Tour: The Night is Mine by M.L. Buchman (Guest Post/Giveaway)

Today I'd like to welcome author, M.L. Buchman, over to Reading Between the Wines who is touring with his new romantic suspense release, The Night is Mine. Now, I see a lot of guest posts, especially in the last year, but I have to say that this one from Mr. Buchman really caught my attention. I hope you all enjoy it as much as I did! Look for my 4 wine glass review of The Night is Mine coming soon!

THE NIGHT IS MINE by M.L. Buchman

Thank you Ms. Crystal for having me aboard!

I’m so thrilled to be talking about the launch book of my military romantic suspense series, “The Night Stalkers.” I feel that what started as a fun book has also become, in some surprising ways, an important book, or perhaps a book in an important genre.

When I started down the path four years ago that led to this series, I had a couple of simple elements in my mind.
1. A great love story.
2. A fun write, which means it becomes a fun read.
3. Strong heroines! I love strong heroines. Women amaze me, they always have. I find them endlessly fascinating and have placed them at the core of almost every book I’ve ever written.

But I chose the military setting, while not as an after-thought, at least not as a motivating theme. It was simply a setting. I’d discovered these amazing real-life Special Forces helicopter fliers, the U.S. Army’s 160^th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (SOAR), the self-named Night Stalkers. These guys were just fascinating. They fly the most lethal helicopters ever launched into the night sky. Their own designs by the way; how cool is that? Their mission, to deliver Rangers, Delta Force, and SEALs where no one else can, and then to get them back out.

I learned that all the pilots are male. At this point, I asked a question: What if one of them was female? How would she interact? All of the conflict? All of the different viewpoints? All of the chances for high-and-hot emotion. Cool!

That’s when my view began to shift.  The more I learned and read, the more timely and important this became. Our military is undergoing an immense shift in public awareness, especially with the changes of U.S. and foreign positioning in Iraq and Afghanistan. The nature of war itself is shifting with the nature of the terrain and the enemy. Soldiers are being deployed and are coming home in higher media profile than perhaps ever before. The top-rated weekly news photos consistently include views of the lives of our military, especially those moments of departing, rejoining, or losing their families.

This is not the generation of our fathers, the troops returning gladly from war. Nor is it the generation of the disenfranchised returnees of Vietnam. I think that we as a culture have grown and matured to understanding more clearly those who choose to serve. The career soldiers, like those of the 160^th SOAR, though nearly invisible in the media, are presently that much closer to our nation’s hearts, as they should be.

I think that is one of the reasons for military romantic suspense’s growing interest to readers and writers alike. I ultimately, to my own surprise, set out to capture that interest in this series. Great love stories, great reads, and great characters. I cannot begin to describe what a blast it was to write these books. What I didn’t expect, but I think is equally important, it has also been an honor. I hope that I have passed some of the honor and fun on to my characters. I’ll leave you with an excerpt:

“Nice flight, Captain.”

Mark couldn’t help himself. He’d always been so careful not to compliment her. Keeping Captain Emily Beale convinced she wasn’t as good as he needed her to be had honed her skills even in two short months since she’d become the first woman of SOAR.

“Thank you, Major.”

Nice flight? He’d almost choked when she crawled into that defile under a rain of fire. One lucky shot, one moment of lost control, and her Black Hawk helicopter have eaten that cliff wall.

Any pilot good enough to make SOAR flew cool under fire. Sitting back at camp they might barf their guts out, but not in flight. And not Emily Beale, Ms. Cool-as-could-be. He’d never seen her with the shakes, the squeams, not even working out the kinks of a stiff neck from holding too tight.

Would he have flown into that defile? Probably. If he’d thought of it. Would he have considered it long enough to think of it? Probably not. He’d have dismissed it out of hand as impossible. And probably left the Delta Force operator to pay the fatal price for the lack of any solution.

What was he supposed to do with this woman?

Even as they landed on the field, she settled her bird clean and square to the worn field lines, hopped down at ease, and chatted for a minute with the D-boy she’d plucked off the cliff. He actually shook her hand and smiled before moving off. More than most got from the silent ghosts of Delta Force.

Mark could see the story of her flight sweeping through the bunch of the flyboys and ground crew gathered around her wounded bird.

And Beale, calm as could be and completely unaware of the men’s stares, stripped her flight suit halfway down, exposing a sweaty t-shirt,  tied the empty arms around her slim hips, and turned to inspect her craft. It was peppered with hundreds of holes, one of the main rotor blades so chewed up it would need replacing, and a slow stream of black hydraulic fluid dribbled down the side of the engine housing. She climbed up with the crew chief to see where the damage originated, and thirty pairs of eyes followed her.

Hard to blame the guys. Five hundred miles from nowhere and only one woman in sight. A real stunner, too. But that wasn’t the real reason they stared. She’d flown into a place no sane person would go to bring her action team out. For doing that, for protecting the team at any cost, there wasn’t a man here who wouldn’t throw himself in front of a bullet to save her, not even if she looked like a heifer.

Did she know that she’d mesmerized an entire base of the toughest warriors on the planet with that single act, never mind the dozens before it?

Did she have any idea that she’d done the same to him?

THE NIGHT IS MINE BY M.L. BUCHMAN

NAME: Emily Beale

RANK: Captain

MISSION: Fly undercover to prevent the assassination of the First Lady, posing as her executive pilot.

NAME: Mark Henderson, code name Viper

RANK: Major

MISSION: Undercover role of wealthy, ex-mercenary boyfriend to Emily

Their jobs are high risk, high reward:

Protect the lives of the powerful and the elite at all cost. Neither expected that one kiss could distract them from their mission. But as the passion mounts between them, their lives and their hearts will both be risked...and the reward this time may well be worth it.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

M. L. Buchman has worked in fast food, theater, computers, publishing, and light manufacturing. It's amazing what you can do with a degree in geophysics. At one point he sold everything and spent 18-months riding a bicycle around the world. In 11,000 miles, he touched 15 countries and hundreds of incredible people. Since then, he has acquired a loving lady, the coolest kid on the planet, and lives in Portland, Oregon. For more information, please visit http://www.mlbuchman.com/.

~*GIVEAWAY*~

SourceBooks is giving away a copy of M.L. Buchman's The Night is Mine to two different readers who reside in the US or Canada. To enter, just leave a comment on this post and then fill out the RaffleCopter with your name and email address. Additional entries are available but not required. Good Luck! 

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