Undercover Colorado Conspiracy - With Jodie Bailey

 Happy Friday, y'all!

It's an exciting week for me, because my latest book, Undercover Colorado Conspiracy, hit the shelves on Tuesday. I've been super excited about this one for several reasons, one of those reasons being how much I love the two leads, Phillip Campbell and Thalia Renner.

I am very much a seat-of-the-pants writer.  (I heard author Ramona Richards call it an "organic writer" once, and I honestly think that makes me sound so much more sophisticated.) My publisher requires me to write a synopsis, which is anywhere from 5-7 pages long and is a summary of what is going to happen in the book. Here's a fun fact: my books pretty much never go the way that synopsis says they're going to go.  Somewhere around chapter five, I get a much better idea of who my characters are and how this thing should work, then off we go into uncharted territory.  (Fortunately, I have a very patient and understanding editor.)

The beauty of this is that new characters are born and new book ideas are formed because I took off on a winding detour.  If you've read the Fatal Response/Mistaken Twin/Hidden Twin/Fatal Identity grouping of books, you witnessed this with Alex "Rich" Richardson.  He had a very minor--and tragic--role in Fatal Response, but then he just kept seeming to pop up until I decided he needed to have a happily ever after of his own.  That, and I got several reader letters asking if I was planning to tell his story.  So, hey, if you wonder if we're listening to our readers, we definitely are. Rich's story was a bit of a gift to those who asked for more of him.  

A similar thing happened here. When I was writing Captured at Christmas, Thalia and Phillip showed up to help out with the investigation.  Thalia jumped right in and stole one scene right away from me.  She was so confident, so straight-shooting, so sarcastic... I loved her attitude. (Also, I had to rewrite that scene and tone her down because she kind of forgot it wasn't all about her...) In Deadly Vengeance, her chemistry with Phillip really started to shine, and Phillip even dropped a hint that he might be a little more interested in his partner than it seemed on the surface.  

Yep, I wanted to see what happened if I threw these two investigative partners and best friends into a scenario where they had to pretend to be so much more.  What did I do? Assigned them to an undercover operation that had them pretending to be a married couple.  And I did it in a way that gave them very little downtime away from the act. 

What happened?  

Ah, see?  You'll have to read to find out, though I'm sure you can guess. If you want to see how their story goes, you can click HERE to visit my webpage, read more details, and find the buy links.   

If you'd like a chance to win an ebook copy of Undercover Colorado Conspiracy, comment below and answer the question, who is your favorite book or movie hero of all time?  I'll choose a winner on Tuesday, February 27th by 9:00 AM Eastern time. Oh, and my favorite fictional hero?  Why it's Westley, aka The Dread Pirate Roberts, from my all time favorite movie, "The Princess Bride."