I’ve gotten a few questions about when Shane’s Deal will be out, and I can now point everyone to the links were they can go to get it if they want to pre-order it. The only place it’s not on right now is Google Play, but my publisher does have it ready to go over there, so it will be there.

Click here for the pre-order links!

This is the last book in the Montana Collection. For easy reference, here are the other books:

When I was working on Shane’s Deal, I had the covers changed for the series has an updated look. That’s why you might not recognize them. 🙂

So, what can you expect in Shane’s Deal?

I left a loose thread at the end of Patty’s Gamble. It’s probably been a while since anyone’s read it since that book came out in July of 2014. (It was so long ago that I had to look it up!) But yes, it’s almost been five years. I did go through and reread the series to refresh my memory, which is good because I had forgotten the details of the loose thread I had left at the end of Patty’s Gamble. That loose thread was the mayor. I was originally going to resolve things with him at the end of Patty’s Gamble, but in the back of my mind, I knew it was best to do that in the fourth (and final) book. That’s when I decided to tack on Book 4 to the series.

Shane’s Deal picks up right after John Meyer got arrested for stealing cattle. If you’ll recall, Patty was upset because the mayor wasn’t arrested, too. If you’ll also recall from Boaz’s Wager, Boaz had a brief encounter with the mayor, and during that time, I hinted that the mayor was a real scumbag.

My problem for the past four years was that I needed a plot I wanted to write that would fit the hero and heroine of the book. I’d rather wait until I can get the book right than to rush something that is mediocre. I know it wasn’t easy to wait, but this is a book I’m really excited about. It gives the entire series a truly satisfying ending.

I wasn’t able to bring in Mitch, Heather, Greg, or Patty because those characters just didn’t fit anywhere. If I had put them in, it would have jarred everyone out of the story, and that’s something I don’t like to do. I was, however, able to bring Boaz, Eva, Herb, and Rachel back. In the timeline in the series, this book takes place before Boaz and Eva had any children of their own, so it’s just Leroy and Hannah (Boaz’s children from his first marriage) in here.

This book also features an alpha hero. I rarely do those, but for this story, the hero had to be an alpha character because he’s going to have to deal with criminal activities. I needed a hero who could do what was necessary no matter what was going on around him. I think this is the first book where I actually did a gunfight scene. I admit I was a little intimidated to write it since I hadn’t done that before. Action scenes aren’t my strength. But I was pleased by how it turned out. It wasn’t that long, but it didn’t need to be for what I had to accomplish in the scene (which is the hero saving his wife). I was listening to the instrumental music piece “Wizards in Winter” by the Trans-Siberian Orchestra while writing it. (I realize that’s not a western type of song, but I was writing this in December, and I was playing music to go with the Christmas season.) The music had an upbeat and battle feel to it that fit what I needed.

The heroine in this story is the Madeline the bandits were looking for at the beginning of Boaz’s Wager. So maybe it was fitting that Boaz, Eva, Herb, and Rachel got a prominent role in this book. It helps to bring to conclusion who Madeline was and why she was on the run. Also, it tells us what in the world ever happened to her. Those were things I had wanted to address in the series, and it just never popped up in the course of writing Patty’s Gamble. That was another reason I had to add a fourth book.

I can’t give away much more without spoiling the story, so I’m going to end the post here. If anyone has questions about this book, I’ll answer them as long as it doesn’t spoil anything.