The more we do for ourselves, the more power we have over our own lives. With the world and the country in the state they’re in, it is super important to build security for ourselves and our neighborhoods however we can. Food security is vital.

I have always believed this. It’s in my DNA. My grandparents on both sides grew most their own food, and my parents always had a big vegetable garden. I can’t seem to shake the urge to grow things.

Before I had spinal surgery in 2010, we were growing most of the vegetables we ate through the summer in a patch of amended soil on the south side of our home. Everything was organic and fresh and so delicious that it ruined store-bought veggies for us. But spinal surgery changed what I was capable of doing, and the urban farm was let go.

Now it’s 2017, and the urban farm is back. In fact, it’s better than before. We’re planting everything in hand-mixed soil in raised beds so that I can garden again. In addition, we planted an orchard — eight dwarf fruit trees — in hopes of having a big store of fruit each fall once the trees mature. We also wanted to add to the urban forest canopy to decrease our carbon footprint.
We implemented Phase I this spring. For some ridiculous reason, most of the work of this transformation was listed under Phase I, so this phase felt eternal. It started in march with covering a big percentage of our lawn with weed cloth and 16 cubic feet of mulch and then transplanting seven rose bushes and one giant delphinium from the old rose bed to new beds.

I thought you might want to see what it looks like these days.

We planted two apple trees — Fireside (at top) and Honeycrisp (below). We weren’t expecting fruit this year, but both trees are producing so well that we’ve had to stake most of the branches to protect them, even after culling less desireable fruit from the trees.


You can see the rasberry beds behind Honeycrisp. The plants are thriving and producing a small amount of fruit, which is what one would expect for their first year.

When is old junk not junk? It’s not junk when it tells a story.

I’m putting the pieces together for the next book in the Colorado High Country series and spent Friday up at the Nederland Mining Museum, gleaning what I could about the area’s hard-rock mining history. The museum has so many artifacts from that era — some of them huge pieces of equipment — that they flow out the door and around to the sides of the building.

Joe and Rain’s story — A Scarlet Springs Christmas — will give us flashbacks into the town’s past. You’ll read all the same last names in those flashbacks — Taylor, Jewell, Hawke, Ahearn, etc. — but the characters will be the great-great-grandparents of the people you know and love.

Joe Moffat, the man who owns Knockers and the mothballed silver mine above town, has a unique relationship to the history of the area that brings with it a sense of responsibility. You’ll see what I mean in his story.

In the meantime, I thought I’d share what I saw at the mining museum.


When most people think of the gold and silver rushes, they think of rustic men panning for gold. That happened in Colorado during the gold rush (1859), but that was never the backbone of mining in my state. Here on this old wagon are a variety of different tools used in placer mining (panning for gold), including a small sluice, several gold pans, hammers and shovels for digging and smashing ore and a basket for sifting through crushed ore.


After seeing this display on the evolution of lighting, I knew immediately that I would never have been able to be a gold miner. Back before Edison and electricity, miners went down into the dark wearing tommy sticks (candles) on their helmets or stuck them into cracks in the rocks or timbers using iron candle holders. Some — those who had a bit more money — made little oil lamps using bacon fat or lard. They burned much brighter than the candles — and advantage when you're in the dark — but were also smoky.

Miners had to work quickly because they had only three candles per shift. When that last candle went out... You can see why I wouldn’t be down there.

Later, they wore carbide lamps on their helmets. A small chamber holding water dripped down onto calcium carbide, creating acetelyne gas. The light from the burning gas was directed using a little mirror on the front of the helmet. But this is later than the period of my story.


Here are more light and helmet artifacts. You can see a candle standing in a wooden candle holder the iron-tipped end of which would have been hammered into the rock or a nearby timber.


Here are some rail cars for moving ore. One of them is hand-pumped. When I saw it, my mind flashed on an episode of Scooby-Doo with Shaggy and Scooby frantically pumping their way down the tracks inside some mine. I have such dignified thoughts.


When I got to the museum, I met a volunteer named Susan, who told me she didn’t know much. She then proceeded to answer all my questions and tell me things I hadn’t thought to ask, using her own very extensive notes. Susan knows a lot, whether she thinks so or not.

This photo above shows the tools a single miner might use in the course of a day — hand drills and hammers. Miners used the drills, which were really iron spikes, to drill holes for blasting. There was single-jacking, where one miner held both the hammer and a short drill. He would strike the drill, turning it 1/4 turn after each blow. But a single man couldn't dig a very deep hole. Double-jacking involved one man holding a larger drill and turning it, while the other hit it with a heavier hammer, or dago, as the hammers were called. You can just see one of those iron candle sticks next to a candle there on the display.

Susan told me that two men could drill a single 1.5-foot-deep hole in an hour. That’s an hour of very hard manual labor. Before dynamite could be placed, they had to drill dozens of holes in a specific pattern in the rock. Those holes would be filled with dynamite, which was connected via long fuses for detonation.

This does not sound like easy work to me.


They have a diorama of the Caribou Mine, the fictional version of which Joe’s family owned. Here you can see the shafts dropping from below the shaft house into the mine below.


How did miners get down there? I’m so very glad you asked. The either climbed down a very long ladder or rode in a kibble — a big iron bucket — together with their tools. The kibble was lowered and raised by a hoist engineer, one of the highest paid men at the mine. He had to be a non-drinker and very reputable because lives were in his hands. In emergencies, he had to move that hoist quickly to get men out of the mine.

Susan told me that the Cornish miners who came here from Devon after the copper mines ran out were a very superstitious lot. They refused to ride down in the kibble but had no problem taking it back up again at the end of their shifts. So they would go down the ladder and then ride up in the kibble. She said men who rode in the kibble would put their tools in the center and then straddle it — one leg in and one leg out. If they were short, this would have put their nuts at risk, but that’s just my observation.



Speaking of dynamite...

See that steel box in the center of the table below, the one with the holes in it? That's a dynamite thawer. Life at altitude is chilly, and dynamite becomes volatile at 40 F — well above freezing. This meant that they had to keep the dynamite warm. One way to do that was to place sticks of dynamite into the slots a dynamite thawer, pour water into the box around them, and then set the box on a warm stove or above a few burning candles. Miners from smaller operations didn’t have newfangled, luxury devices like dynamite thawers and so slept with sticks of dynamte in their armpits. Shut the front door, you say? No, seriously, they did.



Below, you can see some tools that were used by the blacksmith. It was his job to make all the tools used for mining and to maintain them as well. The average drill lasted about six hours in a mine before it had to be resharpened. He spent a lot of time on drills. He was one of the better paid employees. Without a good blacksmith, all work at a mine came to a stop.


So that’s the end of our tour. I learned a lot and came away with new questions. I’m doing research for the historical scenes in the novel now and am really looking forward to hanging with everyone’s ancestors for a while. Eric Hawke’s great-great-granddaddy was a rabble rouser. That’s for sure.

If you haven’t tried my Colorado High Country series yet, now is a great time to dive in. The fourth book, Tempting Fate, was just released a couple of weeks ago, and the first book, Barely Breathing, is only 99 cents. The series is straight contemporary romance, not romantic suspense, something that seems to confuse some readers. In other words, there’s no suspense/thriller threat — except that I do sneak some elements of suspense into the stories. It’s not part of the main narrative, however, like it is with the I-Team series, which is romantic suspense.

You can read excerpts from all the books in the new series on my website.

If you had no idea I was writing this series, you might want to sign up for my newsletter so that you can get word of new releases without missing anything. I don’t send out newsletters unless I actually have news, so don’t worry about being spammed. Be sure to check your spam folder for a confirmation email.

Hope you’re having a great week!

I thought it might be fun to take you all with me on a trip to Scarlet Springs. Everyone needs a vacation, right?

I grew up in Boulder, Colorado, right next to the mountains. My view of the world every single day included the incredible Flatirons. We lived a 10-minute drive across town to hiking trails and spent most summer weekends hiking somewhere on the Mesa or McClintock Nature trails or in the Chautauqua Area in general. I know those trails by heart.

The Scarlet Springs series is set higher up in the mountains — about a 30-minute drive up Boulder Canyon. In real life, the town of Nederland sits there, nestled in a little valley surrounded by mountains with the Indian Peaks as its backdrop. This is a look at Scarlet/Nederland from the other side of the reservoir where Moretti likes to boat and where Hawke taught Victoria to wakeboard.




A couple of weeks ago, Benjamin, my younger son who is a park ranger, went up there with me to show me his secret patch of columbines. I took advantage of being up there to take pictures to share with you.

At the top of this page is a small glimpse of that secret columbine patch. Why is this field of flowers a secret? It's a secret because people don’t follow the rules. When you go into the mountains DO NOT pick flowers. Not only will you be ticketed and fined if you’re caught, but you will be depriving plants in a harsh environment of their one and only chance to make seeds this year. If enough people do this in an area, those flowering plants die off, and there are fewer flowers in the mountains. That's why this is a SECRET columbine patch. It absolutely enrages me when I see people picking flowers in the mountains. It’s not your garden, folks. It belongs to everyone.

When I was little, my father, a semi-pro rock climber and alpinist, taught me this:


That’s the proper ethic for time spent in nature. If everyone takes a pretty rock/pine cone/flower, there won’t be any left.



Here’s a closer look at Colorado’s state flower. Columbines are so delicate. They tend to cling to shady areas, often in glades of aspen where you also find poisonous hemlock.




On the hike up to the columbine patch, we passed this little pond where you can often find moose. There were no moose there that afternoon.



 Here’s a look at Mud Lake, what I call Moose Lake in the series. There are often moose there. I’ve seen them myself. This is the lake where Chaska takes Naomi where they see the mama bear and her cubs.


These are some of the wildflowers alongside the trails as you hike up to Mud Lake/Moose Lake. Penstemon was in high bloom, along with cinquefoil, columbine, and many other flowers. The pink/purplish flowers in these two photos (above and below) are penstemon.




The tree itself was fascinating, and I took many photos of it. Wind shaped it; fire killed it. One of my readers felt there was a kind of poetry to this image. It was very poignant, she said.



This is a slighly better look at Sugarloaf. I’m going hiking there soon, and I’ll get photos when I do.



Cinquefoil blooming next to an old log fence.


 A pond near sunset. Still no moose, darn it!

Now, we’re in the town of Scarlet Springs. Above, you can see the little roundabout where two highways come together. That’s Bear's roundabout, where he likes to expound on the Gospel for spare change.



The average street in Scarlet Springs, busy with summer tourists.



The geod store I mention in the stories.

There isn’t a cryogenics business in Nederland, but there is a famous dead guy in a freezer in a tough shed. Locally, we all call him “Grandpa in the Tuff Shed.” A Norwegian guy who lived here many years ago put his deceased grandfather on ice in his Tuff Shed for the day when he might be brought back to life. After he lost his fight to stay in the US, locals felt they had an obligation to take over paying for the electricity and maintaining the Tuff Shed for Grandpa’s sake. Hence Frozen Dead Guy Days, probably the biggest event in Nederland each year. The cryogenics place in my series is a nod to this cultural element. A local ice cream store sells a Frozen Dead Guy flavor of ice cream — blueberry ice cream with crushed Oreos and sour gummy worms.

You can’t make this shit up. The real world truly is stranger than fiction.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this little glimpse of the area around Scarlet Springs (Nederland). I am headed up there today to visit the Nederland Mining Museum to do some research about the town’s mining history for Rain and Joe’s story. We’ll get Joe’s back story, which is really the history of the town itself. There will be historical flashbacks that show the ancestors of the characters you all love. I’m really looking forward to writing it.

If you haven’t tried the Colorado High Country/Scarlet Springs series, the first book, Barely Breathing, is only 99 cents. The fourth book in the series, Tempting Fate, came out a couple of weeks ago and is getting overwhelmingly positive reviews.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Thanks to all of you who’ve posted reviews about Tempting Fate. Your love for this series is so incredibly gratifying. Your support means everything.

Being an author is something like being a cook. A cook works for hours — sometime days — on a meal, only to watch it be devoured in a fraction of that time. An author works for months — sometimes years — on a book, and readers finish it in a matter of hours. Before the author has slept off the post-writing hangover, they ask, “What’s next?”

That’s a good question. Here’s what I can share with you.

In May, I bought my way out of my contract with Penguin, which means I am free to write and publish anything I wish to write an publish. I no longer have any contractual obligations that prevent me from writing romantic suspense (I-Team or an I-Team spinoff), historicals (Kenleigh-Blakewell and MacKinnon's Rangers), or straight contemporary (Colorado High Country series).

Though the I-Team series is the most popular series I’ve written, my historical fans are hardcore. Hardcore. They have waited years for the next book in the MacKinnon’s Rangers series. I-Team fans, meanwhile, are hoping for Joaquin’s story and perhaps a revamp of the series or a spin-off, while my contemp fans just want the next Scarlet Spring book yesterday (but no pressure).

My plans through the end of this year include giving Rain and Joe their story as part of a Scarlet Springs Christmas novella. This will include some history of the town complete with historical flashbacks. I’m really looking forward to writing it.

I also want to write book 5 in the series. I’d imagined that Conrad would be the hero of Book 5, and I did leave him wandering the Himalaya in a state of grief over a fatal accident on Everest. I need to bring him home. His heroine might be a woman on the team. I’m not certain yet.

That will bring me up to three full-length novels and a novella in 2017 — a record for me. My novellas are the size of some people’s novels (around 50,000 words), so really, it’s almost like four novels.

What about next year?

For 2018, I plan to give historical fans Joseph’s story. Set just at the end of the French and Indian War (Seven Years War), it will give the last “MacKinnon” brother his own HEA and get us back in touch with Iain, Morgan, Connor, Dougie, Killie and the rest of the motley Ranger crew. If I have a very productive year, I will continue the series with Lord William’s story, which I have wanted to write for so very long.

I also plan to give Joaquin Ramirez (I-Team) his HEA in 2018. I haven’t settled on a concept for his story yet. It might be straight romantic suspense, or I might tie his story together with Scarlet Springs somehow. I’m exploring a variety of ways to bring the two series together. Gabe Rossiter (Naked Edge) is a member of the Rocky Mountain Search & Rescue Team, and Zach McBride (Breaking Point) has made a couple of cameo appearances, too. But it would be so fun to get Julian, Marc, and the others in on some kind of action in Scarlet Springs.

I’d like to launch an I-Team spin-off series with Derek Tower getting his story as we follow the exploits of Cobra International Solutions, Javier and Derek’s private security firm. This would definitely include Nick and Holly, who work for Javier and Derek, as well as Laura and other I-Team members.

And then I’d like to get another Colorado High Country book and novella written.

That makes for a very busy year, but there will be something for everyone.

In the meantime, if you haven’t tried the Colorado High Country series because it’s straight contemporary and you don't like straight contemporary romance, you might want to give Chaska’s book a try. No, it’s not suspense, but it’s sexy.

Tempting Fate has a 4.8 average on Amazon after 51 reviews and a 4.51 average on Goodreads after 184 ratings. One reader told me she thought I could never write anything she liked as much as she liked the I-Team series but that now she couldn’t choose between the two series. That was wonderful to hear. The book is available in ebook and paperback.

Barely Breathing, the first book in the series, is only 99 cents in ebook — a great way to get caught up.

A lot of you have asked about the Colorado High Country series as well as Dead by Midnight and when they’ll be out in audiobook. I don’t have an answer for that yet, but I know it won’t be soon.

I hope everyone is having a safe and happy summer!

Thanks so much to those of you who helped make the launch of Tempting Fate so successful. I’m thrilled that you enjoyed Chaska and Naomi’s story and am already working on the next Scarlet Springs novel. It’s been very touching to hear how many of you feel at home in this fictional world — and how many of you laughed until you cried over the “jalapenis” scene.

If you missed the release, you can still grab your copy, or start with Barely Breathing, the first book in the series, which is only 99 cents. All books in the series are available in ebook and in print.

Here’s what readers are saying about the story:

"Pamela Clare is a gifted writer, but this story puts her over the top. The knowledge and nuance of understanding Lakota culture, the passion and pain of finding your true half, the beauty and ugliness of human nature-- it's all there."
—Gem, five-star review, Amazon, verified purchase

“Chaska is a real hero, and I loved how that was told in relation to his heritage and what he was raised to believe. Naomi is a woman with so much courage yet vulnerable and I can totally relate to her difficulties in asking for help. All the characters in this story, and this series, are so well-drawn it feels like they really live in a real town called Scarlet Springs … I recommend the whole series.”
—M. Sayre, Amazon verified purchase, 5-star review

“Tempting Fate is an incredible story. I learned so much about the Lakota people while immersed in a can't-put-down romance! Pamela Clare is amazing, as always.”
—Purple Cow, Amazon verified purchase, 5-star review

“This latest book is my very favorite in this series. I loved Chaska and Naomi together. The gentleness, caring, and passion Chaska had for Naomi was wonderful ... Naomi is a courageous woman, who was dealt a crappy hand at birth but got the life she so deserved in the end. I am truly fascinated by all the Native American traditions so eloquently explained throughout the story, and it made for a nice change in contemporary romance.”
—Sanneke, Amazon verified purchase, 5-star review

“I hate to pick favorites.... because I love alllll my books... But every now and then, a story gives me goosebumps when reading it, makes me want to start all over again as soon as I'm reaching the last chapter.
Tempting Fate was one of those books. I loved it.”
—Gail, 5-star review, Amazon paperback

You can grab your copy here: Kindle US Kindle UK Kindle AU Kindle CA Nook iBooks Kobo Smashwords Paperback
In the meantime, I wish my readers and friends in the US a safe and happy Independence Day!