SOUL DEEP — Cover Reveal!

Here it is — the cover for Soul Deep, an I-Team After Hours novella.

Carrie at Seductive Designs did a fabulous job of putting it together, and she did it with almost no notice. I wasn’t certain how long it would take me to write Seduction Game, Holly’s story. If someone had told me the book would pour out of me in three and half months, I’d have thought they’d been smoking crack. So I didn’t schedule time with Carrie. Still, she jumped in and saved me. And now we have a book cover.

Here’s the blurb from the back of the book:

 

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Rancher Jack West knows what it means to love a woman with all his heart and to lose her far too soon. A widower for seven long years, he thinks love and romance are a thing of the past, nothing more than cherished memories. He devotes himself to his grown son and his family, the horses they raise, and the land that has been theirs for three generations. He doesn’t know that life has a surprise in store for him in the form of Janet Killeen, the lovely FBI agent he threw off his land last winter.

The bullet that left Janet Killeen seriously wounded also tore a hole through her life. All she wants is a little peace and quiet in the mountains, a chance to feel like herself again. That chance comes to an abrupt end when she goes off the road in a snowstorm and winds up stranded alone in a ditch. The last person on earth she wants to see is that arrogant jerk Jack West, no matter how handsome he is. But from the moment Jack finds her and offers her his hand, she realizes there’s far more to this gruff cowboy than she had imagined.                 

                                                                                            

But trouble is brewing at Cimarron Ranch. A deranged man with an inscrutable motive is moving in for the kill, threatening to end Jack and Janet’s romance before they can claim a love that is … Soul Deep.

Soul Deep is the first story I’ve written that isn’t about twenty-somethings or even thirty-somethings. Jack, the hero, is a former Army Ranger and widower who served two tours of duty in Vietnam as a young man. He’s a fit and robust 63. Janet, a special agent with the FBI, met Jack when he threw her off his land in Striking Distance. In the weeks that followed, she was badly injured by a sniper’s bullet while trying to protect Laura Nilsson. She is 45.

Romantic fiction centers around very young people, I suppose, because most people have their first sexual and romantic encounters while in their twenties. Romantic fiction has focused on catching that overwhelming experience of first real love.

But as those of us who are over 39 know, romance and sex remain a part of our lives. Everyone who is young and beautiful will grow older — if they’re lucky — but that doesn’t mean their need to be loved or their desire for fulfilling relationships, including sexual ones, diminishes. In fact, it may grow sharper, as they understand the value of such relationships.

It’s been fun for me as a 51-year-old to write about people closer to my age. Their maturity is fun to work with, making them unique among the characters that have inhabited my brain. There aren’t silly misunderstandings. There’s less ego and more thoughtfulness. And the sex is just as hot.

I can’t wait to share the story with you!

I’m down to the last few chapters at this point and hope to have the novella written and edited and out to you by the end of June or the first week of July. For a novella, it’s very long — at least 48,000 words. Some readers hate novellas, but these days there are books being sold as “novels” that are 50,000 words. Soul Deep will be a complete story.

In the meantime, I’m still waiting to see the US cover for Seduction Game, Holly’s story. It will be out in four months — Oct. 20 — in ebook format, with the print version coming out in March. The publisher split the release like that in order to get it to readers as soon as possible.

Seduction Game is available for pre-order in ebook format.

Kindle: http://amzn.to/1Jn7jZJ
iBooks: http://apple.co/1I9hJu8
Nook: http://bit.ly/1QmwI63

After I finish Soul Deep, I”ll be taking a bit of a break to recharge, and then I’m going to endeavor to write an I-Team Christmas story. No hints. I’m letting my imagination run loose on this one.

When that’s done, I hope to start the first book in a new series of contemporary novels set in the Colorado mountain town of Scarlet Springs, which I introduce in Soul Deep. The series will revolve around the loves and losses of the extraordinary men and women who make up the county’s alpine rescue team — chopper pilots, rangers, climbers, skiers, paramedics, avalanche rescue,  search and rescue dog trainers, law enforcement officers, dispatch people and so forth. The series will also include the kind of folks one meets in a real Colorado mountain town — eccentric mountain loners, New Agers, aging flower children, marijuana store owners, pot growers, the descendents of Cornish miners, ranchers, preppers, and the reclusive millionaire who owns the county's defunct silver mine. (If this description makes you laugh, you’re probably from Colorado or another mountain state.)

Also, I’m trying to get set up for direct distribution to iBooks and Google Play and perhaps All Romance eBooks. I’m also planning to revise the way people are added to my newsletter and how the newsletter is distributed. The current system, which has me entering names manually, is bunk.

I hope you’re all having a great summer so far!

Coming soon:
Cover reveal for Seduction Game
Excerpts from Soul Deep