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HEAVY BREATHING AT THE WAGGONER
By Robert Hale.
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April 23, 2003. "Elizabeth sighed and settled against him. The kiss was soft and sweet. His skin was warm and smelled of his cologne, and she inhaled it deeply into her lungs while her mouth caressed his."
That's pretty hot stuff for the Waggoner Cruising Guide, and in a couple places it gets even hotter. But it's all in a day's writing for author RaeAnne Thayne, who found us on the Internet and contacted me a few months ago, seeking nautical help with the book she was writing. The book's title is "The Quiet Storm," a Harlequin Silhouette Intimate Moments edition, now at bookstores everywhere. Robert Hale and the Waggoner Cruising Guide got a special thank you acknowledgement on the page facing the opening of Chapter 1.
As I said, a few months ago an e-mail arrived from RaeAnne Thayne, asking if I or the Waggoner could help with local geography and boating knowledge for this new romance novel. RaeAnne had the wrong boat, and I suggested at Grand Banks 36 as a model that would meet police detective Beau's purposes. Beau's boat isn't exactly a GB36, but it could be. She needed a three-hour trip in that boat, from Eagle Harbor (Bainbridge Island) to someplace. I suggested Port Ludlow, and gave her a list of place names along the way: Point No Point, Skunk Bay, Foulweather Bluff, the mouth of Hood Canal. They're in the book. She needed help with the heroine (Elizabeth, who sighs when she presses her urgent body close to Beau's cologne), who must make a frantic call to the Coast Guard to escape being murdered by the villain. Those passages -- the radio calls, not Elizabeth's suddenly sensitive whatevers, which I was not involved with -- came off pretty well.
I'm having fun here, and at the expense of a talented and hardworking fellow author, which isn't nice. "The Quiet Storm" is a good book, set in Seattle and on Bainbridge Island, and the boaty parts are believable if not always pin-point correct. They're close enough -- closer, in fact, than often seen. I enjoyed my correspondence with RaeAnne Thayne, and I do appreciate the autographed copy that she sent.
Lemme see. Page 181. "He kissed her until she thought her bones would dissolve, until her brain turned to mush and her body became only a pulsing, sighing, quivering mass of need."
And to think I settle for describing marinas and anchorages.v
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