Taryn Rivers's Blog

I didn’t think this day would ever come, but Savage Cove is finally here. It is an honor to be a part of Susan Stoker’s Special Forces World and being able to borrow Trigger from the Delta Force Team 2 series has been so much fun.

It’s been quite the journey getting Trek and Erin’s story from an idea in my head down on paper. Erin came to me first. From the beginning, I wanted to have a Night Stalker as one of my main characters. My dad was a special forces medic, and he’d talk about the helicopter pilots fondly—how crazy and fearless they were when it came to getting the soldiers where they needed to be, and also picking them up out of some scary situations.

As I researched them, I found an interview featuring a female Night Stalker, and Erin Savage, call sign Xena, was born. She came to me fully formed and badass to the core. Erin is a hero in her own right and when she meets Trek the first time, she’s living out her dreams. Then they all come crashing down. Erin has to walk through some fire to get to her HEA, but she’s a warrior princess through and through. What I love most about her is, as strong and capable as she is, she’s smart enough to know when she needs help and ask for it.

Erin needs a hero who can hold his own with her, but also be secure enough to let her do what she needs to do, which for her, means not freaking out when she willingly puts herself in harm’s way to help others, whether it be a soldier or her family. Trek and Erin have a past together, and well, he royally screws up. He’s got a long way to go to prove to Erin he can be what she needs. I’m not giving anything away, but I have to say, I love his character arc.

Although part of the Special Forces World, you’ll find plenty of familiar faces in Savage Cove. Best of all, you’ll get to spend lots of quality time with some of the Forsaken Aces. Savage Cove is a standalone, but for those of you who love the Aces as much as I do, you’re in for a treat. Rest assured, this is not the last we’ll see of Trek and Erin. They’ve burrowed themselves into my heart so they’ll be around after this.

Download Savage Cove Today

It’s been a whirlwind week, well, year really, but Whiskey Storm is finally out in the world. Griff is special to me, so I wanted his book to be special, which is why I planned it as the final book in the Whiskey Falls series. But patience is not Griff’s strong suit and he wanted his story told now. Who am I to argue with Griff, LOL? Since the day he hijacked the Whiskey Dream epilogue, I’ve poured everything I have into giving him the best happily ever after I possibly could. I think I delivered, but it was one hell of a ride.

I get inspiration for my characters from all sorts of places, but Mercy came to me fully formed, in a dream. It both excited me and broke my heart at the same time, because I knew her back story was a doozy, and to get her and Griff to their HEA, the journey was going to be rocky.

It didn’t help that every time I expected the story to go one way, Mercy and Griff took me in a totally different direction. I spent a lot of writing time looking up at the ceiling and arguing with myself… I mean my characters. I expected Griff to be difficult, but Mercy had her own plans, too. I should have known any woman who was such a perfect partner for Griff would not be quiet about what she wanted.

Whiskey Storm broke my heart and I shed a few tears while writing some of the scenes. I had to remind myself that good stories are never easy. The path to the epilogue was a wild, emotional, action packed ride, but Griff had me cracking up while I wrote that last scene, and I was still smiling when I wrote “The End.”

My next book will still be in the Whiskey Falls world, but I’ve got something really good brewing. After that, it’s Finn, Sadie, and the Forsaken Aces.

I can’t wait to see how their stories unfold.

xoxo

TR

I have a couple of friends I met through a Goodreads group seven or eight years ago. It boggles my mind that here we are, years later, and we’ve become close enough that my day wouldn’t be complete without checking in with them. It’s one of the many reasons why I love the book community—it’s brought me some of my closest friends.

One of these friends, Penny, loves a good epilogue, and by good, she means an HEA that includes a wedding at the very least. Sadly, neither Whiskey Home or Whiskey Dream included wedding scenes. Since we also call Penny the ninja because she has some skills, I decided I should probably rectify this before she shows up on my door step to kick my you-know-what for not giving at least one of my couples the wedding they deserve.

As a present for her, I set about rectifying that. I decided I’d write a short story—8,000 words tops—and I’d give it away as a newsletter signup. Easy-peasy, I thought. It’s just a wedding.

I thought wrong. I wasn’t even done with the first scene before Tony hijacked my story-line and took it in a completely different direction. He brought Erick and Griff in on his shenanigans and things went way off the rails, but in a good way for the story, not so much for them though.

Whiskey Sweet turned out to be bigger than I’d envisioned and so much better. Clocking in at novella length, my other friends encouraged me to put it up for sale rather than giving it away. But I’m sticking with my original plan…for now. It’s my way of saying thank you to my readers for giving my books a chance.

So how do you get it? All you have to do is sign up for my newsletter. That’s it. Sign up and you’ll not only get Whiskey Sweet, you’ll be kept up to date on release dates, works in progress, and sales etc. And I promise I won’t be spamming your inbox willy-nilly. That’s just not who I am.

I hope you have as much fun reading Whiskey Sweet as I did writing it.

Enjoy!

A surprise wedding... what could go wrong?

Tony

I patiently waited for Bree Beck for a long time.

Now she's in my house.

In my bed.

She's my woman in every way except one.

She doesn't have my ring on her finger.

My patience has come to an end.

It's time for that to change.

One of my first memories is cataloging my Little Golden Books, making sure the pesky neighbor kids hadn’t absconded with one, or worse, my mother hadn’t gotten rid of ones she deemed worn out. And I’ve only gotten worse since then.

It’s my late Gramma’s fault I fell for romance at an early age. An army brat, we’d go to Wisconsin and stay with her and Grampa during summer breaks. Gramma read old school romances voraciously and turned a blind eye when I’d steal one to read on the sly. I made do with the Harlequin Romances during the school year, but when summer came, I’d be treated to the likes of Kathleen E. Woodiwiss, Rosemary Rogers, and Beatrice Small. I felt like I’d struck gold. 

Along with a love of reading, I’ve also always loved to tell stories. I can’t say I’ve always had characters whispering to me in my mind, demanding I tell their stories, but they’ve been around for a long time, and they keep multiplying. My choices were to get help or write their stories. Guess which door I chose?

It took a while to get up the nerve to write that first sentence. And then the next and the next. I’d like to say the writing comes easy, but I’d be lying. Some days it flows out of me effortlessly, others, it’s like pulling teeth. Whiskey Home has been years in the making, and there were several times I almost quit. Writing is not for the faint-hearted. Thank goodness I had friends and family along the way that cheered me on and pulled me up out of the dungeon of gloom and self-doubt.

So here we are. Less than two short weeks away from my second book, Whiskey Dream, being published. I can’t wait for you to read Rosalie and Erick’s story. And now it’s time to get started on book number three.