Ready for Two More?

I am not sure which books came out when from January through July but I'll get something about each of them before I am done! Today I'll get back to the dogs with Burrito Belle's Gringo Guy and Doggone Love.

Doggone Love was actually the first of my Canine Cupids group before I realized they would become a theme series. It grew out of a trip to the vet to put my late husband's sweet old Lab-Setter to sleep so she could go join her master and her canine buddy, Butch. They had both crossed over on the same day, almost three years earlier. The new vet at my regular clinic was a short husky blond who did have a  slight attitude and a few weeks later he morphed into Eric Vann. Once I had the vet I needed the guy with an animal requiring urgent care and here came Damon, racing to town with his injured Dixie Belle.

Now the odd thing is, I had acquired one Aussie (Australian Shepherd) almost two years earlier to be Sadie's companion. Rico and she never bonded as she had with Butch but it helped her depression some to have a canine companion. Well, after she was gone and after this story was submitted or even released, I got another Aussie to be Rico's partner. What was her name? Belle! I later added to that calling her Belle Starr for she was a food bandit par excellence! Are there really coincidences?  ~ (my Latina shrug) Who knows!

Anyway Doggone Love was a quick hit and a best seller at Amber Quill. I am so happy to have it available again.  I am not finding the post but I could swear I did do an excerpt and back story on it here. Oh well. Here is the cover, anyway. Dixie Belle is described as a red merle Aussie but the connection between the guy and the dog is perfect in this picture! At right is a closer likeness to my vision of of  Dixie Belle.

Burrito Belle's Gringo Guy is one that basically grew out of a quirky title idea. It was Taco Belle at first but not wanting to get in trouble with that chain, I switched to Burrito. LOL I actually like burritos better anyway!  Of course border crossings and international drug dealing are major issues everywhere but especially down here in southern Arizona and New Mexico which share a whole bottom border with our southern neighbor. Somehow Juan just popped into my mind, a young man, running desperately but not too harried to rescue an abandoned little dog as he flees north toward kin in Albuquerque. By that act already one of the good guys, he is going to need a guardian, a kind of angel when the drug cartel thugs come after him. Voila, enter Troy, a business man in Albuquerque's bustling down town. Of course it's that now feisty little Chihuahua who plays cupid! Here you can meet Juan and the puppy who becomes Burrito Belle.




Excerpt:
Prologue

Cuidad El Paso, USA

Late spring

4:30 A.M.

Juan Pablo Garcia y Calderon crept along the dark alley. He moved as quietly as his feline counterparts who haunted the place. They slipped off ahead and aside, silent as shadows, granting a fellow traveler passage. If the saints and Mother Mary were kind, he’d evade those who pursued him. Approaching dawn tinged the eastern horizon with the faintest hint of color, but in El Paso’s bleakest barrio, the only colors were shades of gray.
A slight sound halted his progress. A whimper, a whine, the merest whisper of distress? Where? What? He stopped to listen with total concentration. Again, there, just to his left. Close. He stooped to reach with a careful hand, mindful of hidden dangers. Rags, tattered papers, and trash were all his questing fingers found. Then…Wait…softness and a trace of warmth. He groped deeper in the litter, finding a small body, merely thinly furred skin stretched over fragile bones, but it stirred and gave off a trace of living heat.
The creature did not resist when he scooped it up. The fading darkness and his night-tuned vision let him discern the color—pale tan—and the shape, head too big for the small body with stick-like legs and large ears. A Chihuahua puppy by the looks of it. He tucked the shivering little shape into his sweatshirt and cradled it there with one hand as he pressed on, moving faster now under the spur of urgency. He needed to be far from here before sunrise.
No time to dawdle now. Albuquerque and the relative safety of Tio Tomás’s home were still far away. Juan broke into a trot, trying to steady the small dog against his body. He still scanned the area around him as he loped along, alert for hazards and danger, but eager to leave the ugly reality of the border city as far behind him as he could. He’d made it this far, and with luck, he’d never return to Cuidad Juarez and its war-torn streets again. His brief time there had almost cost him his life. He’d learned it had taken his brother’s. Pedro had been working for the Federales undercover and someone had caught onto him—that was the only thing Juan could figure.
The puppy didn’t move as they headed toward safety. At the moment, he was not even sure of the gender of the pup he’d found but its shivering had stopped. Still he could feel the slight flutter of breath and heartbeat and knew the little dog was alive. Saving it became almost as critical a need as saving himself. They were two of a kind—throw-away refugees, devalued by the unforgiving society that had made them outcasts and judged their lives of no worth. Juan was tough. If the pup were equally so, they would make it.
Sunrise found him in the northwest quadrant of the city, moving along the Rio Grande, between it and the humming busy-ness of Interstate 25. Following those two arteries would lead him eventually to Albuquerque. It was a long way to walk, but he’d already come a longer way. A few more kilometers, even many, were not too far to go for safety and a chance at tomorrow.