Week Two: Suspenseful Seven Sentence Sunday

Hello All!

The promised winter storm arrived in Georgia last Sunday and us Atlantans have been iced in for almost a week.  Iced in and snowed in are two different animals and I hope you never have an encounter with black ice.  He is a deceptively mean SOB who lurks in the dark of the night to steal your traction right out from under your wheels and sends you spinning out of control.  I, myself, did a 180 in the middle of a five lane highway at midnight on Friday going to pick my son up from work.   I count it a complete miracle that I and my car did not suffer damage.  When I came to a stop, I didn’t even have room to open my car door, the bridge’s guardrail was so close.  There was a reason no one was out.  The South is uniquely cursed.  Whenever we get a snowfall, because it almost always warms up just enough then freezes again to form a hard ice on top of everything.  And it is slick.  But enough about me…

This week I introduce you to the heroine of Collateral Damage, Lauren Collins, a mother of six year old twins who lives in suburban Atlanta.   In the middle of the night she gets a call from an American Embassy in Brazil.  Her soon to be ex’s body, Bill Collins, was found floating in the lake of a five star resort.  She hangs up the phone stunned and…

Suddenly glass shattered and Sasha and Sam started barking. Fearing the boys were up and in the kitchen, Lauren ran down the hall.
A quick glance in their room brought her racing heart to a stop before it thundered painfully harder. Both Matt and Mitch were asleep in their beds. Then who was downstairs? Had Sasha and Sam broken something? Halfway down the steps she caught sight of a black clad hulking figure standing just inside the kitchen French doors.

From this point on everything that Lauren believes about her life and the world around her starts to unravel.  She and her sons run for their lives.  One man puts himself between her family and a killer.  That man is Jack Hunter, a wounded soldier with blood on his hands.  Jack is determined to find the truth.  He killed Bill Collins two weeks ago in Lebanon, so how did the man’s body end up in Brazil reportedly murdered just yesterday?  What he discovers could not only destroy the world as we know it, but could cost him everything.  What does a man do when he falls in love with the woman whose husband he killed?

For those of you who tuned in last week, I was in the middle of writing the dreaded synopsis for book two of my Silent Warrior Series, titled Tactical Deception.  I am happy to say that Tactical Deception will be released in the Fall of 2011, provided that everything goes well.  This is the story of Lt. Col. Roger Weston and Mari Dalton who are secondary characters in Collateral Damage.

Here is a taste of their story in Collateral Damage

Now that Neil was gone, had fate landed her back into the death that she had escaped? For once again, Mari was imprisoned in a windowless room, and death was banging on her door.

She told the emergency operator where she was located streetwise, but couldn’t remember the name of the food mart. After hanging up, she began to wonder what would happen when the police did come. She hadn’t thought about anything but her grief and the baby since Neil was killed. Was she even allowed to remain in the United States now? Her application for citizenship hadn’t been approved yet. Would the police lock her behind bars and accuse her of wrongdoing? She had hit the man with the door first.

Heart pounding impossibly faster, she searched through her incoming calls, found the one number she swore she would never use and hit the send button, and prayed Lt. Col Roger Weston answered.  She was out of time and as good as dead.

Stay tuned for more.  As soon as I get my dreaded taxes done I will be writing Tactical Deception and giving you a taste of that as well.

Go forth and be thankful for every blessed moment that you are alive!

P.S. The Golden Globes are on tonight and a very special lady will be the Golden Globe lady!  Gia Mantegna!  Check her out!

J.L. Saint, aka Jennifer St. Giles, aka Jennifer Saints.