A warm welcome to author Amy Lane joining us to talk about new release “Warm Heart”, part of the Dreamspun Desires series.
Cotton Kills
By Amy Lane
I live about twenty minutes from the Sierra Foothills. Reno is a two-hour drive if I dawdle. My entire life, I have been peripherally aware of everything from the importance of the snowpack to the traffic to Donner Summit to the occasional lost hiker, and you pick up some odd knowledge with that in the background.
One of the most surprising things I’ve learned is that cotton kills.
For anyone who lives with hot summers, cotton is a necessity. It breathes—it helps us keep cool.
But for anyone trekking through the snow, wet cotton wicks away body heat, and in the cold temperatures of the mountains, that’s a deadly quality.
But while cotton kills, wool is warm. And I know that sounds like the simplest thing in the world, but the fact is, wool is more than warm—wool is endothermic. This means that when wool gets wet, instead of drawing body heat away from the body and releasing it into that atmosphere, wool continues to insulate the body heat, keeping it right where it needs to be.
Next to the body.
Sweet deal if you’re lost in the snow, right? But wait—it gets better.
Wool is an easily available fiber—but it’s not the only one that does great in the cold. Alpaca fibers—which are readily available to the discerning handcrafter—do more than just insulate the body when the fiber gets wet. Alpaca releases heat as it dries.
So in Warm Heart, as I was thinking about what our boys would have and what they would need, I thought about Tevyn’s homemade sweater. Our boys would need more than just a cotton/acrylic cabled sweater from Target—that would kill them. Acrylic traps sweat and doesn’t insulate as well as wool. It’s better than naked, but not nearly as good as sheep fur. So I gave Tevyn enough in his go bag to provide each man a fine-gauge wool/alpaca blend sweater. Fine-gauge means a slender fiber—with more opportunities for heated oxygen to nest within.
When worn over a cotton T-shirt, this garment would let them move in the snow, and it would help keep them insulated when it was covered with a coat or a jacket.
And it wouldn’t kill them with hypothermia if they got wet.
So there you go—something to remember if you’re ever going into cold weather conditions. Cotton kills, wool warms, alpaca’s the thing to pack.
And never underestimate a knitter in your little band of survivalists. One good knitter could be the difference between life and death!
Search and Rescue: Book One
Survive the adventure. Live to love.
Following a family emergency, snowboarder Tevyn Moore and financier Mallory Armstrong leave Donner Pass in a blizzard… and barely survive the helicopter crash that follows. Stranded with few supplies and no shelter, Tevyn and Mallory—and their injured pilot—are forced to rely on each other.
The mountain leaves no room for evasion, and Tevyn and Mal must confront the feelings that have been brewing between them for the past five years. Mallory has seen Tevyn through injury and victory. Can Tevyn see that Mallory’s love is real?
Mallory’s job is risk assessment. Tevyn’s job is full-on risk. But to stay alive, Mallory needs to take some gambles and Tevyn needs to have faith in someone besides himself. Can the bond they discover on the mountain see them to rescue and beyond?
Links
Amy Lane lives in a crumbling crapmansion with a couple of growing children, a passel of furbabies, and a bemused spouse. She’s been finaled in the RITA’S (TM) twice, has won honorable mention for an Indiefab, and has a couple of Rainbow Awards to her name. She also has too damned much yarn, a penchant for action-adventure movies, and a need to know that somewhere in all the pain is a story of Wuv, Twu Wuv, which she continues to believe in to this day! She writes fantasy, urban fantasy, and gay romance–and if you accidentally make eye contact, she’ll bore you to tears with why those three genres go together. She’ll also tell you that sacrifices, large and small, are worth the urge to write.
