He wants to stay all through the night, to be near her when she sleeps. It’s so cold that he can’t stay long. His arms and legs are cramped in place and his nose stings from the biting cold air. The skin on his face is crusty and stiff, coated with ice crystals. He raises his head over the stump, inch by inch…”
And so begins A LATE HARD FROST, the sequel to COMPASS NORTH.
A LATE HARD FROST will take you back to Homer, Alaska, and into the intertwined lives of Merry, Cassandra and Nick.
Lately I’ve been asked if there’s a third book brewing in this series. I am in the preliminary stages of work on two new books, but they are not in the COMPASS NORTH world. We’ll just see. It’s hard for me to say goodbye forever to Merry, Cassandra and Nick. We leave them in such an interesting time in their lives…perhaps there is another story for them to tell.
But most recently Raven Applegate won’t leave me alone. She keeps popping into my mind, though she hasn’t revealed her story yet. Raven is fair-skinned and blue-eyed, and named Raven because her mother once saw an albino raven and was enchanted by its uniqueness. But like her namesake, Raven doesn’t really have a place in the world, or at least not one she’s found yet. And as we all know, the world isn’t always kind to those who are different… I’m letting Raven float around in my head for now, wondering where she plans to go and what she plans to do. And that’s the way it works with most writers: You don’t really know where your characters and ideas come from. They lurk in shadows in your brain and haunt you until, one day, they start to spill onto the paper (or, more accurately, into your word processing program.)
Maybe Raven will decide to head to Alaska…