Good morning! The year is coming to an end so I thought I’d give you a little preview to what’s coming in 2022. There are three new opportunities that I can’t say much about, but they are going to be outside my usual writing genres. Two will be interactive, a new way to reach all y’all. But I can’t say much more than that 😉
There will be a new Flip the Trope Anthology, this time with a contemporary Billionaire romance that I finished during #NaNoWriMo this year, called Mr. Fixit’s Billionaire. Look for that in March 2022. And the first Flip the Trope story, A Timeless Heart will be out as an individual title around the same time.
There will also be another Concrete Angels MC tale, entitled Running From the Texas Millionaire (Viper’s tale), and The Samhain Soldier (Cloudburst Colorado #7), and I’m starting a new series, Sirens, Inc. where the military personnel are the heroines and the “heroes” are all civilians. So far I have The Siren Queen, The Siren and the Scientist, and The Siren and the Scot, but I don’t have release dates for those yet. I hope to get three of them out rapidly in the summer.
I hope your holiday season is more restful and joyful than stressful. I’m sending y’all my best. Below are snippets from Running From the Texas Millionaire, and The Siren and the Scientist to whet your appetite for more.
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Running From the Texas Millionaire
Viper
I shook my head and turned off my thoughts. The view was pretty spectacular up here and I needed a few moments of silence to appreciate it.
Until a baby’s wail cut through the early morning air.
My head came up and I searched the surrounding woods with surprise. It’s probably just the ravens. Ravens had been mistaken for babies in the past. The Pacific Northwest nations had named Raven the trickster god of their pantheon because they’d often been mistaken for lost babies in the woods. But the cry came again and all my buried maternal instincts screamed it was a child alone in the wilderness.
I took off down the trail toward the sound, half-convinced the Great Spirit the First Peoples of North America was having me on. I hadn’t passed any people on my way up the mountain so there couldn’t be a baby out there. But the cries kept coming and they sounded like the little one was hungry and uncomfortable.
What the fuck is a baby doing all the way out here?
There weren’t any good answers to my question as I closed in on the cries. They came from off my original path by a good fifty yards, around the base of a large promontory of rock in a clearing in the trees.
I saw the trailer first, the vaguely humped shape hidden amongst the trees and scrub. The door stood ajar and the wailing came from inside. Probably not a raven then.I wandered closer and found a dark green SUV with Colorado plates hooked up to the trailer. The doors were open and the car dinged from the keys set in the ignition.
I frowned. Who’d leave their baby in the trailer while they drove?
Then I found the bodies.
Oh shit.
The man lay slumped face down against the driver’s door as if he’d tried to get in to escape. I found the woman in the front seat leaning over the console to reach the steering wheel. Both bodies had three shots center mass. This had been an execution and they’d encountered a firing squad.
I swallowed hard against the fear. Who the fuck would come all the way out here just to kill people?
Because they were running from someone, just like you.
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The Siren and the Scientist
“Oh my glory, Tessa!” Chester shoved the door open and ran down the hallway to find the guard leaned against the wall with a pinched expression on her face. “Are you hurt? What can I do?”
“Dr. Martell, I need you to find something to use for a tourniquet.”
“Shit!” He crouched beside her and tried not to faint at the sight of blood staining her tan uniform pants. He’d taken basic first aid when he was in high school, but most of it drained out of his memory when he needed it. “What about my belt? Will that work?”
“Yeah, that should be fine.” She looked a little gray as he unbuckled the belt.
I probably look like I’m doing something inappropriate. At least there was no one else in the hallway to see him do it. Except the door at the far end cracked open and someone poked their head in. A pretty woman with intense green eyes and sharp arching brows. She wore a ballcap with some sports team’s logo and she fixed her gaze on him as he yanked his belt free of the loops.
And of course there is someone who just happens to come in right now.
He just hoped she wouldn’t shoot him.
He couldn’t worry about it now. Tessa needed his help and he couldn’t let her bleed out all over the floor. He crouched and wrapped the belt around her thigh and she pulled it higher closer to her groin.
“Really tight, okay?”
Chester swallowed hard. “Are you sure? It might hurt.”
“Yeah. If it’s not tight enough, it won’t matter if it hurts.” She slurred her words and he scrambled to yank the belt tight.
Tessa moaned and tears flowed from her eyes, but she didn’t try to yank her leg away.
“Oh, glory, I’m so sorry.” He hated seeing people hurt. It made his stomach queasy and his vision blur.
“It’s okay. It’s gotta be done.” She held the belt tight. “Cinch it there.”
He swallowed hard against bile as he locked the belt down, his fingers stained with her blood. This is so unsanitary. Tessa eventually leaned back and closed her eyes, tear streaming down her cheeks though she didn’t make a sound.
“Tessa, I’m so sorry to bug you, but there’s someone coming in through the door at the end of the hall.”
Chester swallowed hard as Tessa’s eyes jerked open and she raised her pistol to point at the door. Despite the pain she had to be in and her position on the floor beside the wall, she held her weapon steady.
“Freeze! Identify yourself!” How she managed to shout so strongly he’d never know.
One hand appeared open before the rest of the woman in the ballcap stepped into the open hallway. She appeared to be dressed in fashionable hiking clothes he’d seen in outfitter clothing catalogs, complete with daypack. Despite her “afternoon hiker” attire, she moved like a trained soldier, keep her hands away from her holstered weapon.
“Easy, ma’am. My name is Captain Hermione Wilcox, U.S. Army retired. The guard from Building One, Jeff Anderson directed me here.” Her sharp gaze latched onto the belt he had cinched around Tessa’s leg. “How bad is the damage?”