Sorry to have been MIA again for so long. I have a good excuse this time.

Much has happened here at Casa Clare since my last blog post. We're deep into the gardening season with lots of landscape projects. I had emergency gallbladder surgery. Barely Breathing (Colorado High Country #1) got a brand new sexy cover that brings it into alignment with the rest of the series. And Conrad and Kenzie’s story (Colorado High Country #6) is in progress and due for release late this month.

Life on the Urban Farm

As some of you know, I love to garden and have completed some of the coursework toward a master gardener certification. We have a large rose garden that is a few days away from being in full bloom. We have lots of wildflowers for bees, along with herbs and lavender for sensory enjoyment. Last year, we put in an orchard of eight fruit trees.

We had a beautiful and unusually rainy spring. The trees—apart from the Honeycrisp apple and peach tree which wore themselves out fruiting last year—flowered and began to set fruit. Then we had a bad hail storm that tore most of the pears from one of our pear trees and took off a lot of leaves. We thought we'd gotten off okay — still lots of pears, still some apples, some plums, and lots of cherries— when we noticed that the Fireside apple tree and Bartlett pear tree had fireblight.

Heartbreak! Lamentation!

The wet spring and the hail damage combined to help the bacteria that causes this deadly tree disease to flourish. We've trimmed diseased branches off both trees, caring to dip the pruners in bleach between cuts, and more twigs die off. First the fruit withers and dies, and then the leaves die. I'm not at all certain we'll be able to save either tree.

Unless we want to break out toxic chemicals we're not really equipped to use, we really have no options besides doing our best to give the tree what it needs and hoping it fights off the disease.

Our strawberries got nicked by hail, but we've had our first few bowls for breakfast. There's nothing like homegrown strawberries. Our raspberries are thriving, too. So there are lots of things to be grateful for.

We planted a lot of potatoes, and those didn't seem to notice the hail. I expect a record spud harvest late this summer.

New cover for Barely Breathing

I’m sure Colorado High Country/Scarlet Springs fans noticed that the series changed its look between the first book (Barely Breathing, Lexi and Austin) and the second book (Slow Burn, Hawke and Victoria). Between those two releases, I’d done some research that showed that solo hero covers sell much better than couples. I made the change for the second book, but that left the first looking like it wasn't really part of the series.

I finally had time to do something about it, and I love the new look.

Conrad and Kenzie get their story

The last we heard about Harrison Conrad, the alpinist on the Rocky Mountain Search & Rescue Team, he had almost died in a catastrophe while attempting to summit Mt. Everest for the third time. His team, including his best buddy, were killed. He was the only one to survive. Rather than coming back to Scarlet, we heard that he was in Nepal.

Well, Megs has had enough of this, and she goes after him, finding him at a Buddhist monastery.

In Barely Breathing, you got the hint that Conrad and Kenzie, the search-and-rescue dog trainer, liked each other. It’s Kenzie — and a sweet little golden retriever puppy named Gabby — that help Conrad pull his life back together in the wake of tragedy.

Watch for an excerpt soon!

Take my gallbladder — please

In early April, I had what I thought was a terrible bout of heartburn. It was agony for more than two hours — and then it stopped. I stopped taking NSAIDs for my arthritis (misery) and tried to eat better. My doc at Kaiser ordered an ultrasound to check for gallbladder trouble, and it came back normal.

Then on May 17, it happened again. Agony.

This time I went to the ER. I was there at 6 a.m., and they could tell from blood work and my blood pressure (which was sky high) that something was wrong and that I was in a serious amount of pain. An ultrasound showed that my gallbladder was full of gallstones, even impacted gallstones, and was distended, i.e., not too far from rupturing. I was in the OR by noon. The post-op pain wasn't as bad as the gallbladder attack itself.

Side note: I wanted to see the gallstones, but they wouldn't save them for me. Not very nice.

I'm doing fine now and am very grateful that the ER radiologist was better than the guy at Kaiser, who clearly misread the original ultrasound.

Enough medical drama!

Many thanks to my sons, Alec and Benjamin, who stayed by my side at the hospital, and to my parents who welcomed me into their home for a couple of days where I could recuperate without cats trying to jump on my abdomen.

Needless to say, work on Conrad’s book came to a screeching halt for a couple of weeks.

What’s next in fiction? 

Conrad and Kenzie’s book — still no title! — will be out at the end of this month.

Then, in August, I’m bringing the I-Team heroes and the Scarlet Springs heroes together for an action-packed novella in the vein of every I-Team fan's favorite novella Dead by Midnight (which still has a 5-star rating on Amazon after 2.5 years). This time, the enemy will be wildland fire, not terrorists. Expect the heroes you love and the women they love to have to give their all to survive and save others.

Stay tuned for Conrad and Kenzie’s excerpt! Or join the I-Team or Scarlet Springs readers groups on Facebook and get excerpts and news before anyone else.

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