Nuggets
Excerpt From the Book - The Pursuit 2 | Chapter 5
“Everyone has a weak spot,” Sue thought.
Unfortunately, Harper had no such spot. Sue would find she had opened the door and invited in a bona fide menace.
What Motivated Me to Write | TANTRUM - Visions of Evil
The motivation for TANTRUM came to me one night in a hotel room. I used to travel frequently for work, and one night before drifting off to sleep, I visualized the room used by a madman who tortured our protagonist in the opening scene. It was the perfect environment to add effect for how I wanted the story to begin. I can remember thinking how it just felt right as I wrote that scene.
The interesting thing about this story, while not too uncommon, is that every action of Mathew, the protagonist, is in direct response to something the antagonist did. He was simply incapable of confronting his one overpowering demon.
Even more interesting is the fact that as I wrote this, I could not define the antagonist until just about at the end. I struggled throughout the writing process to admit, or maybe I didn’t want to admit, the obvious. But once I could stand back and look at the overall picture, there really was no denying who it really was.
I suspect that, unlike me and my blinders, readers won’t have a problem identifying the antagonist. It’s an interesting story and I think you’ll like it.
Scene from the book | The Pursuit 2, Chapter 3
This scene features Frank Driscoll, a family man who wanted nothing more than to treat his family to a weekend getaway on a private island. Frank was not particularly a good husband or father. The idea for the family gateway was a peace offering in response to his latest failure at keeping his hands to himself regarding his wife. That other thing he did, however, was the most unforgivable.
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.
“FRANK, YOU SON-OF-A-B…., WHAT DID YOU DO?”
And things for him went downhill from there, ending in a disaster that neither the cops, the judge, or the jury found amusing.