Time for more story and behind the scenes stuff!

Wow, turn my back for a few minutes and two weeks go buy. Holy smoke. Well, its been kinda busy as spring fades into summer in the southwest--some off-season thunder storms, lots of smoke from some bad forest fires and wind--which usually blows at inopportune times. Yes, I can criticise my beloved desert lands but I still love them. It's kinda like family, you know?

Anyway let's get back to more fiction. Ready to start on my 2011 releases. I started the year with another Canine Cupids story. This one is set in New Mexico and features a pair of very different heroes, as I often do. The dog is a spaniel mix, a lot like "Madra" who graced my life for awhile many years ago. To read about my dogs you can check my personal/fun blog http://www.deirdre-fourds.blogspot.com/  I talk a lot about my canine friends there. Anyway the dog here is named Angie and she's a rescue, adopted by one of the heroes who is a wounded warrior. Gary's athletic dreams were shattered by his injuries and he needs to find a new purpose. That's part of the story.

I got the ideas for this one from the news and many other sources. Once when I was a wannabe working very hard to get the romance genre in hand, I read an article about conflict which said, "If you hero is a firefighter, your heroine should be an arsonist." That seems kind of extreme but the point was well taken. I adapted it here when I found another man who would hit the first hero wrong in a variety of ways and yet a friendship and attraction happened against the odds. Isn't that kind of like life is sometimes? We meet someone and are almost put off by them but there is a niggling, nagging little voice that keeps saying we need to get to know the person better. And in time we may end up BFFs or lovers despite the differences.

That makes a good story, too. So jump on to the next post, the excerpt. BTW there is no such town as Gary's home but there are many small settlements along the Rio Grande between Albuquerque and Las Cruces that have similar characteristics. I was living in Colorado when I wrote this one and very much 'homesick' for some of these familiar scenes. The Latino people have  been in New Mexico for centuries and their culture and traditions are  such a wonderful part of the region! I hope you can get a sense of how neat these little places are even though I have to cover that part very briefly. So on to Canine TLC.

The pictures are from Mimbres, not on the Rio Grande but a neat little community in Grant County and the other is looking east from the hill above Las Cruces on the west side of the valley. (the "roadrunner" rest stop). You get a feel for the vast spaces and the rugged mountains here. The line where the river runs is about in the center of the photo running from side to side. Thew highway visible is just before it crosses the bridge. My home now is on the far side of the mountains at the horizon.