Peg Herring's Blog - Posts Tagged "guest"

Thanks, Peg, for inviting me to talk about my book, THE END GAME.

Whenever I meet a book lover, his or her first question is: what's your book about? The second question is: where did you come up with the idea?

The End Game is a mystery about two young Atlanta girls who are kidnapped for the overseas sex trade. Heroine Moriah Dru established Child Trace, Inc. after leaving the Atlanta Police Department. She'll find lost children for anyone, but most of her work originates with the juvenile court system. With the help of Detective Lieutenant Richard Lake, Dru sets out to find the Rose girls after their house burns down. and their foster parents are dead inside.

Robin Agnew, of the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association, reviewed my novel. I'll let her tell a little about the book. "Ferris’ ethos isn’t cozy, it’s fairly hard boiled, and so is the topic she’s chosen to write about: missing children. Her spare prose and unsentimental writing style get you through some of the hard stuff in the story. … Like a runaway freight train, this novel is all about narrative drive."

Robin says other good stuff about my novel – although there are certain aspects I didn't realize I'd accomplished. As I intended, Robin nails the style and purpose of the narrative. I believe the spare prose and unsentimental writing style come from my journalism background. I worked for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution for nearly twenty years.

In those first years, I edited the columns of nationally-syndicated newspaper columnist Lewis Grizzard. As his popularity grew, he compiled his writings – which exemplified his beloved South – into books that landed on the New York Times Best Seller List year after year. Lewis became my mentor, and I learned to edit as sparsely as he did. One caveat though, writing novels isn't like writing for a newspaper. You've got to put a little more flesh on the skeleton.

That brings me to the second question asked about my book: where did you come up with the story idea? Lewis died in 1994, and I joined the National Desk, where I traveled and wrote for a section of the newspaper called, Around the South. My last assignment was on the City Desk, and then I retired.

A sensational case in Atlanta became the genesis of my novel. A child went missing. He was four or five years old, and they couldn't find him in the foster care system. He'd been passed from family to family and then lost. How can you lose a child in the system? As far as I know, he was never found.

About that time, the APD was busting massage parlors and finding ten-to-twelve-year-old foreign girls working in the back rooms, giving more than a traditional massage.

The lost child and the young girls imported by real slavers inspired The End Game. There is a third question I'm asked: what does the title mean? Overseas slave rings have names; one of the most infamous is called Snakehead. I named my fictional human traffickers after chess pieces. Dru and Lake will do anything to keep the Rose girls from becoming part of The End Game.
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Guest Blogger Chris Redding
Today my guest is Chris Redding, author of INCENDIARY. Thanks for giving us a peek at your book, Chris! It sounds hot! (Oh, I'm sorry, I just couldn't resist!)



Chelsea James, captain of her local first aid squad, is trying to keep the organization afloat, but someone is sabotaging her. The squad is her father’s legacy and she feels responsible to keep it going.
Jake Sweeney, back in town after a decade, is investigating the arsons he was accused of long ago. When they start again Chelsea and Jake must join forces to defeat their mutual enemy.
Jake would like to rekindle what they had before he left town, but his departure left Chelsea hurt and bewildered. To begin again, she must learn to trust him.
Her life could depend on it.

Here's an excerpt: The electricity of an impending storm raised the hair on Chelsea James’ arms. She stood, barefoot, on her wide front porch, watching the wind almost blowing the trees back and forth. And through it all, her dead sister’s voice played in her mind. ‘It’s like nature has to violently clean up,’ Morgan used to say when they stood in this very spot. They’d both loved storms then.


The power of nature impressed Chelsea while Morgan concentrated on the aftermath. Odd that Morgan never thought of the aftermath of her own actions.

‘How so?’ Chelsea would ask her older-by-a-few-minutes sister.

Morgan’s eyes would be wide. ‘Because a storm gives the trees a haircut, gets rid of the ones that are weak. And on top of that, the rain helps the ones that do survive,’ Morgan had answered.

Chelsea nodded.

But this storm didn’t bring with it the same renewal. Somewhere deep in Chelsea, she knew this storm was different. This storm could bring destruction.

Or worse, this storm might not bring the wanted rain for those trees that survived.

Chelsea sighed. Right now she missed her sister more than anything.

Then her firehouse pager went off. “Unit 37, you have a fully involved structure fire on Briar Lane.”

My guest today is Ryder Islington, whose book, ULTIMATE JUSTICE, is published by the people who produce my Dead Detective Mysteries.

I'm giving away an Amazon gift certificate for one person who comments on Ryder's post, so go to my main blog: http://itsamysterytomepegherring.blog...
and enter for your chance to win.