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:

Pella Crossing/Fall 2012

What a crazy time it’s been since my last blog update. In that span of time I’ve finished and edited a novella — First Strike: The Erotic Prequel to Striking Distance — been through the biggest flood in the state of Colorado’s recorded history, and helped my younger son pack up and head off for eight months as a teaching assistant in France.

Not exactly a dull time.

Let’s start with the floods.

You probably all saw it on television — massive flash floods caused by a period of heavy rain along Colorado’s Front Range. I just happen to live in Boulder County which is next to Larimer County. Those two counties were the worst hit in the state. My home was not flooded, but the destruction around us was unbelievable, truly staggering.

This used to be a parking lot. The structure toward the center is the restroom facility. This ravine, carved by floodwater, is probably 15 feet deep.

The Rocky Mountains aren't really equipped to deal with lots of rain. We get heavy snows in the high country, but snow melts slowly, feeding the creeks and streams, seeping into the thin, rocky soil, soaking the forest duff. Rain, on the other hand, runs off the soil, taking the path of least resistance downhill. The foothills along the Front Range contain a series of canyons, each with its own stream or river, that funnel runoff from rain and snow out to the plains. When too much water runs into those streams at once, we can get flash floods, where high walls of water rip down from the mountains and tear apart anything in their paths.

The flooding washed down the earthen walls that held Webster Lake, pushing that water through Heron Lake and out through a farmer's field.

All of the cities along these natural floodplains prepare for potential flash floods. In Boulder, our emergency sirens aren’t for tornadoes; they were put in as a warning system for flash floods. Every city has its own emergency plan for how to deal with a major flood, and floods have occurred in the past.

In July 1976, for example, a rainstorm in the mountains to the west of Loveland sent a torrent of water down the Big Thompson Canyon, which most of the time looks like an unimpressive creek, and killed 143 people, five of whom were never found but were probably buried in rock and mud. The terrible death toll and the devastation spurred all of the cities along the Front Range to prepare for flash floods because all of them have little rivers, creeks and streams capable of doing with the Big Thompson River did.

Sunset Lake, Pella Crossing, the day after the flood

A flash flood in Fort Collins killed five in July 1997 when Spring Creek sent water pouring through the city. Fort Collins went to major effort to do all it could to prevent fatalities.

But no one, not even city planners, could have imagined what happened a couple of weeks ago, when the entire Front Range flooded at once, ever creek, river, stream, and ditch between Fort Collins and Colorado Springs flooding at once. The fact that only seven people died instead of hundreds is proof that the work the cities all did to prepare paid off.

Grandmother Cottonwood, which Benjy and I have said hello to on our walks since he was a little boy, survived the flood. The trail did not.

Benjamin was still working as a Ranger then. He was told to stay home for a couple of days — which was fine because there wasn’t really a way to get out of our neighborhood. Although we were high and dry, we were surrounded by flood zones. As I posted on Facebook, I have always wanted to live the island life, but I had been expecting palm trees and rum.

When Benjamin went back to work, he helped assist in the rescues, carrying things off helicopters that the National Guard was using to bring people down from the mountains. It was an unforgettable and very sobering experience for him, I’m sure.

Two mangled vehicles lie completely buried in sand and muck.

Seven people lost their lives. Thousands lost their homes. And we all lost some of the infrastructure of our state and our cities with highways washed out, open space areas destroyed, trails washed away. Our most personal lost came in the form of Pella Crossing, which I often referred to on Facebook and Twitter as “the lakes.” It’s a place I love, and it will be a very long time before it’s open to the public again.

I’ve posted a lot of photos of the place here over the years. It’s where I used to go for walks and where I took Benjamin for walks when he was a kid. The top photo shows Pella roughly a year ago. The remaining photos show what it is today. To get some sense of scale, look at the restroom facilities, tossed aside like a doll house. Those doors are big enough for people to walk through.

The St. Vrain carved a new path through Pella and through a farmer’s field.

Cars are buried in the sand. One lake got washed away. The St. Vrain River, which turned into an almost mile-wide torrent, flooded farms, killed livestock, ripped out the trails, washed away one lake and carved a new bed for itself through a farmer’s field adjacent to Pella. There’s a mobile home sitting in the middle of one lake. For those of us who went there every day, the damage is simply unfathomable.

The flood brought sewage from Lyons into the area. It killed fish by washing them out of the lakes and leaving them high and dry. There are dead chickens and geese lying around. It has been hard for all of us who saw these places on a daily basis to grasp what has happened.

Anyone missing a pickup or a mobile home? Here they are.

But that’s only one tiny piece of it. The water that shredded Pella almost wiped the town of Lyons, only 10 minutes down the road from me, off the map. The highways we drove on this summer when Benjamin and I went to Mud Lake and Nederland and Estes Park were destroyed.

While all this was going on, I was trying to finish First Strike while Chinook helicopters flew overhead. Perhaps because I couldn’t really go anywhere, I succeeded. The novella, which is about 17,000 words long, will be out on October 22. Watch for an excerpt soon!

Benjamin at the airport about to leave for France

And no sooner had I finished editing it — and I really do mean that — it was time to take Benjamin to the airport. He left his Ranger job temporarily to go to France for a once-in-a-lifetime chance to work as a teaching assistant at a public school 35 minutes south of Paris. Saying good-bye to him was hard because I’m going to miss him so much. But I know he’s going to have the time of his life.

So it was writing, writing, writing, rain, floods, editing, driving to the airport to say good-bye to my youngest for eight months.

Can you say whirlwind?

So that’s where I’ve been. I am very grateful that my entire family was spared damage to our health and our property. We all live in either Boulder or Larimer county, right in the heart of the flooding. Not everyone was so lucky, and I feel deep sadness for those who lost their lives, their livelihoods, and their homes.

Right now, with First Strike about to come out (Oct. 22) and Striking Distance right behind it (Nov. 5), I’m turning my attention to a possible Christmas novella and plotting the next full-length I-Team novel. But give me a second to catch my breath here.

Coming next: An excerpt from my sexiest novel yet, First Strike.