In the past I’ve mentioned the inspiration behind My Killer My Love (my war with snails in a Southern California garden.) Teach Me To Forget evolved from sleeping with my husband in the overhead of a motor home while rain pattered on the roof. This particular motor home was a rental, which led eventually to purchasing our own. But that’s another, ongoing story!
A Question of Honor blended many threads, including my concern for war veterans who 
aren’t quite ready to move back into society and all too often are not given the life skills to make that happen easily. As well as my love for New Mexico, long before I moved here. But the initial story line of a woman who left her husband, taking his truck, trailer, and horse, came about because of…you guessed it…a dog. I actually moved across the country to find this dog, and when we finally met, he’d been the loser in a divorce. Eventually the dog came to live with me for the last six years of his life…winner on all fronts.
I asked myself: what if it was a horse, and not a dog? What if the woman in question, Lana, disappears with the horse, then calls her sister, Sydney Castleton, to help? Sydney takes over the horse (Mosby)’s care until Devin Starke flies in to help her return Mosby to his partner, Ty Randolph. In this book Lana was kind of a footnote. Maybe a bit of window dressing. Certainly not a fully realized character in her own right. Until I came to the end of the story, and I began to ask myself: Why? Why would someone who married Ty Randolph (a highly intelligent person) do something so…detestable? Lana is mentioned during the suspense resolution, but the question stayed with me.
A Question of Faith touches on this conundrum while bringing together Ty Randolph and Rosalind Summerton, who has her own mysteries to solve. Into the middle of the book walks a wounded veteran, obviously in need of his own story, and more of Lana’s story came to fill in those empty spaces. A Question of Trust is seeping out of my fingers and becoming the third Stormhaven story.
A Question of Honor starts at the Long Beach, California, airport, when Devin comes off the plane to meet Sydney, starting an adventure that will change both their lives:
She knew that walk. With a slight hesitation in one leg, he prowled like a wounded predator, conditioned to succeed against the most dangerous game of all. Even limping, his reactions would be instantaneous, his balance superior. By itself, his body would be a weapon. He’d be the best man to have on your side in a battle. After the battle, he’d unwind with a drink and a woman. The drink would be strong and straight. The woman would be bosomy and not too bright. He’d very likely spend more time with the drink than the woman.
Sydney Castleton let her mind drift through bitter thoughts and buried memories as she waited for the man who proclaimed danger with every step he took toward her. He was no different from the men who’d worked with her father: soldiers of fortune, whose luck could run out at any minute.
What trouble had her sister gotten her into this time?
You can find A Question of Honor at most major e-book sellers, or at Black Opal Books
New Mexico sunset
Mona Karel Author 