What's Everyone Working On?

I'm eager to hear all about everyone's work-in-progress. There's an extreme amount of talent here amongst the Five Star authors. I've spent a lot of time visiting sites, reading excerpts, and the journey and discoveries were sheer delight. Made me run over to Amazon.com and place my order:)

Now that my final edits have been turned in on TROPICAL WARNINGS, I'm hard at work on revising and revamping my second title in the Wanderlust Mystery series. Tentatively titled, THE LAST RESORT. For me, the most difficult writing came with the prologue (which I'm considering dropping as a prologue and changing to "Chapter One). With it I discovered the true experience of research in getting facts correct with ocean navigation. Along the way I received such comments as. "Why waste time with so much factual research? The book is fiction. Who cares?" I CARE! Fiction or not, I certainly don't want some reader down the road saying, "you better check your facts, ma'am!"

So here it is--you be the judge! A sneak peek into my WIP. Oh, and speaking of "peaks" here's the link to my very first press release! http://www.rvnewsdaily.com/article.php/april_star

The cloaking fog appeared strangely protective. There were areas along Anastasia Island’s coastline where no one could hear you scream. And it was in such an area that the bottle was launched, spinning through the air and landing with a splash. It bobbed and weaved quietly eight feet above the sandy bottom before deciding on a direction. Seemingly, it appeared to be floating a quarter mile off the northerly point of St. Augustine Harbor.

As the day progressed, feeling the pull of the tide, the bottle moved imperceptibly westward before making a gradual circuit around the jetty outward along Salt Run inlet. Starting its journey into the path of the sunlight. Glinting through the sparkling Atlantic, the bottle reflected blue, gold and pink.

Three days later it had cleared the inlet area and was moving north by northwest, about two hundred feet offshore, in fifteen feet of water along the Ancient Sand Dunes.

The rolling waves of the Atlantic and gentle westerly breeze blew across the tropics. Despite the westerly wind, the bottle continued to float west. St. Augustine, Florida has over four and a half miles of beach that stretch along the northeastern tip of Anastasia Island. It is situated right in the middle of modern Florida -- a mere 40 miles from the glassy skyscrapers of downtown Jacksonville, 100 miles from the rocket ships of Kennedy Space Center and 100 miles from the fantasy theme parks of Orlando -- but its nearly four and a half centuries of history make it seem worlds away. The bottle had floated aimlessly for over 200 miles and seven days before drifting into an offshore basin where the water circulated in a counterclockwise motion. The bottle was in the extreme south of this basin. The circulation moved the bottle westward, back toward home.

For two days, the bottle washed back and forth against the rock and wooden structure of the south end of the jetty; as if it were uncertain whether to go inside, toward St. Augustine, or outside, back into the Atlantic.

The romantic symbolism of bottles containing proclamations of love and being tossed out to sea have intrigued people for as long as there have been bottles. Oceanographers have charted these romantic journeys; Hollywood has made blockbuster movies out of the tenderness from the notion.

The bottle that had been hurled out in the Atlantic on a balmy spring day from St. Augustine Harbor contained no messages of undying love and passion. Nor did it contain charts or maps of shipwrecks. What it did contain was secrets, lies, betrayals and the most unspeakable of crimes—murder. And just as the journey of the bottle itself, it would alter the course and direction of many lives beginning with the life of whoever discovered this message in a bottle.