Deadly Strain by Julie Rowe Excerpt & Interview

About The Book

   

    

Title: Deadly Strain Book 1: Biological Response Team Series
Author: Julie Rowe
Publisher: Carina Press
Publication Date: June 15, 2015
Pages: 260
ASIN: B00PQDB6LI
Genre: Romantic Suspense
Format: eBook, PDF  


Buy The Book:

Amazon: 
http://www.amazon.com/Deadly-Strain-Biological-Response-Team-ebook/dp/B00PQDB6LI/ref=la_B005WL9UJY_1_9?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1431025158&sr=1-9

Barnes & Noble: 
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Goodreads:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23366545-deadly-strain?ac=1

Discuss this book in our PUYB Virtual Book Club at Goodreads by clicking: 

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/2359206-deadly-strain-by-julie-rowe

Book Description: 

Book one of Biological Response Team Series

Major Grace Samuels, a trauma surgeon deployed to Afghanistan, spends her life helping her fellow soldiers overcome disease and combat injuries. But her own wounds are harder to heal. Wracked with guilt over the death of a fellow soldier, she finds comfort in her only friend and appointed bodyguard, weapons sergeant Jacob “Sharp” Foster.

Sharp feels more for Grace than a soldier should, more than he wants to admit. When the team discovers a new, quick-to-kill strain of anthrax, he tries to focus on the mission to find its source. He knows he can help Grace defeat her demons, but first they must defeat the deadly outbreak.

Sharp is Grace’s most loyal ally, but in close quarters, he starts to feel like more. She can’t watch someone else she cares about die—but she might not have a choice. The closer they get to finding the source of the strain, the closer it gets to finding them.

Book Excerpt:

The battle line between good and evil runs through the heart of every man. —Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Chapter One

“I’m so dead.” Dr. Grace Samuels stared at the chessboard. There was no hope. None. Not a single move left open to her.

Except for one.

She sighed, shook her head at the patience on her opponent’s face. “I concede.”

“Want to know where you went wrong?” he asked as he cleared the board. He set the pieces up again. Those big hands of his could bandage a wounded soldier, field strip a 9 mm and box her into checkmate with equal skill.

“I sat down in this chair,” she answered with a straight face. The mess hall was busy with soldiers, American and Afghan alike, either beginning their day or ending their night.

“No,” he said. “You played the board.”

Grace thought about it for a second, but it still didn’t make any sense. Then again, it was 0600 and she’d only been up for twenty minutes. “Huh?”

Special Forces Weapons Sergeant Jacob “Sharp” Foster looked at her earnestly. “You played the board,” he repeated. “You should have been playing the man.”

He winked and she had to fight not to roll her eyes. When she first met him she’d thought his flirting was for real, and had been worried she’d have to shut him down. She didn’t want to, because he was hilarious, but the impropriety couldn’t be ignored. Then, she discovered when he wasn’t on the job, he had a wicked sense of humor, and everyone was a target.

“Then I suppose I’ll have to study you.” She leaned forward and made a show of giving him a thorough once-over.

He grinned and spread his hands wide. “By all means, study me.”

Sharp was a big man, about six-two, and she’d guess he weighed about two hundred pounds. He flexed his biceps and waggled his eyebrows in response to her joke. Though he had brown hair, with a mustache and beard to match, he had the lightest blue eyes she’d ever seen—like looking into glacial ice.

Right now, those eyes were challenging her. She just wasn’t sure if it was regarding the game or something she didn’t want to talk about. At all.

Unfortunately, Sharp wasn’t going to leave it alone. The chess game should have warned her. They usually played poker.

She watched him reset the chessboard while, for the first time in a week, letting her mind go back to the moment she realized she was in trouble. On her way to her quarters late at night. They’d arrived at Forward Operating Base Bostick the week before, and she’d been introduced to the base commander, Colonel Marshall. He’d barely spoken to her. So why was he waiting for her outside her quarters with clenched fists and a face so blank she knew he was in the grip of a powerful emotion?

The colonel wasn’t known for any kind of emotion.

She stopped several feet away. “What are you doing here at this hour, sir?”

One corner of his upper lip lifted in a sneer and he snarled, “I wanted a private conversation.”

His words triggered every internal red flag she had. “I don’t understand.”

Marshall’s response was two words. One name. “Joseph Cranston.”

A name she wished she could forget. “You…knew him?”

Scorn turned his words into weapons. “He was my son.”

Oh God.

Grace took an involuntary step backward. Now that she knew, she could see the son in his father’s face, the same eyes and jawline as the young man whose features she couldn’t forget. As if conjured, his shade floated in front of her mind’s eye, thrusting her into a memory she wanted desperately to erase. His face, covered with blood, whipped her heart into a gallop. Her breathing bellowed, lungs attempting to push air through her terror-closed throat. She fought the invisible hands pulling at her and her vision spiraled into a narrow tunnel.

Sharp had surfaced out of the dark, his presence breaking the memory’s chokehold.

He’d crouched in front of her, calling her name, ordering her to respond before he did something stupid like give her mouth-to-mouth. She coughed out a response, couldn’t remember what, and fought her way to her feet.

Sharp didn’t try to hold her. He didn’t touch her at all, but he shielded her body from prying eyes with his own. He refused to leave her, facing down Colonel Marshall, who showed no sympathy and less tolerance for her fainting spell. Two of Sharp’s team members appeared and, after glaring at them all, Marshall left without saying anything else.

She managed to get inside her quarters before anyone could demand an explanation, shut the door and locked it. She’d only felt relief when no one knocked to ask for an explanation. It wasn’t until the next day that she realized their lack of questions was as suspect as her behavior.

She hadn’t expected to meet anyone connected to Joseph Cranston outside of the United States. Hadn’t expected something that happened that long ago to thrust her into a memory like it was happening all over again.

Fool.

In the days since, Sharp had been mother-henning her like she was some fragile little chick, and she’d had about as much of that as she could take. She was a Samuels. Her father, also a military doctor, had just retired from the army, and her grandfather had run a MASH unit during the Korean War. He’d met her grandmother during WWII; she’d been one of the first Air Force service pilots. If there was one thing she wouldn’t accept from anyone, it was pity.

    

 

About The Author

   

Julie Rowe’s first career as a medical lab technologist in Canada took her to the North West Territories and northern Alberta, where she still resides. She loves to include medical details in her romance novels, but admits she’ll never be able to write about all her medical experiences because, “No one would believe them!”.

In addition to writing contemporary and historical medical romance, and fun romantic suspense for Entangled Publishing and Carina Press, Julie has short stories in Fool’s Gold, the Mammoth Book of ER Romance, Timeless Keepsakes and Timeless Escapes anthologies. Her book SAVING THE RIFLEMAN (book #1 WAR GIRLS) won the novella category of the 2013 Gayle Wilson Award of Excellence. AIDING THE ENEMY (book #3 WAR GIRLS) won the novella category of the 2014 Colorado Romance Writer’s Award of Excellence. Her writing has also appeared in several magazines such as Romantic Times Magazine, Today’s Parent, and Canadian Living.

Interview:

When did you first realize you wanted to be a writer?

 

When I couldn’t stop writing despite my many rejections. Years worth of rejections. Writing is not easy. It’s often frustrating and emotionally difficult work, and many people never submit their book to a publisher because they can’t bare for someone to dislike their story. A writer writes anyway. It’s a compulsion, some even say an addiction. For me, it’s part of who I am to tell stories.

 

How long does it take you to write a book?

 

That depends on the book, to be more specific, it depends on the genre and length of the book. Sometimes how excited I am to write that particular story. Sometimes a story grabs you by the throat and you can type fast enough to keep up with the words coming out of your head. My first book took a year and a half to write. I had a goal of 4 pages per week. It was 200 pages long. I write at least 5 pages every day now, sometimes more, it depends on my deadline and whatever else I’m doing.

 

What is your work schedule like when you're writing?

 

I like to write in short blocks, usually 3 per day, morning, afternoon and evening. I do like to write late at night every few nights. Not sure why, but when the urge strikes I try to roll with it. I usually write about 3 pages per block, but that can vary.

 

What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?

 

Hmmm, writing quirk? Probably that I like to listen to the TV show MASH as background noise when I’m writing. I own the entire series on disk.

 

How do books get published?

 

I work with a publisher most of the time, though I do self-publish an anthology every 6 months for four writing friends. There’s a lot of work that goes into a book before the reader sees it. Several rounds of editing and revision, cover art, back cover blurb creation, formatting, uploading to many eretailers, etc…

 

Where do you get your information or ideas for your books?

 

Most of my ideas come from my own head – sometimes the voices get pretty loud in there. J Sometimes they’re inspired by real events or news reports, but I like to ask the what if question a lot. It can be hard to shut off the creative side of my brain sometimes.

 

When did you write your first book and how old were you?

 

I wrote my first book about 18 years ago. I was 30 and my kids were little and I needed something to do with my brain that wasn’t related to housework or childcare.

 

What do you like to do when you're not writing?

 

I’m a scrapbooker and cardmaker. I have a craft room devoted to an insane number of rubber stamps, ink, papers and paper crafting tools.

 

What does your family think of your writing?

 

My kids say it’s cool that their mom writes, but there are parts of my books they refuse to read. J My mom and dad are proud and supportive. My husband is fabulous and enjoys the perks of being my research assistant. J

 

What was one of the most surprising things you learned in creating your books?

 

That once I’ve got the book out there and in the hands of readers, it’s not really my book any more. Readers filter the story through their own experiences and personality, creating an experience that is unique to every person who reads it. It think it’s amazing that we can do that, read something some long dead poet or novelist wrote and discover something new every time.

 

How many books have you written? Which is your favorite?

 

I’ve written more than I’ve published. Some of my early books are so awful they’ll never see the light of day. I guess I’ve written around 18 manuscripts with 8 now published. 2 are scheduled and I have stories in 6 anthologies as well. I love them all for different reasons, so it’s impossible to pick out an absolute favorite.

 

Do you have any suggestions to help me become a better writer? If so, what are they?

 

I teach a number of writing workshops, so I have lots of helpful things to suggest, but my number one piece of advice is: Write every day. Without fail.

 

Do you hear from your readers much? What kinds of things do they say?

 

Readers are wonderful to communicate with. There’s nothing better than having someone tweet to me about how they enjoyed one of my books or email asking when the next book is out.

 

Do you like to create books for adults?

 

Yes, I love writing for adults.

 

What do you think makes a good story?

 

For me, a good story is seeing the main characters grow, overcome challenges, and earn a happy ending. I love good conflict that forces the characters to really struggle with their actions and decisions.

 

As a child, what did you want to do when you grew up?

 

A doctor!

 

What would you like my readers to know?

 

You are as important to the book as the author is. It’s in you that the story comes alive. What kinds of books do you like to read? Why?

You can reach Julie at www.julieroweauthor.com , on Twitter @julieroweauthor or at her Facebook page: www.facebook.com/JulieRoweAuthor 

Connect with Julie:

Author Website: http://www.julieroweauthor.com/ Facebook: www.facebook.com/JulieRoweAuthor 
Twitter: https://twitter.com/JulieRoweAuthor Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/list/5272597.Julie_Rowe  

Virtual Book Tour Page

http://www.pumpupyourbook.com/2015/05/07/pump-up-your-book-presents-deadly-strain-1-biological-response-team-series-virtual-book-publicity-tour/