Showcase Dark Storm - Interview with author Karen Harper

NYT and USA Today bestseller and prolific athor Karen Harper is no stranger to the blog or to the writing world with many stand alone and series under her belt I thought it would be fun to chat with her about the last book in her South Shore series, Dark Storm. So hang around and read the interview.
Enjoy!

ISBN-13:
 9780778369455

Publisher: Mira


Release Date: 5-28-2019


Length:
 384pp

South Shore #6

Buy It: Amazon/B&N/Kobo/IndieBound/Audible

ADD TO: GOODREADS

Overview:

There are some forces you can’t outrun…
Forensic psychologist Claire Markwood has experienced her share of disaster. But nothing could prepare her for her sister, Darcy, going missing. Claire rushes to the butterfly sanctuary where Darcy has been working, prepared to do what she does best—work the clues. But her sister, along with her car and some of the sanctuary’s rarest species of butterflies, has seemingly vanished without a trace.

Amid a flurry of mysterious leads and dead ends, Claire and her criminal lawyer husband, Nick, tap every resource at their disposal. But the deeper they dig, the more unsettling the case becomes, dredging up old family secrets that shake the foundation of everything Claire thought to be true. Because some secrets aren’t just threatening—they’re deadly.

Read an excerpt:

1

Naples, Florida

“I can’t believe you can get two seven-year-olds to work in your garden in this August heat,” Claire’s friend Kris Kane told her as they watched Claire’s daughter, Lexi, and her cousin Jilly pull weeds from around the flowers in the Markwood backyard.

“It’s the butterflies they’re interested in. The brightly colored flowers and those hanging nectar pans attract them. Lexi’s obsessed, says she’s going to major in butterflies in college. She adores her first grade teacher, who retired last year and has a butterfly farm out past the citrus orchard just before the Glades begin.”

“Oh, the place your sister works part-time?”

“Right. And speaking of butterflies, would you and Mitch be interested in a butterfly release at your wedding rather than having everyone throw rice? It’s one of the services the Flutterby Farm provides, and Nick and I would be happy to arrange it as a gift to you.”

Kris’s fiancé, Mitch Blakeman, and Claire’s ex-husband, Lexi’s father, Jace, were best friends and pilots who flew together, literally 

into the storm, checking data on hurricanes along the east coast, clear down to Florida. They had all joked it was best for the men to be commuting to that job from as far away as possible. Kris and Mitch were engaged to be married as soon as the hurricane season ended later this autumn.

“I’ve heard of butterfly releases for funerals, but weddings?” Kris said. “I’d have to run it by Mitch but anything having to do with flight, he’d probably be all for. Claire, I don’t know how you ever kept sane when you were married to a pilot. Sorry to bring that up, but I do worry about Mitch, not only because of the flying, but the work itself now that he’s a storm spy, as he calls himself.”

Claire sighed and stood to move closer to the huge window to watch Lexi and Jilly work. At least they were pulling weeds, not newly planted lantana this time. “I suppose you should talk to Brittany about that, since she’s married to Jace now,” she told Kris. “I think it’s great you and Brit have become good friends—the archaeologist and the zoologist, no less.”

“I’m sorry, Claire. I didn’t mean to bring up any—”

“It’s okay. Nick and I are friends with Jace and Brit, and Lexi’s close to her father. She calls him Daddy and calls Nick Dad. But I understand your concern for Mitch’s new career. Lexi would be devastated if anything happened to Jace. All I worry about these days is that some disgruntled client Nick defends in court will turn 

on him. He’s in court right now, defending an elderly lady who has been wrongfully accused of fraud. He never knows what’s coming next.”

She turned back from watching the girls. “We’ve been through enough dangerous situations that I’ve become a worrywart, and Nick’s even worse. He’s so protective of me. But I’ve been happy just running my website and doing some forensic psych consulting lately, mostly on corporate fraud. Our detective friend at the Collier County Sheriff’s Department still wants me to work there part-time, but for now, I’ve turned him down. It’s been a great—and quiet—year, staying home, taking care of little Trey and keeping an eye on my mad butterfly gardeners when Darcy’s working. She takes them to work with her some days. But try not to worry too much about Mitch chasing storms. Hurricanes or not, he and Jace know what they’re doing in the air.”

“Both of them are danger junkies to the core,” Kris admitted. “I’ve noticed Trey’s walking great for a sixteen-month-old,” she said with a glance at him standing up in his playpen.

Observing people as closely as she did, Claire thought it was a pretty smooth attempt to change the subject. “Sometimes he’s walking too great,” she told Kris, going over to the playpen to give him the football-shaped beanbag he’d thrown onto the floor. “Good 

pass, future Florida Gators quarterback!” she teased, and bent to kiss the top of his head.

“He’s into everything,” she added with a smile, and waved at her darling son, Nick’s pride and joy. “I don’t like to have him in that playpen too long, but he’s out and about enough to do me in.”

The little guy waved back and said something only he understood. But quarterbacks in their huddles used secret language, anyway, Nick had said.

Smiling at that thought, Claire picked up her cell on the coffee table when it sounded. “Oh, it’s Darcy,” she said, looking at the screen. “You know, she might be my younger sister, but she’s always been one to reach out, make sure I’m okay.”

“I remember from our college days, she was always calling to check in.”

Claire turned away, her back toward the window. “Hi, Darcy. Are you done at the Flutterby already? The girls are fine.”

“This is Darcy’s sister, right? Lexi’s mother, Claire Markwood?” a woman’s voice asked.

Claire’s heartbeat kicked up. “Yes? Ms. Gerald? Why are you calling from Darcy’s phone? Is she all right?”

“I took some butterfly release packages to the post office. When I came back—well, I can’t find her anywhere. And her car is gone.”

“If she’s not there, how are you calling me on her cell?”

“It was here on the floor in the first butterfly house. I shouted all around for her, even in the residence, but with her car gone...and some things disturbed...”

Claire’s stomach went into free fall.

“I don’t know whether to call the police,” the woman went on. “I mean, I don’t want to alarm you, but Darcy would never leave the door of this big butterfly house open. It’s the one that houses all the exotics. But it was wide-open, and some of the butterflies are gone—gone, too.”

“I’ll be right there, and we’ll call the police together. No—I have a contact there I’ll call on my way. I’ll be there as fast as I can.”

She punched off and turned to a concerned Kris. “I can’t explain right now, but can you do me a huge favor? I know you said you had errands but there’s an emergency at the butterfly farm, and I need to go there now. Could you stay and watch Trey and the girls until I can get our nanny to come over? You’ve met Nita. She’s eight months pregnant but she gets around fine.”

“Sure. Of course. Anything else?”

Still holding her cell, Claire ran for her purse in the master bedroom, calling back over her shoulder, “Like I said, Nick’s in court, so I can’t call him right now. I may leave him a message. If you hear from him, please have him call me.” She snatched her purse 

and sunglasses, tore back out. “Tell the girls I just had to run an errand. There are cookies on the counter and juice in the fridge.”

“Claire, is everything okay?”

“I’ll know more when I get here. Thanks for doing this,” she called back over her shoulder as she rushed toward the garage.

Yes, something was wrong. Very wrong.

---

“I think I need to quit joking that our getting to fly again is like being in seventh heaven,” Jace told Mitch, his good friend and copilot for this hurricane hunter flight, the first one for which they’d been in the cockpit. The roar of the wind was so loud they spoke only through their mics and muted the noise with their earphones. “Heading into the eye of these storms is damn dangerous.”

“You just figure that out? Good safety record or not, the season’s been bad. This storm’s gonna rip up the east coast if it doesn’t head out over the Atlantic, and evidently that’s not the damn thing’s direction of choice.”

Both men were seasoned military pilots, and Jace had flown commercial passenger jets, but this new career was a challenge. Hurricane hunter planes were twin turboprops, not fan jets. Turboprops were more tolerant of hail and extremely rugged. Rugged like us, Mitch had joked.

The US Air Force and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, known as NOAA, operated these large turboprop planes that flew into hell to reach the calm eye of the storm and send back information about wind currents and direction. With the exception of when they were in the eye itself, it was one mother of a bumpy ride. The flights would last for brutal hours, but the weather info gained was essential for the safety of their fellow earthlings, as they liked to call them.

Newlywed Jace had kidded the soon-to-be-wed Mitch that it was a lot like being married: smooth at first, then the thunderstorm turbulence of a first fight, then the calm eye of making up, then rough again.

“Let’s order another dropsonde,” Mitch said, referring to the cylinders they released to measure storm data. “Man, this rockin’ ride’s something. And to think we volunteered for this.”

“You know you love the challenge and danger as much as I do,” Jace told him, readjusting his earphones. But he couldn’t help but think of when he’d seen Lexi last week and had kissed her goodbye. His daughter kept pointing out butterflies in Claire and Nick’s backyard, one beautiful gold one flitting around her like a halo.

The first big blast before the eye wall slammed them, bouncing the plane like a toy. Jace gripped the control wheel even harder. This would be an almost twelve-hour flight and the crew of thirteen 

weather technicians on board depended on them. At least this storm was nowhere near Florida—yet.

“Hang on. Gonna get worse,” he told his friend.

---

Claire tried not to speed, but she was panicked to get there. She never used the phone when she was driving, but she had today, calling Nita Munez, their nanny. She had intended to call Ken Jensen, a friend and detective she and Nick had worked with before, but she decided to hold off on that. Surely Tara Gerald was overreacting. Darcy might have dropped her phone without knowing it, then run an errand and would be right back. But then there was that door carelessly left ajar at the exotic butterfly house. That didn’t sound like Darcy at all.

Ms. Gerald had been Lexi’s first-grade teacher last year and an excellent one, though she’d recently retired to work her beloved butterfly farm full-time. Lexi had been devastated she’d no longer see her around school, but Claire and Darcy had visited the farm with their daughters and one thing led to another. Darcy accepted a part-time job there, occasionally taking the girls with her.

Claire gripped the steering wheel with both hands as she turned off Collier Boulevard onto narrow Sabal Palm, which led to the 

farm. About three more miles. The road was only paved partway out.

She sped now, past a garden center, then an orchid farm. Her hands shook, and her heart pounded. Darcy had been her mainstay after their salesman father had deserted them and their mother had retreated into her books, adult fiction she’d sometimes read aloud to them. A free literature degree, Darcy had often kidded.

No one else had visited their girlhood home except sometimes their mother’s librarian friend, Will Warren, who dropped off books. He’d later left South Florida and somehow made a fortune for himself. He was back at his old job now, and the kids loved it when Darcy took the girls there for story time while Claire and Nick caught up on work.

The paved road ended with a bump, and the dry dust the car kicked up obliterated everything in Claire’s rearview. The skeletal melaleuca trees on both sides of the road were etched with dust, which would wash away in the season’s terrible storms.

Had Darcy driven this road in the other direction? Fleeing from someone? God forbid, taken by someone? The butterfly farm was the last property on this long road before wilderness began. If only Jace was still flying small crop-dusting planes so he could look for Darcy’s car out in the glades. But no, she couldn’t allow herself to panic. This would turn out all right.

She passed the wooden sign with two beautiful butterflies and the visiting hours for the farm hand-painted on it. The hours included today, right now. Had someone come in to see the place without a reservation and found Darcy alone?

“Seen too much crime,” Claire scolded herself. “This will be okay. Everything will be okay.”

---

Nick heaved a sigh of relief when the judge called for a short recess. He comforted his client, gave his legal team a couple of instructions, then hustled out into the hall with a simple, “No comment at this time,” to the hovering media mavens.

He walked way down the hall and turned a corner, seeking privacy. He was really looking forward to the end of this trial. He and Claire were going to take the kids north—way north—to Mackinac Island off northern Michigan, which they had always wanted to see during warm weather, since the place had been frozen during their time spent there under the Witness Protection Program. They had reservations for the last week in August, right before Lexi went back to school, if they could only pry her away from her butterfly obsession and her pony, Scout, which she rode twice a week.

He thumbed over Claire’s photo to call her, his beautiful redhead with a penchant for getting into trouble. But then he should talk. 

They’d been through thick and thin together from the moment they’d met, but at least things were calm with nothing dangerous on the horizon now.

She didn’t answer at first, must have left her phone elsewhere in the house. He was just about to leave a message when she answered. “Oh, Nick, thank heavens. Listen, Kris is with the kids, Nita’s on her way there and I’m heading to check on Darcy at the butterfly farm. Tara Gerald called me.”

“Check on Darcy why? Is she sick? What happened?”

“She might have disappeared—took her car. Don’t call Steve yet.”

“Yeah, he’s working upstate. You be careful. Don’t walk into anything strange. I’ll call Ken Jensen to come out, if you think it’s not just some...some mistake. He owes me a favor, but, Claire, wait for him if anything looks off. Do nothing on your own.”

“I’m pulling in. Got to go.”

“Call me back, leave a message. As soon as I can get out of here, I’ll be there. Keep calm. Don’t panic.”

But Nick knew she was. And knowing Claire was a magnet for danger, he panicked, too.

My Interview with Karen:

Karen Hi! Welcome back to The Reading Frenzy.

Your new South Shore Series book sounds fabulous.  Tell my readers a bit about it.

Although forensic psychologist Claire and her criminal lawyer husband, Nick, have solved several homicide or kidnapping cases, one has not so closely impacted their family as the shock in Dark Storm.  Claire’s sister Darcy is missing from the butterfly sanctuary where she’s been working—along with a rare butterfly which can put itself in suspended animation, then wake itself up at will.  What if that secret fell into the wrong human hands?  As Claire and Nick desperately try to track Darcy, they also uncover secrets that threaten everything Claire thought was true about her family.  

This is the Claire and Nick series (six books) finale.  Who will you miss more?

So hard to choose.  I find myself typing in Claire’s name for the heroine as I begin to write my next romantic suspense series!  But I really adore Nick, handsome, smart, caring—and always worried about Claire, his little step-daughter and their new baby.  It’s a family love story too.

Do readers need to read their stories in order?

Books 1 and 2 spill over into each other, but the later books can be read as stand-alones, where Claire and Nick solve a new case in each.  Poor guy, he just wants her to stay out of lethal trouble, but she can’t seem to do it!

As a reader I’m really sad to see a beloved series end.  How do you as an author know when it’s time to move on?

Since the South Shores series develops the main romance (as well as the love stories of several other key characters) I was beginning to see that Nick and Claire had somewhat settled into their family, love and working relationships.  To keep the stakes of romance as well as suspense high, I thought it might be good to move on to new characters who are getting to know each other—with romance in mind.  (Not that long marriages can’t be romantic!)

Where will you be taking readers next?

I have completed a novel which will be book #1 in a new trilogy, set this time not in South Florida and the Caribbean but in Alaska—quite a change in climates.  The three heroines include a woman who is running from an abusive relationship who’s convinced she will never find someone to love—but she does, despite dangers and fears.  The other two heroines are her identical twin cousins who run a rustic lodge on scenic Lost Lake and figure their chances for love are lost in that wilderness area.  The Lost Lake Trilogy will include Deep in the Woods, Under the Water and Edge of the Cliff.

Karen, thank you for taking the time to answer these questions.  Good luck with Dark Storm.  

The South Shore Series

About the author:

A New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author, Karen Harper is a former college English instructor (The Ohio State University) and high school literature and writing teacher. A lifelong Ohioan, Karen and her husband love to travel. Besides her American settings, Karen loves the British Isles, where her Scottish and English roots run deep, and where she has set many of her historical novels about real British women: THE ROYAL NANNY, THE IT GIRLS (Oct. 2017), and AMERICAN DUCHESS, yet to come