New Series

While work continues on The Pirate's Bride, I've also begun the process of readying a new series for publication. It's a pretty big project, covering five generations of the Carnahan family, beginning in 1928 and ending in about 2050, and spans the globe from Egypt and Morocco, to England, France, Austria, and the Caribbean. It combines elements of historical romance, spy thrillers, and a bit of science fiction. I started writing it in 2011 and I think I'll be able to publish the first book, Journey of A Lifetime, sometime this year.

Here's a sneak peek at the first book in the Ruins of The Past, Legacy of The Future series:

The first thing Anderson noticed upon stepping off of the train was that other than a larger crowd, Port Said really didn't look much different from the last place the train had stopped. There was the same haphazard mix of cultures and languages; English, Greek, French, Arabic, Hebrew, and even Mandarin were audible. One could have one's pocket picked by an Egyptian urchin, one's soul saved by a well-meaning Scottish Presbyterian minister, buy a phial filled with genuine mummy dust, or arrange a romantic tryst with a Bedouin princess all within the space of twenty paces. There were the same tired and hopeful faces waving the same cheap wares at the descending tourists, who all looked the same, too. He supposed he himself didn't look any different, either. Maybe a bit more educated, probably a lot richer, but still the same on the surface. Inside, though, he didn't feel much like them at all. He'd bet half his father's fortune that not one of these over-dressed and under-cultured Reubens were going to do anything that would involve actually getting their hands dirty.

He collected his luggage and hired a porter to follow him to whichever hotel he booked for his stay in Port Said. Once Anderson left the station, however, he discovered just how different the city was from Casablanca, Algiers, and even Tripoli. Port Said looked as though pieces of Paris had been picked up and transported to Egypt. Broad, tree-lined avenues, marble-faced buildings, and motor cars puttered down the streets. Even the majority of faces on the streets were European though of course there were smatterings of darker Arabs and Orientals mixed in.
As he stood on the sidewalk in front of the station, it became apparent, though, that he was indeed in Africa. A breeze blew in off the desert to the south of the city, bringing with it the heat and dryness that awaited him once he began his adventures. Every street sign and business sign he could see were written in three languages—English, Arabic, and French. The closest signs advertised cheap beds that were no doubt filled with all sorts of vermin, cheap food that probably involved eyeballs or brains, and cheap booze that probably came from someone's bathtub.

He turned to the south for a moment, letting the wind play against his face. He fancied he could even catch a hint of the burned-flint smell of desert sand winding its way through the far stronger layers of human and animal odors. The breeze stirred something inside of him. Maybe it was unusual for a third-generation rich kid from America to feel this way, but that dry wind called to him. He just knew something special was waiting for him out there in that desert. First things first, though. A hotel, preferably one without bed bugs in the mattresses and quiff in the lobby. When he spotted the plain, elegant sign for Hotel Georges, he nodded and strode off in that direction, waving for the porter to follow him.