Good morning. I’ve been dying to tell you about my upcoming
release, out December 22nd.
When asked by my publisher to develop a mini-series for
their new Prepper line, I found my inspiration close to home. My home town of Alliance, Nebraska became my
model for the town of Evans Point, Wyoming. Why Alliance?
In the 1940’s, the Army built an Airfield about three miles
outside of the little blink and miss it town of Alliance. Overnight, with the
combination of workers from Kansas City and the Black Hills, the population
exploded to over ten thousand people. The airfield was used to
train fighter pilots, and with the United States at war, they were conscious of
possible air raids. So the Army Corp of Engineers built a bomb shelter
underneath the town.
It remains there to this day, and only the locals who’ve
been around for a while are aware of it.
This shelter led me to several what if. What if several
tornados level a small community, one like Alliance with an old shelter, mostly
forgotten until disaster strikes. What if those that stay and rebuild, decide
to refurbish the old shelter, so that they will be better prepared for future
disasters.
Evans Point was born and from that community of preppers,
Finding Mercy found its plot.
A note from Heather Bennett at Decadent Publishing about the new Prepper line:
"I saw the trends concerning prepping and new homesteading on television, Facebook, and in stores like CostCo and on Amazon. After decades of suburbanization, and major disasters highlighting our intense vulnerability, people have again found the desire to learn 'the old way'. Self reliance, prepping, homesteading is really just taking the old and making it popular again. It's what our grandparents did, and every generation before them.
Decadent Publishing decided to give this group a voice in the romance genre. We want to entertain our readers and show that preppers are your neighbors, your pastor, the guy who works on your car. The response so far has been overwhelmingly positive. People are emailing and posting, saying,"I'm a prepper! I can't wait to read this!", "We're hardcore preppers. I'm writing a story for this!" It's fantastic and we hope people enjoy not only the prepper bits, but the overall story, as well. The ones that have come in are really very good."
Blurb:
You’ll die in three
minutes without oxygen, three hours without shelter, three days without water
and three weeks without food. But could you survive a lifetime with a broken
heart?
Mercy Evans has come
to Evans Point hoping to collect herself and find a way to resurrect her career
as an anchorwoman for Cheyenne’s news station. Sergeant Justin Redway has come
to Evans Point to try to forget his past and survive what he’s done.
When two worlds
collide, one of a battle damaged veteran, the other of a desperate woman who
will go to any extreme to get his story, sparks fly and old wounds open. When
the chasm between the fated lovers widens, it just might be too big to cross.
One town, two lovers
and a second chance at finding mercy.
Excerpt:
Evans Point, Wyoming
June 28th, 2010
It looked like the end of the world. Will Evans tightened
his grip on Bear’s and Sadie’s leashes and tuned in for any cries for help. The
fresh smell of rain mixed with the industrial stink of spilled fuel and the
ozone from a nearby lightning strike pounded reality home.
Even though they’d merely begun, his bones ached. Fifteen
years before, he would’ve torn through the wreckage and pulled out survivors
without hesitation. Now, he could only look over the destruction and fight the
tears that tugged on his eyes. The scene brought back another time he couldn’t
stomach, when he’d seen the Grim Reaper rip a hole between life and death, as
he’d done this day.
The storms had hit with ferocity, in the middle of the
night, without warning. The roaring of the beast had woken some, but not all.
Those alerted had rushed for cover in their basements and cellars and now
searched for those who were not as lucky. This was all that remained of the
downtown after six tornadoes had torn through Evans Point. In all his
eighty-four years, Will had seen only one other battlefield like it.
He swallowed and searched his soul for courage. There would
be bodies among the rubble, but hopefully, there would also be living. He had
to believe to continue, even though he found his faith tested.
So much carnage. Scanning the brightening horizon, he took
in the destruction. Brick buildings were blown apart. Vehicles lay on their rooftops,
dripping gasoline and other fluids. Even a pickup had been skewered on a
flagpole like one of the carousel horses he’d ridden as a child at the
fairground. A toy truck lay at his feet, its red paint bright and clean like it
was fresh from the box.
His gaze shifted to the left. Someone’s farm equipment sat
on top of a local bridal shop. The five-hundred-thousand-dollar harvester would
have to come down in pieces, which meant it would remain there for a while. No
one would be able to get a crane into the area for months. It all seemed so
overwhelming, and he didn’t have a clue where to start.
But his dogs did.
“All right, we got work to do.” Will squeezed the hooks with
his gnarled fingers, unclipping Bear and Sadie, letting them do what they did
best. Since he’d retired, he’d taken up breeding, raising, and training the
Caucasian Shepherds. The dogs originally belonged to a friend who had worked
search and rescue in Alaska, but when he’d retired and moved to Florida, he
hadn’t wanted to drag the double-coated dogs to Miami, where they’d suffer from
the heat.
Not that Wyoming didn’t have hot summers; it did, but they
were shorter. When Will had taken the pair on, he’d discovered they made great
cattle dogs, and why not? The Caucasian Mountain Shepherds were herding dogs,
highly intelligent, possessing giant personalities to go with their enormous
size. And the bonus? Mountain lions and wolves thought twice about going after
his stock.
Bear barked and dug at a pile of debris that led to a
basement entrance of an old bomb shelter under the downtown area. Will picked
his way around the rubble, careful where he stepped.
The glass blocks embedded in the sidewalk, part of the old
reinforced structure the Army had left behind in the forties, were still intact,
and the structure below hadn’t collapsed. An idea woke in his head. Why hadn’t
they used it before?
“Hey, over here,” he called out to a couple of firefighters
as he tossed a two-by-four to the side. He wouldn’t be much help lifting the
wreckage away, but he’d do what he could, and what he could do was get everyone
together and make sure this didn’t happen again. Those who lost their lives
here would be the last to die because they hadn’t been prepared.
Thanks for stopping by,
D L Jackson
