​There’s a song from a boys band I listened to a lot when I was in college, a tribute to moms everywhere. Once in a while, it’ll play in my head on repeat until I listen to it. For a long time, I thought my mom was perfect. I mean, don’t we all at some point?

She wasn’t.

Because that too happens at some point, the moment we realize our mother is flawed.
Did you ever ask yourself if you’d do better than your mom if you’d had kids? That your discipline would be different? That you’d raise your children in a different way? That you’d be more open and understanding?

I thought I would. But I didn’t have kids, nor will I have any, but that’s another story.
Through primary and high school, my homemaker mom had to raise my brothers and me on a single salary that wasn’t always stable due to my stepfather’s job―construction workers had it hard in the 80s and early 90s. Let’s face it, we were poor; I only realized that as an adult.

Why?

Because she did her best, so we’d never know it. Our lunches were never empty even if they were odd sometimes. We had clothes on our backs, a roof over our heads. We even had pets. My mother was the best to me back then, even if I felt she was too strict with me. Thing is, my friends were a little more...developed than I was, as in they were experiencing with boys and drugs and I just wasn’t there in my life. I felt that my curfew was restrictive but was too respectful to break it.

The summer I turned 13, my mother sent me to live with my father. Like all children, by law, I could choose where I wanted to live by the age of 12 but that choice was taken from me following a sudden decision―or so I thought. I only found out when I was an adult the real reason why and that reason was one of protection; protect me from an upcoming situation she didn’t want me to be a part of or suffer through.

Because that’s what mothers do. They protect you.

After that revelation, we grew closer. I’d call her three or four times a week, we’d spend hours on the phone.

Then the shit hit the fan, pardon the expression. I got sick, enough to be scared for my life. And I felt so alone with my parents living hundreds of miles away. I was mad at them for not helping, but even more at my mother and I can’t even tell you why because I don’t know. I stopped calling, communicating even. I felt hurt that she didn’t protect me. But, how could she? She doesn’t have magic powers.

We made it back to our old ways slowly, only to have it crash back down about a year later when she bluntly asked me if I was dating my female best friend because she and I are super close―as in cuddling on the couch. The way Mom asked me insulted me, not because she wondered if I was gay but because she thought I’d made such an important life change without telling her. I was mad for a long time and didn’t tell her. I still haven’t told her, and it’s been four years. I carried it for a long time but finally let it go. I don’t care anymore because I know she’d accept it and move on if I did come out to her, regardless of my lifestyle choice. How many moms do that? Not all of them, trust me.

See? Moms have flaws. But remember that they were young girls once. Maybe they went through rough patches with their mothers too. They’re not perfect. But I’ll be damned if she wasn’t supportive. Trust me when I say that my mom is the perfect fan.

​Like Mystery? Love Mom? Look to the Romance Novel’s Hate-Love Relationship with
Mothers

As Mother’s Day approaches, Romance writers celebrate our actual mothers—biological
or surrogate. We laud them for their wisdom and patience, and thank them for the
endless ways they’ve encouraged or corrected us as we find our way in the world. Our
mothers made us readers and became our first readers when we began to write.
Without my mother I wouldn’t be writing these words, but in romance fiction mothers
play a different role, most often by being absent, and some times, if the writer is lucky
or clever, by being a mystery.

As romance writers, it’s our job to separate our heroines from their mothers as quickly,
and often as brutally, as we can. “First, whack the parents” is an established rule of
writing popular fiction. The heroine may have a dog, a horse, or a friend, but never a
wise and loving mother. To be a heroine, she has to find her way to lasting love by
herself.

The writer’s method of separating a heroine from her mother can be cruel or comic.
Contrast Fontine’s separation from Cosette in Les Miserables with Jane Austen’s
separation of Elizabeth from Mrs. Bennet in P & P. Or consider Naledi Smith’s
motherless upbringing in foster care in Alyssa Cole’s A Princess in Theory, which makes
Naledi the perfect spunky, I’ve-got-to-do-it-all-by-myself heroine. As writers, we’ve
done our first job when we get the mother out of the way and set up our independent
heroine to stumble or stride alone along the path to love.

Nevertheless, our heroine can’t actually reach her happy ending unless she comes to
terms with her absent or problematic mother. She must solve the “mystery” of her
mother. She has to know her mother to know herself, and only with that self-
knowledge, that recognition of herself as her mother’s daughter, will she choose wisely
in the matter of love.

The heroine’s need to understand her mother hands the writer a great opportunity to
make of the missing mom a mystery. Who was she? Why did she leave, or die? How is
the heroine like or unlike her? A writer can answer those questions in a single sentence
as Austen does about Mrs. Bennet and Lady Elliot. Or the writer can make the absent
mother haunt the story.
​
The “mystery” mother, in whatever century she’s from, is pure gold for the romance
writer. Over the past year my sisters and I have been going through thousands of family
photos and slides our mother kept, discovering things we didn’t know as children. One
of the slides shows Mom (in a gorgeous dress worthy of Lady Felicia in the Father Brown
mysteries) with Dad and the then youngest child. We lived in Honolulu at the time, and the three of them had returned to the mainland. “Oh,” said my sisters, “Don’t you
remember? That’s when Mom was thinking of divorcing Dad.” The mystery of mom hit
me squarely. Who was she? The young woman who’d meant to be a journalist and
travel the world covering international news? Or the wife of a rising executive managing
a gracious home and growing family? Why did she want to leave? Why did she decide to
stay?

A powerful novel haunted by an absent mother is Joy Kagawa’s Obasan. It’s the story of
a Japanese-Canadian family broken apart by internment during and after WWII, but it’s
really a detective novel in which the heroine must solve the mystery of her mother’s
failure to return to Canada after the war. Clues abound in every chapter. The answer,
when it comes, is stunning, heartbreaking, and liberating all at once.

In a more modest way the dead mother in A Lady’s Guide to Passion and Property, one
of my Husband Hunter books, is the source of the novel’s mystery subplot. Raised by a
loving innkeeper father, Lucy Holbrook accepts the story that her mother died in
childbirth. Her innkeeper father’s insistence that she become a lady puzzles her. It is
only as Lucy is drawn into fashionable society that she begins to suspect a secret in her
past. The secret is concealed in the troubled mind of her childhood companion, simple-
minded old Adam. When Adam’s heartbreaking secret is finally revealed, Lucy’s
understanding of her identity and her mother’s frees her to become the lady she’s
meant to be.

In A Princess in Theory, Cole’s heroine Naledi also meets someone who insists that she
has an identity far from her grad-student, waitressing, foster-child circumstances. She,
too, discovers that there is a mystery surrounding her dead parents that must be solved
before she can find lasting love.

That’s it, the two-part, hate-love relationship of the Romance Novel and mothers. First
whack the mom; second, let her haunt the heroine.

Just for fun see if you know the titles of these stories with absent moms who haunt their children--
1. A mom who played Dusty Springfield songs and died in a car crash.
2. Three dead moms who left orphans in the small English village of Highbury.
3. An English Quaker mom who died leaving her daughter to care for her blind
mathematician father.
4. A mom who ran away with her lover leaving her son at the mercy of his aristocratic
mates in an English boys’ school.
5. A mom who died protecting her infant son from a powerful enemy he would one day
challenge.

Find the answers at www.facebook.com/KateMooreAuthor

March 12, 2019
Novel
​Historical ~ Regency ~ Romantic Comedy

An independent lady is accidentally betrothed to a spy with a mysterious past in this Regency gem from beloved, award-winning author Kate Moore. A volume of tips for the marriage-minded brought them together, but their sweeping adventure will change all the rules of engagement . . .
 
When her desperate mother sends her The Husband Hunter’s Guide to London, outspoken Emily Radstock rails against the slim book of manners, boldly declaring that she should wed the first “imbecile” she meets and be done with the matter. Too bad Sir Ajax Lynley overhears her outrageous proposal and holds her to it. But he’s no dullard—he’s a wily government agent who needs the cover of a beautiful fiancé to pursue a deadly enemy. To resist his charms, Emily turns to the guide she disdains—and does exactly the opposite. Dress fashionably? She enshrouds herself in black crepe. Be demure? She steps into danger and faces down criminals alongside her “intended” . . . whose thrilling seduction may be anything but a charade.
 
Praise for Kate Moore’s previous novels
 
“Moore writes with a lyrical beauty that will leave no heart untouched.” —RT Book Reviews
 
“Fans will hope for more of Moore’s sinful delights to come.” --Library Journal (starred review)
 
“Moore skillfully whets readers’ appetites . . .” --Booklist

Mother's Day was difficult for me for many years. Like most little girls, I always wanted to be a Mom. I just assumed it would be easy. It was anything but. For over 5 years, my husband and I tried, with various degrees of intervention, to have a child. Two miscarriages and no explanations later, I was done.
 
Mother's Day became something to dread. No Hallmark cards, flowers, or gifts for me. Clueless strangers wishing me a Happy Mother's Day reduced me to tears. I even had my first miscarriage on that weekend in May of 1997. So, I took off a few years and tried to not mourn the loss.
 
Eventually, we built our family through adoption, bringing home our two children from Russia, our daughter in 2002 and our son in 2004. And Mother's Day became joyful for me. The annual celebration was filled with cute gifts, flowers, and yes, Hallmark Cards. Twice, we celebrated at Disney, which rocked! Once, my son's soccer coach handed out a single carnation to all the Moms. And that was awesome also.
 
This year, however, will be my first without my Mom. I lost her last summer to Alzheimer's after a long, heartbreaking battle. And even though she'd already lost the essence of what made her my Mom years before, I still had her. Now, I don't. So, this year, I have to endure another of the firsts without her. I made it through Thanksgiving and Christmas, not calling her at the strike of midnight on New Year's Eve. April 25th would have been her 81st birthday, and then comes Mother's Day. So once again, the holiday becomes difficult for me. I am a motherless daughter.
 
My Mom, Joan Ann Stanton, raised me and my two older brothers alone. She sometimes worked three jobs at a time to provide for us. To give us better than she’d had. She made sure we all got a college education. She always told me, “You can be anything you want, do anything you want, as long as you’re willing to work for it.” And I believed her. So, I became a wife and a mother and then a nurse and finally an author. By the time I achieved that last part, Alzheimer’s had robbed her of her memory and identity. I became the stranger who came to sit with her. Brought her lunch.
 
So, my advice to you is to cherish the moments you have with your mothers. And your children. Life is at best unpredictable. I try to not take anything for granted. Tell them you love them. Send the flowers. Buy the Hallmark card.

Kimberley O’Malley is a transplant to Charlotte, North Carolina from the frozen North. She is learning to say y’all but draws the line at sweet tea. Sarcasm is an art form in her world. She writes small town Contemporary romances and hilarious Cozy Mysteries. When not writing, she is a full-time nurse and part-time soccer Mom, but not necessarily in that order. She shares her life with an amazing husband of more than 23 years, two teenagers, and one very sweet Shetland Sheepdog, Molly.

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It’s often said that while winning a battle has immediate gains, it’s pointless if you lose the war. Not so for the Battle of Puebla, which occurred on Cinco de Mayo, 1862.

Not only did Mexico win that battle, it gave a struggling democracy pride at a time when France, a superior and better-equipped force, tried to topple the government and take over the country. A year later the foreigners returned, accomplished their purpose, and set up Ferdinand Maximilian as emperor. In 1867 Mexican troops finally prevailed and the country returned to being a republic.

History lesson over? Not quite. According to National Geographic, the Battle of Puebla strengthened the morale of a young Mexican nation and became “the rallying cry of resistance to foreign domination.” We know Cinco de Mayo today, not as a celebration of the French defeat, but for its celebration of Mexican culture.

I grew up in San Juan Capistrano and spent the second half of my life in Sonoma. Both California cities still celebrate their Mexican heritage. The victory at Puebla must have been welcome news to those who remembered the 1846-48 war between Mexico and the United States, a war that was settled by treaty. The Americans weren’t after subjugation. They wanted specific lands—California, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, and Texas—lands that would fulfill their “manifest destiny,” the buzz words of the day.

Fascinated by old family stories, last year I began writing a historical romance series set in California. The Mission Belles series explores how the Mexican aristocracy survived the transfer of California to the Americans and how the hidalgos adapted to suddenly becoming aliens in their own land. A succession of corrupt officials had made the wealthy rancheros tired of their own government. Many secretly supported the Americans, some of whom had married their daughters. Others did not, but the resistance was neither prolonged nor intense.

By 1862—the year the Battle of Puebla took place—order had been established in California after the chaos of the Gold Rush. By then, old Mexican land titles had either been upheld or denounced, and the new state was ripe for settlers coming from the east. The year also saw refugees from Mexico entering California, either escaping the horrors of war, or taking advantage of abundant and well-advertised opportunities in their neighboring country. One was my ancestor, Jesus B. Nieblas, who walked with his family from Sinaloa to Southern California, initially settling in what would one day become Orange County. Did he have special insights about what might be coming to his country in the immediate future, or was he prudently taking his family to a place that promised a better life? We can only guess.

As we enjoy the fiestas, Ballet Folklorico demonstrations, mariachis, and pinatas, let us also remember the lessons of Cinco de Mayo. Battles won can give us hope, determination, and a never-give-up attitude that can sustain and propel us to our final victory.
​
Feliz Cinco de Mayo!

​Author of nine novels and eight history books, Pamela Gibson is a former City Manager who lives part time in Northern California’s wine country and part time in the Nevada desert. Having spent the last three years messing about in boats, a hobby that included a five-thousand-mile trip in a 32-foot Nordic Tug with her patient spouse, she now spends most of her time indoors happily reading, writing, cooking and keeping up with the antics of her gran-cats, gran-dog, and gran-fish. Sadly, the gran-lizard went to his final reward.


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​There are so many reasons to love Spring. Seeing the sun after months of gloom, turning off the heat and opening the windows before it’s time to run the AC, and picking flowers.
 
Especially the flowers.
 
There’s something particularly beautiful about Spring blooms. Unlike Summer flowers that seem to last for weeks, Spring flowers appear in a flash of color and fragrance and disappear with no warning.
 
When I was a child, my grandmother taught me how to save these flowers so we could enjoy them all year long. My grandmother also canned seasonal produce and made jam and jellies, so it wasn’t too surprising that she’d find another way to save the beauty of her present so she could savor it later.
 
Pressed flowers have been found around for centuries. According to a Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/29/AR2006062901769.html?noredirect=on)
article, archaeologists discovered pressed laurels and garlands in the 3,000-year-old coffin of Tutankhamun’s mother. In 16th century Japan, artisans developed Oshibana, the art of pressing flowers to make a complete picture.
 
A few centuries later, Victorian England picked up this art form. Victorian women and men of all ages filled scrapbooks with different types of pressed flowers and herbs, often adding bits of ribbon and other trimmings.
 
In the early 1990s, there was a resurgence in the art of pressed flowers after Nobuo Sugino traveled the world to collect these Victorian pressed flower collections. In 1997, Mr. Sugino publication “The International Pressed Flower Book” encouraged people of all ages to try this simple-yet-lovely hobby.
 
The great thing about pressed flowers is that, because it’s so easy and inexpensive, it’s a perfect activity for kids. Here are some basic directions for pressed flowers novices.

A chance encounter between a penniless young woman in search of her missing brother and a hobo burdened with a big secret takes both on a journey to Chicago's glamorous yet crime-ridden 1920s, where prostitution, bootlegging, and corruption rule. Separated by fate and reunited by chance, WHERE THE NIGHT NEVER ENDS is an unforgettable tale of courage and perseverance, a tribute to the triumph of hope and love against all odds.

When feisty and headstrong Samantha Bruno loses her mother in a freak accident, she decides to search for her brother, Angelo, who didn't return from a business trip to Chicago seven months earlier. It is the year 1924, the height of prohibition, and the city of Cincinnati is in the midst of a deep recession. Narrowly escaping a band of thugs, Sam meets Paul, a mysterious hobo with a big secret. Together they embark on a harrowing journey to Chicago, where Al Capone is building an empire.

Just when it seems their friendship is blossoming into something more, a raid tears Sam and Paul apart. Sam is sold into a brothel while Paul is arrested. Trapped without money and desperate to escape her new profession, Sam realizes she is on her own. Not only to free herself and search for her brother among Chicago's three million residents, but also to do the impossible--find Paul.

During his hearing, Paul learns that his father, a wealthy Chicago inventor, is on his deathbed. The judge, an old family friend, gives Paul an ultimatum. See your father or go to jail. Reluctantly, Paul returns home, where he finds that his decision to run away seven years earlier was based on a terrible mistake.
​
Narrated in alternating chapters by Sam and Paul, with rich historical detail, complex characters, and stunning prose, award-winning author Annette Oppenlander once again delivers a touching novel that lets us imagine what it was like to live and love during the roaring 1920s.

I'm a huge fan of historical fiction - the more I feel transported to the past, the better. I want to see, smell, taste, experience all there is from that time period. I was excited to read Where The Night Never Ends as the roaring 20s is not a place in time I've delved into.

I enjoyed the story - the plot was solid and kept me tapping the Kindle screen as fast as my eyes could finish a page. Without giving too much away, Where The Night Never Ends was gritty without being dark, and had plot twists that surprised and kept me interested in finding out what happened to Sam and Paul.

At the same time, I didn't feel transported back in time which was disappointing because the actual plot was so good. Maybe I didn't feel connected to the characters (though I did like them a lot by the end). Maybe because this was my first historical fiction based in this time period (I kept wondering if the terminology was accurate, resisting the urge to research the Prohibition Era). There were also a few editing errors - not a lot, but they threw me out of the story each time I noticed them. It could also be that I read Where The Night Never Ends at the end of a very stressful week - no matter what I read would not serve to take me away from my worries.

For those concerned with the violence of that era, the book doesn't really touch on it. There is tragedy, but the violence is not in-your-face. There are scenes in brothels, but nothing gratuitous. Depending on how you like your reads, this could be either a plus or minus.

If you choose to read Where The Night Never Ends, which I suggest you do if you A) enjoy historical fiction and/or B) are fascinated with the 1920s Prohibition Era in Chicago, I promise it won't be wasted time. You may even love it!

- Carissa W.
​
I was given a free copy of Where The Night Never Ends in exchange for an honest review.

Sam

I awoke in the early morning, my bones chilled as if they could fracture. I stomped back and forth in the abandoned lot until an inkling of warmth returned to my feet and hands. Remembering the sack from yesterday, I pinched my nose and took a drink from the whiskey. I shook myself as the liquid edged a fiery trail down my throat and gathered heat in my middle.

I’d made up my mind to leave.

What about Papa’s favorite cooking pot made from cast-iron? And his knife used for cutting ingredients, Mamma’s quilt that carried her scent? Should I return and check? Visit my girlfriend, Helen, who lived on the same block? We’d gone to school together, but Helen worked in a canning factory six days a week because her father worked there too.

No, I couldn’t risk it. Talbott had no doubt taken over my apartment and everything in it. Or he was lying in wait. There was no telling what he’d do if he caught me.

Straightening my achy knees, I stumbled onto the street and turned south. Frost covered the muddy trail and puddles. I filled my lungs because the air was almost bearable this morning, not yet soiled with manure from the daily herding of pigs to slaughter and the neglected dirty skin of men out of work.

I’d go search for my brother. He was bound to be in Chicago and he had to be alive. I was sure of it. Why else had there been that mysterious Chicago Tribune newspaper in the mailbox? It had only happened once—it couldn’t be a coincidence. But for some reason Angelo had chosen not to return, not even write. Something big had to have happened, something that had scared Angelo into abandoning mighty George Remus, abandoning Mamma and me. If there was any chance he was still there, I had to find him.

Only when the rail yard came into view did I realize I knew nothing about traveling on trains. In my cluttered brain, I’d figured to catch a free train north. How else was I going to get there without money? Buses required tickets. Walking took weeks and provisions I didn’t have.

Hundreds of cargo wagons stretched in every direction, seemingly parked helter-skelter along miles of rails. Where they went was anybody’s guess. There was a chill in the air, a frigid wind whistling along the tracks. It carried none of the filthy odor I knew from my neighborhood, but something unfamiliar and hostile. I tucked my coat around me, the shotgun a comfortable weight beneath my armpit. I’d fashioned a loop into the lining, the butt of the gun resting in the inner seam of my coat.

Angelo’s blue eyes, so much like my own, appeared in my vision. I angrily wiped a sleeve across my face and climbed over the first rails.
​
I’d heard of hobos, men crisscrossing the country in search of jobs. Surely one of them knew how to find Chicago. I’d simply ask directions.

“Look what we gots here,” a voice snickered.

“Is the girly lost?” another chimed in.

“She needs a fella to help her out,” a third voice said as the man attached to it stepped into my way. “Where to, doll?” His grin exposed a graveyard of foul teeth. There was no telling how old the man was, his face hidden behind a jungle of beard and month’s worth of grime.

I stopped abruptly, hugging the sack with my remaining supplies to my chest. Unless I threw everything down and had space and time to wrestle out my shotgun, I didn’t stand a chance.

Annette Oppenlander is an award-winning writer, literary coach and educator. As a bestselling historical novelist, Oppenlander is known for her authentic characters and stories based on true events, coming alive in well-researched settings. Having lived in Germany the first half of her life and the second half in various parts in the U.S., Oppenlander inspires readers by illuminating story questions as relevant today as they were in the past.

​The setting for CATS OF WAR, my latest space opera romance book, is a swamp. More specifically, an important factory that’s situated in a swamp on a colonized continent on an unprepossessing world. It’s one of the 500 terraformed planets in the galaxy, all members of the Central Galactic Concordance. Plants are flowering, animals are breeding, and the insects are just starting to get annoying. It’s spring in the swamp.
 
And why, you may ask, is the factory in a swamp? On this particular part of the planet, the mountains have rare metals that are needed for making faster-than-light stardrives. The rivers and spring runoff from the mountains pick up the metals, which concentrate in the swamp area. It’s much cheaper to filter them out of the water than dig them out of the inhospitable mountains.
 
However, as you might imagine, it’s not so easy to attract employees to work in a swamp. Therefore, the company partnered with the galactic government’s Criminal Restitution Indenture and Obligation (CRIO) system. For lesser crimes that involve theft and property destruction, convicts must pay back the monetary damage, or be sentenced to the CRIO system to work off their obligation.
 
In theory, this is a win-win situation for the government, the company, and society. Reality is more complicated.

The hero of CATS OF WAR, Subcaptain Kedron Tauceti, is the military liaison for indenturees who are veterans. He had no more choice in his assignment than did the heroine, indenturee Ferra Barray, who is doing restitution time for property damage.
 
But it’s spring for them, too. Kedron has finally been given a new post, and he’s counting the days until he leaves. His reputation was tarnished by a scandal, despite the fact that he’d been the whistleblower, not one of the brazen thieves. Ferra only has to keep her head down and keep her secrets safe for another month, then figure out what to do with her life.
 
Ordinarily, they’d have no reason to interact, but they are brought together by the unlikely arrival of two mysterious creatures who need their help—or might be the help that both Kedron and Ferra need when trouble comes to call.

Here’s a little excerpt from CATS OF WAR:
 
While Kedron wouldn’t miss the Argint d’Apa facility, he would miss the swamp. He’d disliked it at first, the same way most staffers still did, but it had grown on him. He’d spent time studying its ecology and gone with the biodiversity scientists on a few sample-collection expeditions. Living so close to untamed nature made it easier to understand how everything, from the majestic giant trees to annoying clouds of gnats, had a place. Maybe he did, too, even if he couldn’t see it.

He put away his uniform and decided to walk laps on the campus’s wide perimeter walkway, rather than spend another evening alone in the gym. Regulations restricted it to military personnel, and he’d never seen the CPS representative use it.
As much as possible, he kept his interactions with her in virtual space. As a mid-level telepath, she could read thoughts, and as a low-level sifter, she could affect brain chemicals, detect lies, and sense the use of active minder talents. Military personnel caught with minder talents earned an immediate, permanent transfer to the CPS’s Minder Corps.

Kedron’s minder talent wasn’t much, just an ability to use seemingly unrelated information to find things of interest, but he’d rather direct traffic for a city of half a billion or be an indenturee than work for the Minder Corps. Too many private family stories warned of how badly the Minder Corps treated its personnel. He’d learned to hide his talent well enough to beat the CPS Testing Center for mandatory age twelve and seventeen tests, and random ones since, but some sifters were better than the testing equipment. Fortunately, minder talents in the patterner class were hard for even high-level sifters to detect.

He pulled on pants and a specially treated long-sleeved top to ward off biting insects. Last, he stepped into one of his few indulgences—custom-tailored, waterproof, adaptive boots. Even with myriad modern transportation options, Ground Div gunnin, from the lowest ranker to High Command commodores, spent a lot of time walking, running, and marching. Good boots made all the difference.

He looked out the north-facing window of his quarters to check the weather and the path. Non-essential indenturees were on lockdown, and half the staff was busy, so he wasn’t surprised to see it deserted. The tall perimeter fence’s horizontal power lines beyond the road-glass pathway glowed faintly as reminders of their presence. The overhead and glass path lights blinked on and off erratically, then stayed off. Twilight and mold sometimes messed with the sensors.

Shadowed movement caught his eye. Someone carrying a shallow, rectangular crate stepped off the path toward the exterior powered fence. The figure knelt right in front of the fence and set the crate down. After furtive looks left and right, the hunched figure slid something under the fence.

Instead of zapping the person into insensibility or setting off the alarm, the visible bottom three fence lines between the two posts raised like a curtain, leaving a torso-height gap. The figure quickly extended a pole to push the crate outside the fence as far as possible, until it butted up against the big rock outcropping. He or she retracted the pole and picked up the device from the dirt. The fence line sank and straightened to its usual position.

The lights flickered on briefly. The figure pulled on a hood and hunched forward, but he’d already recognized the face. Ferra Barray.

She stepped onto the path and headed west. The lights came on and stayed bright. He watched until she vanished.

Protocol said to report anything unusual to the security chief, but Kedron had repeatedly been told, politely but sternly, to stick to his own star lane.

He wished he could come up with a more probable theory than suspecting that Barray was dealing contraband. A non-indenturee confederate would likely pick up the goods. Chems, pilfered equipment or tech, and stolen raw metals were all likely candidates.

He wouldn’t have tagged her for a thief. She’d been convicted of crashing a friend’s air-racing yacht into a Central Galactic Concordance government launch hangar that housed military orbiters. When she couldn’t pay the court-ordered restitution, the CGC arbiter remanded her to the CRIO system. The record implied she’d been chemmed to the gills.

That didn’t sync with her comment earlier that day about avoiding drugs of any sort, but everyone did stupid things now and again.
​
He wanted Barray to be the person he thought she was, but his experience with the theft ring situation taught him not to be swayed by what he wished to be true, and to look at the actual facts. He needed to know what was in the crate.

Read the rest in CATS OF WAR:
Amazon: https://amazon.com/dp/B07PF5LLW6
Apple Books ~ https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/cats-of-war/id1455752671?mt=11
B&N ~ https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/books/1130863996?ean=2940161479490
Kobo ~ https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/cats-of-war
Google Play ~ https://play.google.com/store/books/details/Carol_Van_Natta_Cats_of_War?id=8lSMDwAAQBAJ

A tarnished military Subcaptain, a repair technician hiding from her past, and two genetically engineered cats join must forces to save an important factory.

Military Subcaptain Kedron Tauceti counts the days until he can leave the rare metals factory and his current duty station as the liaison to the galactic government’s Criminal Restitution and Indenture Obligation system. The post was protection—and punishment—for exposing a theft ring during his previous assignment. He's more than ready to get his career back on track on a new base halfway across the galaxy, even if it means leaving behind the one person who makes him want to stay. Not that he's told her, because technically, he's her warden.
 
Former financial specialist and current indenturee Ferra Barray, hiding from her past, only has three months to go on her restitution sentence. She's lucked into a tech repair job. If she keeps her head down, she'll soon be free to figure out her future. Unfortunately, the local shark behind every illegal scheme in the facility wants her to steal for him, and she's running out of excuses. And now the heroically handsome Tauceti, who she hoped could help, is transferring out.
 
Everything changes when Ferra discovers two genetically modified cats. Saving them takes incredible risks. She doesn't know what she'll do if she can't convince Tauceti to rescue the cats and keep them until she's free to come for them.
 
But when trouble erupts at the factory, it might just be the cats who save them.
 
Find out what happens in this exciting standalone novella from Carol Van Natta's award-winning Central Galactic Concordance space opera series.
 
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NOTE TO READERS: Cats of War debuted in the limited edition Embrace the Passion: Pets in Space 3 anthology. It has been edited for clarity, but is substantially unchanged from the original. If you already have the anthology, you don't need to buy this story again (unless you like your books standalone). For fans of the Central Galactic Concordance series, the events in Cats of War take place after Jumper’s Hope, but are not part of the ongoing big damn story arc.

​Carol Van Natta is a USA TODAY bestselling and award-winning science fiction and fantasy author. Series include the Central Galactic Concordance space opera series that starts with Overload Flux and Minder Rising, and the Ice Age Shifters paranormal romance series that starts with Shifter Mate Magic and Shift of Destiny. She shares her Fort Collins, CO home with a resident mad scientist and just the right number of mad cats.
Chat with her on Facebook at https://facebook.com/CarolVanNattaAuthor, or visit her on the web at http://author.carolvannatta.com. Be the first to find out about new releases by signing up for her newsletter at http://bit.ly/CVN-news.