Drop Zone

The Saint Squad is expanding this October. Thank you to the readers who encouraged me to keep writing this series. Two new team members are joining the Saint Squad beginning with Damian Schmitt in Drop Zone. I am in the process of writing the next one which is expected to hit the shelves in 2015.


Back cover blurb:

Paige Vickers needs a new life, so she’s relieved when she’s given an assignment that takes her away from her stressful position as a psychiatric nurse with the CIA and puts her in a job as administrative assistant for Vanessa Johnson, an instructor for undercover operatives at the CIA’s training facility. 

 

At the same time, Damian Schmitt has been transferred to become a part of the Saint Squad—an elite group of Navy SEALs. However, on his first training mission with the team, he is almost killed, and the team suspects that the nearly fatal exercise was no accident. Then tensions accelerate when the rest of the squad is deployed on a secret mission—only to come up missing. 

 

When the Saint Squad’s disappearance endangers Paige’s boss, it is up to Paige and Damian to discover what has happened by going undercover to Maracaibo, Venezuela, the city of Damian’s childhood. The shocking twists and turns keep all  the members of the team guessing as they push to find out who is responsible for the attacks on the tightly knit Saint Squad. 

Twisted Fate

It seems like I always start each post with the phrase, "I know I haven't posted in a while." Yes, this is another of those posts, but so much has happened lately, I thought I should put something up here.

Photo by Heather Gardner Photography

First, thanks to all of the readers who nominated me for a Whitney Award. I won the Mystery/Suspense category for Deep Cover this year and I still can't believe that night wasn't just an awesome dream. Except maybe for the part where I accepted my award barefoot because I had kicked off my shoes. My daughter Christina will tell you she warned me to put them on...and she'd be telling the truth. Maybe that particular incident is just a tribute to my sense of humor...and my inability to wear shoes for more than a few minutes at a time.

The LDStorymakers Writers Conference in Layton, Utah that preceded this event was amazing. I had so much fun reconnecting with old friends and meeting new ones. I taught a couple of classes and had an awesome group for Bootcamp. I'm already looking forward to next year.

Earlier this month, a couple of the friends I met in person at my first LDStorymakers conference joined with me in a fun publication. You can see from the photos that we all enjoyed ourselves at little too much at times.

Twisted Fate was born from the realization that Stephanie Black, Gregg Luke and I all write mystery/suspense for the same publisher and yet we all have our own flavor. Stephanie writes classic mystery/suspense. She is exceptionally gifted at pacing her novels and creating a lot of tense moments as she guides her readers on the path to discover who dunnit.

Gregg is a pharmacist by day and a scare-the-pants-off-you writer by night. He uses his knowledge of the medical field to write amazing medical thrillers, the kind that make you wonder if the stories within his pages could really happen.

As for me, I write government intrigue, relying on my past experience working for the CIA as well as the experiences of many of my friends who work in various military and government positions.

Twisted Fate gives a flavor of each of our writing styles with three unique stories and a chance to try a new author or two.

For my novella, Hunted, it brings back some of the characters from my Undercurrents series. The main characters are Doug and Jill Valdez who first met one another during Ripple Effect. Doug has shown up a few times since then when characters in my other books needed an FBI agent they could trust.

In other news, the Saint Squad is expanding. Two new members are being added to the elite squad of Navy SEALs. The first will join us in Drop Zone (October 2014) and the second will appear sometime in 2015. I'll post the cover shortly.