Kim McMahill

As they left Macanxoc and returned to the main path, a group of three young girls stepped out of the trees, blocking Kay’s path and cutting her off from Santiago. Two were dressed in delightful embroidered dresses and the third in filthy rags. The two well-dressed girls thrust out their hands and boldly rushed Kay calling for pesos. The third girl held back looking down at the ground, seemingly too shy to approach. On our first trip to Cobá we did encounter a group of three young girls dressed as described. They seemed to appear out of nowhere, and no parents were in sight, though I hoped and assumed they were watching nearby.  We could tell the shy girl had something to sell, so offered to take a look. Touched by her insecurity, we ended up buying a small colorful hand-embroidered doily that we’ve kept with us for decades, and the memories of the children worked their way into Deadly Ruins . 

Nyla was awed as she took in the sight of a giant palm tree several hundred yards upstream. The tree shot at least thirty feet skyward, towering over the shorter riparian vegetation around it. Thick dense fronds dripped down and brushed the sand underneath. The tree looked so out of place in the desert, but it also looked peaceful and promising and she couldn’t take her eyes off it. Moonbeams danced through the surf-board-size fronds and the gentle breeze rustled the crisp fronds, making them sing like a grass skirt going through the motions of the hula. Nyla knew this was the place ¾ the tropical paradise in the desert ¾ the best place to navigate the waters of the Rio Bravo to freedom. I’ll never forget the first time I came upon this unique spot in Big Bend National Park. It was so wonderfully out of place that I knew it would make it into a story one day, which it did in Deadly Exodus .

Grace Talbot gripped the steering wheel of her white four-wheel-drive truck. Every muscle in her body tensed as she leaned closer to the windshield, straining her eyes, searching the blowing snow for the reflector poles, which lined the road, or for any tire track, which would indicate someone else had driven through recently. Traveling the remote rural Wyoming road in a blizzard was risky, and she would have avoided such a stupid act if her Uncle Moss weren’t in the hospital fighting for his life and Butch, his only hired ranch hand, weren’t dead. This scene and chapter from A Dose of Danger was based on an early morning drive on the same mountain road, but thankfully the reason wasn’t to respond to a tragedy, but to rendezvous with family for a Christmas morning celebration. Where Grace is forced to chain up, we had snowmobiles waiting at the road closure parking lot to enable us to snowmobile the rest of the way to our destination shown in the accompanying photo.  R...