How to write a review without it being filled with spoilers! Like Dean Koontz (and early King) this writing team blends a common-place event with chilling anticipation. A young couple falling on hard times, goes back to live with the parents (in this case Mother) knowing full well it’s not a good idea. To add to this reviewer’s anxiety, the young wife is pregnant. Has Mother changed her ways? Has time mellowed her out?
Every page subtly tells the reader this is not going to end well. Just turn the next page and it will get better, won’t it? The authors deliver!
I highly recommend this latest offering by Tamara Thorne and Allistair Cross. I guarantee you will never look at your mother-in-law in the same way again.
If you missed my INTERVIEW with this exciting writing team, CLICK HERE ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
DON’T MISS UPCOMING BLOGS featuring INTERVIEWS with best-selling AUTHORS! A long awaited interview with Kathleen Grissom (The Kitchen House) September’s author will be Joseph Drumheller and October: Andrew Snook. Check out Motivational Moments…for Writers!
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TS. We are sitting in an interview room. It is windowless, small and claustrophobic. Some kind of foam soundproofing covers the walls and there are bare spots where nervous suspects have picked at it. In the far corner, at the ceiling, there is a camera. Why do I feel guilty of something? Sargent Detective O’Roarke is well…no other word for it…big! He seems to take up most of the room’s space and more than his fair share of air. Handsome, tough and his Irish heritage is mapped on his features. Detective Stella Garcia, sitting next to him, is a lily amidst the stones. Refined features, with cheekbones that could cut steak. Clear, sharp hazel eyes and streaky light brown hair cut in an effortless pageboy. I begin.
TS. Tell me, have you always wanted to be in law enforcement?
O’R. I was raised in Hell’s Kitchen before it was gentrified. I had my share of brushes with the law and I saw some of my friends go to jail or get dead. The writing was on the wall. Did I want to end up in prison or worse? As a juvie; I think I was fifteen, a cop picked me up for shoplifting. It was my sister’s birthday and I didn’t have any money for a present for her. First he put the fear of hell in me.
Kept me handcuffed and stuffed me in a room just like this one. Left me alone there for two hours. When he came back he had a sandwich and a soda for me. He moved the cuffs to the front and I had to eat like that. He told me I was damn close to the age where he could charge me as an adult. What was I going to do with my life? He confirmed what I already knew, prison or dead.
Then he asked me if I’d like to ride along with him some night? I remember feeling like an anvil had fallen on me. Be a cop? Really? Was this guy joking? I rode with him and his partner a couple of nights later and that was all it took. The old cop started mentoring me and helped me get a partial scholarship to NYU.
TS. And you, Detective Garcia? (O’Roarke snorted and barked out a laugh)
SG. Cut it out O’Roarke. (She turned back to me) I grew up on a horse farm, upper Connecticut. Lived atop a horse or in the barn until I was eighteen, when I went to UC. The first year I had no idea what I wanted to do, didn’t declare a major until the middle of my sophomore year. Some sonority sisters and I went to Manhattan to see a show one weekend. When we left the theatre, a half a block down, three cop cars suddenly converged on the street, lights and sirens. Six cops jumped out of their cars and grabbed what we heard later were three armed perps.
One broke away and ran up the street toward us waving a gun. People scattered but my friends and I were frozen to the pavement. A female cop chased after him and, as luck would have it, tackled him right in front of us. It was a flying tackle; she landed on his back and they both went down. She disarmed him and had him in cuffs by the time her partner got to them. The cop stood up; she’d lost her hat and she had a split lip but she was grinning like crazy at her partner. From that moment on I was toast. Monday morning I went in to school and declared my major in criminal justice. I made Detective two years ago.
TS. And you’re in NYPD’s Homicide Unit.
O’R. Yeah, I was in Vice for a few years and then moved to Homicide.
SG. Domestic Violence and Kids at Risk Unit and then I went over to Homicide. So many deaths result from domestic violence but once the Homicide detectives arrived we’re done. I wanted to be able to follow my cases to the end. O’Roarke and I have been partners since my transfer.
O’R. (Grinning at his partner) Yeah, I had to train the rookie, here. A dirty job but somebody’s got to do it.
TS. You get some pretty high profile cases assigned to you. That famous Broadway director, the celebrity chef on the Food Network Do those kinds of cases require anything different?
O’R. No. Because under all that wealth and glitter they’re just people like you and me.
TS. Wasn’t Chef Jeff Kirikos the mayor’s brother-in-law? That had to add some pressure on the NYPD. (O’Roarke snorted again, this time in disgust.
I had the distinct impression he didn’t suffer fools or politicians, in this case.)
SG. That was a cold case. The mayor requested that we take another look at it. We were happy to get it solved.
TS. Are either of you married? Have children?
SG: I am, with two boys. R.J.’s eleven and Robbie is seven.
TS. ‘R.J’?
SG. Nickname. He’s Raul Garcia, Jr., for his father.
TS. And you, Detective O’Roarke? (Now it was Garcia’s turn to snort.)
O’R. Single. No further comment.
SG. I have high hopes for O’Roarke here. (She poked him in the ribs.) Someday some woman will gob-smack him into marriage.
O’R. Cut it out, Garcia! Right now! (The rough detective was blushing.)
TS. Must be tough on home life.
SG. Yes. At times very much so. But I have an amazing husband. He teaches high school and coaches the swim team. He can be home when my boys get there and they’re amazing too. They always tell me how proud they are their mom’s a cop.
TS. What are the toughest cases on you personally?
O’R. SG. (They answer simultaneously.) Domestic.
TS. Why so?
SG. The children. (Her eyes were suddenly bright with tears.)
O’R. We just closed a case where two little kids, toddlers, were hiding behind a chair while their father beat their mother to death.
SG. Those cases stay with you for the rest of your life.
TS. What do you do for fun? Do you have time for a personal life?
O’R. I work out, watch soccer on the tube. Meet with friends for dinner occasionally. But we’re on call 24/7 so when the mobile lights up we go.
TS. And you Detective Garcia?
SG. Still riding horses. Our family tries to get up to my parents’ farm at least once a month. We ride, help around the barn and visit with my folks. (She beams with pride.) My boys are naturals.
O’Roarke’s mobile lights up and the theme from ‘Dragnet’ comes from his jacket pocket. Garcia’s starts playing the theme from Star Wars and vibrates across the table. O’Roarke opens his text.
O’R. Speak of the devil. We got a body.
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Sample of the audio-book: TasteOfMurder.Audio.Sample.
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Every time I begin a new Dean Koontz novel (and I’ve read them all!) a few chapters in I say to myself, ‘this is the best one ever’. And it is. Just a few pages into this story, imagine my delight when a golden retriever, Olaf, appears in Bibi’s life. Why? you might ask?
Dean Koontz and I have had a ‘doggy’ friendship for close to 20 years. Over those years, he and I have coincidentally adopted rescue/service Golden Retrievers.
Dean and his beloved Trixie
I’m on my fourth. Dean’s latest is lovely Anna. (for more about this read my interview with Dean).
Gus & Rocky
I challenge any reader to not be totally enchanted by the third…no…the first chapter of Ashley Bell. Dean writes what I call poetry-fiction…prose. Writing about a foggy coastal night: “…those fumes were only slithers of mist seeping through the screen that covered the attic vents. As though the ocean of fog outside possessed curiosity about the contents of the houses currently submerged in it…” The imagery he creates makes me weep, as a writer. The characters draw you in and leave you rooting for them, hoping nothing bad happens, wanting a happy ending for someone besides yourself. Continue reading “Dean Koontz’s newest novel, Ashley Bell * A Review”
Do you read mysteries? Then you’ll love this mystery series set in the tough streets of New York City. Detective Jack O’Roarke, a big rough Irish cop, and his gentle, lady-like partner, Stella Garcia (make no mistake; she can take down a perp twice her size) enter the mysterious world of stripper clubs, art museums, Broadway theatre, the priesthood, and cooking shows to catch their killer.
The series begins with The Art of Murder and currently ends with the most recent, The Taste of Murder, which takes you behind the scenes of reality cooking shows. Please enjoy the following excerpt.
Patrick Shelley, dressed in his signature pink dress shirt and matching paisley tie, walked up to O’Roarke and dropped a case file box on his desk, barely missing the detective’s nose. Another detective, right behind Pat, set two more boxes on a chair and, snorting in disgust, walked away. Pat scowled down at O’Roarke as he flipped open the lid.
“What’s this?” Homicide Detective O’Roarke asked.
“A cold case of mine.” The cop barked. “Boss said to give it to you.” Continue reading “Looking for a Good Mystery?”
It’s time once again to share with other writers, my hopes, my fears, my successes, my setbacks. My days as a writer look very much like a pizza loaded with toppings.
My time at my keyboard, has been filled feverishly working with an editor on The Art of Murder because a publisher is sniffing around my campfire. That is to say, the senior editor for a publishing co. said my mystery series had ‘tremendous potential‘ but wasn’t quite there yet. Now we wait and see if my editor and I were able to do what they needed in order to offer me a contract.
Part Two of my Interview with best selling author, Grant Blackwood, successor to Tom Clancy
Q. Who or what is your “Muse” at the moment ?
A. I don’t have a muse, per se. If anything, my muse is the drive to write stories that entertain readers. That’s the little voice that sits on my shoulder. Too often writers fall into the muse trap — believing that they’re creativity and productivity is at the whim of something “out there”, something fleeting. Start writing. The muse will be there.
While I was reading and reviewing Under Fire by Grant Blackwood (Tom Clancy) my burning question was: ‘how do you write so well that we believe the iconic Tom Clancy is really the one putting pen to paper?’ These authors who write after the death of a beloved writer, like Ludlum, Parker, Fleming or Clancy, are really talented. To be able to put their own unique ‘voice’ on the shelf and write so successfully for another author? It boggles this writer’s mind!
Grant at work on his latest vampire/romance/thriller joined by his two consultants.”
Q. Where do you write? Do you have a special room, shed, barn, special space for your writing? (please provide a photo/s of your shed, room, closet, barn….) Or tell us about your ‘dream’ work space.
A. I have an office in our house. As we’ve recently moved, I’m still in the process of getting things decorated. That said, here’s the view I have when I work in the morning…The wall behind my computer is intentionally barren; when I’m writing Continue reading “Interview with Grant Blackwood, writing for Tom Clancy”
I want to run into Stuart’s comic book store and yell, ‘I’m interviewing Chuck Dixon!’
COMING IN SEPTEMBER! My Interview with iconic, comic book writer, Chuck Dixon. Writer for Batman, the Avenger, and many more legendary characters. He also wrote for many years for the TV hit animation, The Simpsons.
When I asked him, Chuck, you are such an icon in the comic book and animated TV world. What inspired you to switch from that genre to writing fiction?
TS: What a compliment! This dynamic duo’s publicist requested an interview! ‘How fascinating, to interview co-authors’, I said to myself, ‘how does it all work? Two people writing the same story.‘
Q. Where/when did you two meet?
A. Alistair had just been published when he started doing author interviews on his personal blog. As a fan of Tamara Thorne’s since the 1990s, he was eager to have her on. He contacted her through Facebook, she agreed to the interview and they instantly hit it off.
A. Someone who makes you forget you’re reading a book, whose writing makes you care about the characters and what happens to them, sometimes so much so that you ignore plot holes and stay up half the night to finish it and then feel sad because there’s not any more book left.
Q. and the all important: What does the process of going from “no book” to “finished book” look like?
A. For me, writing a book (and I’m referring to series now, so I already have a cast of characters and a place) starts with an “aha” idea. I see or hear or read something, somewhere, and it just clicks. It can be as little as a single word, but it’s the core idea that drives all the rest. That doesn’t mean I jump on it immediately and start writing. Usually I’ve got a couple of books at different stages (draft, revisions, edits, proofing), so I’m busy.
But then there’s the moment when the characters for the new book start speaking their lines, and you know the book is coming alive. Sometimes that comes at an inconvenient moment (like when I have a deadline for something else), but I’m a strong believer in the subconscious, which is busy churning away even when I don’t know it.
Of course, it’s still a long slog to get all the words on paper. I may have a fuzzy idea of the story arc, but like many people, I often have a panic moment in the middle when I think that I don’t have enough story to fill up all those empty pages before the end. So far I’ve muddled through.
Then I ship it off to my editor and forget all about it until he or she tells me that I have to change any number of things and I can’t remember why I said them in the first place. Editing is not my favorite part of the process, even though I know it’s necessary.
Q. How has your life experiences influenced your writing/stories?
A. I’ve had a career no one would describe as linear. I have an undergrad degree plus a Ph.D in Art History, and an MBA in Finance, and you’ll notice I’m not working in either field. But almost everything I’ve done, from providing advisory services to a major city, to working as a fundraiser for a library/museum, to being a free-lance genealogist, has found its way into one book or another. I think it makes a difference to a reader’s experience with a book if you can insert authentic details. Anybody can do research, but it’s the little things that make a story feel real.
Q. Where/when do you first discover your characters?
Sheila Connolly
A. Sometimes I borrow from real people (some but not all of whom know it). For example, the main characters in the Orchard series are based on a woman I worked with for several years, and who is still a friend, and the guy we bought a house from in Pennsylvania, who continued to be a neighbor for years. That may sound a little odd, but the first possesses a wonderful sense of calmness even in the fact of difficulties, and the second was one of the nicest guys I’ve met—he’d do anything for you, and he was sincere about it. In the Museum Mysteries I had to use another amazing woman I worked with, because her history and her knowledge of Philadelphia are essential. She’s in on the secret now and is one of my biggest promoters. On the other, the hunky FBI agent in the Museum Mysteries is my own invention—and my ideal man (as I may have mentioned to my husband a time or two). Sometimes for the protagonist I use myself—a smarter, younger, better version of me.
Q. What inspired your story/stories ?
A. Places, mainly. The Orchard Mysteries are set in a house that one of my ancestors built, in a small New England town where I have multiple generations of those ancestors—I stumbled on it when I was looking for a bed and breakfast in the area. I worked in Center City Philadelphia in a major institution, and I thought people would enjoy seeing what goes on behind the scenes (the Museum series) while my sleuth goes about solving murders. I also wanted to try setting a traditional mystery in an urban setting. And for
Pub in the village
Ireland…it’s a challenge to portray it without making it too cute, but there is a strong sense of community and connection there that works very well in solving mysteries.
Q. Have you? Or do you want to write in another genre`?
A. I started out trying to write romance, because I knew it was the largest market, but I wasn’t very good at it. A few years ago I tried my hand at a rather tongue-in-cheek romantic suspense, Once She Knew, that I self-published. That was fun to write, with a lot of snarky dialogue and a plot that involved saving the First Lady’s life. Then in 2013 I pulled a book off from one of those dusty shelves that most writers have—something I’d written years ago, a romance with ghosts, set in an area I know well and featuring a heck of a lot of my dead relatives. I self-published it as Relatively Dead. It sold well, so my agent said, why not do another? Which became Seeing the Dead, last year. Now I’m working on a third one in that series, which looks at the Salem witch trials from a different perspective (and yes, I have a number of ancestors who were accused of witchcraft in Salem).
Q. Is there anything else you’d like our readers to know?
A. I love what I do. It’s like I’ve been preparing for this all my life, but it took a long time before I thought I had something to say. I can’t believe I get to do this for a living, because it sure doesn’t seem like work.
Click here to read Part I of this interview
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DON’T MISS UPCOMING BLOGS featuring INTERVIEWS with best-selling AUTHORS! To receive my posts sign up for my On the home page, enter your email address. I love comments! Take the time to write one at the bottom of the post. Thanks!
On the home page, enter your email address. Thanks!
