Today is the official release day for HARD TO HOLD.

I can’t believe it.

HARD TO HOLD

Maximum danger.
Maximum desire.
And holding on for dear life…

The Special Ops hero feared nothing
-until he met a woman too hot to hold…

Lt. Jake Hansen has survived some of the riskiest missions known to man. But now the wounded Navy SEAL faces his toughest job yet: Smuggling Dr. Isabelle Markham out of Africa without triggering an international incident. Not easy to do when the gorgeous hostage happens to be a senator’s daughter —and about as easy to resist as an oasis in the desert…

If it weren’t for Jake, Isabelle would still be halfway across the world, where rebel forces left her for dead. The Special Ops warrior may have saved her life, but she doesn’t need him to protect her now. Tell that to the ruggedly handsome hunk in full battle fatigues who’s just been assigned Isabelle’s personal bodyguard. Close quarters aside, Isabelle won’t let Jake anywhere near her heart — until danger throws them together again…and nothing in the jungles of wildest Africa could prepare them for a passion this wild. This crazy. This hot….

***

I adore series, but especially series that seem to link their books together by trilogies. If the trilogy contains brothers, whether biological or brothers in arms, so much the better. And so, with that in mind, I set out to write a very special trilogy, with a very special set of brothers. In Hard To Hold, Too Hot To Hold and Hold On Tight, you’ll meet three men, Navy SEALs and brothers by adoption.

Jake, Nick and Chris have been with me forever. It’s strange to write that and know that some people won’t understand what that means. I’ve always enjoyed the interview Linda Howard once did with AAR where she talks about visiting a psychic and how the psychic kept telling her there was a man in her life…and finally, Linda recognized that it was one of her characters the woman was talking about.

It’s the same for me. These three men showed up in my head one day, long ago, and they refused to leave until I told their stories. And I tried, in many different ways, but none of the stories ever struck. It didn’t feel right, and I didn’t have the skill yet until finally, one day, I read Mackenzie’s Mountain by Linda Howard and I knew I was ready to write Jake’s story.

I can’t explain the connection – I think it was more about the feelings the story invoked in me. That weekend I wrote the prologue and the first chapter and I knew I had it. I knew. Three weeks later, the proposal was in my agent’s hands…and then in the hands of the editor who was already editing my Sydney Croft books.

Back to Jake – in Hard to Hold, you find out that he enlisted in the Navy at the age of fifteen, using false identification. For me, in my mind, this was canon. Fact. No way around it.

And then I discovered a very special connection to that in my own life. You see, my grandfather was in the Navy – I’d always known that. But what I found out long after I’d written Hard To Hold, was that my grandfather got creative with his birth certificate and enlisted in the Navy when he was only fifteen years old.

My grandfather died at least ten years before I was even born, so I’ve only known him through pictures and stories, but the fact that I’ve had a fifteen year old boy in my mind as a character for so long simply proves to me that a force bigger than myself was pushing me to write that part of the story that way. So for me, when I tell you that there was magic at work when I wrote Hard to Hold, you’ll understand where it started from. But every step of that book, from the first scene I ever wrote, was magic. I adore this book. I would’ve written it whether or not I had a contract, because I simply had to.

On my site, you’ll find lots of new info on Hard to Hold, including military terms, maps and the like. There’s also a brand new excerpt of Nick’s book up as well.

But yeah, Jake is here.  That’s all I keep thinking...Jake is here…