A steamy romantic thriller for grown ups by .@MollieBlake0 #steamybooks #suspense #thriller

Guiltless

by

Mollie Blake

Managing Director of her own successful fashion house, Lauren Chandler should have everything going for her. But at twenty-nine, she finds herself single again, and bored.

Seeking a new challenge in her life, under the guise of saving her company money, Lauren embarks on a mission to model their latest range of lingerie herself.

She just needs a photographer.

When Byron Lord makes an unusual proposal, Lauren is adamant he won’t win the contract.

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Co-owner of Broadway Studios, Byron Lord is determined to provide job security to his off-beat workforce and he needs Lauren Chandler’s help to do so. Byron may have underestimated how far Lauren would be prepared to go.

He had definitely underestimated how much she would demand of him.

And with an ultimatum of her own, Lauren gets far more than she bargained for.

My Chestnut Reading Tree, Top 500 Amazon reviewer:

"Mollie Blake hits all the right buttons once again with her newest Cheshire Love Story! It's a potent cocktail of glamorous people having hot and heavy encounters with a few "too hot to handle" shocks along the way. Irresistible!"

Excerpt from

Guiltless

She thought she knew what he was up to, but she was about to find out how very wrong she was…

      Byron leaned back and raised his hand, running the forefinger along his top lip, his elbow resting on the arm below, as he contemplated the woman before him. Part of him was turned on by her confidence, her risk-taking and determination. Not to mention her sense of adventure. She thought this was a game. She probably guessed he wouldn’t play fair. Especially after the episode with the contract. Yet she was interested in him and she wasn’t afraid to let him know.

But the other part of him, that part which had begun to consume him since the accident, put up the brick wall. He couldn’t let her get to him. He couldn’t let her see the real Byron Lord.

“You don’t know what you’re letting yourself in for.”

Lauren tried not to sound petulant. “Then show me. I’m not a virgin, you know.”

He laughed. It was a soft laugh, without bitterness or accusation, and it did nothing but increase her desire to see him naked and hear him gasp with passion. Then his tone changed and there was a touch of danger to his voice as he spoke.

“I don’t spend the night alone with a woman, Lauren. I share. Always.” He stood up. “I’ll leave you to think about that for a moment.” He left the room and closed the door.

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A thriller set in the seedy world of London's drug rings: Hamelin's Child by .@debjbennett #thriller

Hamelin’s Child

by

Debbie Bennett

Michael Redford died on his seventeenth birthday – the night Eddie picked him up off the street, shot him full of heroin and assaulted him.

Now he’s Mikey and he works for Joss. With streaked blond hair and a cute smile, he sleeps by day and services clients at night. Sometimes he remembers his old life, but with what he’s become now, he knows there is no return to his comfortable middle-class background.

Then he makes a friend in Lee. A child of the streets, Lee demands more from friendship than Mikey is prepared to give. But the police are closing in on them now and Mikey’s not sure anymore who he really is – streetwise Mikey or plain Michael Redford. 

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Hamelin’s Child was long-listed in the UK Crime Writers’ Association Debut Dagger Award.

A thriller set in the seedy world of London's drug rings, this book contains strong scenes and adult material.

Excerpt from Hamelin’s Child

Michael Redford died on his seventeenth birthday – the night Eddie picked him up off the street, shot him full of heroin and assaulted him.

Michael had been drinking steadily all night, matching Jenny’s Breezers with export-strength lager, and when he saw Jen wrapped around his mate’s brother across the dance floor, he didn’t feel at all inclined to slow down. Totally oblivious to observers, they were all hands and lips – a human octopus of limbs on the red chesterfield sofa with Jenny’s long dark hair covering both their faces. She’d dropped an E in the toilets; he could tell by the shine in her eyes and the way she moved when they’d been dancing earlier – she always came onto him when she was high, then pulled away when he got interested. Michael kicked the pillar next to him in disgust. He hated nightclubs anyway.

‘She came with you, didn’t she?’

Michael turned to see a man standing next to him. Blond hair, cream chinos, polo shirt and too much jewellery. He seemed older than the rest of the punters.

The man waved his hand in Jenny’s direction. ‘The girl,’ he added, by way of explanation. ‘I was watching the two of you earlier.’

Michael nodded. ‘Don’t think she’ll be leaving with me.’

‘Girlfriend?’

‘Ex.’

‘Evidently.’ The man smiled sympathetically. ‘Women are bitches, aren’t they? He’s a dealer, by the way – saw him outside the bogs before. What’re you drinking?’ He pointed at Michael’s empty glass.

Michael shook his head. ‘No, thanks.’ Now fuck off, creep. Something about the stranger made him uneasy.

‘Suit yourself.’ The man shrugged and went off to the bar, returning a few moments later with a pint and what looked like a whisky chaser. He held the pint out. ‘Got you one, anyway. You look like you could use it.’ He had an impressive assortment of gold rings on his hand, which suggested serious money, even if the guy was a poser.

Oh, what the hell… ‘Cheers.’ Michael emptied half of it immediately. He had less than a fiver left from the eighty quid his dad had given him earlier that day and not enough for a taxi home. Still, he couldn’t complain – there weren’t many parents who’d let their underage son celebrate his birthday in a club, and it was largely due to the intervention of his elder sister Kate that they’d let him go at all. On top of that, she’d even managed to talk them into giving him enough money to enjoy it in style. The money had come with strings of course, but listening to the ten-minute evils of drink and drugs lecture had been a small price to pay for his freedom.

Seventeen today. Or was it yesterday now? It was well past midnight. Some of his mates were on the other side of the dance floor; Jenny and her new friend were all but shagging on the sofa and everyone seemed to be one half of a couple apart from him. Glancing sideways, he saw the man had melted into the crowd. Michael wondered whether he should just go home and he was starting to consider the idea seriously when the stranger appeared at his side again.

‘Still here?’ The man smiled. ‘D’you want me to have him warned off?’

‘No.’ Who is this prick? Some kind of gangster? ‘He can have her.’

‘What’s your name?’

‘Michael.’ His voice sounded weird – in fact, everything sounded weird. The music seemed distorted and hollow and it echoed around his head, the bass making his teeth ache. Too much booze, Redford, that’s your problem. And far too much imagination. Sure, the guy was a bit strange, but – shit – wasn’t everyone in this dump?

‘Hi, Michael. I’m Eddie.’ He touched Michael’s shoulder with an air of concern. ‘Are you OK?’

Michael shook his head, trying to clear it. His pulse was pounding in time with the music. ‘What is this?’ He held out what was left of his drink, wondering whether the man had spiked it with anything.

‘Holsten. It’s what you were drinking earlier.’ Eddie sounded hurt. ‘It’s all right, isn’t it? Chuck it, if it’s off, and I’ll get you another.’

‘No … I don’t know.’ The lights seemed brighter and sharper, the music burning into white noise. He stared at the pint in his hand. What the hell is in this drink? He took a step forward and staggered, but Eddie caught his arm and deftly took the glass out of his grip.

‘I think you’ve had enough, Michael,’ he said softly. ‘Let’s go get some fresh air, shall we?’

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Halloween –A Good Time To Remember Ray Bradbury

by

Seb Kirby

Halloween in a good opportunity to remember Ray Bradbury. Though he’s been thought of more as a science fiction writer in recent years, right from the start and throughout his writing career, Ray Bradbury was interested in the macabre, the bizarre and the unusual, all seen through the lens of his uplifting poetic imagination.

Ray Bradbury
Attribution: photo by Alan Light

The true story he recounts in the Introduction to Volume 1 of his collected short stories sets the scene. He takes us back to 1932 when, as a twelve year old, he met a remarkable performer who was part of a ‘seedy, two-bit’ carnival that came to town:

‘Mr Electrico sat in his electric chair, being fired with ten billion volts of pure blue sizzling power. Reaching out into the audience, his eyes flaming, his white hair standing on end, sparks leaping between his smiling teeth, he brushed an Excalibur sword over the heads of the children, knighting them with fire. When he came to me, he tapped me on both shoulders and then the tip of my nose. The lightening jumped into me, Mr Electrico cried: “Live forever!”’

Making excuses to go back there the next two nights, the twelve year old got to know the entertainer who told him he was a defrocked Presbyterian minister out of Cairo, Illinois. Then, Mr Electrico came up with the really surprising news. They had met before, he said, on the battlefield of the Ardennes in 1918.  “And here you are, born again, in a new body, with a new name. Welcome back!”

Ray Bradbury concludes that he had been uplifted by not one but two gifts from Mr Electrico – the gift of having lived once before (and of being told about it) …and the gift of trying somehow to live forever.  He continues: ‘A few weeks later I started writing my first short stories about the planet Mars. From that time to this, I have never stopped. God bless Mr Electrico, the catalyst, wherever he is.’

As a young boy myself not much older than Ray Bradbury was then, I began reading his stories. His science fiction stories came later for me; what captured my imagination first was the macabre mystery of the stories in ‘The October Country’, ‘I Sing The Body Electric!’ and the story that turned into a novel, ‘Something Wicked This Way Comes’. In these stories he draws on the surreal imagination set off by that carnival encounter back in 1932, producing quirky, challenging encounters that stretch the imagination. But this is a forgiving horror. As in all of his writing there is an optimism that rises despite the most difficult of odds and cuts through the darkness.

So, have a good Halloween!  Banish those monsters!  Ray Bradbury will be with you every step of the way.

Sadly, Ray Bradbury failed in one thing – he didn’t find a way of living forever as Mr Electrico had demanded. He died last year, aged 91. But he lives on in his wonderful stories, written in that clear, inspirational voice that is a model to so many authors today.

Here he is, talking about his writing and his hope of inspiring others.

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Agatha Christie with added mayhem - The Ratcatcher

by 

Tim Steven

Like many thriller readers and writers, particularly of the male variety, I grew up on the novels of Alistair Maclean. What appealed to me about his books wasn’t just the exciting adventure plots, but also how they nearly always contained a ‘whodunit’ element. The best of them had a disparate group of people trapped in a life-threatening situation, and you always knew from early on that one of them was a traitor or a saboteur of some kind; part of the fun was trying to work out which of them it was. It was like Agatha Christie with military weapons.

In my début thriller Ratcatcher I wanted to do something similar. A group of disaffected former soldiers are planning to assassinate the Russian president at a summit meeting in Estonia on the Baltic Sea. Which of the three British MI6 agents trying to foil the plot is actually working with the terrorists? To complicate matters, I made the treacherous MI6 agent one of the point-of-view characters. To complicate them further still, I included both women and men among the suspects, so the sex of the traitor was in doubt.

I got round the problem of hiding his/her identity in the point-of-view scenes by referring to our rogue agent throughout as ‘the Jacobin’, a nickname allocated by one of the other characters. Trickier was the task of disguising the person’s sex, and it involved a fair amount of stylistic and grammatical gymnastics to avoid all reference to ‘he’ or ‘she’. Not that this has any bearing on the finished product – readers want to enjoy a good story, not marvel at how cleverly the author has wielded the language, unless they’re fans of Martin Amis – but I actually found this quite a stimulating exercise as a writer.

The other element of mystery in my novel was the method of assassination chosen by the terrorists. In an odd way, it was like one of the central puzzles in a country-house murder mystery, except the question wasn’t, ‘How could the murderer possibly have done it when the room was locked from the inside?’ but ‘How are the terrorists going to kill the president when every point of access to him has been anticipated and closed?’ This posed a serious problem. I had an idea how to pull it off, but it took extensive (and admittedly very haphazard) research online to find out if a particular piece of technology existed that might serve my purposes. And I did want to stay within the bounds of plausibility; I wasn’t writing science fiction.

Once I’d discovered that the technology needed by my terrorists did in fact exist, I needed to find out more about it. And everywhere I looked, I found the same basic information, but not the in-depth, down-and-dirty detail I wanted. I asked a couple of ex-soldiers I knew, but it was beyond them. I joined a few online forums to pick the brains of the military eggheads there, but had no luck. One person even emailed me with a friendly warning that I had to be careful about asking questions like this online, as they might come to the attention of shadowy outfits monitoring the web for signs of terrorist activity.

In the end, I decided it didn’t matter. If detailed information about a particular weapons system was so secret that only the manufacturers and their military sponsors were aware of it, then I could safely speculate about the nuts and bolts in my book without worrying about looking sloppy in my research to the average reader. This works as a general principle for writers of fiction, I think: do your research, but don’t be so terrified you might get a few details wrong that it takes your focus away from writing a good story.

Oh, and if anyone reading this is an insider in the armed forces or intelligence services of a certain Middle Eastern country and decides to read my novel, I’d welcome your feedback and corrections. With not a little trepidation, I should add.

Present day, alternate world, different rules

by

Alison Morton

Writing crime and thrillers with an alternate history setting throws up twin challenges – to tell a tense, fast-paced story with a punchy ending plus get the historical background right. Historical? Well, yes. Unless a writer knows their history, they can’t alternate it. Knowledgeable readers out there will be disappointed if a writer makes a serious blooper when projecting history in a different direction. And disappointing the reader is a writing crime.

Alternate history stories, whether packed with every last piece of information about their world or lighter where the alternative world is used as a setting with bare detail released only when crucial, need to follow three ‘rules’: nail the point of divergence from the real time line that has carried on in our world; show how the alternate world looks and works; and flesh out the consequences of the split. Writing crime, mystery and thrillers in this environment ain’t easy, but it’s fun!

Readers can take cops being gentle or tough, enthusiastic, intellectual or world-weary. Law enforcers are all genders, classes, races and ages and stand in various places along the personal morality ruler. But whether corrupt or clean, they must act like a recognisable form of cop. They catch criminals, arrest and charge them and operate within a judicial system.

In alternate history, writers draw on history before the point of divergence as C J Sansom does in Dominion. But he then goes on to stretch and distort the functions of the Special Branch we know into a Gestapo-like force and the Special Constabulary into the Auxiliaries similar to the French Second World War milice. In my own earliest story in the series set in the mid-twentieth century in a country founded sixteen hundred years ago by Roman refugees, the town cops are still called ‘vigiles’ after the ancient Roman ones; then, they caught thieves and robbers, put out fires and captured runaway slaves. They were supported by the Urban Cohorts who acted as a heavy-duty anti-riot force and the even the Praetorian Guard if necessary. The modern vigiles in my earliest alternate story carry out the functions of a police force that anybody would recognise today. And there is still a Praetorian Guard, but a very modern one. Both services have to deal with the criminal mind whether rational, completely disconnected from societal norms, opportunistic or terrorist.

Something to remember, especially when writing a series, is to let organisations develop. My vigiles are disbanded then re-formed as ‘custodes’ in the three later stories following a catastrophic civil war. They evolve in a similar way that London Bow Street runners gave way to Sir Robert Peel’s Bobbies who in turn developed into the modern Metropolitan Police.

Legal practicalities in alternate history stories can be quite different to those in our real timeline, but they must be consistent with history of that society while remaining plausible for the reader. My alternate world has examining magistrates (echoing ancient Roman practice) and a twenty-eight day post-arrest, pre-charge detention period which police services in our timeline would probably love! Questioning is robust, but there’s no gratuitous physical brutality – things have moved on since ancient Roman times when the punishment officer would take a criminal off into the corner and beat him into a pulp. In the 21st century, the approach is more psychological, wearing the detainee down, but the odd slap creeps in.

If writing in any foreign language environment, whether in this world, off-planet or in a different time, using local words for police, e.g. ‘Schupo’, ‘carabinieri’ or ‘custodes’ enriches the setting. But the writer has to explain in a non-obvious way. An example from my earliest book:

He handed me his card. “Kriminalpolizeikommissar Huber – GDKA/OK”. Juno, he was one of the German Federated States organised crime investigators. We were in the big time here. I glanced up at him, but he looked even grimmer, if it was possible. I decided to play safe.

The same applies for slang, which naturally peppers any thriller with police and military characters:

‘Dear me,’ he murmured, ‘you are a cross little scarab, aren’t you?’

I knew he was winding me up by using scarab, the derogatory word for the custodes. I might deal with a lot of shit in my job, but I was no dung-beetle.

Getting professional help? Do your research first! If writing a contemporary police thriller, writers should at least read around the basics; detection and arrest procedures, forensics, interviewing and case development. For political or military thrillers, the same applies for structures, chain of command, intelligence procedures and weaponry. Apart from watching television and movies and reading other writers’ books, I find Wikipedia is an excellent place to start if researching a specific force, police service or weapon. After that, most libraries and bookstores will have real life accounts written by former members of those services. For legal background, you could start with the lawyers’ associations and see if they have any public education programmes, similarly the probation and social services. If you ask reasonably intelligent, specific questions (make a list!), serving and retired professionals will usually be delighted to help you, especially if you mention them in the acknowledgements.

If you’re writing in a historical whodunit or thriller, then as well as the reading, you are probably going to become good friends with your county archivist and possibly the British Library staff. As you have no living professional to consult, you should find at least two preferably three sources for your information. Law enforcement officers’ roles, powers and practices varied hugely in the past and if policing existed at all in some past eras, it was often carried out by the military. You soon get to know your Tacitus from your Pliny or Caesar!

Crime, mystery and thrillers are one of the most popular genres in our bookshops, whether online or bricks and mortar. Whether you have a historical, contemporary or alternative setting, research and meticulous accuracy are the watchwords for keeping on the right side of the writing law.

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Author Alison Morton

Alison Morton has a master's degree in history, has served time as a translator and soldier, and is a deep-steeped ‘Roman nut'. 

Currently living in France, she writes Roman-themed alternate history thrillers and her first novel, INCEPTIO, will be published by SilverWood Books in March 2013.

Watch this space!

Trimming Down: to cut or not to cut?

One Author’s Experience

by 

Chris Lindberg 

Several years ago, I began writing the main character for what is now my novel Code of Darkness: a mysterious loner-turned-vigilante known only by the name Rage.  I had recently graduated from college, was living in the suburbs with my parents, and commuting on a train to downtown Chicago.  I decided the train would be my “writing studio.” 

I remember coming up with that first line: “Rage walked into the shadowy bar with one thing in mind: vengeance.”  The line contained a lot of angst, energy, and foreshadowing for what would be the first chapter of my writing life.  I wrote the chapter in a few days, happy with the result, and moved on to write other chapters, getting about a hundred pages into it. 

About a year later I moved downtown, and suddenly found a lot of other things to do with my time.  Without the long commute to give me a “studio” in which to write, the book project was tabled for a long time. 

Five years ago, I moved back out to the suburbs and started a family.  I was back on the train, so I thought I’d try picking up where I’d left off.  I found the old manuscript and began to put down new material.  But I decided to go an entirely new direction.  I scrapped old characters and storylines, and wove in new ones: a Chicago cop, a rogue NSA agent, a government conspiracy.  My goal was to make the story more of a page-turning thriller. 

But through all the changes, the chapters that centered around Rage stayed mostly intact.  That first chapter, the one in which I’d first introduced him, and most importantly that first line, was always going to be my starting point, I’d decided. 

I finished the novel at a whopping 198,000 words.  Yes – 198,000.  I was advised to get it down to about half that.  Half my creation was going to be on the chopping block?  No way was I going to do that. 

But it quickly became clear that I was going to have to.  So I began removing chapters, storylines, characters.  In some cases I was simply trimming fat.  Two revisions later, at 123,000 words, I discovered an angle that would probably cut another ten to fifteen thousand words easily: introduce the three main characters together in the same chapter, putting them in a perilous situation that would set the tone for the book.  The problem with this was, what would this mean for my cherished original starting point? 

I tried to find another home for it: the second chapter, maybe later in the story, but nothing worked.  It just didn’t fit into the story anymore.  And the problem was, the new first chapter didn’t just cut the word count, it also gave the story a much better starting point. 

So after much deliberation, I said goodbye to that original first chapter, and my story became a thousand times better for it.  It will always have a home in the first draft of Code of Darkness, and if enough people are interested, maybe I’ll post it on my blog someday. 

So now you now the rest of the story.  I’d be curious to know what all your experiences were with your first novel: how long the first draft was, did you cut anything, and if so how much … and most importantly, what was the biggest or most difficult change you made? 

Chris Lindberg’s first novel, Code of Darkness, was released in August.  You can find out more by visiting www.codeofdarkness.com, or visiting Facebook and searching on “code of darkness.”


Chris is also offering a FREE eBook version of Code of Darkness to the person with the best, funniest, cutest comment below. Leave your email and he'll contact you.

To purchase Code of Darkness in paperback or e-book edition, please check out: http://www.lulu.com/browse/search.php?fListingClass=0&fSearch=code+of+darkness

Or search “code of darkness” on Amazon or BN.com. 

You can also email him at chris@codeofdarkness.com – he’d love to hear from you. More about Chris:

Chris Lindberg was born and raised outside Chicago, Illinois.  After graduating from Northern Illinois University in the mid-1990s, he headed out to the west coast for a couple of years, where he began writing as a casual pastime.  

Some time after returning to Chicago he began attending writers workshops at StoryStudio Chicago, where he wrote two character studies, both of which have since been developed into key characters in Code of Darkness.

Chris now lives outside Chicago with his wife Jenny and their two children, Luke and Emma.  You might catch him working away on his second novel while commuting on his morning train into the city. 

Code of Darkness - When a routine bank robbery takes an unexpected turn, veteran Chicago police officer Larry Parker witnesses a heroic act by a mysterious intervener. But seconds later the Samaritan disappears, leaving Larry only with unanswered questions.

Suddenly, vigilante activity begins popping up all over the city – including several murders. Larry begins to gather the missing pieces of the puzzle, and finds evidence the Samaritan might be tied to them. When he learns the man’s identity – a loner known only by the name Rage – he prepares to move in for the arrest.

But there is much more to Rage than meets the eye: the case has also drawn the attention of a covert Black Ops division within the Pentagon. Their mission: find Rage, while keeping their operation out of the public eye. Seen as knowing too much, Larry suddenly finds himself in the crosshairs as well. After a deadly standoff, Rage is captured, forcing Larry to search for answers while on the run.

The deadly chase leads cross-country to a top-secret military facility in Virginia, where Rage and Larry uncover the greatest danger of all -- and only they can stop the unthinkable from happening.

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Debut Novel by Scott L. Collins

DAYS' END

Nysa is an up and coming DNA retrieval expert well known in the scientific community for her advances in the technology used in the field. After being recruited to work on a secret project by an extraordinarily wealthy and mysterious benefactor, Nysa is moved to a hidden lab outside Denver, Colorado. Isolated from the world and forbidden from contact with anyone outside the facility, she is unaware of the strange occurrences that begin to plague the planet. Her fiance Alastair becomes concerned about her welfare and, with the help of his father, begins a frantic search for her. They soon come to realize that their quest is producing more questions than answers, and some very unsettling questions at that.

Only one person, the silent man financing the operation, knows the true nature of the experiment. Although unaware of his true identity, Alastair comes to realize his foe will stop at nothing to see the experiment through to its completion.

Scott Collins was born and raised in Southern California but relocated to the Denver area following the birth of the first of his two sons. Days' End is his debut novel and he is now working on a series of young adult books. In addition to writing, he enjoys spending his free time (with two kids that's not much time) running and cycling. Please feel free to visit his website at www.scottlcollins.com.

 

Purchase links: Amazon.com and Smashwords.