Ripe for Scandal (40 page)

In late 2010, while I was writing HOME AT LAST CHANCE, something magical happened that changed the direction of the story.

A friend sent me an e-mail with a missing pet poster attached. This particular poster had a banner headline that read “Missing
Unicorn,” over a black-and-white photograph of the most beautiful unicorn I have ever seen. The flyer said that the lost unicorn
had last been seen entering Central Park and provided a 1-800 number for tips that would lead to the lost unicorn’s safe return.

The unicorn poster made me smile.

A few days later, my friend sent me a news story about how hundreds of people in New York had seen this poster and had started
calling in reports of unicorn sightings. Eventually, the unicorn sightings spread from Manhattan all the way to places in
Australia and Europe.

At that point, the missing unicorn captured my imagination.

The worldwide unicorn sightings proved that if people take a moment to look hard, with an innocent heart, they can see unicorns
and angels and a million miracles all around them. As we grow up, we forget how to look. We get caught up in the hustle and
bustle of daily living, and unicorns become myths. But for a small time, in New York City, a bunch of “Missing Unicorn” posters
made people stop, smile, and see miracles.

The missing unicorn and his message wormed its way right into my story and substantially changed the way I wrote the character
of Hettie Marshall, LAST CHANCE’s Queen Bee. Sarah Murray, my heroine, tells Hettie to look at Golfing for God through the
eyes of a child. When Hettie heeds this advice, she realizes that she’s lost something important in her life. Her sudden desire
to recapture a simple faith becomes a powerful agent of change for her and, ultimately, for LAST CHANCE itself. And of course,
little Haley Rhodes helps to seal the deal. Haley is a master at seeing what the adult world misses altogether.

I hope you keep your ability to wonder at the world around you—to see it like a child does. You might find a missing unicorn—or
maybe a Sorrowful Angel.

Settings are a critical part of every book. They help establish the tone, give insight into characters, and act as the backdrop
for the narrative that drives the story forward. Who can forget the first line of
Rebecca
—“Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.” The brooding house in the middle of the English moors sets us up from the
very beginning for the psychological drama that is the center of the book.

When I first conceptualize a novel, I often start with the settings. Where exactly will my characters feel most at home? What
places evoke the rhythm and pacing of the book? Because my books tend to involve a lot of adventure, the settings often change
with the flow of the story. And when it came time to find the settings for DEEP DISCLOSURE, I knew without a doubt that Alexis
would be living in New Orleans.

One of my favorite cities, I love the quirky eccentricities of the Big Easy, and I wanted to share some of my favorites with
readers, including the Garden District and the French Quarter. Of course, Alexis and Tucker don’t stay in New Orleans long,
and it isn’t surprising that they wind up in Colorado.

We moved a lot when I was a kid, and one of the few stable things in my life was spending summers in Creede. But because I’ve
used Creede already in so many books, I
decided this time to use the neighboring town of South Fork as the place where George has his summer retreat. And Walsenburg—one
of the places we often stopped for groceries on the way to Creede—as the scene of Alexis’s family’s disaster.

I confess that Redlands, Tucker and Drake’s home, is a place I’ve never actually visited. But a dear friend lived there for
several years and tells such wonderful stories about it that it seemed the perfect place for my boys to have grown up and
developed their love of baseball.

And of course Sunderland College, while fictional, is indeed based on a real place: Hendrix College, my alma mater. I spent
a wonderful four years there, and I hope you enjoy your time at Sunderland with A-Tac as much!

For insight into both Alexis and Tucker, here are some songs I listened to while writing DEEP DISCLOSURE:

The Kill, by
Thirty Seconds to Mars

Breathe (2 am), by
Anna Nalick

Need You Now, by
Lady Antebellum

And as always, check out
deedavis.com
for more inside info about my writing and my books.

Happy Reading

“Carr is a born storyteller. She enriches her sensual tale with colorful details, suspense, a treasure hunt, and charming,
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—
RT Book Reviews

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Ripe for Pleasure
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Ripe for Pleasure
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