Things have been pretty crazy at Casa Clare. Let’s see...

I had a major book release, a MacKinnon’s Rangers Christmas novella deadline, and got a lot of really fabulous news. My sister, who is a dual US/Swedish citizen, arrived from Stockholm to celebrate my mother’s 70th birthday and spend Thanksgiving with us. And in the middle of all of this, my poor blog went without an update for a very long time.

Sorry about that!

I’ll start with the good news.

I learned the Unlawful Contact has been picked up by J’ai Lu and will finally be published in French. This comes as good news to my French readers, who’ve been waiting forever for the I-Team.

Also, BookPages, a national publication for librarians and booksellers, featured Striking Distance (I-Team 6) as Christie Ridgeway’s top romance pick for November. That was a huge honor.

Publishers Weekly featured Striking Distance in its article about the popularity of military romance. (I’d post a link, but unless you have a subscription, it wouldn’t do you any good.)

Close on the heels of that announcement, I found out that Striking Distance was nominated by the reviewers at RT Book Reviews for Best Romantic Suspense of 2013. RT had given Striking Distance a 4.5-star Top Pick review in its November edition, and I was thrilled to see the story in such fabulous company.

And then today, I learned that  Striking Distance made the USA Today Bestseller list!



As Javier would say, “¡Wepa!”

I got the news from New York Times bestselling author and friend Thea Harrison, whose book Kinked, also made the list. She tweeted me, beating my editor and agent to the punch. Within seconds author superstar and friend Jill Shalvis, whose novel Rumor Has It hit both USA Today and the NYT, sent me the link. Then author/photographer Jenn LeBlanc, my bestie, posted on Facebook, and I knew it was real.

I was, of course, ecstatic. Squealing may or may not have occurred.

I immediately tried to call the two people who’ve done the most to support me — my sister, Michelle, and my younger son, Benjamin — but couldn’t get a hold of either of them. That’s exactly how it would work out, right? I had always imagined telling them to their faces. In the end, Benjamin, who is in Europe, saw it on Facebook before I could reach him. I did manage to tell my older son over the phone and then caught my sister later in the afternoon.

It means so much to me to hit the list with this novel. As most of you know, this story was very personal for me and took pretty much everything I had. It’s the first time I really explored the inner landscape of surviving trauma, in particular sexual assault. Sometimes we choose which stories we want to write, and sometimes those stories choose us. This was definitely the latter. It wasn’t easy to write, forcing me to dig deeper into myself than perhaps any other book I’ve written.


I feel incredibly grateful to have had the chance—and to have had so much support along the way.

Thanks to my sister, Michelle, and my son Benjamin, for their encouragement, weeks of handholding and long hours of listening me bounce the story off them.

Thank you to Arlene and Beatrice Rios and Wilson Cruz for the 15 months they spent working with me to help me get the Puerto Rican aspect of Javier’s character right. Any time they swear in their mother tongue, they will think of me.

Thank you to Officer Bryan Bartnes of the Loveland Police Department for his help in understanding explosives, the work of EOD teams, and the way authorities investigate bombings. Is it wrong that I was amused by people’s nervous glances as we talked about how to blow stuff up?

Thanks to Diane Grimaldi Whiting for walking me through the world of broadcast journalism. I’ve been interviewed on television, but I’ve never been on the other side of the camera. She helped me understand how a studio operates, essential information for a key scene in the story.

My heartfelt thanks to the active-duty SEAL who spent time between work-ups and deployments helping me understand the work and life of a special operator. His input and perspective over a period of almost two years were so essential to Javier’s part of the story. How he found time to answer all my questions and read the manuscript, I don’t know. But I am so very grateful both for his help and his service. I dedicate the book to him and feel honored to know he has a copy.

And, of course, a huge weepy thank you to the wonderful members of the I-Team Facebook group and all of my fabulous reader friends who have sent emails, posted on Facebook and tweeted to let me know how much Laura and Javier’s story mean to them. You make it all worthwhile!

I celebrated this evening by watching Raylan Givens get into trouble in Justified and enjoying some European chocolate with my dear sister — truly precious time for me.

As for that novella...

I hope to have a sweet MacKinnon’s Rangers Christmas story ready for you by the day before Thanksgiving. But more on that in my next post.

1. The ebook edition of Breaking Point (I-Team Book 5) has been marked down to $1.99 for one week only on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iTunes, and Kobo! 

2. First Strike (I-Team After Hours), the super-sexy prequel to Striking Distance (I-Team Book 6) is only 99 cents and getting great reviews.

3. Striking Distance (I-Team Book 6) will be out on Nov. 5 and is still on sale at special pre-order prices on Amazon for $4.79 (paperback) and $5.99 (Kindle)!

That’s what I mean when I say it’s raining I-Team. You wait more than a year for me to have a new novel, and all of a sudden there’s a new novel, a new novella and a HUGE markdown on one of the most popular and critically acclaimed books in the I-Team series.

It’s the perfect storm of I-Team, an I-Team orgy, an I-Team extravaganza.

It’s a chance for those of you who haven’t read Breaking Point to get caught up on the series before Striking Distance comes out.

Breaking Point was honored by Amazon as one of the Top Books of 2011 and has 99 five-star reviews on Amazon. It also received a starred review from Publishers Weekly. Apart from that, it’s known for its completely drool-worthy cover. I want you to know that it was my idea to make the model all sandy and dirty. You’re welcome!

You can read an excerpt or head on over to take advantage of the sale for yourself or for a stubborn friend who hasn’t listened to you when you’ve told her she needs to read this series. Grab it before the sale ends on Oct. 30. Here are the links:

Kindle: http://amzn.to/16rdJX1
Nook: http://bit.ly/17eGjeR
Kobo: http://bit.ly/HgsOi1
iTunes : http://bit.ly/1gD3sv7




First Strike, the erotic prequel to Striking Distance, just came out on Monday, A 17,400-word novella, it tells the story of how Laura Nilsson and Javier Corbray, the journalist heroine and Navy SEAL hero in Striking Distance, meet and share a mind-blowing weekend of no-strings-attached sex that changes both of their lives forever.

This was my first foray into writing erotica, and I had a lot of fun with it. For those who are a bit skittish about reading something labeled “erotica,” let me just say that it does not involve dinosaurs, step-fathers, animals of any kind, whips, fluorescent light bulbs, chains, more than two people, or anal sex. What else is there, you ask? You’ll just have to read it and find out!

At 99 cents, it’s a must-read for those of you who are waiting breathlessly for Striking Distance. So far, the cover has gotten my ads for it banished from Facebook — beheadings are apparently okay, but people in underwear embracing are not — and readers seem to enjoy looking at it. I guess that matters more to me. Right now, the story has 24 five-star reviews on Amazon, and it just came out Monday.

You can read an excerpt or follow these links to one-click your heart out.


Kindle: http://amzn.to/1gwJHFw 
Nook: http://bit.ly/16p0el8
Smashwords (all ebook formats, including Kobo and iBook): http://bit.ly/16p0nVV




Last, but certainly not least, is Striking Distance (I-Team Book 6), which will be out on Nov. 5 — less than two weeks from today! 

This full-length novel tells the rest of Laura and Javier’s story, carrying them through to their happily ever after. One of the most difficult books I’ve ever written, it took almost a year and half for me to finish the story. I was thrilled when I learned the book had received a Top Pick from RT Book Reviews. 

Striking Distance will be released in mass market paperback, ebook, and audiobook on the same day. The talented Kaleo Griffith is once again narrating the story, so those of you who need a Kaleo fix to help you with your OKD (Obsessive Kaleo Disorder) are in luck!

Read an excerpt, or head over to one of these links to pre-order a copy. Amazon currently has a sale on pre-orders, cutting $3.20 off the paperback price and $2 off the regular retail ebook price.

Here are the links:

Audible http://bit.ly/16r9kxZ 
Kindle http://amzn.to/1b8Fhh7 
nook http://bit.ly/1b8FT6v 
iTunes http://bit.ly/175u3uW 
Amazon http://amzn.to/1aAPFfX 
Barnes & Noble http://bit.ly/1bQClXr 
Books-A-Million http://bit.ly/GYBbPE 
Powell's Books http://bit.ly/1bQCv0Y 
IndieBound http://bit.ly/1aANlWl

And there you have it — a harmonic convergence of I-Team. I hope it helps make up at least in part for the fact that I’m such a slow writer — and the fact that you’ll be waiting a while for the next I-Team novel.

To make this more fun, I’m giving away five more copies of First Strike! Just share the news, tell me where you shared it, and leave your email address below. I’ll pick five winners a day today, Thursday, and Friday!


Coming soon:
One last pre-release excerpt from Striking Distance.

Today is one Monday that will suck just a little bit less.  First Strike is out — one day early!

The story is available on Kindle and Nook, as well as Smashwords, which offers all ebook formats without international restrictions. It will soon be out on iTunes and Kobo, as well, though both of those formats are already available on Smashwords.

For those who’ve missed prior posts about this 17,400-word e-novella, it is the erotic prequel to Striking Distance (I-Team Book 6), which will be out on Nov. 5.

It was originally one of the prologues to the story. I cut it, saved it, and have expanded it for release as a stand-alone novella that introduces us to Laura Nilsson and Javier Corbray, the heroine and hero from Striking Distance, and takes us along for the crazy weekend when they meet in Dubai City—and can’t keep their hands off each other even though it means risking a flogging and prison.




Here’s the description:






I had a lot to work with before I started working on First Strike. It was already very long—for a prologue. And it helped that I knew everything there was to know about Laura and Javier’s story, having just finished Striking Distance.

But what took me by surprise as I wrote it was how poignant the story felt to me, knowing, as I did, what lay in store for them. I found myself getting choked up several times. I suggest reading it again after you finish Striking Distance, and you’ll see what I mean. The last sex scene actually made me cry. And be warned: This story ends with a cliffhanger, binding it to the action in Striking Distance.

I hope you enjoy it! I am so excited to share this story with you and absolutely giddy to think we’re only two weeks and change away from the release of Striking Distance, which completes Laura and Javier’s story.

Without further ado, let’s get down to the giveaway! To celebrate the novella’s release, I’m giving away FIVE ebook copies of the story. What do you have to do to win? If you want to help spread word about the story, that’s great. Otherwise, just comment below, leave your email address, and tell me what you think makes a love scene in a romance sexy.

Simple question, right?

Have a fabulous day!

First, the bad news — I bumped the release date for First Strike back to Oct. 22 after some people expressed concerns about the month-long wait between the prequel and Striking Distance. There is a significant cliffhanger at the end of First Strike. With the Oct. 22 release date, there will be only two weeks between the two stories.

For those of you who missed it — this novella was kind of a surprise to everyone, including me — here’s the scoop on how this story came about: