Spotlight & Giveaway: Free Fall by Emmy Curtis

Today it is my pleasure to Welcome author Emmy Curtis to HJ!

Hi Emmy and welcome to HJ! We’re so excited to chat with you about your new release, Free Fall!

Please summarize the book for the readers here:

This is a part of a short series about Red Flag, which is an international military exercise that goes badly wrong. A former U.S. Air Force pilot, Casey, realizes that her new company might be responsible for a tragic mid-air collision, and Colonel Duke Cameron is determined to get to the bottom of the accident…and if that means he needs to keep Casey in sight at all times—that’s what he’ll do. But what starts as a surveillance mission ends up in a frantic cross-country race to find evidence that will reveal the real culprit!
 

Please share the opening lines of this book:

Colonel Duke Cameron wasn’t the squared-away commander everybody saw. He wasn’t the obedient by-the-books officer he’d accidentally become.
But that was going to change. Right now.

Please share a few Fun facts about this book…

• Red Flag is the international version of the Marines’ Top Gun – with enough fun and egos to go around!
• Oh my gosh – the stories I heard while researching Red Flag. One pilot told me that they had to watch their hangars like a hawk, because other country’s pilots would try to sneak in and get photos of U.S. technology! Even allied countries!
• I went on a MC-130J military aircraft, with a load master, and confirmed that one could actually slide a bomb off the ramp of the aircraft (for one of Casey’s war stories) photo attached!

Please tell us a little about the characters in your book. As you wrote your protagonist was there anything about them that surprised you?

I think, when I was writing Free Fall, I realized for the first time how frustrating it can be to take a seat when you’re used to taking charge. Duke Cameron is an all-action Special Ops hero, who got promoted, and now flies a desk, when he used to be in the thick of the action all the time. I really felt his need to get back into the action when the opportunity presented itself. (I’m kind of dreading what will happen when my husband decides to retire!)

The same is true of the heroine – Casey Jacobs. She’s been out of the military for over a year, but is still pulled back into the brothers-in-arms when it all hits the fan. The military is so ingrained into her DNA that she’s struggling to adapt to her new company, and goes running back to the person she knows she can trust. And she still automatically snaps to attention when Cameron yells at her…even when, shall we say, their uniforms are definitely off… 😉

If your book was optioned for a movie, what scene would you use for the audition of the main characters and why?

Definitely this one. It jumps from snark to real feeling as Casey recalls how near she and her crew were to death:

“What is all this about then? Your own company tries to abduct you, and you’re not even curious why? You didn’t call the police…Actually, why didn’t you call the police?”
Her mouth fell open. “Really? You expect me to go to the Vegas police and tell them I just busted out of a locked-down base, that security tried to stop me, gave chase, and tried to take me back? I’m pretty sure the police will just hand me over to them.”
“Who was in the minivan that left just ahead of you? Was that something to do with you too?” he asked, jumping from one subject to another like the well-trained interrogator that he probably was.
She could tell him that. “That was the Animal and friends. They were tired of sitting on their asses and leaving the rescue to TGO. They asked me to bust them out so that they could do their own search and rescue.”
“And you just let them?” Disbelief echoed in the car.
She shrugged. “I owed him.”
Cameron huffed an unbelieving laugh. “What could you possibly owe him?”
She sat up straighter. “What do you mean ‘him’? Like he’s the last person on earth who could have done something for me in the past?”
“Well, isn’t he? He’s a show pony. All that hoisting himself out of the cockpit like he was a gymnast on the rings or something.”
The smug bastard. How dare he? “Careful,” she said, dabbing at her face as if showing him where crumbs were on his. “You’ve got a bit of jealousy here.”
He snorted.
“Have you honestly never flown with him downrange?” she asked.
“Why would I? He’s conventional warfare, and I’m—”
“—anything other than conventional.” She nodded. It was true. Spec ops really did think they were flighting a different war sometimes. “I flew with him a lot. And he saved my crew, me and my aircraft on more than one occasion. That’s why I gave him a pass. That’s why I’ll always give him a pass. He took out a surface-to-air missile nest, and then the missile they let off at me seconds before they blew up. He was laughing over the radio as he did it. It was locked onto us. We had limited maneuverability. My crew had already pretty much said our goodbyes to each other.”
She paused, tears welling up in her eyes as she remembered why they’d been there and were so vulnerable. They were one engine down and were searching for an air-refueler so they could…
Nope. She wasn’t going there. She sniffed and glared out the window, widening her eyes so the air would dry the unshed tears.
She grabbed a tissue from her bag and swiped at her nose. “And by the way, the reason he looks like a gymnast, is because he was a gymnast. An Olympic medalist. You know how many South Koreans joined the military after he did?” She didn’t wait for his answer. “Over three thousand. He knows what’s important, and he knows how to motivate the people he works with.” She paused. “If you had a way to get people out of the base to look for the pilots, wouldn’t you have taken it? You wouldn’t have thought it more important to have as many eyes out there as possible? You would have let him out?”
She looked into the darkness, before turning back. “And, by the way. He never mentioned that he saved our lives—ever—until this evening, when he called in his favor to go rescue pilots who aren’t even Korean. So, don’t talk to me about him like that, okay?”

What do you want people to take away from reading this book?

That it’s really hard being in the military and being 100% constrained by processes and direct orders when you know something bad is going down. Sometimes it’s better to break out – and work on the problem from the outside. Or you know, end up being chased across the country without any back up…

What are you currently working on? What other releases do you have planned for 2017?

I’m currently working on a new romance series that will be out next year, two Young Adult books, and two Women’s Fiction books. In other words, most days, I forget where I left my keys, and can’t remember where I’m supposed to be. Wait, what did you say my name was again?
 

Thanks for blogging at HJ!

Giveaway: Ebook: FREE FALL by Emmy Curtis

To enter Giveaway: Please complete the Rafflecopter form and Post a comment to this Q: So I have recently been GUTTED by the cancelation of two of my favorite TV shows. The Brave, and Timeless. Did anyone watch them? The Brave was an awesome military ‘mission of the week’ show that my husband said was pretty realistic (within the bounds of TV), and Timeless – about a time-traveling Delta Ops soldier, historian, and a tech guy. They both made TV such a pleasure, and now…they’re gone. Anyone else had their fave TV show cancelled recently? Any tips for good new shows?

 
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Excerpt from Free Fall:

Cameron has just realized that the bad guys had been tracking them via the GPS on Casey’s phone.

“Show me your bag,” he demanded.
She leaned in the car to grab it, handed it to him without a word, and watched as he emptied the contents onto the hood of the car. In the dim light she winced as she took in the damage to the car. She took a shaky breath. “I’m sorry, Cameron. I didn’t think…”
“That might be the first true thing you’ve told me.”
What? “Dick,” she muttered. He ignored her and kept pawing through her bag, as if the answer to the universe was in there. She’d been worried at his sudden anger, but now he was just being a douche.
He examined each item that had fallen out of her bag, and then felt his way through the tan leather bag itself. There was nothing there. It was a Jimmy Choo. Just acknowledging that she’d paid thousands of dollars for a freaking handbag made her realize just how crazy her life had become after she’d been recruited at TGO. She’d been paid so much money, she could afford multiple Jimmy Choos. Surely that should have tipped her off that something wasn’t right. Had they started buying her off right from her very first paycheck? The thought made her feel queasy, and she rubbed her stomach as she watched him check a tube of lipstick, a small container of tampons, and a couple of stray condoms that had been at the bottom of her handbag for who knows how long. She wasn’t embarrassed, and he didn’t seem to be either.
“Now it’s your turn,” he said, his voice hard, but more strained than angry.
“What now?” she replied, startled.
Before she’d finished asking the question, his hard hands were on her shoulders. It surprised her into silence. For a second, she wanted to close her eyes and just feel him touching her. Suddenly, the years of longing for him, then not seeing him for months, only for the feeling to return whenever he popped back on to base, came front and center.
She forced herself to say something. “What are you doing?” She even managed to inject an indignant tone into her voice. She was pretty proud of that.
He paused as his hands squeezed the T-shirt she’d bought that morning “I mean no disrespect, but I really don’t trust you. I have two missing—possibly dead—pilots, and I have you. You were in the control room when word came in about the crash. You had the guiltiest look on your face as you left the room. You, who still look guilty. I’m prepared to give you the benefit of the doubt, since I saw someone try to grab you. But now I just don’t know.
“Our date you skipped out on, after being careful to drive very slowly past the officers’ club parking lot? Suspicious. Everything is suspicious to me right now. So yes, I’m going to frisk you for anything your company can use to track us. And you’re going to stand there and take it.” His expression was grim.
“Seriously? You’re suspicious of me? You know me,” she said, playing for time. She had nothing to hide, but the fact that she was now on the run with the man of her dreams who inexplicably seemed to think that she was a bad dude, made her nervous.
He took a half step back, but it wasn’t enough to calm her racing heart. “Correction: I knew you. Kind of.” He frowned to himself, and she wondered what he was thinking. “I slightly knew you.” He countered.
“What?” She had no idea what he was doing, but he seemed to be talking himself out of the fact that he’d known her for years. Sure, they hadn’t talked a lot, but her crew had told her that he’d always been in the control room when she flew. She’d seen it as a good luck charm. That someone of his legendary skills was looking out for her and her crew. Of course, she guessed that could have been crap. Maybe it had been his job to be there, or maybe it had been a coincidence that he’d been there for all her missions. Had she been fooling herself this whole time? Maybe he’d never thought about her after Afghanistan. But then she remembered…
“It was a date?” She pressed her lips together to stop herself from smiling.
“What?”
“Every time you’ve mentioned the officers’ club, you’ve called it a date. We were going on a date.” What was she doing? Embarrassing him, or goading him into action? Then she felt her half-smirk fade from her face. She was being stupid. He was literally backing away from her. Physically and mentally. Saying he didn’t really know her. That he thought she was complicit somehow with TGO, which in a way she was. Although she didn’t know what TGO actually was doing. Had it been a terrible error that they put the wrong version of the software on the planes? Or had it been done deliberately?
“Can I ask you a question?” she asked.
“I don’t know, can you?” he replied, like an ass.
“Did my company put software of any kind on the aircraft at Red Flag? Was that part of the sponsorship deal?”
Cameron took another step back, anxiety and anger fighting for dominance in his expression. “No. You know that would be a nonstarter. We don’t do after-market alterations on aircraft unless we’ve seen the testing and think that it’s a legit improvement on what we’ve got. After-market add-ons don’t usually have a great track record. As well you know. So, what are you saying?” His voice was getting louder. “Are you telling me that your company fucked with the aircraft at Red Flag?”
Shit. No. Backtrack. Backtrack. But even before she said the words, she knew she’d hesitated too long for it to be plausible. “I’m not saying that at all!” she said. Because if I did, I’d be going to jail. If I’m not already dead. Damn the nondisclosure, and damn Malcolm for telling her about James Turner. If he hadn’t mentioned that the previous whistle-blower had been sued successfully and then “died,” she wouldn’t have hesitated to tell Cameron everything she knew, or suspected. But her sense of self-preservation, and her need to find out what really happened and to protect Cameron who had already gotten himself involved by saving her, overrode everything.
“Then why are you asking me?”
“I…I can’t tell you that,” she squeaked, and then cleared her throat. She hadn’t thought that one through. Of course he’d have a follow-up. She had to tell him what was going on. Not the facts, just the reason why she couldn’t tell him.
“Give me a reason not to take you back to base. Because if you don’t tell me what happened to those two pilots and their aircraft, I will kill you myself.” He was practically radiating fury, and God help her, she found it pretty hot. That probably didn’t speak well of her.
She stayed silent.
He lunged forward and grabbed her shoulders. Kiss me. Kiss me, her whole body shouted silently. But instead he pulled her arms out to the side.
“Seriously?” she asked.
“Spread them,” he commanded.
She tried to keep her face neutral, and said “Yes, sir!” as she assumed the position. She opened her legs and spread her arms like she’d done a hundred times for the TSA when traveling.
And then he hesitated. With that hesitation, came a sense of power, a feeling that he was tacitly accepting that touching her was not going to be a regular TSA frisk.
Her skin tingled with the breeze, and the anticipation of his touch. She rose an eyebrow at him. “Well come on then, Commander. Make sure I’m not a bad guy.”

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
 

Book Info:

A legend among black ops teams, Col. Duke Cameron can’t wait to get back in action again–no matter how high the risk. Two of the world’s best military pilots are missing after a midair collision, and he’s made it his job to find out why.

U.S. Air Force veteran Casey Jacobs loves working for a cutting-edge, high-tech company – until she suspects their newest design might have caused a horrible plane crash. But after a few “accidents,” it’s clear no one wants her asking too many questions. The only person she trusts to help her is Duke, the sexy secret crush from her flying days who still turns her on like no one ever has.

But someone is watching their every move, making sure they don’t uncover the truth. And when the danger turns physical, it’s not just their love that’s on the line. It’s their lives.

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Meet the Author:

Emmy Curtis is an author who has lived in Germany, France, the USA, the UK and for the time being, is back in Germany with her USAF husband. She loves traveling with her husband and dogs, Kendall Jackson Vintner’s Reserve, Angelina’s cafe in Paris, macarons, the serial comma, and absolutely everything Aaron Sorkin has written.
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