Wild
Women Authors
is delighted to have author Petie McCarty spend the week of
Independence Day with us, chatting about The Mystery Angel Romances
series she created for Soul Mate Publishing. Today we'll feature No
Cowboys, No Angels.
Blurb:
Since
Kellen is convinced no sane woman would choose to live in Riverside,
she vows to sell her farm and quick. Her handsome neighbor Luke
Thornton must block the farm sale or risk exposure of his family's
secrets. While Kellen has located one potential buyer, she faces a
town full of objectors. Someone is trying to frighten her off, and
Luke is forced to step in and rescue her more than once.
Unfortunately,
Kellen can't seem to stay out of trouble. She stumbles onto a
clandestine hazardous-waste-dumping operation next to her farm, and
she prays Luke has one more rescue up his sleeve. It's her only hope
of staying alive.
Unless
her mother really did
leave her a guardian angel…
Excerpt:
The frigid water closed in over
Kellen, and she lashed out with both arms to force her head above the
surface for a desperate breath. Her hiking boots would sign her death
warrant. They already felt like concrete blocks. She had only
minutes, maybe seconds, to keep herself afloat. She thrashed again,
and this time her face barely cleared the water’s surface. She was
ready and screamed with all her might.
Icy water filled her eyes, and
her arms stroked hard to keep her mouth above the water long enough
to grab a precious lungful of air. She scissored her legs to help her
dwindling buoyancy, but the physical act was so difficult with the
boots on, her muscles screamed with the effort.
How many more times can I get
a breath? Two, maybe three?
Her arm muscles strained in
revolt as she scissored her legs again. She plummeted farther after
each thrust, and her best effort barely pushed her mouth and nose
above the surface. She didn’t scream again. There was no one around
to hear, and she couldn’t spare the strength. Less than a minute
had passed since she’d hit the freezing water.
Downward she stroked her arms
hard, but the heavy flannel shirt dragged against the motion. She
opened her eyes to see the surface, and at the peak of her thrust,
her lips were still underwater. She tried to scissor her legs, but
she had nothing left. She feared she would sink and flailed both arms
upward. Death hovered at her shoulder, near as the blackest of
shadows beneath the dock, tangible enough that she could reach out
and touch the darkness. Another stroke downward, and she jerked her
head back, ready to grab a breath. She could see a blurred shadow
moving overhead. Hope buoyed her efforts to escape from the frigid
arms of the river drawing her down, and she forced her way to the
surface.
A huge hand plunged into the icy
water and grabbed her right arm. Kellen felt her body straining
toward the surface. The second her mouth was exposed to the air, she
gasped for a breath. A cough wracked her frame and threatened the
tenuous hold of the mighty hand on her arm. She sunk back down, her
eyes filled with water, and her vision blurred. She knew she weighed
a ton—with the soaked clothing and boots—and panicked thinking
the hand couldn’t hold on. Yet she was dragged higher until another
hand grabbed the back of her shirt, and her body careened up and
sideways onto the deck.
The mighty hands released her, and she
clutched at the wooden planks to be sure she was far enough from the
precipice to the icy water. She heaved two successive gasps, and a
hard sob wracked her frame.
Two strong arms tugged her
upright. She blinked rapidly to clear her blurred vision and saw
Luke’s face, his dark eyes wide. Nothing had ever looked so good to
her in all her life. With another hard sob, she threw herself into
his arms and broke into tears. The brush with death shattered all her
resolve and kindled emotions buried in the deepest recesses of her
heart.
He yanked her roughly to him and
clutched her tight to his chest, mumbling soothing words into her
ear. His warmth seeped into her, and she clung to him like her
lifeline, digging her fingers into his back, unwilling to let go and
unable to stop crying.
“I almost d-drowned,” she
stuttered, her face buried against his warm and now soaked chest.
“Good Lord, I know,” he
rumbled and crushed her even tighter against him.
“If you had been a minute
later,” she wheezed and tried to look up at him.
“Don’t even think that!”
She flinched and leaned back.
His gaze looked hard and unyielding.
“Just be glad I got here in
time,” he whispered harshly, and his eyes went black as onyx. He cupped her cheeks, lowered
his mouth, and gently brushed his lips against hers.
The
sizzle of heat shot straight to her heart and warmed her from the
inside out. All she could manage was a nod. His kiss twisted all her
wild emotions into a spinning vortex, allowing her only to react
without thought, and she leaned in to kiss him again.
Since
we'd read and reviewed No
Cowboys No Angels
earlier in the year, we wanted to know more about Petie's process and
the series and asked, how does it tie into the other two books in the
series?
First,
let me take a moment to thank Wild Women Authors for allowing me to
spend time with their readers today!
No
Cowboys No Angels is Book 1 in my Mystery Angel Romances series. The cast of
characters are different for each stand-alone love story, but the
novels are similar in that an angel has been hidden within each plot.
The angel's identity is not officially revealed until the
finale—unless the reader figures out who.
Two
things led me along to my very first series. One: I used to love
watching the TV show, Touched
by an Angel. Two: In
church one particular Sunday, the New Testament reading was Hebrews
13:2—Do not neglect
to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have
entertained angels without knowing it.
I
heard that and my jaw dropped. There
really were angels down here walking among us?
And
then my mind drifted to the possibility of angels down here actually
directing our individual path through life and better still, our
individual path to true love. From that the leap to a love story with
an angel hidden in the plot was but a short hop. Sort of
Touched-by-an-Angel
stories except you don’t know who the angel is . . .
And yes, I
may not have been paying complete attention in church that Sunday
morning. Too many other things racing through my mind.
No
Cowboys No Angels has
its own angel tucked into the plot as do Books 2 and 3 in the series.
Can you figure out who? If you do, drop me an email and let me know
if you did and when.
What's up next and when can we expect to
see it on the shelves?
I
am working on Earl
Away, Book 2 in my
Lords in Time series, a time-travel regency romance and sequel to
Duke du Jour.
Each book in the series is a stand alone but has returning characters.
In Book 2, Dex—the 8th
Earl of Dexter—takes an accidental tumble into the eerie fountain
on the Duke of Reston’s country estate and travels to the future
where he is mistaken for his great-great-great-etc. grandson and
namesake, the 14th
Earl of Dexter, gone missing and presently searched for by Isabella
“Izzy” Vanson, a present-day private investigator.
At
the same time, I am formulating my writing outline and scene bullets
for Cinderella on the
Rocks, Book 4 in my
Cinderella Romances series. Ian MacVicar returns from Par
for Cinderella for
his own story in which his wicked stepmother and stepsister try to
sabotage the Clan’s scotch distillery and liquor-distribution
business. Ian’s quirky clan of Highlanders comes up with plenty of
hijinks to thwart their saboteurs.
As
you can see, I have my work cut out for me for my foreseeable future.
Thank you again, Kat, for allowing me to spend time with your readers
today.
A bit about Petie McCarty:
Petie
spent a large part of her career working at Walt Disney World—"The
Most Magical Place on Earth"—where she enjoyed working in the
land of fairy tales by day and creating her own romantic fairy tales
by night, including her new series, The Cinderella
Romances.
She eventually said good-bye to her "day" job to
write her stories full-time. These days Petie spends her time
writing sequels to her regency time-travel series, Lords in Time, and
her cozy-mystery-with-romantic-suspense series, the Mystery Angel
Romances.
Petie
shares her home on the Cumberland Plateau in Tennessee with her
horticulturist husband and an opinionated Nanday conure named Sassy
who made a cameo appearance in No
Angels for Christmas.
To
learn more about Petie and the stories she creates, go to:
