Showing posts with label action thriller. Show all posts
Showing posts with label action thriller. Show all posts

Tuesday 12 July 2011

BiteMarks by Drew Cross

Drew Cross is a thirty-year-old former model and ex-cop (sadly never a model cop!), now masquerading as a Financial Services professional, from Nottingham, England. He is married with two young children - The Zeds (Zac and Zara) - and a stroppy weimaraner called Charlie. When he's not reading, writing, toddler-wrangling or weimaraner-wrestling, Drew likes to practice martial arts, cook south-east Asian cuisine, and meditate. He hopes one day to break the habit of referring to himself in the third person.


Blood, lust and bloodlust collide when the police hunt for a vampiric attacker threatens to shine an unwelcome spotlight onto the dark secrets of one that they call their own...








What will readers like about your book?
Despite the darkness of the subject matter, there is a good scattering of humour and playfulness throughout the book. Shane Marks is a memorable and complex character (which we'll continue to see as the other books in the series are released), and this is not a paint-by-numbers police procedural, there are several big surprises to keep you guessing. Please ignore the publisher blurb though, guys; this is not a 'vampire' novel, it's crime fiction and there are no supernatural characters involved.


What inspired you to write it?
When I left the police force a number of years ago I felt that I'd had an insight to the both job and to the city that I live in, that many people never get to know. I also had a ton of resentment and anger, so this seemed like a constructive way to channel those feelings!


Do you have any new works in the pipeline?
Loads! There's TrackMarks - the second book in the 'Marks' crime fiction series; a YA fantasy trilogy called 'The Scarmap'; a WIP YA novel called The Girl and Her Ghost, about a girl who upon choosing to end her life meets somebody who already has...I've also just released 'Under The Influence' a vicious and creepy horror short on Smashwords; and finally (for now), there's a satirical piece under construction too called 'Selling It', which can't decide whether it wants to be a script or a novel.


Who are your favorite authors?
Thomas Harris, John Connolly, Mary Shelley, Robert Louis Stevenson, Poppy Z Brite...probably a dozen others that will occur to me once I've sent this mail too!


Tell us something about yourself that not many people know.
I have a Mensa tested IQ of 155.


Thanks so much, Drew!

www.drewcross.blogspot.com

Bitemarks is available from Amazon and Smashwords

Tuesday 28 June 2011

A Healthy Dose of Satire

Lisa Scullard has been writing novels since the age of 18, and has managed to scrape by otherwise without any relationships or permanent career. She has one daughter from a holiday she can't really remember properly, and her main job so far was nightclub bouncer full-time for seven years.



Hi Lisa! Can you tell us about your first novel, Living Hell.
Set in the fictional small suburban town of Jericho, in a world which took a religious wrong turn several hundred years ago and is currently mostly non-practising Satanist, a group of Youth Club volunteers try to organise a Halloween party. In between dealing with the local Press's fixation on an unresolved suicide, and day-to-day blackmail, 19-year-old Kim hooks up with Hellraisers frontman Alastair Brash - and all HIS problems. Which look like they're only just starting.




What do you think readers will like about the book?
It's about that post-adolescent stage in your life when school was pretty much over but nothing real has come along to replace it, and everything's awkward. Your parent's aren't part of your daily life anymore, so you find ways to get by on your own, and try not to be sucked into other people's gangs, groups or cult-type things.

I think a lot of people forget about how funny everything is at that age – there are no commitments, mortgages or 'lifestyle' to keep up with, and pretty much everything is spontaneous and weird.

Also it's a great mystery/action plot following the aftermath of a Halloween party, which takes place over only four days. I wanted to keep the story focused and create interesting characters that readers would want more stories about in future.

What inspired you to write it?
I wrote Living Hell when I was 18, aiming at my own age group - all there was to choose from when I was a teen was Judy Blume, Enid Blyton or Willard Price. Nothing was edgy or racy enough, and it was depressing. Gollancz and Pan MacMillan loved it, but wanted me to change the target audience to adult. Pan Mac asked me to write a sequel, but that only got to first draft stage before the editor handling it left. It was three years' waiting wasted, and I lost confidence for a long time after that.

I lived in a small village with boy racers and bikers amongst the locals, with nothing to do at weekends except pubs or the sports centre in a nearby town - not even a cinema within 30 miles, and the last bus anywhere was at 5.30pm. I also had Graves' Disease and was going back and forth to hospital appointments in London, and having various beta-blockers tested on me, none of which were working, and I couldn't get a job. My brothers and I read Pratchett, Tom Sharpe, watched sci-fi and comedy, and I wrote stories as escapism.

Do you have any new works in the pipeline?
I've also just published Death & The City in hardcover, paperback and eBook - a chick-lit backlash against traditional romance/crime stories. It's satire, dark, and due to get darker in follow-ups. It's about a female bouncer with a personality disorder who has to bump off contract killers identified through her usual job. Her head office set her up with a wingman, and she doesn't want to be manipulated or tied up in romantic cliches that other women would assume was part of the scenario. It's a bit postmodern in that sense.

I'm doing some illustrations at the moment, and writing a sequel to The Terrible Zombie Of Oz, as well as continuing the Death & The City "Tales Of The Deathrunners" series. I haven't got into the sales side of it, I don't want to - would rather just wait and see if readers like it without being pressurised into buying.

Who are your favourite authors?
Terry Pratchett and Tom Sharpe - for pure irreverence and style of humour. The laugh-out-loud even if you know you shouldn't sort.

Tell us something about yourself that not many people know.
While I was at school my only real ambition was to get married at 16, and have six children *fail* :) But at least I can say I've got further in writing fiction than I have in real life ambitions, even if I never sell many books :)

Lisa, you’re such a star. I already have two of your paperbacks on my bookshelf at home and you know I’m a big fan. It’s been a joy to have you here.

LIVING HELL was Lisa Scullard’s first completed novel, and is now available in both ebook and paperback on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords (Nook/Sony), Createspace (paperback) and Lulu (hardcover/dustjacket).

You can stalk find more out about Lisa here:
http://voodoo-spice.blogspot.com
On Twitter
On Youtube

Tuesday 7 June 2011

Hot New Author: Robert Craven

Today I’m thrilled to welcome Robert Craven to HOT NEW AUTHORS, a brand spanking new feature on my blog. I’ve been pestering him for weeks to let me know the release date for his fab new spy thriller, Get Lenin, and now here it is! Yay!

                           Available from Amazon
So Robert, what will readers like about Get Lenin?

What readers will get is adventure, espionage & both the horror & the glamour of the 1930's as the story unfolds into WW2 through the eyes of the main character Eva Molenaar.

What inspired you to write the novel?

I grew up loving the books of Alastair Maclean, Fredrick Forsyth, Jack Higgins and John Le Carre. I came across a book called 'Lenin's Embalmers' about 10yrs ago which told the story of Lenin's mausoleum shipping in its entirety to the Urals in the face of the German army advance. Then a bulb went off in my head that went 'what would happen if...'


Do you have any other favorite authors?

As well as those mentioned above I love Cormac MaCarthy, Arthur Miller, Robert Ludlum and Martin Cruz Smith. Irish authors Roddy Doyle, John McGahern, Frank O'Connor and Brendan Behan.

And are there any new works in the pipeline?
I have almost completed the sequel, but mindful of how Get Lenin does. I have pitched to Night Publishing a semi-autobiographical work called 'Vocals preferred, own transport essential'. I was a musician in Dublin in the late 1980's to the mid 1990's and would jot down incidents and stories along the way. It needs a lot of work and is more of a long-term project.

Finally, can you tell us something about yourself that not many people know.

I've a pathological hatred of mime artists.

I'm with you on that last point! Thanks so much for taking the time to chat to us and I'd like to wish you massive success with Get Lenin. It's a great read.