Only one day till Hawke and Victoria’s story is out! Here’s the blurb from the back of the Slow Burn:


Victoria Woodley is done with men. Fresh off a dating nightmare, she flies from her home in Chicago to Scarlet Springs to take part in her best friend’s wedding. Who picks her up at the airport? Eric Hawke. Of course. She made a fool of herself over him last time she was here. He’s cocky, charming, and sexy as sin. But the fact that she’s attracted to him is all the proof she needs that he’s bad news. She would ignore him if she could. But he’s the best man, and she’s the maid of honor. She can’t just tell him to jump in a lake—especially not when her lips are locked with his.

Eric isn’t looking for a relationship. Between running the firehouse and volunteering for the county’s search and rescue team, he has enough on his plate. He doesn’t need to get tangled up with a woman from the big city, especially one whose idea of roughing it is going without designer coffee. Yet from the moment he looks into Victoria’s big brown eyes, the attraction he feels is too strong to deny. Faster than he can imagine, the spark of desire that has smoldered between them since the first day they met will flare into full-blown passion.

But can Eric convince Victoria to set aside her doubts and trust him with her heart before their time together runs out?
You can read the first two chapters on my website. Just click here.

Why did I choose to write about Hawke when I had a rescue team full of hunks to pick from? Easy. Because the moment readers finished Barely Breathing, they wrote to me to ask, “When are you writing Hawke’s story?” Also, I kind of had a crush on him.

I was fortunate enough to be able to spend a day with the fire chief of a local rural firehouse, who filled my head with so much information and so many amazing (and nutty) stories that I’m considering doing a spinoff series featuring firefighters.

The ebook for Slow Burn will be available Tuesday (9/20), while the print edition will take another week or so. It takes longer to create an actual physical product than it does to transform a Word document into an ebook. I’m not trying to make print readers wait.

I’ll be doing giveaways from my Facebook page and via my newsletter on Tuesday — signed print copies of Barely Breathing, salt water taffy from the original Taffy Shop in Estes Park, and Amazon gift cards.

If you haven’t signed up for my newsletter, you can join here. Enter your email address, then be sure to check your spam folder or Inbox for a confirmation email. I never share emails, and I don’t send out newsletters unless there’s news. You won’t get spammed.

But now to answer a question some of you have had: Why would an author of angsty, high-octane romantic suspense (the I-Team series) write straight contemporary romance?

The idea for the Colorado High Country series came to be back in 2013 when I was trying to decide what direction I wanted to go with self-publishing. I had self-published a few older historical romances that had gone out of print after my first New York Publisher went out of business. I had also published a couple of novellas related to my popular I-Team series. But I wanted to try something new.

Where to start? Well, there’s no place like home—especially when your home is Colorado.

I grew up in Boulder, Colorado, right up against the mountains and went on my first hike in the foothills before the age of 3. Weekends at our house were spent hiking, bouldering, skiing, rock climbing or trekking up one of the state’s many fourteeners—peaks that reach heights of at least 14,000 feet. Colorado has more fourteeners than any other state in the contiguous 48, something we take pride in and which keeps us busy on weekends.

My father taught rock climbing and mountaineering, even doing the first ascent of a few crags in Boulder Canyon. I have memories of my dad doing fingertip pull-ups and organizing his climbing gear—ropes, carabiners, pitons—on the floor of our living room. My brother followed in his footsteps. He learned to climb rock and ice and went on to summit Aconcagua, the highest mountain in the Western Hemisphere.

My contribution to climbing history was less admirable. I fell 40 feet down the side of Mt. Ida in Rocky Mountain National Park while on a five-day backpacking trip and had to be taken by helicopter to a trauma center. A ranger hiking in the backcountry came across my father and me, assessed my injuries, and called for a helicopter rescue.

That’s not exactly climbing glory. But it’s where the Colorado High Country series gets its inspiration—with an all-volunteer mountain rescue team.

We have several teams like this scattered across our state. Their members are highly trained men and women who do everything from rescuing injured climbers to finding lost children to helping people who’ve gotten stuck on a rock get safely down. They don’t charge for their services. They simply save lives.

My fictional Rocky Mountain Search & Rescue Team is headquartered in Scarlet Springs, a small, quirky mountain town with a colorful history and an even more colorful population. Scarlet is based loosely on Nederland, home of brewpubs and Frozen Dead Guy Days. It’s the perfect setting for these bigger-than-life heroes and heroines to meet, have adventures together, and fall passionately in love.

Have I mentioned that the series is hot? These are men and women who love adrenaline and who live big. In the bedroom, they’re just as adventurous. After all, if your idea of a good time is climbing 700-foot rock walls, you’re not going to be satisfied with a few sweet kisses and a little polite sex in the bedroom.

The Colorado High Country series gives me a chance to share the place where I grew up with all of you. No, these stories aren't angsty like the I-Team books, but they are sexy and emotionally “real.”
Do I plan to write more romantic suspense? Yes, absolutely, I do. But I want to get this series out of my brain and launched first. I hope you enjoy the stories.

If you haven’t read the first book in the series, there’s still time to get caught up.

Okay, Tuesday, come on! I can’t wait to share Hawke and Victoria’s story with you all.