Can I just say the success of this series supports my love of the good guy, especially the complex, tortured good guy? (Please refer back to my obsession last year with North and South. Richard Armitage. O.M.G. I even have fan fiction on Wattpad for that one.) I know that bad boys are somewhat the rage right now with their tats and their pasts completely devoid of love and understanding. But I like me a sexy nice guy.

I’m releasing one to you almost as we speak. In one week, Rhyolite Drifts: Yellowblown™ Book Two will be released with the continuing story of Violet and her slice of heaven, Boone, all on preorder for 99 cents. So grab yourself a handful of Hotness.

Sitting in the truck on the prairie, the night sky blocked by ash, was like sitting in a closed refrigerator, minus the threat of suffocation. Boone reclined in the passenger seat, gingerly exploring the cut and bruise over his eye. At least the lid wasn’t swollen shut anymore. Sneaking over the train trestle bridge with fifty-percent vision hadn’t been the wisest journey he’d ever made. Violet wouldn’t call him Dudley Do Right when she heard about that.

If.

Distance was supposed to break the bond. That’s what had happened with his high school girlfriend, and with Twyla. He’d gone on to the next phase of his life and they’d receded. He wasn’t so cold that he hadn’t worried about their hurt feelings, but he hadn’t been broken. He hadn’t shuddered with guilt in the daylight and woken at night filled with longing.

He’d been alone—solidly alone, without even a friendly conversation at a gas station—for a little more than two weeks and learned he wasn’t very good at it. Especially now, when time and distance weren’t working in his favor.

Leaving Violet hadn’t been a real choice. He’d had to go. He had to find his parents.

A girl he’d only been with a couple of months couldn’t tag along, even if she asked fervently enough to squeeze his heart. This wasn’t a trip to the county fair, after all.

But the damned bond wasn’t breaking the way it should. It wasn’t even weakening.

Rhyolite Drifts on Amazon

If you need to start at the beginning, Eruption is also on sale. You can find the purchase links here.

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Click here to find the other authors on the Book Hooks hop.

As services are disrupted, Violet Perch uses her bike to deliver mail to her rural neighbors and steal some alone-time for her sanity. She sees the flag up on the mailbox at a house she’s never stopped at before, and is pretty sure the note in the box requesting she come to the slightly creepy house to get a message is just a ploy to lure her into the clutches of serial killer.

I left my bike by the road as a signal that Violet had been here. That way if the cell towers were down and my phone’s GPS failed, the homicide detectives might know where to find the blood spatter with their black lights. Were forensic scientists still employed? I wondered this as I shuffled through the dead leaves in the driveway. It would actually be a great way to evaluate careers. How would such a proficiency test question be worded? “Is it important to you your career remain viable through an apocalyptic event?” Perhaps if I survived the next quarter hour, or the next year, I would take a serious look at who still had jobs and then go get training for whatever they were doing.

As I mentioned above, books one and two are both on sale for 99 cents, so it’s a great time to get started with the Yellowblown™ series. Eruption: Yellowblown™ Book One is highly recommended to be read first, and was a BTS eMag Red Carpet finalist in 2014.

You can find Eruption: Yellowblown™ Book One here:

Amazon http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00MRHAIRO

Barnes and Noble http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/eruption-j-hughey/1120343037?ean=9781500866051

Kobo https://store.kobobooks.com/en-US/ebook/eruption-3

iTunes https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/eruption/id977183578?mt=11&uo=4

Rhyolite Drifts: Yellowblown™ Book Two is available for preorder at Amazon and will be on other vendors on or around May 5, 2015.

Here’s a blurb:

Abandoned by Hotness.

Held hostage by the Yellowstone eruption, I’m stuck at home instead of loving life at college.

Sanity is restored when my college roommate arrives, but I’m still trapped in my hometown with a bunch of people just trying to survive. Some of them are surprisingly interesting, like the HAM radio opera singer lady. Or the pop star who crushes on me while waiting for an air filter for his tour bus.

Unfortunately there’s also my roommate’s gangster little brother who pushes Grandma to her conservative edge, and the local entrepreneurs determined to capitalize on hard times. They tick me off.

Despite all this I’m determined to find a path to the fabled land of Adulthood even if my heart is broken and all the roads are ash covered.

And where the heck did that Nebraskan cattle rancher go, anyway?

Everything is changing but my heart and my hopes don’t want to change with it.

Admit it, you’re hooked. Give the first book a try for 99 cents.

Also, visit the other authors on todays Book Hooks blog tour by using the Click here link below.

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Click here to find the blog list.

“I’m here to be with you and I intend to keep it that way. I’m not stepping aside for anybody or any reason, unless you tell me to.”

I nodded again, abrading my forehead on denim.

“And even then, I’m gonna put up a helluva fight for you.”

If Amazon did their job, Rhyolite Drifts should be available to preorder for 99 cents at http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00VGOQ9VS. To be ready for it, you need to get to know Hotness in Eruption: Yellowblown™ Book One.

Make sure to visit the other Hot For Friday bloggers today. You can find them by clicking the little blue frog.

In this scene from Eruption: Yellowblown™ Book One, Boone, the Geology TA who is also Violet’s freshman-crush-starting-to-turn-into-sophomore-boyfriend, first breaks the news. Neither of them fully understand the potential impacts, though Boone has a better idea than Violet.

EXCERPT

“You’re starting to freak me out,” I said. He looked like he was going to tell me someone had died, but he didn’t know anyone in my family, and surely the Dean of Students would not give him the responsibility of passing on bad news after three weeks of talking.

“Sorry,” he said. “I can’t decide if I’m freaked out or not.” He took a deep breath. “Yellowstone is erupting.”

I stared at him, not a flicker of comprehension illuminating my dim-bulb mind. Nothing. “Yellowstone? The place with the, umm, geysers?” Obviously I’d heard of Yellowstone, never been there, not sure I could place it on a map in the murky part of the U.S. between where I lived and Hollywood.

“Yeah. Yellowstone sits over a hotspot that’s been around for millions of years.”

“Instead of steaming it’s now erupting? As in lava erupting?” We’d covered igneous rocks in a very general way already so I knew hot liquefied rock below the ground was called magma and, when it erupted, became lava.

“Dr. Potter says nobody knows what it’s doing. It blew this morning. I mean explosively blew. All the local sensors went offline. Satellite pictures show a big brown cloud of dust. Like two hundred miles across.”

Boone’s voice shook a fraction. I put my hand on his forearm. He sat back so he could hold it in his.

I asked, “Do you have friends out there, or family?”

“Not close. Dr. Potter knows I’m from Nebraska. He asked me where—made me point to it on a map. He said my family might want to stockpile supplies, or better yet, leave.” He paused, prompting me to scoot to the edge of my seat. “My house is nine hundred miles away from Yellowstone, Violet.”

END OF EXCERPT

I’ve incorporated little science tidbits throughout the book, but especially in the next scene after this excerpt, to give the average reader a respectable understanding of Yellowstone and some geological concepts. If you’d like to know more about the science, I’m in the middle of a series of blog posts about it, starting with I’m a Geek about Yellowstone, some low-key talking points to impress your friends that I then expand upon in subsequent posts.

BLURB for Eruption: Yellowblown Book One.

I’m in the middle of the perfect college semester, hundreds of miles from Mom, with an awesome roomie and my freshman crush finally becoming a sophomore reality—Hotness! I’m figuring out calculus, I’ve got both hands on the handlebars and the wind of freedom in my hair. What on earth could slow my roll?

How about if the Yellowstone volcano erupts for the first time in 630,000 years, spewing a continuous load of ash (crap) all over North America? Think that’ll put a kink in my bicycle chain?

Make that kinks, plural, because here’s a scientific fact I’ll bet you didn’t know. Nothing ruins the perfect semester like a super caldera. Now that I’ve made you smarter today, maybe you can tell me how to keep my life cruising in the right direction—no to Mom, yes to roomie, double yes to Hotness!—during a global disaster?

My lame name is Violet and, in the interest of full disclosure, I’m not hanging from the side of a cinder cone on the last page of this trauma, but there’s definitely more to come. Unless, of course, humans become extinct and then there’s not. Duh.

Buy it now  on Amazon

Eruption is book one in the Yellowblown™ Series and is a BTS eMag Red Carpet Finalist.

Don’t forget to visit the other Book Hooks bloggers this week by clicking where it says “Click here” below.

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EXCERPT

He handled the large SUV easily, without the usual jerkiness of a guy trying to impress a girl with his mad driving skills. We drove through the depressing remains of an old steel town before he pulled in at a parking lot in a place called Duquesne. He came to my side of the SUV even though I already had the door open. I slid down out of the seat. His hand on my arm stopped me from reaching back in for my pack.

“Hey,” he said softly. “Before I get all sweaty and disgusting.” His kiss ignited sparks. I stepped in to press against him. A lift to my tiptoes brought me to the perfect height for my thighs to nestle against his. My arms slipped around his neck, all the encouragement he needed to deepen the kiss.

His hands drifted from my shoulder blades, down my back, to my hips. I squeaked against his mouth when he took a possessive grip on my behind.

He pulled away to look down at me with hooded eyes. “You look so hot in this little skirt. If you rode around campus there’d be a trail of guys jogging behind you.”

The unexpected compliment made me blush. Oh sure, the ex had tried to get in my pants, but he’d never told me I was hot. And men followed Mia, not me. “You look pretty good yourself,” I whispered. I ran my hands across his shoulders, muscular under the thin quick-dry fabric clinging to them. “And, for future reference, I don’t mind sweat. At least, not yours.”

His eyes smoldered. “That’s some good information right there.” He rocked my hips into tighter contact with his. His hands were strong and confident, a man’s hands, meant to make a woman pliable. That’s what they did to me, anyway.

Something in his expression urged me to initiate another kiss, this one searching and tender, like we’d each admitted something special to one another when we’d hardly said anything at all. I pressed against him, demanding more. He gave, one hand still cupping my ass while the other centered on my back. His firm hold, the way it told me exactly how he wanted me to stand, inflamed me, from the top of my tingling scalp to the bottom of my curling toes.

A car horn tooted merrily from the road. I dropped my face to his chest, his smell making me nuzzle the smooth cloth and wonder about the firm flesh I felt beneath. He slid his hand into my hair to cradle my head as he watched the vehicle drive away.

“Shoot,” I said into his shirt.

“Not a good spot,” he said gruffly. “Let’s take this ride.”

END OF EXCERPT

If you want to know more about Boone and Violet’s story, click here to visit Eruption’s page on this website.

I’m happy to report that book two in the series, Rhyolite Drifts, is with the editor. I’m waiting to see how extensive her comments are before I set a release date, but it will be soon!!!

Make sure to check out the other Hot Kisses by clicking the blue froggy button or by visiting the Book Boyfriends Cafe page.

That got me thinking about fictional fathers I’ve created. I’ve written at least one horribly cruel father, and three who are somewhat disconnected, and a few characters whose fathers have died, though I’ve given a couple heroes and heroines relatively normal family units. Violet Perch is one of the normal ones because, in Eruption, part of the journey is watching this white-bread American family deal with the eruption of the Yellowstone super caldera. In this short excerpt, Violet is still at college. Phone communications have been spotty due to problems with landlines and cell towers. Her dad finally reaches her while she’s in the car with the new boyfriend her parents don’t know about. She and Dad have already talked about all the important stuff, like everybody being safe and having food, etc. Then….

“It sounds like you’re in a car,” Dad said.

“Oh, well, I, umm, I…a guy took me to a rail trail south of Pittsburgh.” Dang it, I hated when home life infringed on college life.

“A guy? What guy?” Dad’s tone went from conversational to stern alertness.

“We’re almost back to campus. Gotta go.”

“Wait. What guy?”

I sighed. “Dad, I’m fine. I’ll text you later. Say hi to Mom and Sara, okay?”

He grumbled, but hung up. I suspected this wouldn’t be the end of it. As soon as he told mom I’d been out with a boy, my phone would light up big time.

Boone quirked a brow. “I guess your parents don’t know about me?”

“No,” I admitted. “Do yours?”

So, tell me in the comments about the first character who comes to mind when you think of a fictional father. He can be either good (the wise Odin) or horrible (Darth Vader).

Eruption is book one in the Yellowblown series. I just sent book two off to the editor so it’s definitely coming in the first half of 2015!!!

BLURB

I’m in the middle of the perfect college semester, hundreds of miles from Mom, with an awesome roomie and my freshman crush finally becoming a sophomore reality—Hotness! I’m figuring out calculus, I’ve got both hands on the handlebars and the wind of freedom in my hair. What on earth could slow my roll?

How about if the Yellowstone volcano erupts for the first time in 630,000 years, spewing a continuous load of ash (crap) all over North America? Think that’ll put a kink in my bicycle chain?

Make that kinks, plural, because here’s a scientific fact I’ll bet you didn’t know. Nothing ruins the perfect semester like a super caldera. Now that I’ve made you smarter today, maybe you can tell me how to keep my life cruising in the right direction—no to Mom, yes to roomie, double yes to Hotness!—during a global disaster?

My lame name is Violet and, in the interest of full disclosure, I’m not hanging from the side of a cinder cone on the last page of this trauma, but there’s definitely more to come. Unless, of course, humans become extinct and then there’s not. Duh.

Available at Amazon

Make sure you visit more of the authors in the Book Hooks hop by using the “Click here” link below!

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Click here to find more authors in the Book Hooks hop.

EXCERPT

I’d spent months forcing myself into mental placidity where Boone Ramer was concerned, the mantra “not into you” repeating like an endless ride through “It’s A Small World” at Disneyland. Now, unexpectedly, I climbed the rails right before the steepest drop of “Thunder Mountain.” Dark. Disoriented. Exhilarated.

“You’re not like most girls, are you?”

The confusing question spurred me to blurt my own, a thought barely formed in my mind, much less my mouth. “Do you want to go to the Valentine’s formal with me?”

His head shook “no” too quickly, automatically, as if I’d offered him a cube of disgusting, moldy cheese. “I can’t,” he added, in case I hadn’t gotten the unequivocal message.

I looked past him into the warmth of the library, wishing I could reverse the clock and return to “It’s A Small World.”

No such luck. The bottom of the roller coaster dropped, leaving me, well, screwed. In less than five minutes I’d gone from time-to-study-French-verbs to a fresh hell of obsession for Boone Ramer.

Not.

Into.

You.

“Okay,” I said as I ducked around him. “That’s embarrassing.”

“Violet, wait,” he said when I was halfway to the door.

END OF EXCERPT

BLURB

I’m in the middle of the perfect college semester, hundreds of miles from Mom, with an awesome roomie and my freshman crush finally becoming a sophomore reality—Hotness! I’m figuring out calculus, I’ve got both hands on the handlebars and the wind of freedom in my hair. What on earth could slow my roll?

How about if the Yellowstone volcano erupts for the first time in 630,000 years, spewing a continuous load of ash (crap) all over North America? Think that’ll put a kink in my bicycle chain?

Make that kinks, plural, because here’s a scientific fact I’ll bet you didn’t know. Nothing ruins the perfect semester like a super caldera. Now that I’ve made you smarter today, maybe you can tell me how to keep my life cruising in the right direction—no to Mom, yes to roomie, double yes to Hotness!—during a global disaster?

My lame name is Violet and, in the interest of full disclosure, I’m not hanging from the side of a cinder cone on the last page of this trauma, but there’s definitely more to come. Unless, of course, humans become extinct and then there’s not. Duh.

Eruption is book one in the Yellowblown™ Series and is available at Amazon.

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In my last post on the topic of Yellowstone, I discussed what gives it the heat, and mentioned it is known as a super caldera. Super does not refer to the size of the caldera detectable in the northwestern corner of Wyoming, an oval bowl about 34 by 45 miles well concealed by the acres and acres of evergreen trees in the national park. No, the super description refers to what it has proven it can do over the last 16.5 million years.

The United States Geological Survey requires a volcano to put out 1,000 cubic kilometers of ejecta (lava, ash, etc.) to earn the super caldera (or super volcano) tag. Some scientists go as low as 300 cubic kilometers. Give me something to compare this to, you say. Well, Mt. St. Helens maybe put out 1 cubic kilometer in 1980, the only comparison most North Americans can relate to. Three hundred times that is enough to kill and inconvenience many people. One thousand times that is a climate-altering shedload.

So let’s go all the way and use the 1,000 cubic kilometers standard. There are two Yellowstone eruptions in the last 2.1 million years believed to achieve the USGS’s “super” designation. The most recent was 630,000 years ago with an ejecta volume estimated to be right on the 1,000 cubic kilometers number. The biggest known was two million years ago that put out a whopping 2,500 cubic kilometers. OMG. There was another in between those two, 1.3 million years ago, at a volume of about 280.

Are all these numbers making your eyes glaze over? They probably should. It is almost impossible to conceive of eruptions of this size when what most of us visualize from a volcano are the placid, picturesque flows of Kilauea in Hawaii or the relatively localized devastation from Mt. St. Helens. Admittedly, most of Yellowstone’s volcanic activity is on a similarly small scale. There’ve been fifteen to twenty eruptions identified since the hot spot’s oldest known one, when it was percolating below what is now Nevada’s northern border. Possibly two of those were super. And there are probably many that were so small they have been lost to the geologic record.

Next time, I’ll discuss the fact that sizable volcanic eruptions are anything but localized events, and the blast of a super caldera anywhere on Earth would impact every living thing on our planet. I’ll give you a hint: having measurable ash fall on you is only part of the problem.

A few weeks ago I posted some concise talking points about Yellowstone so you could sound smart at your holiday gatherings, and I promised a continuing path to geekdom. Join the journey today, as I expand on point number one. Yellowstone is hot like a romance hero. Well, duh, everybody knows that. It’s gorgeous, steamy, and explosive.

But why is it hot? Deep underneath Yellowstone—from eight to sixteen kilometers depth, according the the United States Geological Survey (USGS)—lies a chamber of magma forty to eight kilometers wide. (Magma and lava are molten rock. Magma is lava that hasn’t erupted yet. If you can see it above the ground, it’s lava. If it’s still hiding underground, it’s magma.)

Not all of the chamber is full of melted rock. Some areas are probably solid or semi-solid. The point is there’s a minimum of something like 12,800 cubic kilometers (8,000 cubic miles) of freakin’ hot rock sitting down there. It heats everything above it, including creating super-heated water, hence the geysers, bubbly mud pools, and hot springs. Occasionally this gentle release of heat isn’t enough and it erupts, usually in a small way and other times like a Roman candle. As in one-thousand times the Mt. St. Helens eruption.

That epically large potential is why Yellowstone is known as a super volcano. (Call it a super caldera if you want to be really geeky and correct, which you do.) We’ll get into the “super” part more next time, but a caldera is an area of volcanic activity that sinks to fill the void left when a volume of magma exits. While we picture most volcanos as cones sticking up, a caldera is a saucer dipping down. If they were belly buttons, calderas would be innies. They make beautiful lakes, such as the aptly named Crater Lake.

If you have any questions about what I’ve written so far, ask away. I’ll do my best to answer or let you know if there is a future post that will address it.

Next step on the path to geekdom? The geographical size and eruption history of the Yellowstone caldera.

I was logging onto my Yahoo account, minding my own business, when an article about Yellowstone caught my eye. Since my current writing project centers around an eruption of Yellowstone, obviously I had a professional obligation to read said article. And then read every article linked within said article. I even understood most of it, though the unit “microstrain” must have been invented since I graduated with my geology degree in 1989.

Many folks, when I mention Yellowstone, say something like “Oh, it’s so beautiful there, I can’t wait to go back,” or “Visiting Yellowstone is on my bucket list.” The eruption concept of my series fuels a few to admit worry about impending volcanic activity at the USA’s first national park. (They get an A for even knowing about the possibility. I recently had a reviewer who actually asked in the middle of the review if Yellowstone was really a volcano. As if I would invent that plot twist, and as if he/she couldn’t have answered that question with a five-second online search. Definitely not a geek.) For those of you now scratching your heads, here is a list of key talking points about Yellowstone. If you have geek-like tendencies, you might want to know more, which is why I’ll tackle some of these as single topics in 2015.

1. Yellowstone is, at its essence, a volcanic caldera. That’s why it’s hot and steamy, like a great romance hero.

2. The potential of Yellowstone is massive. It is part of an elite club known by commoners like us as super-calderas. There is no firm definition of what constitutes a super-caldera, but to even apply to the club, a volcano must have emitted in a single eruption at least three hundred cubic kilometers of stuff. (Picture a solid block with each edge long enough to reach from New York City to Baltimore, Maryland.) Some scientists hold the bar quite a bit higher, at one thousand cubic kilometers. Yellowstone has done all that and more, so it’s a gold card carrying member.

3. Volcanoes are just local events, right? Wrong. Remember the volcano in Iceland that screwed up air travel in Europe for several weeks in 2010? During it’s troubling second phase, it ejected one quarter of one cubic kilometers of stuff, or a cube with edges equal to something like the long side of a city block in Manhattan. That is a trifling sneeze compared to a super-caldera (see point 2.)

4. Yellowstone will probably not erupt, and is much more likely to do so in a small way, like a tiny garden wedding as opposed to the mass weddings of the Unification Church.

5. Though even Yellowstone isn’t monitored as overwhelmingly as curious scientists would like, we’ll probably have warning signs of a massive eruption, so as long as you have a go-bag for the southern hemisphere, you’ll be fine. Or you’ll at least survive longer than the rest of us.

6. Of course, Yellowstone isn’t the only super-caldera to worry about.  There are at least six known on Earth. If any one of them cuts loose in your lifetime, buckle up.

Curious enough to dash down the path of geekdom? Here’s the article that got me meandering into this blog post in the first place, or you can follow my blog so you know when I post the next fact-filled blast.

And here’s a link to my Pinterest board where I collected images for my series. There are some really impressive photos of volcanic eruptions! I definitely want to see an active volcano in person some day, though I hope it is one that is sort of gurgling along, like Kilauea, not a super-caldera with the potential to end life as we know it.