True Confession

My name is Marie Force and I am guilty of ignoring my blog. There. I said it out loud. I can't believe it's been almost three months since I posted here! You'd think I had nothing to say, which couldn't be further from the truth. If you've gotten to know me at all, you know I've always got plenty to say! So what's new?

FATAL DECEPTION, book 5 in my FATAL SERIES, will be out on November 12. I'm really excited about this book, which in my humble opinion, is the best one yet. Sam and Nick are back with more married adventures. You'll see more of series favorites Freddie, Gonzo, Jeannie, Skip, Graham, Laine and of course, SCOTTY! I've also come up with what I think is a fun way to get our superstar wedding planner, Shelby Faircloth, back onto the canvas in a more enduring role. She was so damned fun to write and her dynamic with Sam made me laugh out loud more than once, so how could I not find a way to get her back into the series? If you haven't already pre-ordered your copy, you can do so now at:


Kindle
Nook
Apple

More retailers coming soon! Here's a bit about what you can expect in FATAL DECEPTION: 

The wife of the White House deputy chief of staff has been beaten to death, and their one-year-old daughter is missing. D.C. Police Lieutenant Sam Holland is in charge of the murder investigation, but she's forced to collaborate with Special Victims Unit detectives as well as thorn-in-her-side FBI Special Agent Avery Hill. Then, a cold case of her father's resurrects old hurts—a distraction Sam cannot afford. 

As Sam's investigation heats up, so does Nick's political career—and the heat carries over to their bedroom. Will Sam put the pieces in time to catch a killer and find the baby, or will ambition, greed and lies prove fatal?

Read an excerpt here.

I get a lot of questions about the Fatal Series, so let me answer a few of them here.

How many books do you plan to write in the Fatal Series?

I don't know yet. I figure as long as I'm having fun with Sam and Nick and readers are enjoying their adventures, I'll keep writing the series. 

What will the next book be called and when will it be out?

Book Six will be called Fatal Mistake, and I believe it's scheduled to be out in June 2013. 

Will the Fatal Series be coming to print?

YES! I'm pleased to report that books 1 and 2, FATAL AFFAIR and FATAL JUSTICE, will be out in  2013 in what's called mass market paperback format (meaning they will be in bookstores and retail outlets close to your homes) from HQN, which is a Harlequin imprint. I'm hoping the rest of the books will follow soon after. In the meantime, the series has been coming to print via eHarlequin.com. Fatal Consequences is currently available there in print.

Will Sam ever have a baby?

I'm not sure yet how that will play out. I do know that bringing a newborn in their lives would vastly change the landscape of the series, and not necessarily for the better. So if and when Sam has a baby, I do expect it to be much later in the series. 

Will we ever find out who shot Skip?

I believe we will, but I'm not sure when yet!

If you have other questions about the Fatal Series, please feel free to post them in the comments. I'm happy to provide the answers—if I have them!

In other news...

Right now I'm working on two books at the same time. COMING HOME, book 4 in the Treading Water Series, will hopefully be out by Christmas, and WAITING FOR LOVE, book 8 in the McCarthys of Gansett Island Series, will be out early next year. Right after that, I'll be diving into FATAL MISTAKE as well as book 1 in my new Green Mountain Country Store Series that's coming in late 2013. If you're interested in audio books, watch for the McCarthy Series coming to audio in 2013!

So that's what is keeping me busy at the moment! Hope you're doing well and getting lots of reading time! 

Happy Mother's Day and Other News

Hope all the moms out there are having a wonderful day. My day began with breakfast in bed made by my husband and son, along with my daughter's special contribution: chocolate covered strawberries, which should, in my humble opinion, be their own food group. They are one of my all-time FAVORITE things. I also received some candy and flowers and a HUGE card declaring me the best mom ever. Since my kids are 16 and 13 I suppose I should count myself as fortunate that they still think so with all my many rules and restrictions that make their lives so miserable. Hey, that's my job, right?

As a special offering to all the moms, I'm offering my book GEORGIA ON MY MIND as a Kindle freebie this weekend. If you've already read GEORGIA, then you know that the loss of my own mother, now almost eight years ago, featured prominently in this story. Much of what Georgie Quinn goes through after losing her mother mirrored my experiences. There's also a cast of irascible senior citizens in this book that are fashioned after my dad and his hilarious group of friends. And finally, you get three romances for the price of one when the Caldwell brothers meet Georgie and her two roommates. Get it for free here until Tuesday. If you have a Nook, Kobo or iPad and want to read Georgia, you can download the free Kindle app to any device with an internet connection and get the free copy.

In other news, I was excited to hear this week that Harlequin will be bringing out the Fatal Series in mass market paperback under the HQN imprint starting in the fall of 2013 and going forward from there. I'm looking forward to gaining some new readers of the series through this offering, and I signed on for two more books in the series, Fatal Attack and Fatal Mistake. I'm looking forward to getting back to work on Fatal Attack when I get the recovered items off my damaged hard drive--hopefully by Tuesday of this week. What an ordeal that turned out to be. Note to all who rely on computers: back up more often than I did and don't drop your laptop.

Have a great Sunday!

Dear Diary: The Beautiful Thing About Ebooks

There are so many beautiful things about e-books. They are easily accessible, user friendly and never go out of print. They are available on a moment's notice and fit neatly on groovy devices we take with us everywhere we go. From the author's point of view, they are also easily updated, which is what I spent this morning doing. I updated the entire McCarthy series and created new files for the various retailers. I redid the Author's Note in each book to account for the fact that there will soon be five books in the series, and I updated the About the Author pages, as well as the reviews and list of available books to include new ones. It was a good "housekeeping" job that needed to be done. I'll also be refreshing the book descriptions on the various retail sites to include reviews, testimonials and a listing of the other books in the series. While all of this takes time and effort, I'm thrilled to be able to do it myself.

Speaking of housekeeping, I've just done a slight overhaul to my website. I've added a "Connect" button that lists all the ways readers can connect with me, from this blog to the reader groups on Facebook to Twitter and beyond. I've added a "Reviews" link to keep all my reviews in one central place, and we added a tab for the Treading Water Trilogy. The website is always a work in progress, so if there's anything you'd like to see there that I've missed, just let me know. On the back end, my lovely web guy Dan helped me to set up a sidebar feature that will allow me to make a single update to the sidebar that will then show up on every page. That might seem like a small thing, but as the site grows, it's a huge time saver to be able to hit every page with one update. It's the little things that make my life easier!

On the writing front, I hit 12,000 words on Fatal Attack yesterday. It was one of those perfect days when everything is firing on all cylinders. That book is off to a great start and the hardest part—the set up—is done now. I got to write a really fun Sam and Nick at home scene last night that I loved. I so enjoying hanging out with them. At this point they feel like old friends, and I know them so well that writing them gets easier all the time. The hardest part of the Fatal books is always the police investigation portion. I like where that part of Fatal Attack is heading. While at the gym yesterday (let there be no wasted time), I figured out the nuts and bolts of what will be the book after Attack, Fatal Mistake. That one is going to have a sports theme to it, and I'm looking forward to writing that. I'm also plugging away on my historical, Duchess by Deception, and thinking about the opening chapter of Season for Love, book 6 in the McCarthys of Gansett Island Series. I'll need to do that opening chapter soon so I can include it in the back of book 5, Hoping for Love, when that's released in March. So, there's a lot going on inside my poor tired brain, but it's all good and I'm having so much fun!

The new dog Louie seems to be settling in well. It's amazing how fast he and Brandy have worked out things like whose bowl is whose, who is allowed on what portion of the sofa, who I belong to (BRANDY, if you ask her, and LOUIE, if you ask him) and various other pack details. I posted a video of them playing tug of war with one of their toys last night. They sound like cute little one-horsepower motors! Since we're still training Louie on the invisible fence, we're not letting him run free in the yard yet, so we have to walk him out to his rope on the tree (hopefully, for just another day or two). One thing I have noticed about him is for a skinny little 39-pound dude, he is FREAKISHLY strong. Yesterday, I was bringing him in, lost my balance and ended up face down on the cement porch with skinned knees and a bruised elbow. I imagine it was quite a sight for any passing motorists! I managed to hang on to him as I recovered my senses, but it was a lesson to make sure I'm being careful where he's concerned. He's small but scrappy! I also discovered today, much to Dan's dismay, that Louie is a digger. Brandy went through a fierce digging phase that has only recently ended. Poor Dan...he fights a losing battle with the grass and the digging dogs are not good for growing grass. I see a lecture from Dad in poor Louie's future... I wonder if he will listen?

Song I can't get out of my head: still Set Fire to the Rain by Adele. Day five.... My family is going to shoot me any minute.

Who I love on American Idol: Phillip Phillips. My daughter predicts he will win. What do you say?

Looking forward to: More Idol as well as Grey's and Private Practice tonight

Hope you're having a great day!
xoxo
Marie