Bayou Midnight
ISBN13: 978-0-9896574-8-8Buy the Book: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo
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OVERVIEW
New Orleans nights are as intriguing as the lives of three friends raised together on the city’s streets. Lifelong solidarity has seen each man through difficult times, but challenges still lurk in the Big Easy, where love is always complicated–but worth any struggle.
Sam Long Is Happiest Alone
Homicide detective Sam Long is determined to solve his latest case, but he can't move forward without help. His best witness to arson and murder is a little girl, and whatever she saw on the night of the fire is safely locked away in her mind.
The last thing Sam wants is to consult with anyone, especially Dr. Antoinette Deveraux, a beautiful psychologist trained in hypnosis. He's certain there's no place for someone like compassionate Antoinette in a murder investigation. But when she unlocks the child's memories, Antoinette unlocks something primal and compelling in Sam's own heart.
Antoinette is stunned by her attraction to Sam, who is determined not to let a woman into his life. After escaping a toxic marriage, she's concerned that she's choosing the wrong man once more. But the more she's with Sam, the more she understands he's not the man he pretends to be. When he invites her to meet his Cajun family down on Bayou Midnight in South Louisiana, Antoinette realizes it's too late to be cautious. But can their relationship thrive and grow when her skills as a psychologist are in direct conflict with his skills as a police detective?
Change always comes at a cost, but as the murder investigation unfolds and danger deepens, who will pay the price? Sam, himself, or the woman he's fallen in love with?
AUTHOR'S NOTE
Picture this if you will: Two authors in a canoe on a swamp south of New Orleans. One, who has never set foot or bottom in a canoe. The other, who usually only paddles from the front when needed. (That would be me.) We arrive at our destination, find our canoe and paraphernalia, and wait for instructions.
"Enjoy yourselves," say our guides as they push away from the shore and glide across the water to disappear from view for the rest of the trip, leaving us to stare at each other in dismay. Then, with no choice, we get in, push off, and have the time of our lives.
As with all my books, when writing Bayou Midnight I knew I needed more than a trip to the library to get the true feel of the Louisiana bayou country. The swamp trip was one of my answers. Karen Young, the author who accompanied me, recently told me that when I said canoe trip, she'd pictured herself lazily trailing her fingers through the water while a chatty guide paddled us through swamp and marsh. Instead she got me, guiding the canoe just the way I'd learned a million years before at Camp Oklawaha as a young teenager. (And relearned that day.)
Karen also says our trip is one of her fondest memories. Mine, too. We saw snakes hanging from tree limbs, gris-gris bags, trot lines, alligators, and nutria. We also fell more deeply in love with the state we both called home.
A few years ago Lady of the Night (book one of the New Orleans Nights series) and Bayou Midnight (book two) came back into my loving care. I was so glad to become reacquainted with my characters and stories, and I wanted you to enjoy them again, too.
Now what to do?
Both books needed to be updated and revised. Even more important, in order to finish the series, they needed the companionship of a third book, Night Magic. Unfortunately, Skeeter, the third of three childhood friends who grew up on the streets of New Orleans, had been just a bit too much the bad boy for my publisher, who had declined the idea. Skeeter's book languished.
Now I was faced with a decision. Was publishing these stories as a trilogy so important to me that I was willing to drop everything else, write the third book and dip back into romantic suspense? Darned right. I still had everything I needed in my files, as well as the conviction that this story wanted to be told. Clearly it was time to get moving.
So welcome to New Orleans Nights, complete at last. Welcome to the seamier side of The City That Care Forgot, to the bayous of Southern Louisiana and to the underworld of New Orleans voodoo. Most of all to the stories of three men whose friendship never wavered.
While the first two books were updated and revised, and the third book written in the same time frame, the books are still set before Hurricane Katrina, which changed the city so drastically in August 2005. This is the New Orleans I remember and love so well.
Laissez les bon temps rouler! (Let the good times roll.)