Mar 21, 2026 | Crime, Police Procedural / Crime |
M.E. Roche begins Connie Regis: A Black Widow with an Irish proverb that perfectly illustrates the story that follows. Relatives and friends do their best to portray Connie as a scheming fraud and murderer who chooses her victims carefully, ensuring their deaths. Connie presents her case in chapters throughout the story, gradually denying any evil intent. The reader will see evidence piling up, but not enough to stop her schemes. Roche has multiple protagonists but only one antagonist. What drew this reader in was the way the sociopath weaves herself into her victims and the reader. The surprise ending is a twist that this reader never saw coming — it’s masterfully executed.
Jan 2, 2025 | Crime, Mystery, Thriller |
James L’Etoile uses his twenty-nine years behind bars as an influence in his award-winning novels, short stories, and screenplays. He is a former associate warden in a maximum-security prison, a hostage negotiator, and director of California’s state parole system. His novels have been shortlisted or awarded the Lefty, Anthony, Silver Falchion, and the Public Safety Writers Award. River of Lies is his most recent novel. Look for the Illusion of Truth and Sins of the Father, which are coming soon.
You can find out more at www.jamesletoile.com
Thanks, George, for letting me guest post here. I’m more than just a little giddy over the release of River of Lies this month. I know every author loves their most recent book. I’m guilty there, too, for the story and how it came to life.
River of Lies is the second book in the Detective Emily Hunter series, set in Sacramento. It’s the sequel to last year’s Face of Greed. Why Sacramento, you ask? And people do ask because, on the surface, Sacramento doesn’t have the same panache as, say, Paris, New York, or Los Angeles. But what the city has is crime, corruption, and a conspicuous homeless population.
This book dives into all three. I’ve lived in the city and the surrounding burbs for years. From the city’s claim to fame as a serial killer magnet in the 80s to politicians who will say anything to get elected. Through it all, the city’s homeless numbers grew beyond anyone’s expectations. It reached a high point just a year ago when a homeless census documented over 10,000 people living on the street. Thousands of men, women, and children exist in the shadows. More than San Francisco’s unhoused population. What is the response after millions of dollars are thrown at the problem? There are a mere 1,200 shelter beds in the entire county.
Where did the money go? Who gained from the massive spending? It doesn’t appear to have been the homeless population who still gather in encampments throughout the city.
In my prior career, I worked for nearly three decades in the prison/parole/probation environment. While serving in the parole system, I accompanied some of my parole administrators on a tour of Los Angeles’s Skid Row, the largest homeless encampment in the nation. There were dozens of high-risk parolees living in tents and cardboard condos, and supervising that population came with some unique challenges and risks.
High rates of communicable diseases, like hepatitis, HIV, tuberculosis, and parasitic infections, were rampant in the community. The densely packed tents made spreading any illness the envy of a 1300s plague rat. The parolees living in the camp easily hide among the anonymous faces. Parole Agents making a field visit found their offender had moved from one street corner to another.
Charging an electronic monitor (ankle bracelet) proved problematic when the parolee has no place to plug it in to keep the battery working.
There is a structure there amid the chaos. The larger homeless camps have sentries and a leadership structure of some of the older, streetwise survivors. A loose system of self-government exists in these camps.
That’s the backdrop River of Lies is set within. Detective Emily Hunter investigates a series of deadly arson attacks in the city’s riverside homeless camps. She soon discovers even the homeless have something that somebody wants. An unexpected victim and a most unusual killer lead Emily to the place where crime, corruption, and homelessness intersect.
I hope you have a chance to check out Emily’s latest case.
Contact Information: jamesletoilebooks@gmail.com
You can find your copy of FACE OF GREED at: Amazon, Barnes & Noble Bookshop.org, Face in a Book Book Passage
River of Lies: Amazon Barnes and Noble Bookshop.org
Aug 22, 2024 | Action & Adventure, Crime, Historical, Mystery, Westerns, Young Adult |
Michael A. Black is the award winning author of 50 books, most of which are in the mystery and thriller genres. He’s also written in the sci-fi, western, horror, and sports genres. A retired police officer from the Chicago area, he did everything from patrol to investigating homicides to conducting numerous SWAT operations. Black was awarded the Cook County Medal of Merit in 2010. He is the author of over 100 short stories and articles and wrote two novels with the late television star Richard Belzer (Law & Order SVU). He wrote eleven novels under the name Don Pendleton in the Executioner series and numerous westerns the Gunslinger series under the name A.W. Hart (Killer’s Choice, Killer’s Brand, Killer’s Ghost, Killer’s Gamble, and Killer’s Requiem).
His Executioner novel, Fatal Prescription, won the Best Original Novel Scribe Award in 2018. His recent novels are in the ongoing Trackdown series, most recently Devil’s Lair. His most recent works are Concho: Border Blood (written as A.W. Hart) and Where Legends Lie under his own name.
You write in more than one genre. What brought you into writing? I’ve been writing all my life. I wrote my first short story in the 6th grade. The class laughed, and the teacher admonished me to never do it again, but I didn’t listen.
Tell us about your writing process. What’s the most challenging part? The challenge is to write something that’s entertaining and will hold the reader’s attention. My process is just to put my butt in the chair and write. Sometimes, I think beforehand, too.
All right, I’ll accept that. Do you outline, or are you a pantser? I’m a staunch supporter of outlining. I’ve done it both ways, and while you have to figure out the method that works best for you, an outline helps you stay on track. Pantsing is fun, but you end up going off on tangents and wasting a lot of words. It’s like trying to build a house without any blueprints.
Your latest book, Where Legends Lie, is a western set in both 1913 and 1880. What kind of research did you do? I did extensive research on this one. I’ve written a lot of westerns so I was familiar with a lot of the weaponry of the times, but this one also has scenes involving the Philippine Insurrection and the early days of motion pictures. The Philippine Insurrection was one of our bloody and tragic little wars, and back then, our society knew next to nothing about the effects of PTSD. I dedicated the book to our fallen military members, many of whom came back as walking wounded due to what they went through.
You also have a historical figure in the book. Tell us about him. Ambrose Bierce was a Civil War veteran who went on to become one of the best-known writers of his time. I read his stories in high school and always admired him. When I was plotting out Legends, I suddenly knew I had to include him as a character. He perished in Mexico in 1913 during the revolution. It’s conjectured that Pancho Villa’s men executed him, but the actual circumstances are unknown. I wanted to give Mr. Bierce one more great adventure before his untimely end.
What obstacles do you face when writing about historical figures? My mentor, Stuart Kaminsky, once told me, “You’re better off writing about them if they’re dead.” I followed Stuart’s advice because, like I said, Bierce died during the Mexican Revolution. I did copious research on him, however, and tried to use some of his actual quotes in the story.
Let me get this straight… It’s set in two different time periods? Right, it opens in the Philippines during the last battle of what was termed the Moro Rebellion. It was bloody and violent. Then the story shifts to a few months later, and returning veteran Jim Bishop lands a job with a fledgling motion picture company in southern California. They’re filming a version of a famous, or infamous, shootout that occurred thirty years before. Next I do a shift and go back to the site of the actual shootout in 1880. The two stories evolve in tandem until they finally coalesce at the end. It’s billed as two stories told as one, which I guess it is.
You’ve also got a couple of other books out, correct? I do. One of them is Devil’s Lair, which is the 8th book in my Trackdown series. It’s about ex-army ranger Steve Wolf, who spent time in prison for a war crime he didn’t commit. Upon his release, he becomes a modern-day bounty hunter or bail enforcement agent. He’s also a mixed martial arts fighter and is struggling to clear his name. There’s a common thread of intrigue and betrayal that runs through the series, starting with the first one, Devil’s Dance. Devil’s Lair is the eighth one in the series and, at this point, might be the last. I’ve managed to tie up almost all the major plot threads, but I wouldn’t be averse to penning a few more. I think Wolf still has his legs, as they say in boxing.
What about the book you wrote as A.W. Hart? Ah, yes, Concho: Border Blood. A.W. Hart’s a house name for Wolfpack Publishing, and I’ve written numerous books under that pseudonym. Old A.W. is an Amazon Bestseller, so I owe him a lot. Concho is a half Black, half Indian Texas Ranger. The books are set in modern times, and I touched upon our border mess and human trafficking in this one. I should add that the other ten books in the series were written by different authors.
Anything else you’d like to say, Mike? George, I appreciate being on your excellent blog. We know each other from the PSWA (Public Safety Writers Association), and you’ve always been a great friend and an inspiration to me, brother.
Contact Info:
Email: DocAtlas108@aol.com
Phone: 708-903-7458
Buy Links:
Blood Concho – Amazon
Devil’s Lair – Amazon
Where Legends Lie – Amazon
Jun 17, 2024 | Action & Adventure, Crime, Mystery, Romance |
About the Author: Donnell Ann Bell is an award-winning author who began her nonfiction career in newspapers. After she turned to fiction, her romantic suspense novels became Amazon bestsellers, including The Past Came Hunting, Deadly Recall, Betrayed, and Buried Agendas.
In 2019, Donnell released her first mainstream suspense, Black Pearl, A Cold Case Suspense, which was a 2020 Colorado Book Award finalist. In 2022, book two of the series was released. Until Dead, A Cold Case Suspense won Best Thriller in 2023 at the Imaginarium Conference in Louisville, Kentucky. Currently, she’s working on book three of the series. Readers can follow Donnell on her blog or sign up for her newsletter at www.donnellannbell.com.
Have you ever heard authors talk about a germ of an idea that led to their writing a novel? It’s crazy how one idea can take hold, and a 90,000-word book can result. That’s what happened behind many of my books. Still, when it comes to my romantic suspense novel Buried Agendas, a lone germ wasn’t what got me started. The ideas that flooded this book were more like an epidemic.
I’m married to a chemical engineer, so I lived daily with his adventures and misadventures in this necessary but often environmentally explosive industry. Chemicals make our lives easier, right? But if you put the wrong compounds or solutions together, you may blow up a lab. Discover too late that the ingredients used were toxic and leached into the soil or groundwater, you only wished you’d blown up a lab.
That was germ number one that made me want to write this book; what’s more, I thought I had the perfect expert at my disposal. Know what his response was when I started with my list of 20 questions? “Honey, I deal with this stuff all day. The last thing I want to do when I get home is talk about chemicals with my wife.”
On one hand, I sympathized with him. On the other hand, he hadn’t answered my questions, and my list was growing.
How did I handle that? Went around him, of course. We’d lived in Colorado for many years, and I’d met many of his contacts. To write Buried Agendas, I consulted with my husband’s colleagues, who, it turns out, were happy to talk with me about chemicals and what they do in their jobs. I spoke with plant managers, chemists, control room operators, an underground tank specialist, and shift supervisors. I was like the proverbial kid in the candy store as my plot gained traction, and I began to understand (in a simplistic, nontechnical way) what they were doing and why.
I still needed a cause and effect for my book, however. In a murder mystery, the cause of death is often explained by poison, drowning, a gunshot wound, etcetera. In Buried Agendas, I need to point to a newly created chemical that should have never been created.
This time, I needed specifics. So, I called up the Environmental Protection Agency’s Region 8. From there, I was put in touch with a very knowledgeable woman, who again was happy to talk to me about my scenario. You can imagine my elation (and considerable fright) when she confirmed my plot wasn’t far-fetched at all. Not only did we have a phone call, she also mailed me hundreds of pages of information to corroborate my thinking.
In a way, I’m glad my husband didn’t want to spend long hours discussing chemicals. After all, I received a synopsis of his job each evening, which created the germ in the first place. My hunting for specifics with others led to dozens of possibilities and, in my opinion, a more intriguing story.
Buried Agendas goes on sale June 16-30th on several digital outlets for the discounted price of $.99 Hope you enjoyed my trip down Memory Lane.
May 23, 2024 | Historical, Memoir |
I’m the product of a Midwest upbringing, but I’ve lived on both coasts as well as in Ireland. As a registered nurse, I’ve had the opportunity to work in many facets of nursing. Once officially retired, I began volunteering with the local coroner—part of the sheriff’s department—in northern California.
My favorite books have always been mysteries.
What brought me to writing? I first decided to try my hand at writing when I discovered there were so few books written about or by nurses and nothing for young readers since the student nurse mysteries of the 1950s. I started with three young adult mysteries modeled on those early works. I liked the writing process—of having a character tell me where the story would go—and when I decided to bring my student nurses into adulthood, I began writing for an adult audience, and now I have an additional three mysteries and two standalones.
New Book My newly released novel, TOOTS, is a historical stand-alone work based on one of my great aunts, one of my grandmother’s sisters. Growing up, I only knew my aunt as living with my grandmother. She was quiet but warm and generally retreated to somewhere quieter in the house when my family of eight kids arrived. I don’t remember ever having any extended conversation. We were told that her husband and children had died in a fire, and she had come back to her family in Chicago from wherever they had been living. I began thinking about this story several years ago, and I wanted to know more, but there was no one from that generation left to ask. And so I began trolling the memories of my siblings and cousins, but they were no wiser
Research TOOTS required spending a lot of time with Ancestry.com and Newspapers.com and my local genealogy people at the library. The amount of information out there is amazing. My grandmother and her sister, Toots, came over from Ireland by themselves at ages 12 and 10. They came to work as servants—first in New York and later in Chicago. My grandmother married and stayed in Chicago, but Toots met and married a homesteader from Nebraska. So many questions! I began by tracking down the ship manifests. Census reports, marriage records, obituaries, and homestead records. Finally, I made a road trip to Nebraska to see the homestead for myself. But then…what happened after Nebraska?
I discovered that there is also a ton of information to be found in obituaries. A good example: I knew my grandfather was a train conductor on the Northwestern railroad, but I had always thought of him as a passenger conductor (he had passed before I was born); his obituary stated he was a freight conductor! Tracking down the routes—possibly through Nebraska—that his train would have taken in 1915 led me to the tiny town of Albion in Nebraska, where my aunt’s husband’s homestead happened to be. There is no one alive to verify my guess, but I’d say my grandfather played matchmaker for his sister-in-law!
Setting the Location: I think it’s important to know something about the setting of one’s story, which is why I felt the need to see Nebraska. How many people plan to visit Nebraska? It was, however, a great experience—visiting the Homestead museum and learning something about the Dust Bowl period, of which I knew little beyond The Grapes of Wrath. It is beautiful farm country; the cover for TOOTS is a photo of their homestead. Similarly, I lived in San Francisco and northern California for some time, as well as in Boston, so I enjoy adding bits of local color to stories set in those locations.
Writing Process My writing process is changing. I’ve always felt most creative in the early morning hours, but not so much now. I do my own editing and preparation for publishing, and the more I write, the more time it takes to complete these non-creative tasks. I’ve discovered that my head doesn’t work for editing in the early morning. So now, I have coffee, walk, have breakfast, and then work on editing. But as I finish those tasks required by a new book, I think I’m almost ready to start writing something creative again. We’ll see.
Current Project Before turning to the final edits and publishing aspects of TOOTS, I finished the first draft of a mystery that spans the two coasts and centers on an arson group of firefighters in Boston. In the first re-read of that draft, I saw some serious problems, and now I’m looking forward to seeing what can be done to fix those problems. After that, I have the start of a black widow murder mystery.
Please visit my website and sign up for my newsletter at https://www.meroche.com, where I am now adding a section for Book Clubs with questions and personal recipes.
This sounds like something I want to read. I don’t want to wait until July. I’m off to see if it is out in kindle.
Sounds like a winner. I’ll be looking for it at the PSWA Conference.