If you’ve hung around author blogs, followed or friended many authors, or followed many blog tours you’ve probably heard at least one author compare writing a book with being pregnant or giving birth. Others compare their books to their children. As an author I can say that writing a book is a bit like pregnancy in that you carry this book around with you for months, sometimes years, then it is finally published and you hold your breath waiting to see whether everyone else thinks it is as great as you do. It’s a bit like waiting to hear the doctor pronounce that the baby is a boy or girl and has all its fingers and toes.
Releasing a book is a bit the same for a publisher. I’ve published numerous books now but the feeling of culmination, as everyone’s effort finally pays off as something real that can enter the real world to be enjoyed by others never really changes. It’s always an exciting time as months or years of work by the author, months of work by me, weeks of work by the copy editor and the cover artist, and weeks of work by my husband who creates the final versions of the books finally pays off in a book that we can put into the hands of our readers.
My husband just gave me the exciting news that Accidental Affair has been uploaded to Amazon for Kindle. It will be making its way to Barnes & Noble for Nook in a few minutes, and to Smashwords in many other formats a few minutes after that. It usually takes a few hours for the files we turn in to show up for sale at Amazon or Barnes & Noble but they should be there soon.
So…let me tell you a bit about our new release.
Accidental Affair is a romantic suspense. The hero, Jack Vaughn is sure his life is over as he tumbles down the wooded hillside onto a deserted two-lane stretch of asphalt. It seems years of work infiltrating a domestic terrorist organization will be ended with a single gunshot. But it’s not over. Not by a long shot. 
Laine Wheeler knows better than to stop for strangers on the rural Montana highway near her home, but her conscience won’t allow her to leave an injured man behind.
Though there is an instant attraction Jack knows that beginning a romantic relationship with Laine would be both unfair and unwise, yet the farther they run the harder it gets to ignore the feelings that are surging between them.
Excerpt From Accidental Affair By Leslie McKelvey
An attempted kidnapping?
She gulped and frowned. She glanced at her dog, whose wise, golden eyes were fixed on her. “What do you think, Maverick? Is this a carjacking . . . in the middle of nowhere? And who’d want to kidnap me? My former in-laws?” A short, sharp laugh escaped her. “No, they’re happy enough I left Chicago.” Her gaze was drawn back to the person in the road. “Maybe they want you, Mav.” The dog whimpered.
Her brain worked at warp speed, trying to wrap itself around what she’d just witnessed. No matter which idea she entertained, none presented a reasonable explanation for the body lying in the road. She felt the adrenaline hit her bloodstream and took several deep breaths, then opened the door and stepped out.
“Stay there,” she said to the dog.
Laine took a step and stopped. What was she doing? The side of a deserted highway was no place to be a hero. She looked at the prone figure for a moment, debating with herself. A low, pained moan escaped the person, and the mournful, gravelly sound spurred her. She squared her shoulders. Right place or not, she wasn’t the type to run, and there was no way she was going to just leave an injured person in the middle of the road. She ran around the front of the Rover, looked down at the person for a split second before she knelt at their side. It was a man dressed in camouflage pants and a khaki shirt, and from the stained, disheveled state of his clothes it looked like he’d been rolling in the dirt well before his tumble down the embankment. He lay on his side with his back to her. He wasn’t moving, and the silence hung heavy.
She waited and as each second ticked off her alarm grew. She hesitated and then pressed two fingers into his neck to check for a pulse. It was weak and thready but it was there, and she sighed in relief. Grasping his shoulder, she rolled him onto his back.
Dark red blood stained the upper left side of his chest and Laine drew back, startled. That she had not expected.
It took her a second to compose herself, and she reached for the collar of his shirt to get a look at the wound. Before she could peel back the material, his fingers snaked around her wrist. She jumped and fell onto her backside, her heart nearly exploding from her chest.
“Please.” His grip tightened slightly. “Get the bag and get out of here.” He spoke in a hoarse whisper. “They’re not far behind me.”
Her heart jumped and she glanced toward the tree line, imagining high-powered rifles and the sound of gunshots. “Who?”
“It doesn’t matter. Just get my bag and get it to the FBI.” His grip tightened. “What’s in that bag is more important than me. Get it and go.” He took a ragged breath. “Please.”
A finger of fear traversed her spine, but she shook it off. He had obviously hit his head on the way down the hill, and blood loss was no doubt affecting his mental faculties. “Don’t be ridiculous,” Laine replied, her voice much stronger than she felt. She glanced at the ridge again. “I can’t just leave you here.”
“They’ll kill you,” he croaked. “You have to get the bag and go . . . now!”
Laine paused and that finger of fear scratched again, harder. She looked at his dirty, bearded face, searching for signs of the madness his words hinted at, but all she saw there was pain and weariness. She hesitated a moment, and then frowned and squared her shoulders. “I’m not leaving you on the side of the highway to bleed to death.”
Accidental Affair is available NOW at Smashwords
