Hold Me
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When the college basketball team traveled to Boise for a Thanksgiving tournament, the sports editor thought she did everything right: social distancing, testing before the trip, masks, no parties.
But no one told her, or the team, or the alumni aboard the trip, the truth: a coach came down with COVID and had to be left behind on a ventilator in Boise.
The COVID numbers are rising in Portland. At the university.
And now it's in the newsroom.
The new editors at Eyewitness News in Portland have a lot going on: run one of the largest newsrooms in the city, all done by college students. Cover the nightly Black Lives Matter protests downtown. Start a new personal relationship. But all of that takes back seat when the pandemic comes home.
The university and the city need the information EWN can provide. If they can keep enough people healthy to get the job done.
Stay safe. Get the story. Sometimes you can't do both.
This is book 4Â in the new-adult political suspense series, Newsroom PDX.
Some sex, a bit kinky. Bad language. Lots of politics. Heartbreak. It's Portland.
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L.J. Breedlove is a former journalist writing mysteries and thrillers about what she knows: complicated people, small towns, big cities, cops, reporters, politicians, assorted bad guys.
"I write about religion and politics. About race and gender. I believe in the journalism axiom: Comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable. To which the labor organizer Mother Jones was supposed to have added: And in general raise hell. That works for me."
L.J. grew up on a cattle ranch and then went to college to be an oceanographer. She decided getting seasick was not a good trait for an oceanographer to have, and discovered journalism instead â a field that liked people who asked questions!
As a reporter and editor, she worked in Alaska, Oregon, Idaho, Texas, Washington, D. C. Then she got homesick for the Pacific Northwest and came home to work with college newspapers and teach journalism.
She is an over-educated, bleeding heart liberal with a penchant for heroes such as Jack Reacher. She isn't particularly bothered by the inconsistency.
You can follow her on Twitter @ljbreedlove for her political stuff, or on Facebook ljbreedlove for her writing life. Best place to find her -- besides a local coffee shop -- is at ljbreedlove.com. You can sign up for her email newsletter there. Or read her blog, snark included, and check out all her books.
