I'm working on my new series, Danger in Destiny, which means I'm actively writing three different stories. 

Fear the Shadows - A prequel novella for newsletter subscribers only coming soon
Out of the Ashes - The first official book releases March 28th
Frozen in Jeopardy - The second book releases July 25th

While one of my characters, Officer Gabe Harrison, is featured in Frozen in Jeopardy, he actually makes an appearance in the other two books as well. He works for the Destiny Police Department as a member of the K-9 unit. He and his German shepherd partner, Loki, specialize in tracking. 

When I first started this series, I knew very little about how a K-9 unit operates within the police department. I did a lot of online research, but information wasn't easy to find. That's when I decided to reach out to our local police department. 

I spoke with Lt. Moran who not only answered some of my questions, but he suggested I go on a ride-along with one of the K-9 units and put me in touch with Officer Timothy Cox and his dog, Barco. 
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I was fortunate to be able to go on a four hour ride-along with Officer Cox and Barco a couple of weeks ago.

Not only was Officer Cox super helpful when it came to understanding how he and Barco are involved in the every day workings of the police department, but I got to see how their vehicle is set up, including the kennel that Barco rides in.

I also learned a lot about how police dogs are trained and even got to watch Barco perform a drug search. It gave me a great deal of respect not only for what the dog can do, but for all of the hard work that goes into what the handler does to train the dog and read his reactions in order to track effectively. 

Later in the evening, I had the chance to ask some questions directly related to a few scenes I had planned. In several cases, not only did I come away with more details, but I even had to alter the basic situation simply because that's not how it would really work. It's important to me to make the scenes as realistic as possible, so having that clarity was huge.

For example, there's a scene in Out of the Ashes where someone breaks into a house. I originally had Gabe and Loki going in and clearing the home. Instead, I learned that they would wait for backup and then go in with at least one other officer. 

I'm excited to apply everything I've learned to this series, and I look forward to being able to share the books with all of you!

Nearly every year, I take Christmas portraits of our pets. Sometimes they are pretty or cute, other times they are just funny. 

Jessie - We strongly suspect that she is a kelpie, although we've never done genetic testing for her. We adopted her when she was six months old in 2015. She's definitely our smallest dog, but my goodness does she have a lot of attitude. She sleeps in our daughter's room, and they do nearly everything together. She loves to play with tennis balls and lives for tug-of-war.

Loki - He was a rescue in 2020, and about six months old when we saw an ad about him and decided to bring him home. He walked into our house and right into my heart. He's definitely my buddy. He weighs about 90 lbs. and is a mutt through and through. We did do genetic testing on him and he's primarily Australian cattle dog and German shepherd. He's super sweet, and I'm hoping to do obedience training and possibly some agility with him next year. 

Natty - This is the baby of the family. She turned a year old in November. We got her at six weeks - probably the youngest puppy I've ever had. It's hard to believe how fast they grow! She's a German shepherd and around 75 pounds. She's super sweet but can be a little timid. That said, she's an amazing guard dog. She and Loki love to play together!

Jasper - He's our angel. We just said goodbye to him on December 10th, and our home isn't the same without him. We found him as a puppy in 2009 running on the side of the road and brought him home. He was such a sweet, mellow guy that loved food, gave true hugs, and was always happy. We were blessed to have him in our lives for 13 1/2 years. 

Hello, friends!
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I realize I haven't posted on my blog in a really long time. Honestly, I took it off my site because I found the process of keeping it up-to-date very overwhelming over the last year or so. In that time, I've also found that I've truly missed it. So I'm back, and I hope at least some of you are still out there. To start a new blog post off, I'm going to share the message in my latest newsletter. Then I'll be posting new content from then on. 

We've had quite the beginning to our new year.  

We got a new puppy for my husband's birthday. Shortly after that, we all came down with COVID one-by-one. Dealing with being sick and a young puppy who is getting up multiple times at night to go out or because she was hungry hasn't been easy! On top of that, both our daughter and my husband were sick for their birthdays. Our son is having some health issues in addition to COVID. 

We're all mostly feeling better, finally, but are still dealing with congestion and fatigue.
I'm so ready to get back to normal. Oh, and spring. I'm really ready for spring. Ha! 

Okay, enough about being sick. On to the new puppy! My husband named her Natty Gann, and we call her Natty. She's about 9.5 weeks old now, and fits perfectly with our family. We bought her to be my husband's dog. My dog, Loki, turned a year old in December. The two absolutely LOVE to play together. I really don't know how we would've made it through not feeling well if it weren't for Loki entertaining Natty so much. 
Natty is supposed to be a full German shepherd, but that didn't matter too much to us. I guess time will tell as she grows. We may do one of those DNA tests with her that we did with Loki because it was fun. But will wait a while for that.