. (I'm not planning an audiobook this year.)

Here are the links:

Amazon print: http://amzn.to/2HiBwMAKindle: http://amzn.to/2FhEfWSKindle UK http://amzn.to/2C9EX9ZKindle CA http://amzn.to/2okk02CKindle AU http://amzn.to/2GsViEPKindle DR http://amzn.to/2BE8wPBNook: http://bit.ly/2C9Lfq4iBooks: https://apple.co/2C9RmdJKobo: http://bit.ly/2sIq1LPSmashwords: http://bit.ly/2ETVcso


Thank you to those of you who helped to spread the word, posting reviews and sharing tweets and Facebook posts. I'm grateful for your support. It’s unbelievably gratifying to see how very much you love the I-Team characters. 


What's next, you ask?



I've started working on an outline for Conrad’s story (Colorado High Country #6). We know he gets together with the search-and-rescue dog trainer, Kenzie Morgan. But first I have to bring him home from the Buddhist monastery in Nepal where he has been holed up since every member of his climbing team was killed in an accident on Everest. 




Last week, I met with a deputy who trains S&R dogs. SHE answered my many questions and has invited me to watch a training this Sunday, where the dogs will be practicing their skill at finding human remains. 

“What do you use for the human remains?” I asked.
“Human remains,” she said.


Oookay....


An image of people dragging a severed head out of vehicle and hiding it in the bushes popped into my head. Instead, they take a vial that has a small amount of decomposing human flesh in it — donated by a deceased person for the training of S&R dogs — and hide that. No body parts in bags. 
I will do my best not to smell this vial, I assure you. I'll leave sniffing to the dogs. It ought to be interesting to watch. 


Stay tuned for more I-Team and Scarlet Springs news!

Sorry to have been MIA again for so long. I have a good excuse this time.

Much has happened here at Casa Clare since my last blog post. We're deep into the gardening season with lots of landscape projects. I had emergency gallbladder surgery. Barely Breathing (Colorado High Country #1) got a brand new sexy cover that brings it into alignment with the rest of the series. And Conrad and Kenzie’s story (Colorado High Country #6) is in progress and due for release late this month.




Life on the Urban Farm






As some of you know, I love to garden and have completed some of the coursework toward a master gardener certification. We have a large rose garden that is a few days away from being in full bloom. We have lots of wildflowers for bees, along with herbs and lavender for sensory enjoyment. Last year, we put in an orchard of eight fruit trees.

We had a beautiful and unusually rainy spring. The trees—apart from the Honeycrisp apple and peach tree which wore themselves out fruiting last year—flowered and began to set fruit. Then we had a bad hail storm that tore most of the pears from one of our pear trees and took off a lot of leaves. We thought we'd gotten off okay — still lots of pears, still some apples, some plums, and lots of cherries— when we noticed that the Fireside apple tree and Bartlett pear tree had fireblight.

Heartbreak! Lamentation!

The wet spring and the hail damage combined to help the bacteria that causes this deadly tree disease to flourish. We've trimmed diseased branches off both trees, caring to dip the pruners in bleach between cuts, and more twigs die off. First the fruit withers and dies, and then the leaves die. I'm not at all certain we'll be able to save either tree.

Unless we want to break out toxic chemicals we're not really equipped to use, we really have no options besides doing our best to give the tree what it needs and hoping it fights off the disease.

Our strawberries got nicked by hail, but we've had our first few bowls for breakfast. There's nothing like homegrown strawberries. Our raspberries are thriving, too. So there are lots of things to be grateful for.

We planted a lot of potatoes, and those didn't seem to notice the hail. I expect a record spud harvest late this summer.

New cover for Barely BreathingI’m sure Colorado High Country/Scarlet Springs fans noticed that the series changed its look between the first book ( Barely Breathing , Lexi and Austin) and the second book ( Slow Burn , Hawke and Victoria). Between those two releases, I’d done some research that showed that solo hero covers sell much better than couples. I made the change for the second book, but that left the first looking like it wasn't really part of the series.

I finally had time to do something about it, and I love the new look.

Conrad and Kenzie get their storyThe last we heard about Harrison Conrad, the alpinist on the Rocky Mountain Search & Rescue Team, he had almost died in a catastrophe while attempting to summit Mt. Everest for the third time. His team, including his best buddy, were killed. He was the only one to survive. Rather than coming back to Scarlet, we heard that he was in Nepal.

Well, Megs has had enough of this, and she goes after him, finding him at a Buddhist monastery.

In Barely Breathing , you got the hint that Conrad and Kenzie, the search-and-rescue dog trainer, liked each other. It’s Kenzie — and a sweet little golden retriever puppy named Gabby — that help Conrad pull his life back together in the wake of tragedy.

Watch for an excerpt soon!




Take my gallbladder — please



In early April, I had what I thought was a terrible bout of heartburn. It was agony for more than two hours — and then it stopped. I stopped taking NSAIDs for my arthritis (misery) and tried to eat better. My doc at Kaiser ordered an ultrasound to check for gallbladder trouble, and it came back normal.



Then on May 17, it happened again. Agony.



This time I went to the ER. I was there at 6 a.m., and they could tell from blood work and my blood pressure (which was sky high) that something was wrong and that I was in a serious amount of pain. An ultrasound showed that my gallbladder was full of gallstones, even impacted gallstones, and was distended, i.e., not too far from rupturing. I was in the OR by noon. The post-op pain wasn't as bad as the gallbladder attack itself.



Side note: I wanted to see the gallstones, but they wouldn't save them for me. Not very nice.



I'm doing fine now and am very grateful that the ER radiologist was better than the guy at Kaiser, who clearly misread the original ultrasound.

Enough medical drama!



Many thanks to my sons, Alec and Benjamin, who stayed by my side at the hospital, and to my parents who welcomed me into their home for a couple of days where I could recuperate without cats trying to jump on my abdomen.

Needless to say, work on Conrad’s book came to a screeching halt for a couple of weeks.



What’s next in fiction?

 Conrad and Kenzie’s book — still no title! — will be out at the end of this month.

Then, in August, I’m bringing the I-Team heroes and the Scarlet Springs heroes together for an action-packed novella in the vein of every I-Team fan's favorite novella Dead by Midnight (which still has a 5-star rating on Amazon after 2.5 years). This time, the enemy will be wildland fire, not terrorists. Expect the heroes you love and the women they love to have to give their all to survive and save others.

Stay tuned for Conrad and Kenzie’s excerpt! Or join the I-Team or Scarlet Springs readers groups on Facebook and get excerpts and news before anyone else.

Facebook
Twitter

For a limited time, BARELY BREATHING (Colorado High Country #1) is free in ebook everywhere my books are sold — and, yes, that includes Australia and New Zealand.

BARELY BREATHING is the first of six books in my ongoing series about the Rocky Mountain Search & Rescue Team. It's straight contemporary romance with elements of adventure and suspense, NOT romantic suspense like the I-Team series. If you haven't yet given the series a try, now is your chance to get caught up while saving a little money.

Lexi Jewell left Scarlet Springs twelve years ago, vowing never to return to the small Colorado mountain town where she grew up. Now, here she is—over thirty, out of a job and with little choice but to move back in with her eccentric father. Lexi knows it’s just a matter of time before she runs into Austin Taylor, her first boyfriend and her first heartbreak. She’s determined to show him she’s over him—until he steps out of a pickup truck and back into her life, looking sexy as hell in his mountain ranger uniform.

As far as Austin is concerned, Lexi can turn her snazzy little convertible around and drive back to Chicago. After all, she ripped his teenage heart to pieces and turned her back on the town he loves. But from the moment he sees her again, he can’t get her out of his mind. Even her smile messes with his head.

When an evening of conversation turns into something else, Lexi and Austin agree to be friends—with benefits. But as Lexi starts making plans to return to the big city, Austin realizes he’ll lose her a second time unless he can show her that what she’s searching for has been right here all along.

Kindle US
Kindle UK
Kindle AU
Kindle CA
iBooks
Nook
Kobo
Smashwords

The other books in the series are only $4.99 each — a $4-per-book savings over typical New York ebook prices.The series includes (in order SLOW BURN, FALLING HARD, TEMPTING FATE, CLOSE TO HEAVEN: A Scarlet Springs Christmas, and my new release HOLDING ON.

Now is your chance to catch up with the series before the release of Book 7, which brings the I-Team heroes together with Scarlet Springs heroes in a struggle for survival.

Other book news

The audiobook of DEADLY INTENT is currently in production with Kaleo Griffith narrating as always. I have no word yet on a release date, but I promise to keep you posted.

Subscribe to my newsletter to keep up with new book releases and other important news. I never share information. If you want to read my Privacy Policy, click here. You can unsubscribe from the newsletter at any time.

Happy reading!

Kindle
Nook
Kobo
Apple Books 


We've had a smoky time of it in Colorado. News of the wildfires close to us made national and even international news. I even got an evacuation notice, which proved to be a mistake. As my phone was telling me I must grab essentials and evacuate NOW, I was trying to finish one more paragraph of Hard Pursuit . Just one more...

We got the all-clear shortly thereafter and are fortunate that our only experience of the fires is unbreathable air and two months of smelling like there was a campfire in the house. It was dark much of that time, an eerie kind of orange light. I was so glad when the snow came and knocked the fires back. (They are still burning.)

Noon at my parents' house. This is a color photo.

I live directly beneath the plume from the East
Troublesome Fire and very close to the Calwood Fire.
This was pretty much every day.





But enough about fires. Let’s talk about books! Malik and Kristi, who burned up the sheets together in Antarctica, are getting their own happily ever after. I absolutely love the cover, with those penetrating, intense eyes. Here’s the book description:


She walked away once…
When ER nurse Kristi Chang met former Army Ranger Malik Jones in Antarctica eighteen months ago, they agreed to sex with no strings. She had no idea that Malik would turn out to be the most fun she’d ever had. Or that a big, bad soldier could be so sweet. Or that she would still be thinking of him more than a year later. Now working with an international aid organization in Nigeria, Kristi regrets letting him go. When gunmen suddenly attack and tear her from her medical unit and force her at gunpoint to care for their leader, she knows she’ll have to use her wits if she wants to stay alive. She warns her captors that she’s married to a Ranger named Malik who will kill any man who touches her. If only that were true…


Now he’ll do anything to free her…
Malik hasn’t forgotten a single incredible moment he spent with Kristi. When he gets the news that she’s been abducted, he is gutted and wants to get Cobra’s guns into the fight to free her. A veteran of more than a few rescues, he knows only too well how brutal captivity can be for a woman and wants to get her out of there as soon as possible. But the State Department decides to let local authorities handle the situation and gives Cobra a different assignment, leaving Malik no choice but to quit the job he loves to go after Kristi himself. But locating her in an area bigger than the state of Texas and freeing her from a band of ruthless killers by himself isn’t going to be easy.


But the threat is greater than they realize…
When Malik appears out of nowhere and saves her life, Kristi thinks she’s dreaming. As she recovers from her ordeal, the heat between them once again flares into passion. This time, however, it’s not just about lust and physical pleasure. Their hearts are on the line. But in rescuing Kristi, Malik has kicked the proverbial hornet’s nest, unleashing the wrath of a ruthless criminal organization bent on revenge. It will take all of their strength and skill to survive—and turn this second chance at romance into the love of a lifetime.
I hope you're as excited to read their story as I am to share it with you. It will be out on Dec. 15. I’m working hard to get it done before Thanksgiving. I had a little accident this summer and have to get my left knee replaced. My surgery is the day before Thanksgiving. No turkey for me this year. But then 2020 has been a crazy year for everyone.


Stay well, everyone! Take good care of yourselves, and enjoy escaping into fiction.


KindleNookKoboApple Books