I don’t know about you, but the world seems to be getting pretty (insert your favorite colorful word here) intense. While I like to stay informed, I also like to laugh to deal with stress. And, I need some chuckles these days.

Today, the wonderful Cheyenne Blue is here to help us laugh with an embarrassing story. Also, Cheyenne is giving away 1 ecopy of All at Sea. Below the guest post, you’ll find more details about the giveaway.

Take it away, Cheyenne.

The United States Border Patrol is Not Your Friend

I’m lucky enough to have lived in a few different places around the world: Australia (of course), the UK, Ireland, Switzerland, Canada, and the United States. For most of ten years, I lived in various parts of the southwest, mostly in Denver, Colorado (which is still where I call my American home), but also spent several months in Phoenix, Arizona.

I love Arizona. A city is a city is a city, but to me, what I love is getting out into the remote and rural areas. ‘Going bush’ we call it in Australia, or ‘heading backcountry’ in the U.S. Arizona is an amazing place for a desert lover. My partner and I would head off in our Jeep and explore the desert parks, the huge tracts of public land held by the Bureau of Land Management, and the mines and ghost towns that dotted those regions. I loved the glistening desert pavements of compacted fragments of rock, as smooth and shiny as any highway. I loved travelling the dry desert washes that spilled out of the mountains onto the plains, and the cacti in all their beauty and glory. (I had a few run-ins with cactus spines too, including sitting on a barrel cactus, but that story is not this story). I loved, too, the characters I met along the way (some bad, most great) and places like the Lone Star Bar (sadly now closed) which stood all by itself on a quiet crossroads. The place had hundreds of bras suspended from the ceiling, like a fabric jungle of vines. I only just managed to hang on to mine.

Arizona is a fabulous destination for four-wheel driving, and there is one long desert track that, for us, was the stuff of fantasy. Coming from Australia, where routes like the Canning Stock Route can take most of a week to drive, the long multi-day drive along the Camino del Diablo sounded like heaven. The ‘Devil’s Highway’ runs for 250 miles, much of it right alongside the border with Mexico. In the early 2000s, which is when this story takes place, the border ‘fence’ was mostly two rusty strands of wire held up (or not) by rotting fence posts.  Yes, there were many people crossing illegally into the United States, and the poorly patrolled remote area of Sonoran Desert was a dangerous temptation for some.

Travelling the Camino meant paperwork. Permits and ‘hold harmless’ agreements. We’d never had to sign any such thing before, and as the Camino crossed the Barry M. Goldwater Air Force Range, as well as the usual warnings about mountain lions, lack of water, lack of assistance, lack of a breakdown service, and lack of, well, anything, the hold harmless included a disclaimer that we may be used as target practice by the air force. We were, but luckily they only used laser beams.

Camping on the Camino was a particular delight. There was no light pollution, no noise except the howling of coyotes, and no one to be seen. No one except the U.S. Border Patrol.

The Border Patrol used mainly helicopters on this remote stretch. On our first night’s camp, we were sound asleep in our little tent when we were woken by the whop-whop-whop of an approaching ‘copter. Searchlights shone down on us, as bright as any alien abduction, illuminating us in our tent as clearly as day. We lay still and waited for them to go away. Long minutes passed while they were presumably checking the number of bodies in the tent, the vehicle rego, and our permit to be there, but eventually the light was turned off and the whop-whop-whop faded away.

It was the middle of the night. And, as I’m sure many of you will know, when woken in the middle of the night, the urge to pee gets stronger. I got up and stuck my head out of the tent. No one around. No helicopter, no vehicle patrols, no border jumpers. Not a soul. I put on my boots (Those cacti spines, y’know) and walked stark naked out of the tent into the moonlight.

It was a beautiful night.  Forgetting the need to pee, I wandered across the sand, sparkling in the moonlight, through cacti gardens, following my nose until I stood on a slight rise. The tent was about 200 yards away, and the only sound was an occasional night bird… and the whop-whop-whop of the border patrol helicopter.

I took a quick scan around but although I could hear it, I couldn’t see it anywhere. I crouched to pee. And suddenly, the motor noise was louder and the bloody alien abduction light switched on brighter than a hundred football fields. The searchlight beamed down on me as I peed. In my imagination, I could hear the laughter of the border patrol agents only a short distance above me.

What could I do? I looked up, waved, smiled for the cameras, finished peeing, had a little shaky-shaky-shake dry and stomped off back to the tent, my naked flesh illuminated all the way by the perfect circle of the spotlight.

I crawled inside to my partner’s laughter—just as loud, I’m sure, as the laughter of the agents in the helicopter.

GIVEAWAY

ALL AT SEA

by Cheyenne Blue

An enthralling, opposites-attract lesbian romance about what lies beneath.

Stevie Sterling is having a day from hell. Snubbed—yet again—by her unsupportive parents, she runs out on their posh party and takes refuge on a deserted yacht. Waking the next day with the world’s worst hangover, Stevie finds herself far from shore.

As if being trapped on the yacht in only her party dress isn’t bad enough, Stevie’s frantic that she’ll miss the first day of her new job as a nurse. She has so much to prove in her career—to herself and her parents.

The yacht’s cute but unimpressed captain, Kaz Malone—an eco-warrior who hits the seas with Sinbad the cat—is on a mission: There’s a nuclear-waste-dumping tanker to harass.

Kaz is as single-minded as she is stubborn and she’s not about to turn around for some stowaway with a new job. Hell, no. Saving the planet comes first.

But perhaps there’s more than one way to a destination?

MEET THE AUTHOR

Cheyenne Blue has been hanging around the lesbian erotica world since 1999 writing short lesbian erotica which has appeared in over 90 anthologies. Her stories got longer and longer and more and more romantic, so she went with the flow and switched to writing romance novels. You’ll find her books published by Ylva Publishing—the latest being All at Sea. She loves writing big-hearted romance often set in rural Australia because that’s where she lives. She has a small house on a hill with a big deck and bigger view—perfect for morning coffee, evening wine, and anytime writing.

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Thanks so much for stopping by today.