The HBS Author's Spotlight SHOWCASES Jinx Schwartz's novel Just Add Trouble.
Award-Winning Author Jinx Schwartz is the author of the Hetta Coffey series.
Just Add Trouble
Hetta Coffey Series (Book 3)
Author: Jinx Schwartz
AVAILABLE
Amazon
Barnes and Noble
Hetta Coffey is a woman with a yacht and she's not afraid to use it.
A globe-trotting engineer with adventure in her soul, Hetta is determined to solidify her relationship with her long-distance boyfriend, Jenks jenkins. What better place for a romantic interlude than aboard a yacht in Mexico's hauntingly beautiful and solitary Sea of Cortez?
But where Hetta goes, trouble follows, and chaos is sure to ensue. After a run-in with a couple of sea serpents that threaten to rock the boat, she nevertheless decides to take on a project in the port city of Guaymas. After all, Jenks is headed back to Kuwait, so why not cash in on the best of both worlds by making some dough while living aboard her boat in Mexico?
Once again Hetta's indomitablespirit, stubborn independence and penchant for deceit will keep the reader in stitches as she launches herself and her best friend, Jan, into a sea of trouble. A pesky parrot, a drunken aunt, and a shadowy figure who is handsome in a "criminal sort of way" lead to murder, mayhem, kidnapping, and run-ins with several federal agencies on both sides of the border.
Except from Just Add Trouble, Book 3 in the Hetta Coffey series.
For someone who lives on a boat, I have an irrational love-hate relationship with aquatics. While I revel in warm, very clear waters, and can spend hours snorkeling, watching jewel-toned fish dart in and out of coral and kelp, I harbor a lurking dark fear of the briny deep. Many years before, while scuba diving off the coast of Aruba, I was escorted down eighty feet by four professional divers who watchfully hovered around me as I swam amongst graceful sea fans, gurgled happily into my regulator and wasted valuable air with giggles. Yep, I’m a real water baby until something goes wrong.
That Caribbean dive ended abruptly when I made the abysmal error of looking out, into the abyss of the unknown, beyond the blue, into the unfathomable black. Short of a toothy megalodon suddenly materializing out of that void, nothing could have terrified me more. It took all four of my instructors to prevent me from a panicky zoom upwards to the safety of the boat, and a long and painful stint in a decompression chamber. I no longer scuba, just snorkel.
The upshot of that Aruban episode is that I will not swim in water that does not reveal its bottom, or in an environment I cannot totally control. I guess that’s why I’m partial to swimming pools and hot tubs. And ever since my ex-fiancé turned up parboiled in my last Jacuzzi, I’m not all that keen on those.
Isla San Francisco’s cozy anchorage was perfect for me. We were anchored in only eight feet of crystalline water, mere yards from the beach. I finned around Raymond Johnson once, inspecting the hull for green stuff and other gunk along the waterline, then grabbed my snorkel from the dive platform. Jenks was already swimming toward a rocky outcropping, so I followed, checking out the sandy bottom as I went. Okay, so I was also checking out Jenks’s bottom. Is it just me, or does watching the south end of a naked man swimming north strike anyone else as downright comical?
I started to giggle, then stopped dead, all of my water demons coming home to roost. Ripping off my mask and snorkel, gulping salty water in the process, I gasped, “Jenks!”
He turned around and, with his long and lanky legs and arms, was by my side in four easy strokes. “What is it, Hetta?”
I coughed up water. “The,” gag, “bottom! The sand. It moved.”
“Yeah, I know. Cute little buggers, aren’t they?”
“They?”
“The garden eels. As you swim over them they—”
I didn’t hear the rest. All it took was “eels” for me to turn tail and streak for the boat. Oh, did I mention that, along with my affinity for panic in water, I can’t swim worth a damn? Under normal circumstances I sink like a rock, but in the salty Sea of Cortez, with fins on, and eels on my heels, I probably overturned some Olympic record. All modesty forgotten, I executed a belly whop onto the swim platform in a move likely to put Shamu’s famous slide to shame. I’m certain there was a resemblance.
By the time Jenks reached the boat, I was sitting on the swim platform, wrapped in a towel.
He treaded water and grinned. “I’ll give that exit a ten. What a chicken! My chicken of the sea. And here I thought you were a certified sea wench. Garden eels are totally harmless. They auger their tails into the sand and sway with the current. When you swim over them, they sink, hiding themselves under the bottom. I think they’re cute.”
“Cute and eel do not belong in the same sentence.” I peered down. “They looked bigger underwater.”
He reached up and ruffled my damp pixie cut. “So did your retreating butt.”
“Watch it, buster. My butt is a touchy subject.”
“I like to touch it.”
You gotta love him, he loves my butt. “Sweet talker.”
“That’s me. I’ll check the set of our anchor.” He swam underwater toward the front of the boat, and I followed on deck. When he surfaced, he saw me, slid his mask onto his head and grabbed hold of the anchor chain.
“She’s buried good. We ain’t gonna move.”
“That, in my book, is a really good thing. So, Jenks, you say these eels are harmless?”
“Absolutely.” Water trickled from his mask, into his eyes. He swiped at them, only rubbing in more salt, but the resulting tears cleared his vision. As clear as his gets.
“And how about other kinds of eels?”
“Perfectly safe.”
“Even really big morays?”
“Long as you aren’t trying to take a lobster from them. It’s their favorite food.”
“Sooo, that six-foot bugger right behind you? The green one with the blue eyes? Perhaps you should remove your lobster from his line of sight.” “I don’t have a lob…oh, hell!”
I didn’t realize a body could climb an anchor chain so quickly. As Jenks practically sailed over the rail, an obviously disappointed monster turned a blue eye his way, still ogling what he hoped was a quick meal.
“Nine and a half,” I declared as Jenks scrambled onto his feet. “Half a point off for form.”
We watched the eel nuzzle the chain, probably hoping for a lingering taste of Jenks. It gave us a snaggletoothed—emphasis on the toothed—grin, and began circling the boat. It was then we saw his big brother.
Not only were my skinny dipping days at an end, it wasn’t long before we learned that giant morays weren’t the only sea serpents plying the waters of the Mar de Cortez.
Author Genre: Mystery & Thrillers, Young Adult/tweens, Historical/Western, Humor, Chicklit
Website: Jinx Schwartz
Author's Blog: Jinx Schwartz's Water Writes
Twitter: @jinxschwartz
E-Mail: jinxschwartz@yahoo.com
Goodreads: Check Out Goodreads
Google+: Check Out Google+
Facebook: Check Out Facebook
Pinterest: Check Out Pinterest
Author Description: Jinx Schwartz is the author of nine books, including the award-winning Hetta Coffey series. Hetta is a sassy Texan with a snazzy yacht, and she's not afraid to use it!
A ninth-generation Texan, Jinx has lived and worked all over the globe, and much like the protagonist in her Hetta Coffey mystery series, she's a woman with a yacht and not afraid to use it.
Author's Book List
Just The Pits
- Hetta Coffey Series (Book 5)Hetta Coffey is a sassy Texan with a snazzy yacht, and she's not afraid to use it!
As a self-employed engineering consultant with a penchant for oddball—read: shady—projects, Hetta Coffey has a history of inviting trouble. But now that she's been hired for a legitimate mining project in Mexico's Baja, it looks like smooth sailing ahead...until she discovers that people and pesos are disappearing faster than you can say, "This job is the pits!" And Hetta Coffey as sleuth? Goodness knows she's nosy enough, but her detective skills leave a lot to be desired. Luckily for her she gets help from her best friend, Jan, and a mysterious Velveeta thief.
Order the Book From: Amazon
- Barnes and Noble
Hetta Coffey Collection
- Boxed Set Books 1-4 Hetta Coffey SeriesBoxed Set Includes Four Full-Length Novels including:
Just Add Water
Just Add Salt
Just Add Trouble
Just Deserts
Order the Book From: Amazon
Troubled Sea
Hetta and Jenks Jenkins live a life many only dream of aboard their 42-foot boat in Mexico's hauntingly beautiful Sea of Cortez. But their chosen sea has a serpent: Mexico's out-of-control drug trade.
After witnessing a drug-deal gone wrong, they set off a deadly chain of events that lands them in a sea of intrigue involving a best friend, the Mexican Federal Police, the DEA, US Coast Guard, the INS, and a nasty drug cartel.
This fast-paced adventure is a must-read for anyone who has ever dreamed of cutting the lines and shoving off to adventure.
Order the Book From: Amazon
- Barnes and Noble
Just Deserts
- Hetta Coffey Series (Book 4)Hetta Coffey is a woman with a yacht, and she's not afraid to use it. As a self employed engineering consultant with a penchant of oddball-read: shady- projects, she has a way of attracting trouble.
With her floating home drydocked for repairs in Mexico, Hetta needs a place to live and a job to pay the boatyard. Landing a project at a mining operation not far from her boat, Hetta finds herself on the tumultuous Arizona/Mexico border, where all hell is breaking loose even before she gets there.
Order the Book From: Amazon
- Barnes and Noble
Just Add Salt
- Hetta Coffey Mystery Series (Book 2)Hetta Coffey is a woman with a yacht, and she's not afraid to use it!
Hetta, a globe-trotting engineer with attitude, a penchant for trouble, and a yacht, is back, and this time she s steering us into hot Mexican waters.
Miffed that vacation plans with her chronically absent boyfriend Jenks Jenkins have gone awry, she accepts a job in Baja. So what if she and her friend Jan are spectacularly unqualified to take her yacht on a thousand mile cruise in the eastern Pacific Ocean in the middle of hurricane season? Hiring a handsome, if somewhat fishy captain for the trip might keep them off the rocks, but probably won t do the same for her future with Jenks. Meanwhile, a little eye candy on board can t be all bad.
Hetta s unmanageable independence impels her to tackle the very profitable, if environmentally and politically incorrect project south of the border. True to form, her irreverent nature and disregard for danger soon swamps her in a sea of inconvenient bodies, illegal aliens, a pesky whale, and a menacing Mexican machinator. And without her usual arsenal of firepower.
Set sail for Baja Mexico s Magdalena Bay as Hetta Coffey leads us once more into a morass of intrigue that will keep you laughing, breathless, and wanting more.
To quote Lord Byron, Hetta would "much rather sink beneath the shock than moulder piecemeal on the rock."
Order the Book From: Amazon
- Barnes and Noble
Just Add Water
- Hetta Coffey Series (Book 1)Winner: International EPPIE Award for Best Mystery.
Hetta Coffey is a sassy Texan with a snazzy yacht and and she's not afraid to use it.
She's a globe-trotting civil engineer with swath of failed multi-national affairs in her jet stream.
Plying the San Francisco waterfront, trolling for triceps, her attention is snagged by a parade of passing yachts--especially their predominantly male skippers--and experiences a champagne-induced epiphany: If she had a boat, she could get a man.
In spite of a spectacular ignorance of all things nautical, Hetta buys her dream boat, but shadowy stalker, an inconvenient body, and Hetta's own self-destructive foibles, give a whole new meaning to the phrase "sink or swim!"
Order the Book From: Amazon
- Barnes and Noble
Land Of Mountains
A ten-year-old's new home on an exotic Caribbean island proves so fascinating she quickly forgets she didn't want to leave Texas. After all, where better than a jungle world teeming with voodoo, mystery, and a really pesky zombie, to indulge her favorite pastime: snooping.
In this humorous mystery, award-winning author Jinx Schwartz transports the reader to another time and place where rivers, and little girls, ran wild and free.
Book Trailer: Land Of Mountains
Order the Book From: Amazon
- Barnes and Noble
The Texicans
NOT another story about Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie, Sam Houston and the boys.
Decades before Crockett, Bowie or Houston even set foot in Texas, Frederick Stockman was already there. Author Jinx Schwartz, a ninth-generation Texan, has delved deep into her ancestral roots to create this moving story of the Frederick Stockman familys' courageous determination to make Texas their home during the turbulent period between 1806 and 1836.
The Texicans was inspired by a Texas history book calling her ancestral clan a "congenial society for evil"--rogues "skilled in many forms of villainy" for their role in the tumultuous years of first Spanish, the Mexican rule. Frederick Stockman and his family immigrate to Spanish Texas in 1806 to ranch, but soon find themselves inexorably drawn into the bitter conflict between Mexico and Spain. They join forces with a dashing young Spanish deserter, Miguel Gonzales, in his successful campaign to liberate Mexico and Texas from Spanish rule. Their ties are further cemented when Gonzales marries into the family.
As Heroes of Mexico, the Texicans--staunch supporters of Mexican rule for Texas--find themselves vilified by North American settlers illegally flocking across the unprotected border. These newcomers, calling themselves Texians, view Mexico, Mexicans and Texicans as the enemy. Targets of bigotry, the Texicans themselves are torn along cultural lines as their hero-turned-despot, General Santa Anna, propels them towards a deadly showdown.
Order the Book From: Amazon
- Barnes and Noble
Author Recommended by: HBSystems Publications
Publisher of ebooks, writing industry blogger and the sponsor of the following blogs:
eBook Author’s Corner
Mystery Reader’s Circle
Check out the index of other Spotlight authors. Spotlight Index.
Thanks for spotlighting me!
ReplyDelete