Page 104 of King's Ransom

King’s Ransom

Dear Reader,

Frisco’s Kid, the third book in my popular Tall, Dark & Dangerous series, the book in which Thomas King and Tasha Francisco first appeared, was originally released as a Silhouette Intimate Moments category romance in January, 1997.

I started getting emails from readers almost immediately: “You’re gonna write Thomas and Tasha’s book, right…?” For nearly all of my thirty-year career, this has been my most frequently asked question.

Um… Yes? But Tasha and I both needed a little time. Cause she was, like,five…?

Still, I thought, “Sure, someday!” My original plan with the TDD books was to write an ongoing and opened-ended series about U.S. Navy SEAL Team Ten. (I think if you’d approached 1997-me with the idea that I’d still be writing this series in 2020, I would’ve said, “Hooyah…?”)

Oh! Here’s some fun trivia! Back when I outlined the first TDD book,Prince Joe, there was no real-life SEAL Team Ten. There was one, two, three and six, with six being the most elite. So I skipped a few numbers, too, and created my fictional elite Team Ten.

More fun trivia!Prince Joe(TDD #1, published June, 1996) features the original Prince Tedric (Uncle Prince Tedric, as Thomas calls him).

See, when I sat down to finally outline Thomas and Tasha’s book, I thought it would be fun to a) bring this long-running series full circle and end where I started; and b) write a story in which it appears as if Tasha is truly going to become a princess.

But I also knew that this story was going to be a challenge to write, not just because of the heroine and hero’s age difference, but because of their history. AfterFrisco’s Kid, Thomas and Tasha both appear regularly throughout the TDD series, and most of the time, Tasha is still a very young girl.

I realized right away that I would need to lock Tasha and Thomas away somewhere, alone together, as full-grown adults, to help Thomas (and me!) overcome his “you’re too young” issues. I started with that—a need for isolation—back in September 2018, and I created that whole “9/11-type event” so that T&T would be forced to be alone in the wilderness together, never guessing that our world was on the verge of a global pandemic. Sheesh. I coulda made this a “quarantined together during a hurricane so there’s no power/internet/ability to Zoom/make phone calls” book. If I’d only looked harder into my crystal ball. (Hah!)

About the time warp: I wrote the first eleven books in the TDD series between 1995 and 2002. A variety of issues made me put the series on hold until 2018, when I finally sat down to writeSEAL Camp(Spaceman and Ashley’s book, set up inTaylor’s Temptation, TDD #10).

I was faced, at that time, with a choice. Should I maintain the old timeline and set this book in the early 2000s? (Pagers! Dial-up internet! Ugh! No!!)

Should I maintain the old timeline, acknowledge the passage of time, and set the story in the current day? (By which point even the youngest SEALs in the series would likely be retired, so all of the familiar faces would be gone. Ugh! No!!)

Or…

Should I do one of those funky, weird, kinda cheat-y, soap-opera-esque thangs, and warp time so that we (me-the-writer and you-the-reader) could have it all…? (Smart phones! Text messages! Wi-fi!Andfamiliar names and faces! Yes!!)

So yeah. As I mentioned in that little note right at the top of ChapterOne, likeSEAL Camp, King’s Ransomis setbothin the present day,anda few years after the end ofNight Watch(TDD#11, Wes and Brittany’s book). Admiral Francisco, Team Ten CO Captain Joe Catalanotto, Senior Chief Harvard Becker, and Lucky and Bobby and Wes and all of the rest of the SEALs from the original eleven books have been in their early-to-mid-to-late-thirties for more than a dozen years. (Gee, I wish I could say the same!) Thomas King, now mid-thirties to Tasha’s early twenties, has caught up to them. Embrace the time warp!

About the future (as long as we’re time traveling!): I’d intended forKing’s Ransomto be the final book in the Tall, Dark & Dangerous series, but as I was getting to know both Rio and Dave through their subplot, I found myself more and more intrigued. And then my husband cleverly came up with an enticing title:Blame it on Rio.

No promises, but it’s hard to turn down a good title like that. Plus that story practically writes itself. (Maybe I’ll make it a short, with two stories, one for Rio and one for Dave…?)

But here we are.

The End.