Nuggets
Excerpt From the Book - Retribution| Chapter 5
Claire seemed to have calmed down. She stopped crying and Jack thought, for a moment, she was about to leave. He breathed a sigh of relief at the thought of making it through the morning unscathed. But then she did it.
“Oh my God, Claire,” Dawn said as she put a hand to her mouth. “What have you done?”
What Motivated Me to Write | Harper Mane
The motivation for Harper Mane, The H E R Murders, came to me as I was finishing the novel The Pursuit 2. Harper’s character as an investigator/assassin fascinated me. I realized that in most of my novels, female characters typically play antagonists. Harper’s character inspired me to make her the hero.
The way she and a new partner, Rhonda Colegal, joined forces in The Pursuit 2, gave me the idea for a new story. It led me to pause writing and create the framework for a yet to be named novel featuring both characters.
In the new book, Rhonda has fully embraced her character and established her inner pitbull, while Harper remains the constant professional and never allows herself to be anything but.
I needed to provide a distraction to keep readers engaged in the intentionally slow-forming plot. The character, Zach Briley, provided that angle. A constant rivalry between him and Rhonda fit the bill perfectly.
Scene from the book | The Pursuit 2
The setup involved a suspected burglary, a drained bank account, and a kidnapping. Against that backdrop, Frank’s vacation plan took a backseat to ensuing chaos. He had truly disappointed his wife, and she was having none of his attempts to “buy” his way back into her arms. When he got home, he found no one there. The house was completely empty. He panicked, thinking some of his shady associates had come seeking past due payments, or worse, his wife had finally left him.
Assuming the latter, he suffered another type of panic, one that came from discovering that someone had drained his bank account. That discovery led to an act of mindless desperation. Frank concocted a dumb plan, the kidnapping part. He thought it would force his wife to get over whatever it was he did to ruffle her feathers. It went down about as well as any dumb plan could have.
Frank’s reaction to everything was dead wrong. Reality came crashing down on him, though, when he received a call from his missing wife furiously screaming into the phone. And things for him went downhill from there, ending in a disaster that neither the cops, the judge, or the jury found amusing.