Cindy Dees's Blog, page 8
June 18, 2017
Sneak Peek of Her Mission With a SEAL
Excerpt not for reproduction
Nissa Beck had done some crazy things in her life, but sailing into the teeth of a rapidly intensifying hurricane in a tiny dinghy—in the dark—with a trio of Navy SEALs was right up there on the stupid scale. They’d actually strapped her into the boat so she wouldn’t get tossed out as their craft went nearly vertical climbing the wave faces towering overhead and then plunged nearly vertically down the waves crashing into black troughs of icy seawater.
Throat paralyzing terror was the only reason she hadn’t screamed herself hoarse already. The horror of being out here, at the mercy of the wildly tossing ocean, was indescribable. As was the sheer size of the waves. They were small mountains. Literally. Except these ones periodically collapsed on top of them, burying them in frigid seawater for endless seconds until they popped back up to the surface and could breathe again. In short, it was a living nightmare.
She’d swallowed more seawater than she could fathom and thrown most of it back up, along with the last meal she’d consumed three hours ago. A lifetime away in a safe place. On land. Not in the path of Hurricane Jessamine.
But her target had fled the United States and was out here somewhere in the Gulf of Mexico making his getaway on a container ship call the Anna Belle. The ship wasn’t one of the super giants, just a relatively small cargo ship. The manifest said she sailed with a crew of twenty, was loaded with wheat below decks, and carried 120 containers stacked above decks.
What the manifest didn’t say was that she also carried a passenger. A man named Markus Petrov. One of the most elusive spies ever to operate on American soil. A colleague of hers, an American spy named Max Kuznetsov whose mother had been killed by Petrov, had spent nearly a decade tracking the guy, and had spent most of the past three years undercover in Petrov’s criminal organization learning his true identity.
It was a brilliant set-up, actually. Petrov ran a Russian crime gang and used its proceeds to finance his extracurricular espionage activities. In the meantime, he hid behind the Russian mafia, who had fiercely protected his identity.
Max and a team of Navy SEALs had destroyed most of Petrov’s criminal organization last week in a spectacular shootout deep in the bayous of south Louisiana. But Petrov had disappeared.
Unfortunately, Max also needed to go to ground, along with his fiancée, a psychic who had helped him identify Markus Petrov at long last. Until Petrov was apprehended, the two of them were in extreme danger and had been whisked into federal protective custody. Which left no subject matter experts on Petrov except her to help with the manhunt.
She’d been tracking Max’s progress in the Petrov case for years and was the CIA’s second most knowledgeable analyst when it came to the Russian spy. Which was why she was out here tonight doing her darnedest to drown. The SEALs needed someone who could make a positive I.D. on Petrov when they captured him on the Anna Belle.
The cargo ship had gone silent the moment it crossed into international waters, and the only reason they knew where it was now was compliments of a hurricane hunter aircraft who’d made a visual sighting of the ship on its last pass through Hurricane Jessamine this afternoon.
Were it not for that chance sighting, nobody would have any idea where Petrov and the ship he’d fled on had disappeared to.
The ship’s manifest said it was bound for the Dominican Republic with food and humanitarian supplies. Perhaps that part was true, at any rate.
One of the SEALs had a radio headset plastered to his ears. He shouted a course correction back to the muscular man wrestling the tiller, the team leader, Commander Cole Perriman.
He was easily six-foot-three, and built like a god. The high-tech wet suit currently clinging to his torso was an exercise in truth in advertising. Every beautiful, perfect muscle was clearly outlined for her viewing pleasure. Thank you, God.
At the moment his hood was pushed back, and his dark, short hair was plastered to his skull. Still, his face was handsome and rugged. She knew from earlier that his eyes were pale, icy blue and practically glowed against his darkly tanned skin.
The members of his team called him Frosty. Although the nickname initially made her think of cheerful snowmen, after two minutes in his presence, she understood the moniker. The guy’s nerves were made of pure ice.
Their pitifully small craft topped a massive swell, and she thought she caught sight of a black shape looming ahead. But then the rain squall around them intensified, and they slid down the back side of the swell into a black trough bordered by massive walls of water on all sides. Lord, the ocean was big. She felt tiny and insignificant in the face of these gigantic waves. She was not a particularly religious person, but a prayer entered her head now to whatever deity might hear her plea to please save them all from this insanity.
Runaway Ranch is coming…
I’m delighted to announce the sale of a new series to Harlequin Romantic Suspense about the Morgan clan of Runaway Ranch. As the family’s sons begin coming home from war, it will take every bit of Montana’s magic–and the love of a few good women–to make them whole again. The first four books in the series are scheduled for release starting in 2018. More details coming soon!
ACE IN THE HOLE finals in Daphne’s
Just found out that a fun book I wrote a while back, a M/M romance for Dreamspinner press that I wrote under the pen name, Ava Drake, finaled in the Daphne du Maurier contest for mystery and suspense. Am totally stoked! It’s a short, sexy romp that fans of M/M fiction will enjoy. Results of the contest will be announced in late July, but I’m just tickled to have been selected as a finalist. My warmest thanks to all the staff and judges who made this contest possible, and congratulations to my fellow finalists!
March 30, 2016
Pre-order THE DREAMING HUNT!
Available for pre-order NOW…the continuing adventures of a group of young heroes who dare to oppose the mighty Kothite Empire and wake an ancient king who can lead the lands to freedom…assuming they don’t die horribly first.
HER SECRET SPY is here!
Max is a spy with a secret, and Lissa’s a psychic with an uncanny gift. She’s the last person on earth he wants to be with, he’s the one man she feels safe with. When mobsters come calling at Lissa’s store, Max reluctantly breaks cover to save her, and she’s not about to let him get away. But can he hide his secrets from her as he falls for the alluring young woman who may be the key to his entire investigation? What secrets is she keeping from him as she reads him like an open book? Does he dare let her read his heart and does he dare look into hers?
October 7, 2015
REAL TALK ABOUT WHY MOST AUTHORS WON'T SUCCEED
The fact of the matter is that most authors won't succeed because they're not good enough. Boom. I said it. They're not good enough. For some reason, this seems to be the 600-pound gorilla in the corner that no one's willing to talk about.
Close to a half-million self published books will go up on Amazon this year, and the reality is that most of them aren't good enough to garner fans who would buy another book from that writer. You would think everyone knows that to be the truth, but I'm amazed and appalled by the number of writers I encounter who agree that it applies to the other guy, but NOT to them.
If you're not selling ANY books except those you've coerced your family, friends, and a few co-workers into buying, it's time to ask yourself the question of whether or not you're one of those writers who's not good enough yet to succeed.
I am the very first person to agree that a FEW excellent writers will just have bad luck or bad packaging or bad marketing that kills a great book, and it sells for crap. But MOST writers who claim to be one of these writers...I did say real talk...are delusional.
In the good old days of print publishing way back, say, ten years ago, writers had to submit their stories to publishers and have their story purchased before it saw the light of publishing day. Something like one in 5000 books made it out of the slush pile and onto book store shelves.
Was this always a fair filter? Certainly not. Great books didn't get bought because the publisher didn't know how to market them, or the author's voice just wasn't right for that particular editor, or other reasons. But I daresay that at least 4900 or so of those rejected manuscripts were rightfully rejected. Frankly, I think the number is closer to 4990, but I'm willing to give my fellow writers the benefit of the doubt.
In today's publishing environment, every last one of those 4900 books is now being self-published.
It worries me that writers don't understand the disservice they're doing to themselves by publishing their works before they've become good enough to earn fans and build a career. Once you've put a book out, particularly in ebook format, it's out there forever. In years to come, anyone can go back and read that sub-par book and have a chance to be turned off by it and decide not to read any more of your books.
Everything you do contributes to building your brand. When you put out bad books, the brand you're building is "WRITER OF BAD BOOKS".
Let's say you write a dozen novels, and six or eight books in, you figure out what the hell you're doing and start writing pretty decent stories. Readers who like your new stuff and going to go back and buy the crap from the early days, assuming it will hold up to the new stuff. Their enthusiasm evaporates, and now they won't recommend you to a friend over the water cooler at work. It's hard to give a recommendation that says, "Read this author, except only read this title and not that title, because some of Author X's stuff is great, but the rest is drek." The other guy at the water cooler won't remember all of that. He hears, "Author X. Writes drek."
I know everyone's shouting about how great it is to get to self-publish while you learn the craft and how cool it is that writing can pay for itself while you learn how to do it. I just heard someone crowing about what a great gig it was for these very reasons. To that person, I say, a) I doubt you'll make a decent living writing crap en route to writing something decent, b) if being a good writer were that easy, everyone would actually BE good writers, c) you're wrecking your brand, and on a purely personal note, d) you're clogging up the marketplace with crap that's preventing the decent books out there from being found.
I know it's going to be a wildly unpopular point of view, but I really think most authors would be better off writing their bad learning books and storing them in the safety of their own closets forever, rather than sharing them with the rest of us.
And yes, I have four manuscripts under my bed that will never see the light of day.
Author's Note: After I first posted this blog, it took under a minute for someone to post that I hate indy publishing and am a slave to NY print publishing. Impressive. I'll say it again. I think some of the BEST books being published today are being indy published and I wish them massive success. They're helping break the strangle hold that print publishing has held over publishing for far too long. But I stand by what I said. MOST self-published books aren't good enough to build a working career on. We're talking a half million books a year, here. 15 million total or something insane on Amazon right now. MOST of those are not selling and most of those writers are NOT making a living at it. Why is that? We all know the answer. Everyone's too afraid of being that author to answer the question truthfully. I'm just the moron who dared to say it out loud.
REAL TALK ABOUT WHY MOST AUTHORS WON’T SUCCEED
Now that I’ve got your attention and you’re already irritated, let’s have a little real talk, shall we?
The fact of the matter is that most authors won’t succeed because they’re not good enough. Boom. I said it. They’re not good enough. For some reason, this seems to be the 600-pound gorilla in the corner that no one’s willing to talk about.
Close to a half-million self published books will go up on Amazon this year, and the reality is that most of them aren’t good enough to garner fans who would buy another book from that writer. You would think everyone knows that to be the truth, but I’m amazed and appalled by the number of writers I encounter who agree that it applies to the other guy, but NOT to them.
If you’re not selling ANY books except those you’ve coerced your family, friends, and a few co-workers into buying, it’s time to ask yourself the question of whether or not you’re one of those writers who’s not good enough yet to succeed.
I am the very first person to agree that a FEW excellent writers will just have bad luck or bad packaging or bad marketing that kills a great book, and it sells for crap. But MOST writers who claim to be one of these writers…I did say real talk…are delusional.
In the good old days of print publishing way back, say, ten years ago, writers had to submit their stories to publishers and have their story purchased before it saw the light of publishing day. Something like one in 5000 books made it out of the slush pile and onto book store shelves.
Was this always a fair filter? Certainly not. Great books didn’t get bought because the publisher didn’t know how to market them, or the author’s voice just wasn’t right for that particular editor, or other reasons. But I daresay that at least 4900 or so of those rejected manuscripts were rightfully rejected. Frankly, I think the number is closer to 4990, but I’m willing to give my fellow writers the benefit of the doubt.
In today’s publishing environment, every last one of those 4900 books is now being self-published.
It worries me that writers don’t understand the disservice they’re doing to themselves by publishing their works before they’ve become good enough to earn fans and build a career. Once you’ve put a book out, particularly in ebook format, it’s out there forever. In years to come, anyone can go back and read that sub-par book and have a chance to be turned off by it and decide not to read any more of your books.
Everything you do contributes to building your brand. When you put out bad books, the brand you’re building is “WRITER OF BAD BOOKS”.
Let’s say you write a dozen novels, and six or eight books in, you figure out what the hell you’re doing and start writing pretty decent stories. Readers who like your new stuff and going to go back and buy the crap from the early days, assuming it will hold up to the new stuff. Their enthusiasm evaporates, and now they won’t recommend you to a friend over the water cooler at work. It’s hard to give a recommendation that says, “Read this author, except only read this title and not that title, because some of Author X’s stuff is great, but the rest is drek.” The other guy at the water cooler won’t remember all of that. He hears, “Author X. Writes drek.”
I know everyone’s shouting about how great it is to get to self-publish while you learn the craft and how cool it is that writing can pay for itself while you learn how to do it. I just heard someone crowing about what a great gig it was for these very reasons. To that person, I say, a) I doubt you’ll make a decent living writing crap en route to writing something decent, b) if being a good writer were that easy, everyone would actually BE good writers, c) you’re wrecking your brand, and on a purely personal note, d) you’re clogging up the marketplace with crap that’s preventing the decent books out there from being found.
I know it’s going to be a wildly unpopular point of view, but I really think most authors would be better off writing their bad learning books and storing them in the safety of their own closets forever, rather than sharing them with the rest of us.
And yes, I have four manuscripts under my bed that will never see the light of day.
Author’s Note: After I first posted this blog, it took under a minute for someone to post that I hate indy publishing and am a slave to NY print publishing. Impressive. I’ll say it again. I think some of the BEST books being published today are being indy published and I wish them massive success. They’re helping break the strangle hold that print publishing has held over publishing for far too long. But I stand by what I said. MOST self-published books aren’t good enough to build a working career on. We’re talking a half million books a year, here. 15 million total or something insane on Amazon right now. MOST of those are not selling and most of those writers are NOT making a living at it. Why is that? We all know the answer. Everyone’s too afraid of being that author to answer the question truthfully. I’m just the moron who dared to say it out loud.
August 30, 2015
Sleeping King Video Trailer!
Seriously. Did we write a book that cool?
August 14, 2015
SLEEPING KING Excerpt is Live!
The entire first chapter of THE SLEEPING KING is posted at Tor.com today for your reading pleasure (and I write long chapters!). Stop by and take a peek. Here’s the link :http://bit.ly/SleepingKingexcerpt Enjoy!
August 2, 2015
Great Pub Name Needed!
The new discussion forum is up and running at www.dragongcrest.com, (and it’s fantastic!) I’ve asked there for suggestions for a great pub name. Can be funny, ironic, silly, or plain obnoxious. If you’ve got a fave, I’ll collect them and set up a poll there for everyone to vote on. Come play!
