I’m so happy to be rolling out the first novella in the Adrenaline Highs series. This book – since it’s a mini suspense – is appropriately titled A Little Danger. When I first had the idea for a novella and thought about who might be featured, I also started batting around title ideas. I actually have a pattern with my titles and this book kind of messed with the flow, but once I came up with the title I didn’t care as much. It’s a quick romp with two of my most level headed characters and I’m so glad they managed to find the time to talk and get to know each other. I might even be breaking some rules with this book, but I’ll let the reader decide.

Here’s the beautiful cover and the blurb.

Some killers never die.

Elena Fraser is on her way to the airport to catch a flight to New York for the premiere of her daughter’s movie. Before limo driver Bill “Fido” Fidelo can make it to the freeway, a 7.1 earthquake collapses the overpass above and traps them. With nothing but time between frightening temblors, Elena and Bill learn more about each other, including the fact they’ve lusted after each other for years.

Understanding they might not survive, Elena and Bill look to one another for solace and companionship. Bill tries to convince Elena that their seven-year age difference means nothing to him, and Elena soon realizes that life is too short to put off living.

The passion they discover is enough to torch the limo they’re trapped in, but can rescuers save them in time, or will a final aftershock bury them before they have a chance to build a life together?

Since this story revolves around a major earthquake, I thought I’d share a story of the first major quake my husband and I went through in 1987. It’s known as the Whittier Narrows earthquake. I was in the shower (it was 7:00 in the morning), when everything started shaking. Showers in general will break the noise of an earthquake, but only to an extent. Watching the shower spray move back and forth like someone was waving it around was very surreal. It only took a few seconds for me to hop out of that sucker and look for clothes!

Let me tell you, there isn’t much louder than a major earthquake (although I’m sure any natural disaster will equal it). Seriously, it sounds like a freight train coming through the walls. Then of course you have everything that’s not nailed down flying all over the place.

Since I knew the safest place in our apartment was our bathroom area since it had so many reinforced doorways around it, I stood in one of those archways and called to my husband, holding out my hand for him to grab as he tried to make his way toward me from the bed. I had already grabbed the closest thing to put over myself and it happened to be his robe. Well, he grabbed the closest thing to him when he reached me and it turned out to be MY robe. Did I mention my husband is about a foot taller than me? When the quake was over we looked at each other and traded robes. It was pretty funny. We did a lot of holding onto each other that day. Generally we were pretty lucky. Although a lot of things fell out of cabinets and off shelves, we didn’t lose much. Our balcony got a giant crack across the middle and we never felt comfortable using it after that day, so we lost that space voluntarily. (We heard one of the apartments had their balcony fall completely so that was all the incentive we needed.)

One of our friends a few blocks away had her whole apartment crack in the middle and fall into itself. She ended up on our sofa for a night or two as she secured a new place.

I remember Pasadena was a mess. The clean-up was pretty massive as it usually is from something like this.

I’ll always say this about an earthquake. They make you thankful to be alive.

Does anyone have an earthquake story to share? I’d love to read about it!

Before I forget… here are links for A Little Danger just in case you’re interested.

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | iBooks | Kobo | ARe