Celebrating Coast Guard Day! by Lexi Post

HAPPY COAST GUARD DAY!

That's right, August 4th is the celebration of the birth of the US Coast Guard which was created by Alexander Hamilton.

I love that he grew up on St. Croix in the Virgin Islands because I lived there as well. Of course, my hubby is very active in the Coast Guard and celebrating it on island was great!
 
Now, we live in Florida, but we still had a great day with active duty Coast Guardsmen and women. This year it was a real family day with the whole crew bringing spouses and children.


It started off with a few games of volleyball, but since it was so hot, a number of people took advantage of the blow up water slide to cool off.

 




After that it was time to eat and thanks to the USO we had a great meal! 
  
We had a surprise visit from Kona Ice who heard it was Coast Guard Day and stopped by to give everyone a FREE snow cone! How awesome is that!

 
To top it all off we had ponies! Yay! Some of the children braided their manes and took rides. One Coast Guardswoman just had to give a pony a pet :-) 

What a great way to spend the day celebrating the birthday of the US Coast Guard!

Of course, because of my ties to this branch of the military, I just had to write about them in my romance story Poisoned Honor (Broken Valor #2) which is set in Florida. No surprise there. If you are looking for some suspenseful summer reading, you can pick it up at any of these retailers:

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | iBooks | Kobo | Amazon UK | Amazon AU  | Amazon CA | Amazon DE

So a big HAPPY BIRTHDAY to the US Coast Guard, serving our country for over 134 years!

Semper Paratus

Lexi
www.lexipostbooks.com

Researching Reality for POISONED HONOR (Broken Valor #2) by Lexi Post

RESEARCHING REALITY

When I started working on Poisoned Honor (Broken Valor #2), I was excited. My husband is a Public Affairs Officer for the Coast Guard Auxiliary, he produces the AUXAIR newsletter for this district, and we have many friends from past and present Coast Guard Stations. I figured all my research would be at my fingers tips.

Boy, was I wrong!

I've read not only Coast Guard Manuals, helicopter specs and training requirements, but also harrowing real accounts of when the Coast Guard was called upon to save lives. Every bit of it has been educational, some of it fascinating and some of it heart-breaking like the story of the El Faro, a 790 foot freighter that sunk during a hurricane taking with it all 33 on board. My admiration and respect for the Coast Guard has grown tenfold.

But that research was just for my hero, Tyler Adams, a twenty-eight year-old rescue swimmer. When it came to my heroine, twenty-eight year-old psychologist Dr. Meghan Haskell, I needed to do more research. Luckily, my very good friend Deb, who is in that profession, was able to help me immensely and kept my characters from doing something illegal. With a safety-first, by-the-book hero and a very professional, ethical heroine, there was no way they would engage in illegal activity.

I'm putting the finishing touches on the story now. I can't wait for the release day on March 7th. However, I am looking forward to working a lot more on Eden Revealed (Eden Series #4). Since that book takes place on the planet Eden and since it is a world I invented, I get to make all the rules. It's one of the perks of writing different sub-genres of romance ;-)

Well, I better get back to writing, so you can enjoy reading my stories.

Always, Lexi
www.lexipostbooks.com