Cold Deception (29 page)

This book took a long time to write. I abandoned it, came back to it and abandoned it again.  I wouldn’t have finished it without the help and support of the A Team, Elizabeth Lhuede, Cathleen Ross and Kandy Shepherd. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. Our rural retreat is very precious to me.

My Friday afternoon chats with Anne Gracie also helped me focus on what was important and what wasn’t. Along with other, some times more important discussions about house renovations and books.

I’ve also been greatly blessed by the friendship and support of numerous Romance Writers of Australia buddies. Shannon Curtis, Paula Roe, Maggie Nash, Jenny Brassel, Donna Gallagher and Coleen Kwan (or the Writers’ Coven) among many others have all be encouraging and supportive at various times in my writing career. 

Many thanks to Judy Burgess and Radhakrishnan Nair for specific advice on sentencing and other legal matters (as well as fascinating conversation). Valda Rusis and Catriona McComish were always interested in my work and clarified some issues around parole details as well as reminding me of some prison details I’d forgotten about. All errors and omissions are mine.

Thank you Anna Campbell for your hospitality, blurb advice and lots of writerly conversation (do we ever shut up?).

Thanks also to my work colleagues for their enthusiastic support of my writing life and to Evelyn Henry, Kerry Williams, Jill Day, Sarah Dillane and Susan Grant for their friendship over many years. 

Finally, many thanks to the team at Momentum, Haylee Nash, Tara Goedjen, Narelle Battersby and Patrick Lenton. You are all a dream with work with.

A note to the reader. My mythical hotel in
Cold Deception
is a poorly disguised version of the grand Carrington Hotel in Katoomba. The current owners of the Carrington, Mark Jarvis and Michael Brischetto, are nothing like my villain. They did indeed turn a moldering old heap into something wonderful for which the upper mountains community is extremely grateful.

D.B. Tait 

Born and bred in Sydney, Australia, D.B. Tait is a lifelong lover of books in all forms but crime fiction in particular. She worked for many years in the criminal justice system before deciding a tree change was needed, so decamped to the beautiful Blue Mountains, west of Sydney. Now she writes and works part-time in the community sector, tends her out-of-control garden, and tries not to procrastinate too much. In a parallel life, she is also erotica writer Keziah Hill and contemporary romance writer Deborah Tait.