My newest book, Race to Truth, is available today on Kindle and Kobo and will soon be out everywhere.The story is a mix of mystery and adventure as my young character Tanzania Grey returns to her hometown of Bellingham, Washington to participate in an extreme version of the Ski to Sea Relay Race. I wanted to explain why I wrote a lot of the elements that are in the book.

First of all, Ski to Sea–it’s an amazing 90-mile relay race that includes cross-country skiers, snowboarders and downhillers, road runners, road bikers, canoeists, cross-country/mountain bikers, and kayakers. How exciting is that! I changed it up a little in my book, of course, and Tana is participating in three legs: mountain run, road bike, and canoe.

There are a lot of drones in this book. They film the race, they spy on Tana at home, they collide with her during a race. I put drones in the story because I find them an interesting development in our society–they have some great uses, but can also be employed for a lot of evil purposes, and how do you fight a drone? I don’t know about you, but I don’t have a rocket launcher in my closet.

Practically everyone in this book has more than one name. Tanzania Grey was born Amelia Robinson, as you would know if you’ve read the first book in the trilogy, Race with Danger. She had to invent a new identity because she’s on the run from the killers who murdered her parents. I probably have an obsession with names because as a private investigator, I run into them a lot: people switch first and middle names, create totally new names, etc. and after these names begin to appear on public records, it can get pretty hard to sort out who is truly who.

Finally, Tana begins by investigating the companies her parents worked for, and she is disturbed by hints that something bad may be going on behind the scenes. Now, I realize that all corporations are not bad guys, but I do worry about how many of them have seized control of American media and politics, don’t you?

I hope you enjoy Race to Truth as much as I enjoyed writing it.