Hello, and welcome back to Coffee Time Romance! Ready for some heavenly romance? Then you’ve come to the right place. Especially for the “heavenly” part. Please join me in welcoming Petie McCarty. Today we’re talking about the first in her Rescue Angels series, No Going Back. Welcome Petie! I’d offer you some pastry to go with the coffee, but as I believe you pointed out in this book, “Angels don’t eat.” But I’m not an angel, so if you’d like to join me and grab a cinnamon roll, please feel free.
You know, I’ve always believed angels walk among us. Your whole concept for this series revolves around that, doesn’t it? Was there a moment in your life when you knew—knew with absolute certainty—that that was true? That angels walk among us?
The actual inspiration for my Rescue Angel romances came from St. Paul’s letter to the Hebrews [13:2]: “Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers for some who have done this have entertained angels without realizing it.” I heard that New Testament reading one Sunday morning in church, and though my mind shouldn’t wander during church, my imaginative side immediately thought, If angels walk among us, waiting to be entertained by the unknowing, maybe other angels walk among us waiting to assist the — as yet — unloved.
What a great love story that would make if there really were angels assigned to guide some of us – those who require special assistance because we choose poorly on our own – toward our one forever love! Better yet, I could hide the angel in the love story, so no one finds out their identity until the grand finale. How cool would that be? The reader gets to guess who the angel is, and I get to leave red herrings to throw the reader off. A match made in heaven!
Definitely a win-win plotline situation! Tell us a little about No Going Back. And about heroine Kellen Brand and that gorgeous Luke Kenyon.
Kellen Brand’s inheritance turns out to be a whopper — one dilapidated farm in West Virginia and one guardian angel! Since she can’t give back her inheritance, she vows to sell her farm quick and ignore the codicil with the angel. Her handsome neighbor Luke Kenyon can’t allow her to sell her farm, or his family secrets will no longer be safe.
Kellen locates one buyer, but she faces a town full of objectors, and the clock is ticking on her farm sale. Events escalate. Someone tries to frighten Kellen off, so she turns to Luke for help. Unfortunately, she has a penchant for finding trouble and stumbles onto a clandestine hazardous-waste-dumping operation next to her farm in the middle of the night. Kellen prays Luke has one more rescue up his sleeve. It’s her only hope of staying alive. Unless her mother really did leave her a guardian angel…
Kellen Brand almost starved as a child in the tiny Appalachian town of Riverside, so the last thing she wants is to inherit the old homestead. Her intent to sell out as fast as she can changes when she meets some of the lovable town residents — and one stellar-looking cowboy in particular.
Luke Kenyon owns the ranch adjacent to Kellen’s run-down farm, and he has his own reasons to keep her from selling out. He needs the two properties to remain untouched, and untouched is how he vows to leave the girl next door. But he’s destined to break those vows… repeatedly.
This is the first book in the Rescue Angels series. How many books are you planning for this series? Are they already written, and when can we expect them?
The second Rescue Angel romance is due out in December and titled appropriately enough, Angel to the Rescue. Child psychologist Rachel Kelly isn’t quite sure how to handle the situation with her newest client — a six-year-old boy who says he can see angels and one is coming to help Rachel. She already has her hands full of trouble this Christmas season, and things quickly take a turn for the worse when a stalker takes her young clients hostage at Rachel’s Christmas party. Their only chance of rescue lies with Rachel’s estranged boyfriend, police negotiator Jake Dillon. Unless her little angel-spying client is telling the truth…
Actually, I can see no real end to the series. There are two more RA works-in-progress, and I hope to be writing them for years to come.
Without giving any “spoilers”, a very real danger in today’s industrial world figures prominently in the plot of No Going Back. Hazardous waste. What made you choose this particular “protagonist” for this plot?
I have a number of friends and colleagues who work in the hazardous waste field, and back in my consulting days, I identified macroinvertebrates for remediation credit on Superfund sites in the northeast. You would be shocked at the nationwide number of perpetrators arrested for illegally disposing of hazardous waste and who thought they wouldn’t get caught. I’ve seen the cumulative impacts on the environment from the dumping of even a small amount of hazardous waste, and the results are absolutely mind-boggling.
So naturally, haz-waste dumpers would make the ultimate evil villain for my No Going Back hero/heroine to fight.
Your first two novels, Everglades and Catch of the Day, are both set in the outdoors. Catch of the Day particularly caught my eye with the Coast Guard angle. My youngest son’s Navy and his best friend from high school is Coast Guard. I’ve got to go back and grab that one! You’re a Florida girl who writes what she knows, huh?
First of all, my respectful salute to your wonderful son and his best friend for their service to our country. It is much appreciated.
As for the stories, two years of my career were spent surveying Florida waterways by airboat, and I never once had a hunky airboat guide along. So for Everglades, I wrote the perfect airboat guide. Jeepers, even I fell in love with Skye Landers.
Catch of the Day was flat-out fun to write! I mean, how could you not have zany residents in a town named Loon? Add in a spunky heroine who just lost her daddy and a handsome Coast Guard captain willing to provide both comfort and distraction and – whew boy – you’ve got a love story. There are so many romances out there portraying Army Rangers or Navy Seals as the alpha heroes, and I realized the Coast Guard has plenty of Hoorah! hunks who are equally tough — and sexy. We just don’t hear about them as often.
I’ve spent a huge part of my career on the water so stories set around an airboat tour of the Everglades or set around a wild and crazy all-male lake tournament seemed a natural fit for me. *grin*
Well, of course you didn’t run into a real Coast Guard hunk when you needed one! (If only for the view.) The blurb and excerpt on this one sure caught my attention! I’ve got to read that book. Loon. Most folks would tell me I need to move there. And take my whole family with me, actually. Tell us about your family, Petie. Especially life with that Nanday Conure, Sassy! How does she get along with Lily the Springer Spaniel?
My kids are furry and feathered. Sassy-Smart-Assy is a Nanday conure, sort of a gorgeous, height-challenged green parrot — black head and red anklets and ADD and a bit narcissistic. The attention span of a gnat, and she believes she is Queen Nefertiti reincarnate.
Lily is my adorable English springer spaniel who goes through life “just along for the ride.” She’ll stick to you through thick and thin and would’ve made a great deer tick. If you sit, Lily climbs into the chair with you whether she fits or not. Fifty-pound lap dogs aren’t always fun.
Both Lily and Sassy love to be in the room with me when I write, Lily at my feet and Sassy watching from her cage [she has two, so the scenery changes]. They are quiet as mice – thank goodness – and I think they like watching me write because I often read passages out loud to get the right feel for the scene. Of course, they think I’m reading to them, and that means the poor things have heard all my books at least five times during editing.
Sassy-Smart-Assy! I love that! We had a parakeet named bird who lived for thirteen years, which I understand is rather long-lived for a parakeet. He had tons of personality. And we let him fly around the rooms for exercise, he loved it, didn’t panic him at all. He got out by accident once though, an unplanned outing, and narrowly escaped being snapped up and eaten by our beagle. Scared us to death, didn’t seem to bother him. And I currently live with three dogs, one of whom is a 110 pounder and jumps in your lap every chance she gets, so I commiserate. So what’s next for Petie McCarty? Any projects in mind after the Angels to the Rescue series?
In tandem with the Rescue Angel romances, I have a line of Cinderella romances planned. With changes of heroine and locale and occupation, the possibilities are indeed endless. A reverse Cinderella is planned, too. *Wink*
The first in the series is Cinderella Busted. An eccentric landscape-nursery owner is mistaken for a Jupiter Island socialite by a hunky billionaire real-estate developer, and she decides to play along, thinking she’d lose Mr. Wonderful otherwise. When her deception comes to light, the fireworks start, and well-meaning friends on both sides will try anything to patch things up for the fairy-tale match. Cinderella is not scheduled for release yet for she still has publishers to visit. In the next few years, I hope to have a Rescue Angel- and a Cinderella-work-in-progress going at all times. There’s nothing more fun than writing your own love story – or two.
Thank you for allowing me to spend time today with the Coffee Time Romance readers! If you find time to read this summer, please give one of my books a try and stop by my web site and check out new excerpts from my stories. Leave me your address and I’ll mail you an autographed bookplate of your choice.
Thank you for coming over! And we’ll all be looking forward to your future releases! You’ve got an easy, breezy, natural style I found a pleasure to read, and I definitely intend to read more of it. And first next read is Catch of the Day, for sure. Thanks so much for stopping in today, Petie, it was a pleasure to meet you! And to all our readers, remember the coffee’s always brewing at Coffee Time and visitors are always welcome to drop in! Y’all come back now, hear?
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