Caroline Fyffe - Where The Wind Blows

Today, I'm pleased to introduce the Killer Fiction community to Caroline Fyffee, a debut author at Dorchester whose book, Where the Wind Blows, has just hit the bookshelves. Take it away, Caroline!

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What is with Romance Writers of America and false alarms? You wouldn’t think the two go together, but they must. The only experience I’ve ever had with a bomb or fire scare in a luxury hotel has been at an RWA National Conference.


Does anyone remember Dallas, 2007? We were awakened from our sleep by an alarm followed by a very calm computerized female voice advising us not to gather our belongings, but to evacuate immediately. Dread coiled around me as I remembered our room was on the fourteenth floor! My roommate was just barely awake when I stated pulling at her to hurry as she tried to dress. I flung on a robe and pulled open the door. At any moment we were going to be blown to smithereens. As we hustled down the hall with a handful of other people we didn’t know, the alarm still echoed up and down. Doors opened, some people just looked out, others hurried past us in the opposite direction and I wondered which of us was going the wrong way. At the stairwell we began our descent, still hearing the alarm. Within a few minutes the only thing we could hear was our breathing and the sound of our hearts beating in our ears.


Thank goodness my roommate was levelheaded because I’m not at all. She kept telling me it was just a false alarm, not to worry. In the parking garage was where our flight of stairs deposited us. We swooped in a group, much like a school of fish, hunting for an exit. The first exit we found was locked. A fluke? Who locks exits? Apparently luxury hotels. Yes, all the exits were locked! I wasn’t the only one thinking tons of cement would soon be smashing us like pancakes.


Washington, DC was my second experience. Although nerve-wracking this time wasn’t nearly as frightening because, one-now I was experienced, two-it happened in the middle of the day, and three-I was only on the second floor and easily took the open-air escalator down and out. Without a doubt the worst shock was when I realized I’d gone off without my iPhone!! Thankfully another writer picked it up for me and was there waiting at the conference room where she knew I would return looking for it.


Were you in either of those evacuations? If yes, what was going through your head? Or has there been another time you’ve had a close call?


On a funny note several weeks later I learned that one of the people I’d been trapped in the parking garage with was an agent I’d been querying. LOL. If I’d only known! Talk about a captive audience!


~Caroline


My book is now out! In celebration I’m giving away a copy of, Where The Wind Blows, to a poster. Also, if you want to enter my Under The Western Sky Contest that’s running August 1st to December 1st., all you need to do is watch my Book Preview on my website, and write me a last line for my story. We’re looking to have fun. Grand prize is a night stay in an ol’ western bunkhouse under the stars. Check the details at www.carolinefyffe.com