Countdown to INTO THE WILD!

This is a repost from my personal blog. I'm on a mission to spread the word, and since I hardly ever post at my blog anymore, few people visit. Hence the repost. Enjoy!

I've been working extremely hard on several new projects. I hope to share some details about those soon, but in the meantime, I have a new book coming out in September! That's just 39 days from now! For those who like to preorder, you can do so by clicking here for Amazon or here for Barnes and Noble or here for Borders.

Behold my awesome new cover and a mini sneak-peek of INTO THE WILD...

Excerpt from CHAPTER TWO

Cajamarca, Peru, South America



Altitude 8,900 ft.



“What do you mean they canceled the shoot?”

“An executive decision.” Spenser McGraw thumbed his cell to vibrate and placed it beside his empty beer bottle as Gordo Fish, his friend and professional sidekick, dropped into an opposing chair. The popular café buzzed with good cheer, offsetting the men’s grim expressions.

They’d flown from the Scottish Highlands to South America to film an episode for the popular cable show, Into the Wild. Spenser was the talent. Gordo was the one-man camera/audio crew. Now instead of exploring The Legend of El Dorado, instead of searching for a lost city of freaking gold, they’d been ordered to cool their heels in Cajamarca until the show’s new producer and a board of equally young turks hammered out the details of a new adrenaline-charged adventure. Spenser met his friend’s baffled stare. “They want to introduce an element of danger into the show.”

Gordo frowned. “You’re kidding.”

“Nope.”

“Something tells me Necktie Nate is behind this.”

The nickname they’d given to Nathan Crup, their new Armani-suited producer. “Probably.”

“Has that asshole watched even one episode from the past five seasons?” Gordo complained. “We’ve battled extreme elements and hostile people. Survived mudslides, cave-ins, avalanches, and assorted injuries.”

“None of them life-threatening.”

“Like hell. What about the time I got food poisoning in Cairo?”

Spenser found it amusing that a man who’d endured extreme temperatures, snake bites, and altitude sickness would label the time he’d hugged the porcelain goddess in a ritzy hotel room as a near death experience. “You weren’t even close to dying.”

“I ended up in the hospital.”

“Because you called an ambulance.”

“What I didn’t puke up shot out the other end. For three frickin’ hours. I’m telling you . . .” Gordo trailed off when he noticed the young woman standing next to them. “Sorry.” He squinted at her name tag. “Yara.”

Earlier, the sultry waitress had lingered at Spenser’s table, flirting outrageously as most women did, until he’d received the phone call from Los Angeles. Now she was back, and though she spared Gordo a glance, her focus was on Spenser. He winked, encouraging the infatuation. Yara’s pretty face and voluptuous curves were a welcome distraction from Necktie’s disappointing mandate.

Gordo cleared his throat. “Why, yes, I would like to order something. Thank you for asking, Yara.”

Spenser smiled at the woman then spoke in Spanish. “He’ll have what I’m having.”

“What are you having?” Gordo asked in English.

“Beer and tamales.”

“Forget the tamales.”

“They’re locally famous,” Spenser teased, knowing Gordo was still fixed on the Cairo incident and the ‘locally famous’ molokhiyya.

“Just a beer, please,” he said in Spanish. “Make that two. No, three. Two for me, one for him.”

Beaming at Spenser, Yara nodded and left.

Gordo rolled his eyes. “You’re hooking up with her later, aren’t you?”

Never one to screw and tell, Spenser just grinned.

“Why aren’t you more upset about the canceled shoot? You’ve been hot on exploring the possibility that El Dorado is located in Peru and not Columbia for months.”

Spenser shrugged. Granted, at first he’d been royally ticked. Not just because Nate had pulled the plug on El Dorado, but because that piss-ant had called his Indiana Jones’s schtick old hat, insinuating in the next breath that Spenser was over-the-hill.

A) He didn’t do schtick.

B) Since when was thirty-seven old?

Shaking off the insults, he now saw the hole in the producer’s new angle. “When the board reviews Necktie’s brilliant idea, they’ll squelch it.”

“How can you be sure?”

“Because it’s been done.”

Gordo narrowed his eyes. “What does Necktie want us to do exactly?”

“To canoe down the Amazon, hack through the jungle, and to somehow connect with a fierce tribe—preferably cannibalistic.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Just about the cannibal part.”

* * *

Hope you enjoyed the sneak mini-peek!

SIS Beth