UPDATE: The winner is…ButtonsMom2003!
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First, just a reminder! Gabriel releases after midnight tonight. If you haven’t already pre-ordered your copy, just click on the image!

Next! With only three weeks left before the kids head back to school, we’re trying to fit in fun family activities. Of course, we have the pool, the lake, etc. We also love our movie nights!

I’ve been dying to see this movie…

For a chance to win a $5 Amazon gift card, tell me your recommendations for family movie night!

My latest book releases tomorrow night just after midnight. I’m sitting here wanting to share the entire story right now, but I’m settling for a snippet instead. But which one? An exciting criminal takedown? The first kiss?

I’ve shared the entire first chapter. You can read it here. What about a snippet from the sex scene?

How about I choose my favorite scene from the book? And it might seem weird to you, but I love this tiny scene featuring my favorite waitress, Nadine. She makes an appearance in all the books. The woman is a fixture in Dead Horse—she’s rude, irascible, and knows everyone’s business. She’s decided that the bounty hunters are enemy #1 and never gives them any slack. This scene has more to it, because you’re meeting Nadine’s relative, who will feature in my first We are Dead Horse story. So, maybe this excerpt won’t be as much fun for you because you’re not seeing the “bigger” scene but it’s my favorite because I love, love, love Nadine.

Nadine in Gabriel…

Their table at the diner was surrounded by other tables. No privacy. And business was humming. Fig glanced up and watched the hunters’ “favorite fan” approach. “Watch out,” she whispered to Gabe. “Nadine’s coming our way.”

Gabe’s mouth firmed into a thin line.

Nadine slapped laminated copies of the menu on their table. “Heard you two let that Jimmy Calhoun fella slip right through your fingers.”

Fig raised her eyebrows. “Nadine, I never figured you for someone who kept up with current events. You being so busy and all.”

Nadine’s eyes narrowed. “Had someone from your TV show call me yesterday. Said they wanted some local color and wanted to interview me. Told ’em they’d need more than a damn five-minute segment to cover all the issues.”

“I’m sure they were eager to sign you up.”

Nadine huffed a breath. “So, are you two gonna order or talk my ear off? I’ve got other customers to tend to.”

Open Contests & a Giveaway

1. Giveaway! FREE Read! Sweeter Than Honey — LAST DAY! Everyone, get your FREE story!
2. Tell Me a Story or a Big Fat Lie! (Contest) — Win an Amazon gift card!
3. Gabbi Grey: Why Write in A Shared World? (Contest) — Win an Amazon gift card!
4. Michal Scott: Nothing New Under the Sun: Callie House and Ex-Slave Reparations (Contest) — Win an Amazon gift card!
5. Saturday Puzzle-Contest! — Win an Amazon gift card!

Just a reminder! In just ONE WEEK, Gabriel releases! Have you pre-ordered your copy?!

MONTANA BOUNTY HUNTERS:
DEAD HORSE, MT
Authentic Men… Real Adventures…

An ex-Special Forces bounty hunter has to find a way to repair his friendship with the agency’s prickly tech guru while not falling in love with her…

Gabriel Pelletier can’t read women. Hell, he didn’t know his ex-wife had been seeing another man until she cleaned out the apartment while he was deployed. Somehow, he’s managed to offend the Montana Bounty Hunters’ tech guru, and everyone around him is telling him to fix it!

Ex-Army Fredericka “Fig” Newton has always navigated working with men by repelling them before she attracts unwanted attention. She temporarily lost her mind trying to befriend Gabriel when he joined the agency. Sure, he’s cute, and while everyone around her has found their happy-ever-after, she thought, just maybe, she could find hers with him. But nope. All her friendly overtures blew up in her face. So, it’s back to prickly Fig. Besides, they have a bad guy to take down and no time for romance.

Pre-order here!

Open Contests

1. 10 Things That Make Me Sigh (Contest) — Win a FREE book!
2. Saturday Puzzle-Contest! — Win an Amazon gift card!
3. Giveaway! FREE Read! Sweeter Than Honey — This giveaway ends soon! Everyone, get your copy!
4. Tell Me a Story or a Big Fat Lie! (Contest) — Win an Amazon gift card!

I’ve got my head down, typing my stubby fingers to the bone to get this book done! It arrives on July 26th, but I wanted to give you a little taste of Gabriel’s story. Enjoy the excerpt! ~DD

Have you preordered your copy? Link to Gabriel

Excerpt from Gabriel…

Gabriel Pelletier was pretty sure something had changed. Not that he was a deeply intuitive man—at least, not when it came to women. However, he was one hundred percent sure something was different about the bounty hunter’s office admin and operations guru, Fredericka Newton.

For one thing, she’d insisted that very morning that he call her “Fig” like everyone else in the agency did—her delivery crisp, her lips firm. And she’d hit him with that as he’d poured his first cup of coffee before the morning meeting had even begun.

When she’d turned on her heel and left him with his jaw sagging and wondering what bee had crawled up her ass, he’d seen Chase’s black eyebrows rise and his lips purse, had noted Cowboy’s grimace and Cage’s slow blink. Worse, Marti had been doing her best after her initial snort not to bust a gut laughing while her man Hardman shushed her with a glare.

Gabe had thought he’d had a budding friendship happening with Fredericka…er, Fig. “Fredericka” had been the name she’d given him when he’d first arrived after he’d received the invitation from Cage Morgan to join the agency. He’d sat across from Fig’s desk, filling out forms, while she’d kept up a light patter of conversation, which he’d learned later from the rest of the hunters was highly unusual. The Fig they knew was all about the job, hyper-focused, no chitchat. And yet, she’d been friendly with him. Soft and warm-looking, too—something he’d mentioned to his partner, Eli Pope, who’d done his level best to hold back a grin, especially when Gabe had mentioned just how nice “Fredericka” was.

Today, he’d finally seen what the rest of the crew saw when they looked at Fig. Read the rest of this entry »

I have a new release coming on July 12^th, and I thought you’d like to know some of the personal motivation that went into creating the story.

1. The title is a tribute to one of my longtime industry partners and friends, Kate Richards. She is the owner of Decadent Publishing, and I’ve worked with her for more than eleven years, both as a publisher and an editor.

2. Kate, the heroine of Protecting Kate, first appeared in Protecting Susan. In that book, Susan came to Kate’s farm for battered women to learn self-defense skills.

3. My favorite hero from Susan Stoker’s Special Forces series, SEAL of Protection, is Tex Keegan, He appears in all of my stories as a secondary character, including this one.

Read an excerpt from the book, and then learn how you can order a signed print copy!

Protecting Kate

For Kate Bartlett running Haven Farm was the realization of a dream. Helping battered and abused women build a new life was very satisfying. Of course, it left her with no personal life of her own but she put that on the back burner.

Dan Wolff left the SEALs with a nightmare that wouldn’t go away. It kept him from having a personal life and sent him to the small town of Dixville, Florida, where he served now as sheriff of the county. His biggest challenges were the rednecks who thought it was fun to get drunk and beat up their women, a situation that brought him into continuous contact with Kate.

But it all changes when a group of convicts escapes from the nearby prison and takes refuge in Dixville. Can Dan protect the women who make perfect shields? And will he and Kate finally give in to the attraction that sizzles between them?

Excerpt from Protecting Kate…

Clad in his battle fatigues, his face darkened with camouflage paint and his M4A1 rifle in his hands, Dan Wolff crouched in the thicket of trees, staring at the cluster of small adobe houses with straw roofing. At three in the morning, it was very quiet in this village, even though it was a hotbed of activity for the local gang in this small city. Was it too quiet? Should people be moving somewhere, or was everyone asleep? Were there only three gang members guarding the inside, or were there really more? As team leader, he hadn’t been happy with the scarcity of information they’d been given, and neither was their commanding officer, but they were running out of time to stage their rescue. Ten women had been taken captive by gang members who announced they were going to stage an execution to make an example of them. Send a message not to mess in gang territory.

The women had come down here on a trip from the States to study the country and have a vacation. Although why the fuck anyone would want to take a pleasure trip to a place overrun with gangs was beyond him. Oh sure, the resorts were beautiful, and the areas immediately surrounding them were gorgeous. But there was always a sliver of fear in the area that one or more of the gangs would decide to have a little fun. It had happened before, and he’d bet his left testicle it would happen again. Of course, he fervently hoped it wouldn’t come to that since he was intensely fond of both of them.

But the women had been appalled at some of the conditions they’d seen on their trips to the smaller villages—another idiotic move—and talked about bringing organizations to the country to help correct it.

What he wasn’t fond of was the sketchy information they’d been given. Their commanding officer had busted his butt to get as much as possible, but the gang holding the women made sure what was known was sketchy and frequently changing. So, they went with a rundown full of holes. Unsure number of gang members involved protecting the women, but not more than four. Which room in the house they were sequestered in, but probably one of the bedrooms. And more like that. But he was the team leader, so it was up to him to make apple juice out of apples, even as he cursed the newly minted CO every minute.

After he used his night- vision goggles to study everything around them, doing his best to make sure gang members wouldn’t come flooding out of the trees, he waved his team forward. As described, there was only one man guarding the front door and two lounging against a junker across the street. Dan figured they were pretty damn overconfident.

He gave the signals they’d prepared, two of the SEALs crept up on the gang members against the car, and two more of them breached the door, with four others as backup. But when Dan had his men kick the door down and roll in with their guns at the ready, all hell broke loose. Unlike the few gang members they had expected, there were several in the house, standing behind the women who were bound and gagged…and terrified, not to mention other terrorists in a second room. They’d laid a trap so successfully that even checking out the scene ahead of time had revealed nothing.

Fucking shit!

“Back off, back off,” he shouted to his men, but, by then, it was insanity.

Bullets were flying, people were shouting, and bodies were falling. It was a totally fucked-up mess.

When it was over, three gang members were dead, four of Dan’s men were wounded, and all the women were either wounded or dead. He called for emergency pickup, and those of his men still functioning were able to hold the rest of the gang off until two choppers arrived, cleared the area, and landed to pick everyone up.

He had no idea how he was going to live with the memories of all the people who had been killed on a mission he led. In the debrief, his commanding officer had tried to assure him it hadn’t been his fault. That their information had been bad. A trap, in fact. That he, the CO, took full responsibility for it.

But Dan couldn’t deal with it. Despite efforts to change his mind, he resigned from the SEALs, determined to bury himself as an ordinary civilian, with no mention of the military at all. Someplace where, hopefully, he could redeem himself enough that the nightmares would stop.

He had no idea where that place would be, but he knew just the person to ask.

Available for preorder on Amazon:  https://geni.us/ProtectingKate_AznALL
Want a signed print copy? Click here for details:  https://bit.ly/ProtectingKatePRINTorder

UPDATE: The winners are…Colleen, bn100, Debra Guyette, and ButtonsMom2003!
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Check out the series here!

I’m working on finishing the next Montana Bounty Hunters: Dead Horse, MT, book now, so I thought I’d post a little reminder of the stories that precede Gabriel’s in case you haven’t read them yet!

Readers enjoy the interplay between my ex-military hunters, love the strong heroines, the action, the sexiness, the action-packed scenes. Oh, and the humor! If you haven’t given my bounty hunters a try, now’s the time!

For a chance to win your choice of one of the books in this series, tell me what you love to see in an action-packed story!

And don’t forget, Gabriel is coming July 26th! Preorder your copy here: Gabriel

UPDATE: The winner is…Margaret!
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Let’s just get started on my recap! I have a bunch of s**t to do today! ‘Kay? 🙂

June

Here’s what I managed to accomplish…

Work-related:

1. I completed writing and published Victoria’s Six—which I hated while I was writing it but love, love, love now! It’s funny how that works.
2. I completed 4 editing projects for other authors in June!
3. The bad news? I cancelled the release of Wild Thing. I simply could not squeeze in another book in June. My goal now is to push the book toward the end of the year, releasing it in November or December.

Health-related:

1. I have not climbed back aboard the Weight Watchers wagon. However, I maintained 25 pounds of my loss since January. Motivation is lagging…
2. As for physical activity, the pool is finally sparkling clear and warm! I’m swimming at least once a day, usually twice. The little ones don’t have to do more than show up at my door with a quivering bottom lip to talk me into joining them.

Happiness-related: 

1. After the #100DayChallenge ended in May, so did my artistic ambition. I puttered but painted very, very little. I’m embarrassed to share the “best” of what I produced, but here it goes…

July

Come hell or high water…

For work-related, I plan:

1. To complete and publish my next bounty hunter book, Gabriel!
2. To revise and compile the Danger Zone trilogy into a single bundle and get it ready for publishing!
3. To begin work on my next Brotherhood Protectors romantic suspense story.
4. To complete 3 editing projects in July!

For health related, I plan:

1. To restart Weight Watchers (count those points!) and hope to lose at least 5 pounds, remembering: Slow is good!
2. To swim at least one time a day!
3. To begin some low-impact aerobics. Maybe, I’ll do more housework, too. Gah.

For happiness-related, I plan: 

1. To participate in an online #fodderchallenge beginning July 5!
2. To produce at least two finished pieces of art every week!
3. To blog about art (on my Emerald Casket site) just to keep myself honest! (No one actually has to read it!)

Contest

Solve the puzzle then comment on anything you’ve read in this post, share something you plan to do in July, or just tell me what you plan to read…

Like I said, comment on anything for a chance to win a $5 Amazon gift card!

Open Contests

1. Scavenger Hunt! (Contest) — This one ends on Monday! Win an Amazon gift card!
2. The Weekend–Batman-style! (Contest) — This one also ends Monday! Win an Amazon gift card!
3. Saturday Puzzle-Contest! Plus, More Open Contests! — Win an Amazon gift card!
4. Michal Scott: Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley — An Extraordinary Life In Her Own Words (Contest) — Win an Amazon gift card!