Spotlight & Giveaway: ARCTIC PURSUIT by Anna J Stewart

Today it is my pleasure to Welcome author Anna J Stewart to HJ!

Hi Anna  and welcome to HJ! We’re so excited to chat with you about your new release, ARCTIC PURSUIT!

 
Hi, everyone! Always happy to hang out with you all.
 

Please summarize the book for the readers here:

ARCTIC PURSUIT is the first book in my brand new romantic suspense series for Harlequin. It features FBI Special Agent Wren McKenna and her partner Ty Savakis in a friends to lovers trope. After a former witness of Ty’s is nearly killed, he asks for Wren’s help in protecting her and finding her attacker. That means heading up north to small-town Splendor, Alaska, (inspired by Whittier) pretending to be married! Let the high jinks–and romance!–begin!
 

Please share your favorite line(s) or quote from this book:

“You’ll have to tell Mom I’m missing this month’s dinner.” My original idea for these books was to have “Blue Bloods” inspired monthly dinner with the entire family. As I started writing, however, I realized that needed to be the big reward at the end of the series. Still, this is one of my favorite lines as it really sets up all four books and the family connection.

Pretending to be married to Ty Savakis. What a can of worms that could open up.
They’d had their share of undercover assignments, but nothing quite so…intimate before. (I’m not sure I’ve ever written a couple so perfectly suited for one another. It was a challenge in a lot of ways, because the conflict literally has to come from the “what will this do to our working relationship,” but yeah. They just belong together.)

Please share a few Fun facts about this book…

• I’ve wanted to create a story around a fictional version of Whittier, Alaska for a long time. I’d seen a news story on CBS Sunday morning years ago and it’s always stuck in my head. When I put together ideas for a new series of books, this setting was at the top of my list!
• One of my best friends is from Alaska and a lot of her family spent considerable time in Whittier, so I was able to get some first-hand knowledge about the place, especially in how transportation in and out of the area happens.
• This is the first in my McKenna Code series (inspired by FBI and Blue Bloods, two of my favorite TV shows). Wren’s oldest brother Aiden was featured in my final Honor Bound romance (A DETECTIVE’S DEADLY SECRET). He pops up in all of his siblings’ books, but his will be the final of the four I’ll be writing.
• This was a fun book to write mainly because I got put my small-town writing ability to work. Normally my small town romances for Heartwarming don’t have much action and adventure. That’s definitely NOT the case with ARCTIC PURSUIT.

What first attracts your Hero to the Heroine and vice versa?

Wren and Ty have known each for years. In fact, they’ve had feelings for one another for a good long while, but neither acted on them while the other wasn’t available (love that honorable thing they both possess). Loyalty plays a big role in their relationship. They trust each other. Implicitly. No question, no hesitation, no doubt. it’s a great foundation. Now that they’re “playing” at being married, it opens the floodgates to all the what ifs they’ve both kept to themselves. Honestly? It’s my favorite kind of story to write.

Did any scene have you blushing, crying or laughing while writing it? And Why?

I laughed a bit when writing this scene:

Wren had flown in military cargo planes with only a thin metal bench as a seat during category two winds. She’d found herself dangling off the side of a helicopter with only Ty’s hand locked around her wrist as security. And she’d flown coast to coast in a massive jetliner that lost one engine during a particularly nasty summer storm.

Right now she’d take any of those scenarios over the single engine 1946 Piper Super Cruiser—suspiciously similar to a tin can— she currently found herself in.

The only reason she could even identify the plane was because its pilot, one forty-something Gabriel Hawthorne, had given her an extensive rundown on the plane’s capabilities. No doubt the abject look of horror she’d been unable to conceal when she first spotted the red-and-white-painted aircraft was the reason for the history lesson.

Hawthorne seemed to believe that the fact his grandfather had flown the plane for more than forty years was an endorsement of safety. She might have felt better if the plane had just rolled off the assembly line.

I’ve been working on my own fear of flying and with this scene, honestly, I’ve never related to a character more. Things like that always make me laugh. It’s the human touches that can lend to authenticity for my heroes and heroines I think. In the end, Wren did a lot better with this plane than I would have!

Readers should read this book….

If they like mysteries, adventure, snow-bound settings and friends to lovers tropes. If readers like law-enforcement focused characters, small town quirky characters, and a couple who truly deserves to be together then ARCTIC PURSUIT is definitely a read you should check out.

What are you currently working on? What other releases do you have in the works?

I’m currently writing book 3 in my Circle of the Red Lily series. BURIED is a book that is fighting me every step of the way. It’s almost painful, LOL, but I’m going to win in the end! I’m hoping to edit book two in the McKenna series (Howell’s story) in the next couple of weeks before I start book number 3. Heartwarmings are on hold for the moment as I’ve got my fingers (and everything else) crossed for a new contract.
 

Thanks for blogging at HJ!

Giveaway: 3 winners: First four books in the Honor Bound romantic suspense series (MORE THAN A LAWMAN, REUNITED WITH THE PI, GONE IN THE NIGHT, and GUARDING HIS MIDNIGHT WITNESS)

To enter Giveaway: Please complete the Rafflecopter form and Post a comment to this Q: As I stated earlier, friends to lovers is one of my favorite tropes, both to read and write. I’d be interested to know what some of your favorite tropes are? What are your absolute must buy books based on tropes alone?

 
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Excerpt from Arctic Pursuit:

“I seem to recall you telling me Alice refused witness protection.”

“She did.” It had been an argument Ty had been devastated to lose. What was happening now had been his nightmare scenario come to life, but Alice had been adamant. “She’d finally gotten her life together and knew what she wanted. She didn’t want Treyhern messing with her future. She’d just started dating the man who would become her husband. She was happy, and testifying felt like closing the book on a big chapter of her life. Said she knew how to disappear and still keep her identity intact.”

“Brave woman. Wrong, but brave.”

“I told her she’d be safe,” Ty said. “I promised her Treyhern would never get out, that he couldn’t hurt her anymore and I’d make sure she could have that life she wanted so desperately.” The layers of guilt that continued to build threatened to pull him under. “I went so far as to visit Treyhern in prison and told him that whatever beef he had, it was with me. That I was the one who made her testify. I made him believe she didn’t have a choice.”

“Something tells me you didn’t quite succeed.”

“Alice is still alive, Wren.” Right now that fact was the only thing holding him together. “She’s clinging to it with her fingertips, but she’s alive. She has a good life, a wonderful family. I can’t walk away from this. From her. Not again. Whoever’s gunning for her works for Treyhern and he probably doesn’t take failure w to be there when they try.”

“You?” Wren picked her coffee back up. “You mean we, don’t you?” She sipped, sipped again. “That’s why you called me, right?”

“I’d appreciate the assist.” A new layer of uncertainty unfolded inside him. “But I also don’t want to put you in the position of having to lie. I called Frisco, asked for permission to head up to Alaska to look into this, to make sure Alice and her family stay safe.”

“Let me guess,” Wren said slowly. “Our commanding officer denied your request.”

Not only denied it, but Frisco told Ty if he did pursue the investigation, he could pretty much kiss his career in the agency goodbye. After his insubordination regarding Dante Vex, it made
sense the agency would want him far away from the Treyhern retrial.

“I promised her she’d be safe. And you know I never break—”

“Your promises.” Wren nodded. “Yes, I am aware.”

“I just need you watching my back up there. And maybe covering for me with Frisco when he asks where I am. Just say you don’t know.”

“Well, that’ll be a bald-faced lie since I’m coming with you.” The ease with which she said it both erased the tension in his bones and awakened new concerns.

Deep down he’d known Wren wouldn’t let him do this alone. She’d never let him down. Not in seven years. “You don’t have to.”

“Please.” She rolled her eyes. “Of course I do. If for no other reason than to make sure you don’t mess this up. Plus, I really don’t want to have to break in a new partner. So.” She finished her coffee. “What’s the plan?”

“Plan?” He tried to sound nonchalant. “What—”

“You had a list of options mapped out before you even called me,” Wren accused. “One option if I bailed on you and told you to handle your own mess. One if I didn’t answer the phone, and another for when I agreed to help. Let’s get option C out in the open. Where are we going and what’s our plan when we get there?”

“Ah.” Now came the tricky part. “We’ll be going to Splendor, Alaska. A small town on the West Coast, population a whopping four hundred and forty-three.”

“Wow. Okay. Well, I guess that’ll limit our suspect pool. What?”

She narrowed her gaze, pointed her finger in between his eyes. “What’s that look?”

He swallowed harder than he meant to and almost choked. “I, ah, may have already laid the groundwork for our cover story.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out two gold rings. He watched the shock register first, then dismayed amusement, followed immediately by her you-have-got-to-be-kidding-me look. “What do you say, partner? Will you marry me?”

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
 
 

Book Info:

Falling in love isn’t supposed to be part of the job

FBI special agent Ty Savakis keeps his promises. That’s why he’s asked Wren McKenna to join him in an isolated Alaskan town: he wants her help safeguarding a witness he swore to protect. To find the assailant who tried to kill her, Ty and Wren go undercover as a married couple. These partners have always been a perfect team, but sharing an apartment makes it impossible to resist the attraction they’ve both fought to deny. Will the violent criminal they’re tracking give them a chance to imagine a future together?
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Meet the Author:

Anna J Stewart is the National and USA Today bestselling author of more than sixty sweet to spicy romances. Currently writing for Harlequin’s Heartwarming and Romantic Suspense lines, she also writes the award-winning Circle of the Red Lily romantic thriller series for Arc Manor’s Caezik Romance. When she’s not writing or working with her editing clients, she’s usually cooking, baking, binge-watching her newest TV addiction, or re-watching her all-time favorite shows, The Great British Bake-Off, Supernatural and all things Star Trek. Any spare time she has left is spent wrangling two monstrous and attitude prone cats named Rosie and Sherlock.
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