Jon Michaelsen's Blog: Ramblings, Excerpts, WIPs, etc., page 21

Guest Blog: Author of the very Popular Boystown Mysteries, Marshall Thornton

I first discovered Marshall Thornton’s Boystown series in the summer of 2013 – long after he’d originally published the first four novels; Boystown: Three Nick Nowak Mysteries, Boystown 2: Three More Nick Nowak Mysteries, Boystown 3: Two Nick Nowak Novellas and Boystown 4: A Time for Secrets. By the time of the release of Boystown 4, I had become familiar with Marshall’s mysteries, and decided to start at the beginning since the first full-length novel of the series had caught my attention. About this same time, Marshall had begun to release the first few books in the series via Audiobook, narrated by the incredible Brad Langer, and offered to me a promo-copy of Boystown 2 to review. Through Marshall’s words, Brad Langer made quirky, tough, rough around the edges, at times jaded, former Chicago cop turned private detective, Nick Nowak come to life, and I eagerly await each novel’s release in the series.

I got to interview Marshall for my Gay Mystery-Thriller-Suspense Fiction Facebook group in 2013 and reposted the interview in January 2016 with updates (interview), have written numerous reviews of both his novels & audiobooks, and got to finally such a warm, sweet man in person when we both attended a Mystery Writer’s of America seminar in Atlanta a couple years ago. Numerous novels in the Boystown series have been finalists for the prestigious Lambda Literary Award. Boystown 7: Bloodlines is being considered in the Gay Mystery category this year as well. Finalists for the 28th Annual Lambda Literary Awards is expected to be announced any day now. Good luck, Marshall!

There is so much more I’d love to share about Marshall and Nick Nowak, but instead of rambling on, I thought I’d share a recent blog post that says everything I would want and more. You can read it below.

How Far Will I Go?

Guest Blog by Marshall Thornton

Reposted with permission; originally posted February 24, 2016

One of the questions I get a lot about the Boystown series is, “How many books will there be?” Of course, since the question is about the future the most honest answer is, “I don’t know.” But at the same time, how many books to write and where to leave Nick Nowak is something I think about and obviously something that interests my readers so I thought I’d put down a few thoughts…

Typically, as I finish one book I get ideas about the next one. Boystown 8: The Lies That Bind came out a few days ago and I already have about fifteen percent of Boystown 9: Lucky Days written in the form of notes and first draft scenes. This is important as I have to keep track of the mystery arc in books 7-9 about Jimmy English, and of course the ongoing lives of the recurring characters. I imagine if I finish one of the books and have no ideas, or very few ideas, about the next book I’ll know that the end has arrived.

The first eight books cover the period from January 1981 through August 1984. I definitely want to do two more books set in 1984 and have one in mind for 1985. That would bring me up to eleven—Joseph Hansen, one of my idols, did twelve in his series. I hope that I’ll write more than eleven. I wouldn’t mind getting all the way to nineteen or twenty like Michael Connelly, another of my idols. It would be nice to take the books all the way to the first glimmers of hope in the AIDS epidemic, but that wasn’t until the mid-nineties, which right now is a long way off.

As a gay man who lived through the eighties there are so many stories from that period I feel I can tell. So many stories I think are still important. One of the most satisfying aspects of writing this series has been collecting the little bits of real life that I remember from that period and weaving them into the mysteries. Quite a few of the characters and situations I’ve touched on in the stories come from people I knew during the period, in many cases people who can no longer speak for themselves. Collecting those stories matters to me a great deal on a very personal level.

There are many ways to classify the Boystown series. I think it would be fair to include it as AIDS literature. Most of AIDS literature took place in the eighties and nineties, and most of it was a cry for help, a warning bell rung as loudly as possible. Writing about AIDS from this vantage point is a very different experience. I’m able to focus on the way very real people reacted to the crisis. Knowing that things improve, allows me to focus on the ways in which individuals reacted, sometimes heroically, sometimes not. Of course, AIDS is still an issue. It hasn’t gone away. Reminding people of how it began and how we got to where we are is something I find to be vital.

I think if the Boystown series were a romance series with mystery elements—as opposed to being the opposite of that—I would have would have stopped at two or three books as I find manufacturing “conflict” in a happy couple uninteresting. Some writers do it well; I don’t think I’m one of them. Several of the Boystown books have ended in a happy-for-now kind of way, but if Nick ever finds a truly happy ending it will likely mean the end of the series.

An important indicator of whether a writer should keep writing a series is sales. Not for financial reasons—certainly many writers do well writing multiple series of three or four books—but because each sale represents one or more readers. The last year has been very positive for the Boystown series. Boystown 7: Bloodlines opened better than any of the previous books, and even though it’s only been a few days it looks as though this year’s book is on tract to exceed that. Equally important is that last year the first book in the series actually sold more copies than it had since it was published five years before. The audience is finding the books and I’m so happy about that. With all of that said, I’d like to send out a big thank you to all who’ve bought and supported the series over the years. It means a lot.

EXCERPT: STAGE FRIGHT (The Jimmy McSwain Files) by Adam Carpenter

STAGE FRIGHT by Adam Carpenter (The Jimmy McSwain Files – book 3)

PROLOGUE

          Case file #101: THE FOREVER HAUNT

           He titled the thick file so because it was appropriate, the haunting unrepentant even on sunny days but mostly on dark nights when sleep would come and his nightmares consumed him. What lived inside the recesses of his mind were unsolved mysteries, but also deep in his aching heart, seemingly lodged there for forever. Being unable to close this case represented his own phobia, a fear that answers would always elude him. He had been fourteen when the deafening shot rang out, claiming the life of NYPD officer Joseph McSwain and leaving his son as empty a shell at the spent bullet. That son was thirty now, and on stormy nights when thunder rumbled across the sky and he tossed in bed alone, he heard that gunshot over and over. The blast would make him jump. He would awaken in a bath of sweat, the events of that warm spring day having come screaming back.

            The police—his father’s brethren–had never solved the murder, relegating the case to a steel file cabinet in the basement of some dusty precinct where it had grown, at least figuratively, cold. For Jimmy McSwain, his son, not now or never a cop but a private detective, had sworn to keep the heat on, and only when the truth was uncovered would he find peace. In the past year, he had redoubled his lone efforts, the tragic realization that fifteen years had passed fueling him. The senseless execution of NYPD officer Joseph McSwain remained as much a mystery now as it did then.

             And execution was how Jimmy defined it. Someone had wanted him dead.

             And someone knew something, still, and that person continued to remain quiet. A case-altering clue existed out there, it had to, waiting to be found. He just had to search in the right place. To find it, he was forced down to the lowest depths of the human condition, perhaps even to the highest ranks of the NYPD. Sometimes he felt they were one in the same.

            Jimmy felt he’d gotten close this past summer. A crime wave of robberies at Manhattan delis had mirrored the manner of his father’s death, but the suspect—a recent parole—had been shot dead during a tense hostage situation. Gunned down by Captain Francis X. Frisano of the 10th Precinct, an ambitious career cop with his own secret. Jimmy fought an attraction to him, even as they once spent a passionate night. But that relationship was over, another case of hope bled out by the blast of a gun. The suspect had died on the spot, never able to confess to being involved in the shooting years ago of Joseph McSwain. Since then, the case had grown colder still, as the city had boiled, as the heat and humidity of August raced to the top of the barometer.

            On this hot day, Jimmy McSwain, dressed only in a pair of shorts and sweating despite the hard-working air conditioner, sat on the floor of his office, really just a studio apartment on the second floor of a building owned by his uncle. Paddy Byrne ran his own pub downstairs, and the floorboards often failed to hold the raucous music and laughter at bay; one of the reasons Paddy allowed his nephew to use this space for his private detective business, and at quite the discount. Any other tenant might object to those late-night disturbances, but as Paddy explained, “You can’t complain, the rent is cheap.”

            “As cheap as that swill you serve as beer,” Jimmy had once shot back.

            “Talk to me that way again, I’ll have Maggie wash your mouth out with soap.”

            Maggie was Paddy’s sister, Jimmy’s mother. “Better than your beer.” 

            Paddy had been a much needed father figure throughout Jimmy’s teen years and as he hurtled toward his adult life. The two men could joke about anything, knowing their banter fed good times. And as much as Jimmy appreciated having his uncle a part of his daily life, he couldn’t replace the tough-as-nails, heart as big as Manhattan Joseph McSwain. No one could.

            Speaking of beer, Jimmy had a sweating green bottle at his side, Yuengling. He took a sip while he flipped through the recent articles he’d added to his father’s case file. They were from the Post and the Daily News, both of which had covered the deli robberies closely, and had, on July 4th, splashed across the front pages the bloody hostage situation which had ended Rashad Assan’s reign of terror. A photo of the day’s hero stared back at Jimmy: Frisano was dressed in his uniform, slightly disheveled from an afternoon of staving off a killer but still as sexy as ever. Regret wound its way around the strings of Jimmy’s soul, and he wondered, not for the first time, if he’d been hasty in dismissing Frisano from his life, and his bed.

            He stole a look at his iPhone and picked it up. He scrolled through his contacts, landing on Frisano’s name. Was there a reason he hadn’t deleted the man’s personal number? Was he holding onto it because he was secretly wishing that he would once again find comfort in the burly cop’s strong arms? Or because he was an influential captain in the NYPD and might one day be useful in finding out what really happened the morning Joseph McSwain was stolen from him? Because Jimmy couldn’t be sure of his motives, he set the phone back down and closed his eyes. Usually he saw only blackness, but today the image of Frisano unspooled before him, their time in an upstate motel when the only thing exploding had been their passion for each other. He could feel that sizzling kiss on his neck, the scrape of his whiskers while slowly unbuttoning his shirt…temptation leading them toward more.

            Jimmy’s eyes flashed open and suddenly time forced him back to the present.

            He rose from the floor, finished off his beer and tossed the empty bottle into a trash bin.

            Frustration filtered through his system, and he knew he had to do something. Anything.

            The summer had been quiet, case-wise. Two simple assignments where he had to trail two separate married men whose wives thought they were cheating; both suspicions turned out to be true Jimmy filed his reports, took the money, and wondered if anyone was really happy. But the final two weeks of August were proving to be quiet; maybe all of Manhattan was on vacation. Maggie and his pregnant sister, Meaghan, were still upstate at Peach Lake, staying at Grandma Hester’s cottage. Soon enough they would both return to work at the Calloway Theatre, since its new show was scheduled to begin previews on September 13th. His other sister Mallory was on vacation at some luxury resort. All that meant Jimmy was alone, rattling around his office or at the McSwain apartment over on Tenth Avenue, or just stopping during the late hour into Paddy’s Pub for a pint or two, as directionless as he was miserable.

            He hated August. Life was as still as the air.

            Jimmy McSwain needed something to jumpstart his heart.

            As he put away his father’s file, securing it into the metal cabinet inside the closet, he put on his sneakers and then headed out of the office. Craving company, maybe he’d just go down to Paddy’s and drown his sorrows. That changed when he reached the bottom of the staircase, the ring of his phone echoing in the dim hallway. He looked at the screen. “No Caller ID.” He still preferred to answer the call. Prospective clients often hid behind the curtain of anonymity.

            “This is Jimmy. How may I help you?”

            “Hello,” came a woman’s voice, accented, timid, uncertain. “This is Jimmy McSwain?”

            “As stated. Who is this?”

            “I have information for you, at least, I think I do.”

            Again he heard that uncertainty in her voice. Jimmy paused mid-staircase, not wanting to trip himself up. This call had his attention.

            “I’m listening,” he said.

            “My name is Seetha,” she said, “Seetha Assan.”

            It wasn’t the first name that stopped him in his tracks. It was the last name.

            “Tell me more.”

            “Rashad Assan was my brother,” she said. “I’d like to meet with you.”

            “Where and when,” he said, barely pausing between words.

            There was a pause, and then he heard, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have called.”

            “No…wait…”

            Did his voice betray his desperation?

            There was no reply. He looked at the screen and saw the call had ended. His heart raced as he stepped out onto Ninth Avenue and a busy summer afternoon. Cars and cabs backed up the traffic on the avenue, pedestrians passed by, immersed in their own lives. Countless souls, going through the motions of life, oblivious to what ailed Jimmy. Except there was one person out there who shared his pain. One person who maybe had access to that elusive clue he’d been seeking all summer, all his life.

            The call from the mysterious Seetha Assan had changed everything. The solution for the Forever Haunt was back on. Joseph McSwain, father, your killer will be found, Jimmy thought.

            He slipped on a pair of sunglasses, as much hiding as shading his expressive eyes, and then he allowed himself to be absorbed onto the crowded, steamy sidewalks of the city, his steps fueled with newfound confidence. Despite the humidity, he felt he could breathe again.

Case file #101: THE FOREVER HAUNT

Case Status: UNSOLVED

 

 

 

 

Exclusive Excerpt: Boystown 8: The Lies That Bind by Marshall Thornton

Boystown 8: The Lies That Bind

By Marshall Thornton

 

Chapter One

Chicago is famous for its wind, its snow, its frigid, bone-cracking cold. It’s not as well known for the one or two weeks each summer when the heat hits the high nineties, and the humidity grips you by the throat and squeezes. For those dog days, which almost always happen in August, we sweat, we overheat, we get red-faced and as angry as cats in a bathtub. Our brief summer heat waves explain why it’s actually a pleasure to wear an overcoat most of the year.

I’d cranked open all the windows in my tenth floor apartment. Joseph and I lay naked on my bed trying not to touch each other, while at the same time trying to spread our limbs so we weren’t touching ourselves either. Joseph had gotten us a plastic spray bottle and filled it with chilled water. Every so often we woke up and sprayed ourselves so the water would evaporate on our skin and cool us down.

The phone rang around three that morning. My first inclination was to not answer as there was a fifty-fifty chance it was a wrong number. Curiosity got me on the sixth ring, though. I pushed myself out of bed and aimed toward the living room. I hoped I’d get lucky and hear a stranger ask for Mary or Bobo or José. But then I picked up the phone and wasn’t lucky.

“Nick? Nick, I need your help.”

I tried not to recognize his voice. I tried to think of a good reason to just hang up. The last person in the world I wanted to be having a conversation with in the middle of the night was Christian Baylor, intrepid journalist and all around pain in the ass.

“Why can’t you come to my office in the morning like a normal person?”

“I need help now. Can you come over?”

I hadn’t seen Christian since April. There was a chance he was calling about a detective named Devlin who had hassled us for a while over the death of the Bughouse Slasher. There was also a chance he was just trying to get me to come over and fuck him.

“I need you, Nick. You have to—” His voice was TV movie urgent.

“No, actually, I don’t have to.”

“There’s a dead man in my bathroom.”

That stopped me. I had no idea whether to believe him or not. I wanted to not believe him. I wanted to call him a liar. But he did strike me as exactly the kind of person who’d end up with a dead man lying around the house.

“Why do you have a dead man in your bathroom?”

“He’s one of my neighbors. Someone shot him and he ran to my apartment, so I let him in and tried to help him. But I couldn’t. It was too late.”

“And the someone with the gun?”

“Took off.”

“So you decided to call me…”

“Yes.”

“Instead of the police?”

“I’m going to call them. I just thought it would be good to have a friend here when I do.”

Friend was pushing it. Still, I said, “Call them now. And I’ll come.”

“You will?”

“Call them.”

###

Christian lived in the only contemporary building on that block of Belden. It was about eight stories, red brick, and as architecturally bland as a cheese sandwich. It was about a half hour walk from my place. At that time of the morning it could take fifteen or twenty-minutes to get a cab and even longer to find a parking place if I drove, so I went ahead and hoofed it. When I got there thirty-five minutes later, it was no surprise to find an empty blue-and-white squad car sitting in front of the building with its lights flashing, next to a white van from the Medical Examiner’s office.

Someone had been nice enough to jam a phone book in the lobby door, so I let myself up to Christian’s fifth floor studio—well, close to his studio. When I got off the elevator I was stopped by a wall-sized patrol.

“I’m sorry, this area is closed,” he said.

In the elevator I’d decided to start this off on the wrong foot and had my keys ready in my hand. “I live down there,” I said, pointing at the door across from Christian’s.

“Are you just getting home?”

“Bartender.” I tried to look exhausted which wasn’t much of a stretch.

“You know the guy across the hall?”

“Not well.”

In a lowered voice, he asked, “He a faggot?”

I ground my teeth a little. Then I said evasively, “I try to keep to myself.”

He got a worried look on his face and I thought he was trying to decide whether he should let me by. In my days on the job I wouldn’t have let someone walk through a crime scene. When I set a perimeter it stayed set. But that didn’t mean this guy wasn’t going to let me by.

“This job, man. It’s getting more dangerous every day.”

I stared at him. Other than the fact that it was muggy as a swamp, I didn’t see what was so dangerous about standing in a hallway.

Without being asked, he explained, “There’s blood everywhere in there. Faggot blood.”

Oh. That. His fear didn’t faze me. Panic about AIDS had begun to reach the general population and all the wrong people were freaked out over all the wrong things. Doorknobs, toothbrushes, movie seats. The world was a continuing round of famine, war and genocide, but it was doorknobs that scared the shit out of people.

“I’ll just stick to my side of the hallway.”

He looked around as though someone might give him a yay or nay. Begrudgingly, he said, “All right. Go directly to your apartment.”

I walked down the hallway and stood in front of the door across from Christian’s. I looked over my shoulder. What I saw was disturbing. The patrol was right. Blood was everywhere. The door to the apartment was covered in a big splash of it. Honestly, it looked like someone had thrown a water balloon at the door and it had exploded…except it wasn’t water, it was blood. There was blood on almost every other surface I could see, handprints, splashes, smears; it was everywhere on the butter-colored hardwood floor. I didn’t see the medical examiner anywhere. I guessed he was in the bathroom with the body.

Underneath all that blood, the studio was preciously decorated with a twin-sized daybed covered in too many pillows sitting in front of the one wide window, a mod blue desk and a little cafe table with two metal chairs. The miniscule kitchen sat to the right of the front door. The bathroom was in the back to the left of the living room area.

In the center of the living room, Christian stood talking to another patrol, a thick, tough-looking woman in her late twenties. Christian was slight and too pretty for his own good. He looked like he’d been clubbing; he wore a yellow mesh shirt and a tight pair of jeans with clean, white Chuck Taylors. There wasn’t a drop of blood on him. If he’d tried to help the dead guy like he’d said, his help must not have gone much beyond shouting encouragement. Clearly, he hadn’t been anywhere near the guy while he was bleeding to death.

“Just go into your apartment, sir,” the Wall said. His plastic nametag told me his name was some kind of Slavic, beginning with a V and ended with a -vich. There were ten or twelve letters in between. The Wall was easier to remember.

I turned, wondering exactly how I was going to worm my way out of this. Suddenly the door in front of me opened. A scrawny, fifty-year-old woman in a flowered housecoat stared at me as though I had the word RAPE tattooed on my forehead and then yelled, “GO AWAY!” Before I could, she slammed the door in my face.

Behind me, I heard Christian yell, “Nick! You came!”

I turned fully to look at him, ignoring the glare I was surely receiving from the Wall. Christian hurried out into the hallway, his patrol close behind.

“I can’t believe this happened! It doesn’t make any sense.”

“Who are you, sir?” the female officer asked, her nametag said McCready. “You a neighbor?”

“No. Christian called me. Asked me to come.”

Without turning, I could feel that the Wall had moved in and was now breathing down my neck. I’d lied to him and I could feel his anger floating my way.

“Name?” McCready asked.

“Nick Nowak.”

I decided not to mention my profession since no one was paying me. But Christian had other ideas and told them, “He’s a private investigator.”

McCready looked me up, down and around. “Nowak? You have family on the job?”’

“I do.”

“Bridgeport?”

“That would be them.”

“Then you know this isn’t a social occasion. It’s not a party. Your friend doesn’t get to send out invites. You don’t have any business at our crime scene.”

I tried not to smile at her possessiveness. Someone had been murdered and the crime scene belonged to her. “Yes, ma’am. I’ll go stand down the hall.”

“I’d prefer you leave the building entirely,” she said. It really was preference. She didn’t have the right to ask me to leave the building completely. I would have happily gone home, though, except for the panic in Christian’s eyes.

“Do you want me to call a lawyer?” I asked him.

“I didn’t do anything.” Which was actually one of the better reasons to call a lawyer. I didn’t bother pointing it out, though. He was a big enough boy to make his own decisions.

“I’ll be right down here if you need me,” I told him pointing down the hallway

I turned to walk down the hall, and as I walked by the Wall he gave my shoulder a shove as though he didn’t think I’d be able to walk away from the scene on my own. I stumbled a few steps then righted myself. I took a position near the elevator and lit a cigarette. The Wall took a position in the middle of the hallway and puffed himself out in case I tried to slip by him again.

Belden was just over the line into the 18th police district. Harker’s district. Detective Bert Harker had been my lover from the spring of 1981 until he died in September 1982. Eighteen months. The two-year anniversary of his death was coming up in a month. He’d been gone longer than we’d been together. But I didn’t really have time to be thinking about that. I needed to be thinking about Christian Baylor, who Harker had brought into my life.

Since the apartment was in Harker’s old district, I held a faint hope that his former partner, Frank Connors, might be the detective showing up for this investigation. He wouldn’t be happy to see me, but he’d be likely to let me know what was going on.

Unfortunately, after I’d been standing in the hallway by the elevator for about three cigarettes—exchanging cold stares with the Wall—a black guy in his early forties got off the elevator. I could tell he was a detective right off. His ill-fitting, cheap suit and the mean glance he gave me were big clues.

One of the very few times I missed spending time with my family was the year before, when Harold Washington got elected mayor and appointed the first black police commissioner. I would have loved to see the looks on their faces. Having spent decades under the thumb of an Irish mayor and an Irish-dominated police force, I would have loved watching them get passed over for the blacks. Of course, in their view—and there was a bit of truth to it—they’d been getting passed over for the blacks since the seventies, when the department was put under court order to recruit and promote in a way that more accurately reflected the makeup of the city. In other words, more blacks. Whoever it was who’d just walked by me probably got his job due to the court order. I hoped he deserved it.

I decided to try conversation with the Wall. “Where are all the neighbors?”

“We told them to go back inside.”

“Anyone hear anything?”

“Most of them heard someone yell and then the gunshot. There was a lot of peephole peeping, but everyone stayed inside.”

“Just one gunshot?”

He got a look on his face, like he realized he’d already said too much. “What difference does it make?”

“It makes a lot of difference to the dead guy.”

After that, the Wall clammed up. Even halfway down the hall, I could hear that people were talking in Christian’s apartment. I just couldn’t hear what they were saying. I did know that whatever Christian was telling them was a bald-faced lie. What I didn’t know was why he was lying. And why he thought he needed me there. He seemed to be doing a bang up job of lying to the police without my help.

Christian told me his neighbor had been shot and ran to his apartment for help. Of course, I thought it was ridiculous that anyone would run to Christian for help. But beyond that there wasn’t any blood in the hallway. Well, any blood other than the blood that had been tracked out of the apartment into the hallway, including a few bloody footprints on the low-pile, butterscotch-colored carpet in front of Christian’s door. I didn’t know whether they belonged to the killer or the patrol officers. As I stood there trying to work that out, I realized there was a faint set of footsteps that came away from the door and continued down the hallway toward me. The footprints were nearly undetectable, fading more with each step. But they continued toward me, then went by me and down the hallway becoming fainter and fainter with each step. I took a few steps down the hallway to find out where they went.

The Wall asked, “Where are you going?”

I pointed at the footprints in the carpet at my feet. The Wall squinted, but he saw what I was showing him. We followed the footprints, which disappeared as we turned the corner on the far side of the elevator. Halfway down a short hallway a garbage chute sat about four feet up the wall: a metal door, eighteen inches square with a handle smeared in blood.

The Wall reached out like he was going to open the chute and I instinctively said, “Don’t touch it.” He gave me a dirty look, mainly because I was right. There was blood, so there would be fingerprints. “Get the detective.”

“I’m not leaving you here.”

“Do you want me to go get the detective while you wait here?”

He pulled me by the arm back to where I’d been standing and then continued down the hall to the door of Christian’s apartment. He kept his eyes on me while speaking into the apartment. “Detective White? There’s something you need to see.”

The Wall kept looking at me and I managed to keep a straight face over the irony of a black detective being named White. The name was like the punch line to a joke that didn’t quite land. Detective White came out of the apartment and followed the Wall down the hallway. They breezed passed me and I followed them.

“Footprints,” the Wall said, pointing at the carpet, then at the garbage chute. “Smudge.”

“Go down to the basement and find out what this kid dropped into the chute,” White said.

The Wall gave him a concerned look. “Who’s gonna watch this guy?”

“I’ll keep an eye on him.”

Unhappy, the Wall turned and went around the corner to the elevator. White looked me over and said, “Your friend is telling a bucket full of lies.”

“I’d offer to tell him to stop, but I have the feeling he lies to me, too.”

“Do you know why he’s lying?”

“Not a clue.”

He shifted uncomfortably in his suit. It was about two sizes too big. I wondered if he’d recently lost a lot of weight and hadn’t bothered with a new wardrobe just in case the diet didn’t stick.

“Officer McCready says you have family on the job.”

“I do. I was on the job myself in the mid-seventies.” I pulled one of my business cards out of a pocket; it wasn’t too badly crumpled so I gave it to him. “Nick Nowak.”

“Monroe White,” he said, shaking my hand. He glanced at my card, “You’re a private dick.”

Dick was an old-timey nickname for a private eye. I figure he used it since it was an opportunity to call me a dick to my face. “Investigator. Yes.”

“Why’d you leave the CPD?”

“Creative differences.”

I could tell he didn’t like my answer. His dark eyes got a shade darker. “What are you doing here?”

“Christian called me.”

“He your boyfriend?” That made me wonder if he already knew why I wasn’t on the job.

“No.”

“That offend you? Me thinking you’re a fag?”

“My boyfriend is an ex-priest. He’s teaching me forgiveness.”

“You fucking this one on the side, then?”

“No. I’m not.”

You would think that who’s fucking who was not the most important thing to figure out in a murder investigation, but you’d be wrong. It’s depressing how often love and death get tangled up together.

“What did Christian say to you on the phone?”

“That his neighbor got shot and ran to his apartment for help, and then died in his bathroom.”

White raised an eyebrow. “You believe him?”

“No. Someone came to the door, your victim answered and he was shot there at the door. He retreated into the apartment to get away or try to stop the bleeding. I’m only guessing, I haven’t been in there, but I doubt Christian was anywhere near here when it happened.”

“Unless he was the one with the gun.”

“The shooting took place in a closed space. He’d be covered in blood.”

“He took his time. Called you. Maybe he took a shower.”

“Isn’t the body in the bathroom?”

“There are a hundred showers in this building. He didn’t have to get cleaned up in there.”

“Can you prove he took a shower somewhere else?”

“We got time,” he said and walked away from me.

I went back to the spot where I’d been standing to smoke and swelter. I wore a pair of jeans and a blue Cubs T-shirt that Joseph bought me when we went to a game. It was too much clothing. If I thought stripping down to my BVDs would have helped the situation I’d have done it.

The elevator pinged and the door opened. The Wall came out delicately holding a snub-nosed 38 by the barrel with two fingers. He walked quickly down to the apartment. The whole thing was beginning to annoy me. White was already focused on Christian as the main suspect. That was a mistake. Or at least my gut said so. Christian wasn’t the type to murder.

But it was more than that. As I stood there, I began to see little things that didn’t add up. If Christian did shoot the dead guy why did he do it at the front door? Given the mess the blood made on the door—and not in the hallway—it made sense that the guy answered the door and someone shot him. Why would Christian come home and shoot someone in his own doorway?

And why was he so clean? If he did murder the guy and then went somewhere else for a shower, then why not tell the lie that he’d been out and just come home to find this dead guy in his apartment? That was a story that fit the way he looked. The story he told me, that he’d tried to help his neighbor, didn’t fit with the way he looked. If he had murdered the guy, the last thing in the world he should do was take a shower and say he tried to save him. He’d washed the proof of his story away.

Christian was annoying me as much as White. If he didn’t kill the guy, and I was pretty sure he didn’t, then why was he lying? Was there something bigger going on? Something scarier? Something worse than being suspected—

Officer McCready pulled Christian out of the apartment. He was handcuffed and his hands were covered by brown paper bags. The kind mothers pack with lunch for their kids. As they walked by, I said, “Christian, you need a lawyer. Tell them you want a lawyer.”

But he didn’t. He just gave me a confused look that said he didn’t understand what was happening.

 

Marshall Thornton’s Website:

http://marshallthorntonauthor.com/

Exclusive Excerpt: The Dirt Peddler (a Dick Hardesty Mystery) by Dorien Grey

Exclusive Excerpt  – Available now from Untreed Reads – first time available in a decade!

The Dirt Peddler

by

Dorien Grey

 

Ah, Hughie’s. I hadn’t been there, I don’t think, since I met Jonathan. But it hadn’t changed. Hughie’s never changed. It was exactly the same when I walked in at four fifteen—early as ever—as it had been the first time I wandered in for a beer right after I’d first opened my office.

Bud, the bartender, saw me come in and automatically reached into the cooler for a frosted mug, drew me a dark draft, and had it on the bar by the time I reached it.

“How’s it goin’, Dick?” he asked, as though I’d been in yesterday afternoon.

“Fine, Bud. You?”

He just shrugged, took my money, and moved off to the register.

The place was starting to fill up. The hustlers—those who hadn’t already been there most of the day—were drifting in from the streets in anticipation of the imminent arrival of the johns as the local offices and businesses closed. I recognized a couple of them, but most were new; the turnover rate in hustling was always high, and I didn’t care to speculate as to the reasons.

One of the guys my crotch had been concentrating on—a really good-looking, rough-around-the‑edges blond started looking, then moving in my direction.

Shit! Now what’ll you do? my mind asked.

Yeah, like this is your first time, another mind-voice responded.

Luckily, at that moment I felt a hand on my shoulder and turned to see Glen O’Banyon standing beside me. As with the other times we’d met at Hughie’s, this was not the executive tower, dressed-to-impress lawyer; this was a guy in a baseball cap, a Green Bay Packers sweatshirt, and pair of pretty threadbare Levi’s. Not one person in twenty he saw every day would readily recognize him.

“Thanks for meeting me, Dick.” He kept one hand on my shoulder while he signaled Bud with the other.

The blond number had stopped in mid step when he saw O’Banyon come up, and looked at me with one raised eyebrow. I gave him a quick half smile and a shrug, and he turned and went back to where I’d first spotted him. My crotch was not happy, though the rest of me was guiltily relieved.

“No problem. It’s good to see you in civvies.”

Bud had come over and O’Banyon waited until he’d ordered before turning to me with a grin.

“Yeah. I really need to get out more.”

He scooped a bill out of his pocket and exchanged it for the beer Bud had brought him.

“So what can I do for you?” I knew full well this wasn’t strictly a social get-together.

He pushed himself away from the bar, picked up his beer, and gestured for me to follow him to the far corner of the front of the bar, where no one else had gathered yet. We set our drinks on one of the tall, steering-wheel-sized tables flanked by two high stools.

“I may have a case for you.”

“Great!” I didn’t have to ask or say anything else; I knew he’d tell me.

He took a long swig of his beer and pulled one of the stools closer to sit down.

“I’ve got a client with a whole shitload of problems, most of which he brought on himself. Strictly between you and me, he’s a pain in the ass. Less than a year ago he was a very junior executive at Craylaw and Collier. Today people are falling all over themselves to cozy up to him, and his ego has completely run off with what little common sense he might have had to begin with.”

“And what did he do to deserve all this sudden attention?”

O’Banyon sighed, took another swig of his beer and set the bottle on the table.

“He wrote a book.”

He sat there watching me in silence for a moment until I said, “Not one titled Dirty Little Minds, by any chance?”

“Dirty Little Minds,” he said.

Interesting, I thought. “And where might I fit into all this?”

O’Banyon smiled. “Oh, we’re just getting started. And by the way, I know I don’t have to even mention that I’m telling you all this with the full confidence that none of it will go any further than between the two of us.”

“Of course.”

He stared out the window for a moment, then said, “Tunderew is currently working on a second book, which promises to be an even bigger blockbuster than his first. He’s got every major publisher in the business practically throwing advance offers at him.”

“What’s the new book about?”

O’Banyon shook his head. “He won’t say, but he’s got a lot of people very nervous. As you probably know, Craylaw and Collier is a very big outfit with its fingers in a lot of pies. It’s primarily a consulting firm, but they have branches throughout the county doing public relations, financial planning, you name it. By no small coincidence, it handled the P.R. for Governor Keene’s last gubernatorial campaign. Tunderew left the company shortly before his book came out. I wouldn’t be surprised if he wasn’t keeping some sort of little black book on some of C&C’s other clients.”

Exclusive Excerpt: Amber Alert by Barbara Winkes

Amber Alert

by Barbara Winkes

Blurb:

When her two-year-old niece is kidnapped, Major Crimes Detective Ann McCoy uses every bit of leverage she has with Agent Cal Davis to stay on the case. More children are missing. Their parents, like Ann’s sister and her wife, are desperate for answers. While the investigators look at the disturbing possibilities, a pattern emerges. They find an organization hidden in plain sight that has no boundaries when it comes to pushing their agenda- even at the cost of harming families and children.

Exclusive Excerpt:

The world has lost its colors, or so it seems to Chrissie in her medicated state. Voices, faces, emotions are all tinged in grey. She didn’t want to calm down or relax, fall for a treacherous illusion, but she just couldn’t stop shaking and sobbing. She’d seen the fear on Rachel’s face and that made her give in. She agreed to lie down for a bit, and Rachel stayed with her. Rachel is different. She doesn’t show a lot of emotion in a crisis, so when Chrissie realized how scared she was, for her, she let the doctor do his job. There’s no time to be scared for each other, when the fear for Rosie takes over every conscious thought. Chrissie doesn’t tell anyone she feels even worse in the cocoon of drugs, like she’s walking around in a nightmare that she can’t wake up from. She prays that the man who took Rosie won’t harm her. There will be a call, a demand for a ransom, they will pay it and get her back. Rachel’s Dad has contacted his bank, and they are ready to act, whatever plan the police have. When is the man going to make the damn call? Something springs to mind, and she sits up, looking at Rachel in alarm. “I snapped at her this morning! Why did I do that? What if we never see her again?” “You didn’t snap. Don’t do that.” Rachel brushes her hand over her hair gently, a tiny bit of comfort in a reality that has shifted in a disturbing way. “Rosie will be here soon.” “She’s scared around strangers.” “Yes, I know,” Rachel says, her arms tightening around Chrissie. “I’m so sorry.” “Chrissie, don’t. It’s not your fault. It’s nobody’s fault.” She can’t just lie here and wait. It’s not fair to Rosie, or Rachel. She needs to stay awake, alert, preferably without another nervous breakdown. It’s hard, because whenever Chrissie pictures what happened in the park, her eyes well up and her heart clenches painfully. She can’t be without Rosie, and neither can Rachel. “I want to get up and call Ann. Maybe she knows more.” “If she did,” Rachel says softly, “don’t you think she would have called already?” Reason is the last thing Chrissie wants to deal with right now. “Did we really think of all the parents from the center?” “I gave the police all the names. Not that I think any of them would kidnap a little girl.” “What if it’s a relative of one of them, someone who needs money?” Chrissie thinks it’s not such a bad theory, and she’s continually warming to it. They know all the parents who send their kids to the center. They are good people with whom she and Rachel have shared proud moments, worries and cookie recipes. By proxy, Chrissie is willing to grant any relative of theirs can’t be pure evil. It could be a glitch of reason, a desperate situation maybe that has driven them to commit a crime. Make no mistake–once they find the man, she still wants to kick him, hard, where it hurts the most. It seems only fair. “The police will look into that,” Rachel reminds her. “True!” Chrissie says with renewed resolve that’s somehow breaking through the drugged haze she’s been in. “They’ll go through credit records and stuff. If one of them has an SUV like Deb saw, they’ll find him real soon.” “I’m sure.” Rachel smiles at her, as they hold on to each other’s hand. Chrissie can tell how hard it is for her. “I love you,” she says. “I love you too.” Rachel leans forward against Chrissie’s shoulder, trembling. She’s crying quietly. If there’s anything that will get them through this, it’s this certainty. Rosie will be fine. That is all there is to say, or think.

* * * *

The trace has been set up, but there has been no ransom call yet as time is ticking away. I don’t need anybody to tell me this is not good. There are dumb, small-time criminals who think a kidnapping is easy money. There are people so desperate to have a child that they break the law in order to try and have one. Then, there’s the snake-pit. Cal has been quick to set up a task force, and his people are all highly skilled professionals. Well, so are we at Major Crimes. There are cops out in the field to organize volunteers for a search. The media has been informed, and an Amber Alert has been issued. On the other hand, the colleagues at Chrissie’s and Rachel’s house are instructed to keep reporters away from them. They want to control what information is given out at this point. Cal’s already been in a shouting match with Rachel’s Dad, because he wants a TV appearance in order to appeal to the kidnapper. Here, within the core of the investigation taking place at headquarters, I’ve been stuck with a dozen others, mostly FBI. They don’t sugarcoat the possibilities. They’re talking all possible areas, pedophiles, sex trafficking networks. I want to shoot somebody. Cal’s look at me doesn’t quite say “You asked for this”, but it’s “I told you so” at best. I square my shoulders. He’s right, I asked to be here, and I’m going to do my job. “Are those theories, worst case scenarios, or do you have actual proof that any of those groups is operating in this area?” I ask, proud of how calm my voice is, not giving away the rage inside. Special Agent Martinez points to the map behind her. “Unfortunately, hard proof is lacking. What we do know is that there’s been an increase in missing children. We’ve been reaching out to informants and undercover agents to identify any new players–” I feel sick at her choice of words, even though I don’t blame her. If I didn’t know Rosie, the use of the same detached language would be instinctive. “No luck so far.” I struggle to make sense of her words. I know they have their statistics. Those numbers aren’t conclusive to determine that the criminal landscape has changed, is there? “How long until you know for sure?” “Hard to say.” She casts me an apologetic glance. “We’ve seen these numbers increase over the past two months, within a rather wide area. We don’t know yet what this means.” I feel lightheaded. Two months? No. We need results sooner than that. There’s no way–I stop myself. I’m a guest here, and I’m not invited to criticize their proceedings. “How many?” She points to the map again. “There were five in this area in a matter of weeks, children between the ages of three months and six years. Two were taken from their homes. Before you ask, there’s no relation whatsoever between these families. This is definitely orchestrated by professionals.” “The kindergarten teacher saw the kidnapper. I wouldn’t call that a pro job.” Martinez shrugs. “We’d appreciate it if they started making mistakes this early in the game.” The cop in me agrees. Never mind it was my first impulse to shake her. It’s not Martinez’ fault–she is doing her job. Words have a different meaning when a case concerns you personally, and I don’t like the word “game”. My sensibilities don’t matter here though. We’re on the same side. I press my hand against my forehead, feeling a massive headache building. Where can we go from this? I give myself the answer. Initial responses are in motion. We’ll have to wait, for a ransom, a witness calling in, anything. I recall the last time I’ve seen Rosie, only yesterday, about to fall asleep on my lap. She’s such a smart and happy child. Her family and the little group in the daycare center are her whole world. She must be terrified. Hell, I am terrified, because with each minute ticking by, I have to give up the idea that the person who took her will show any regard whatsoever for her well-being. Whatever happens, though, that person will have to answer to me, and there’s going to be hell to pay.

Purchase links:

Ebook: http://www.amazon.com/Amber-Alert-Bar...

Print:

http://www.amazon.com/Amber-Alert-Bar...

Website:

barbarawinkes.blogspot.ca

Catching up with the Multi-Lammy Finalist author, Marshall Thornton

It’s been two years since I first interviewed, Marshall Thornton, the author of the very popular BOYSTOWN series. This week, I’ve decided to share the same interview with you again, and provide some updates to what Marshall has been up to with the Boystown series.

Where do you live? City, town, island, country?

I live in Long Beach, California about a block from the beach. I’ve been in Southern California for twenty-five years. Before that I lived in Chicago.

Writer’s rarely like to toot their own horn; seriously! What would you say is your greatest accomplishment?

Well, aside from simply still being alive, I’d have to say that my Boystown mystery series is what I’m most proud of. I suppose, I’m also quite proud of the fact that I put myself through college; several times.

Without getting too personal, can you share a little about your home life?

I live in a very large apartment with two roommates, two step-dogs and one pampered pedigree cat.

What inspires and challenges you most in writing?

I think the best writing advice I’ve ever seen is to write something you’d like to read. I find that both inspiring and challenging.

You’ve probably answered this question a hundred times, but please indulge as our readers (and fellow writers) would like to know: Do you fly by the seat of your pants when writing, or plot out your storylines?

It depends on the project, but generally I start an outline before I begin a project and then never finish it. Sometimes if I loose my way, I stop and re-outline. I will admit that the first five Boystown books have an arc that was unplanned and completely seat of your pants writing. I have actually thought through an arc for the next three or four books… I don’t want to trust in luck twice.

How do you deal with the constant distractions such as blogs, FB, promo and real life (like that dreaded daytime job)?

I’m a multitasker by nature. I don’t have the patience to just do one thing at a time. As I write this I’m also checking my sales numbers, playing World of Warcraft, and considering ways in which our government could become functional.

How do you sustain serialized, continuing characters? What are your thoughts about print versus audio book?

I think the best series, whether in book form or on television, are stories in which the main character has an unsolvable internal conflict at the center of their character. An easy example of that would be the TV comedy Everybody Loves Raymond. Raymond is a guy who hates his family and loves them at the same time. That’s a problem without a solution. In my series, as in many detective series, the main character’s central conflict has to do with the desire for justice and the inability to get justice in an unjust world; in a gay mystery series this internal conflict mirrors the external conflict of our community’s fight for justice.

There are some big differences between audio and print. With audio, I think there’s a temptation to spell everything out for the listener and I’m trying to avoid that. I prefer the listener feel that they’re being told a story rather than having a story acted out for them. Some of the books I’ve listened to go too far with elaborate voices and characterizations; personally, I have trouble finishing those.

Your first book in the Nick Nowak series Boystown: Three Nick Nowak Mysteries was a 2012 Lambda Literary Award finalist. Can you share how you learned your novel was a finalist and how you felt?

Honestly, I don’t remember how I found out. I think I saw that the finalists had been announced and went to their site and saw my book. Of course, it felt great. I think I’ve wanted a Lammy since I first heard about them twenty-five years ago – years before I was even writing fiction… It was very exciting to come close.

After your book(s) come out, have you ever had to deal with homophobia, and if so, what form has it taken?

No, I wouldn’t say I’ve dealt with any homophobia. Or at least, not homophobia with a big H. The books are pretty clearly labeled so I wouldn’t expect to. I’ve had a little pushback from some m/m romance readers who aren’t comfortable with Nick’s unrepentant promiscuity. But then, I’m not trying to write that kind of book and I think readers have figured that out by this point.

On behalf of the Facebook Gay Mystery-Thriller-Suspense Fiction Group, thank you for answering the questions. Huge congratulations on your Boystown 6: From the Ashes  being selected finalist in the 2015 Lambda Literary Awards in the Gay Mystery category. Good luck with Boystown 7: Bloodlines for the 2016 Lammys!

Thank you!

Will you share with us a little about your current release and/or WIP?

The eighth book of the best-selling Boystown Mystery Series begins with a phone call in the middle of the night. Private investigator Nick Nowak is pulled into the troubled world of freelance journalist, and all around pain-in-the-ass, Christian Baylor. When Christian can’t stop lying about the corpse in his bathroom things slip slowly out of control. Meanwhile, Nick’s relationship with former priest Joseph Biernecki takes an unexpected turn and the Federal case against Jimmy English proceeds toward trial

Boystown 8: The Lies that Bind is available for pre-order currently and will be released February 25, 2016.

Have any questions to ask Marshall? Feel free to post them here and Marshall will be happy to respond!

 

Exclusive Excerpt: Love and Punishment by Susan Mac Nicol

(Currently on sale for $0.99 via Amazon!)

Blurb:

On the search for a serial killer, Detective Anthony Parglietto and Flynn Parker learn that every man must make a choice: to kill, to live, to love.

FROM DARKNESS

AND LIGHT

Someone is leaving a trail of bodies throughout London, and Detective Anthony Parglietto is determined to end the violence. Then he’ll return to the man he loves.

Tough, street-savvy, and used to dealing with lowlifes, Flynn Parker is the last person Anthony thinks he has to protect. Then the Bow-Tie Killer strikes close to home and the world turns upside down. Right is wrong, black is white, and a policeman might become a monster. But in the name of love, justice must be served. In the name of love, pain can be endured. In the name of love, a man can taste the very essence that defines him.

 

Excerpt: 

Detective Inspector Anthony Parglietto strode around the kitchen in Flynn’s home. He ran a large, tanned hand through mid-length, curly black hair as he growled into his mobile phone.

“Jesus, Rupert, I’ve told you already! He’s fucking gone, and all I have is this bloody cryptic note signed BTK, and we all fucking know who that is. Yes, that one. I’ve just sent a picture of Flynn off to your phone. His satchel is still here, the front door was open—that’s not like him at all. He’s normally ultra-cautious. You know how bloody paranoid he is.”

Anthony looked down at the note on the kitchen table, pinned there by a full tomato sauce bottle, a condiment he knew Flynn refused to have in his kitchen. Anthony had never even been able to get him to buy it for his own bloody fish and chips, for God’s sake, so the bottle must mean something.

As he’d arrived at Flynn’s basement flat off the street around eleven-thirty p.m., Anthony had seen the open front door. He’d made his way inside. Flynn’s old, beaten satchel in which he stored all manner of things was sitting on the kitchen counter, with his mobile in it. His laptop bag was at the side of the kitchen table. Flynn’s house keys were on the tabletop. The note had been sitting on the table and Anthony had glanced at it, thinking Flynn had to dash out quickly and left him a note. The handwritten words on the cream note paper had frozen his blood.

Anthony. I have your little fuck buddy. I’ll send him back once I’m finished with him, but he might not be in the same mint condition. Sorry about that. You might just have to have sloppy seconds tonight. Your buddy, BTK.

He’d not touched the note, just called the station and told them to get the Scene of Crime team down here fucking quickly, midnight or not. Once he’d hung up, he’d had time to process the chilling words, fearing what they meant. Then he’d found another note, addressed to Flynn on the same cream-coloured notepaper, lying on the floor by the sink.

By the time he reads this, you’ll be mine. Inside and out.

The two bits of paper had sent Anthony spinning into a spiral of frustration and fear. He stood now in agonised helplessness, his broad-shouldered figure gazing out into the darkness beyond. Anthony Parglietto was forty-two years old, six-foot-four and muscled like a boxer, with an explosive Italian temper just like his mother’s.

The Criminal Investigation Department—the Homicide and Serious Crime unit, in fact—had been his home now for the past nine years. He grimaced as he gazed out of the window. All he could think about now was that the monster he was hunting had Flynn in his clutches. Flynn of the cheeky smile and pale blue icy eyes and a nose for trouble—both causing it and getting into it.

He strode impatiently to the front door and peered out into the street above. It was quiet. Still no SOC team. SOC were usually quick to get to the crime scene but Anthony had no time to wait when Flynn was in mortal danger. Street lights flickered and ebbed undecidedly. Anthony muttered an expletive as he stalked back into the kitchen, tapping his fingers impatiently against his thigh. Close to ten minutes later, he heard the sound of a commotion outside. He walked impatiently over to the door, once again looking up into the street. The detective saw the fat, waddling form of Joe MacGrew, dressed in his white pull-on suit, and his assistant, Maddy Glover, exit their van. Anthony double-timed to the top of the stairs and waved his arms at the pair. They looked at him and Joe nodded. The couple approached, both looking tired and bleary eyed.

Joe clapped a hand on Anthony’s shoulder as he walked down the stairs and past him into the flat. “Anthony, don’t worry. We’ll find him. The rest of the team are on their way.”

Joe walked past Anthony and into the kitchen and looked around, shrewd eyes assessing the situation.

Despite his dread, Anthony felt reassured. Joe and Maddy were among the best at what they did and they’d find something. They had to.

“Is this the note?” Joe asked quietly. He took a swift look around the room, keen eyes noting the layout and no doubt documenting the tableau set before him. “Have you taken a look around yourself? Find anything you want to tell me about?”

Anthony nodded. “Just the notes and the sauce bottle. It doesn’t belong to Flynn. He won’t have it in the house. And there’s another note too. I found it on the floor.” He frowned at Joe’s look. “Don’t worry. I picked it up with a piece of cling wrap. My prints aren’t on it. I’m not a fool, Joe. I’ve been doing this for a while.”

He watched as Joe and Maddy did what they did best, all the time feeling a sense of complete helplessness that he could do nothing useful himself yet. Joe laid his kit out on the kitchen table as Maddy picked up the tomato sauce bottle in her gloved hands, examining the bottle.

“It’s not a new one. It’s been refilled from the looks of it.” She twisted the cap, lifting the bottle to her nose. Her face paled as she looked at Joe grimly.

“This is blood.”

She dipped a cotton bud in the substance and took out her little spray bottle of luminol. Anthony watched in trepidation as the bud turned a greenish blue. He knew all too well what that meant. He paled, bile welling up in his throat that he swallowed, feeling its acidic sting as it went down.

“Jesus Christ. Human blood?”

She shook her head, her face grave. “I won’t know until we get it back to the lab for microscopic analysis. But even if it is, that doesn’t mean it’s Flynn’s. You need to keep calm.”

But her voice sounded uncertain. Anthony passed a shaking hand over his eyes.

 

Buy Links

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Love-Punishme...

http://www.amazon.com/Love-Punishment...

http://boroughspublishinggroup.com/bo...

http://boroughspublishinggroup.com/bo...

Website:

http://www.susanmacnicol.net

Exclusive Excerpt: DRAMA MUSCLE (a Nicky and Noah Mystery) by Joe Cosentino

 

a comedy/mystery/romance novel by JOE COSENTINO from Lethe Press

 

Congratulations to Joe Cosentino for winning Best Contemporary Novel, Best Mystery Novel, Best Crime Novel, and Best Humorous Novel of 2015 for DRAMA QUEEN, the first Nicky and Noah mystery published by Lethe Press, in the Divine Magazine Readers’ Poll Awards!

Blurb:

It could be lights out for college theatre professor Nicky Abbondanza. With dead bodybuilders popping up on campus, Nicky, and his favorite colleague/life partner Noah Oliver, must use their drama skills to figure out who is taking down pumped up musclemen in the Physical Education building before it is curtain down for Nicky and Noah. Complicating matters is a visit from Noah’s parents from Wisconsin, and Nicky’s suspicion that Noah may be hiding more than a cut, smooth body. You will be applauding and shouting Bravo for Joe Cosentino’s fast-paced, side-splittingly funny, edge-of-your-seat entertaining second novel in this delightful series. Curtain up and weights up!

Excerpt:

A half hour later, Noah and I (wearing dress shirts, chinos, and blazers), stood in the Bodybuilding Department office in front of the department office assistant’s desk. We looked at one another in surprise as the gray-haired, elderly woman behind the desk snored loudly, perched over her computer monitor. Professor Van Granite, who was much younger than the office assistant (and me), noticed our confusion.

“Mary has worked in the Physical Education building for fifty-five years,” said Granite. He winked at me. “That’s twenty years older than you, Nicky!”

“Why doesn’t she retire?” I asked.

Granite responded, “Because she gets insomnia at home, and at Mary’s age, she needs her sleep.” He nudged my side. “Most older people do.” Then he hooked his muscular arm with Noah’s and stood behind me. “Age before beauty, Professor Abbondanza.”

Luckily for Van Granite, Mary’s snoring drowned out my response.

Department Head Brick Strong’s windowless office in the Bodybuilding section of the Physical Education building reminded me of the custodian’s office in my grade school. Professor Strong’s rickety desk sat between a large drain pipe and an overflowing trash can.

The middle-aged ex-military man ran his thick fingers through his crew cut as he invited each of his guests to sit on rusty metal folding chairs assembled around his desk like cannons surrounding a target. Brick sat behind his desk on an old black chair perched on four squeaky wheels. Clockwise around Professor Strong sat Professor of Bodybuilding Cheryl Stryker, Professor of Bodybuilding Van Granite, my handsome Noah, yours truly, and Detective Manuello.

Though the Bodybuilding faculty wore sweat clothes, the bulges and curves of their formidable muscles were visible through the thick fabric.

Granite cased Noah’s body like a photocopy machine, until I caught Granite’s eye and he looked away—at my crotch. Then he checked himself out in the mirror on the wall. Obviously liking what he saw, Granite flexed his giant biceps, then ran a hand through his chestnut-brown hair. If he had been a student in the bodybuilding competition, I would have cast him as Narcissus.

“Thank you all for coming.” Dressed in a wrinkled gray suit, Manuello pulled at one of the folds of flab hanging over his thick belt. “As you know, this meeting is about the death of bodybuilding student Jonathan Toner.”

“What do you know so far, Detective?” asked Brick Strong in authority mode.

Manuello rubbed his wide nose. “The cause of death was a heart attack.”

Thinking of the numerous muscles on Jonathan’s petite frame, I asked, “Did Jonathan Toner die from taking steroids?”

Brick Strong’s crew cut nearly hit the moldy light bulb over his head. “Absolutely not! We don’t permit our students to use steroids.”

“Do you test them?” I asked.

I obviously had hit a nerve.

The department head said, “I say no steroids, and the students know that means no steroids.”

“I’ll have to try that with my students regarding texting during class,” I said with a nudge to Noah’s arm.

Manuello turned to me in annoyance. “Professor Abbondanza, why are you and Professor Oliver working in this department?”

Since Noah and I helped solve a series of murders in our Theatre Department last academic year, Manuello had a soft spot for us—where he sat.

Noah waved his hands theatrically. “Nicky and I are adding dramatic elements to this year’s student bodybuilding competition.”

“I’m sure,” Manuello answered with eyes raised to his bushy eyebrows. “The initial toxicology report showed something in Toner’s blood. The forensic team is doing further investigation, but they know it isn’t steroids or testosterone.”

Granite flashed his green eyes. “Is there anything else, Detective?” Glancing again at his reflection in the mirror, he added, “I’d like to fit in a workout before my morning class.” His gigantic pectoral muscles contracted under his skintight green sweatshirt as Granite said to Noah, “Care to join me, Professor Oliver?”

“Noah doesn’t like working out,” I explained with dagger eyes aimed at Granite.

Granite responded as if helping himself to sloppy seconds, “How about you, Abbondanza?”

After removing Granite’s thick hand from my arm, and lifting his chin from staring at my crotch, I answered, “I prefer to do my workouts alone.”

“Which is how it came about that Professor Abbondanza found Jonathan Toner last evening,” Manuello said getting us back on track. “Toner’s parents want his body flown to them in Montana after the full coroner’s report. While we wait, do any of you have any information that might be of help? We know Toner had no history of heart disease. But what about his recent state of mind? Is there anyone who might want to hurt him?”

“Detective,” said Cheryl Stryker, “I don’t know if this has anything to do with his death, but Jonathan has been training quite hard this semester.”

“Why is that?” asked Manuello.

“I think it was because Jonathan was jealous of Jillian Flowers,” Cheryl answered.

“Why was Jonathan jealous of Jillian?” I asked as Manuello raised his dark eyes to the cracks in the ceiling.

Cheryl answered, “Jonathan thought Brick had a personal interest in Jillian winning the competition.”

“That isn’t true, and you know it, Cheryl!” Brick Strong rose from his chair like a lawyer issuing a courtroom objection. “I’ve complimented Jillian and Mack a lot lately, because they’ve worked hard and made good progress. As a judge in the bodybuilding competition, I will be completely impartial.” He added to Granite and Cheryl, “I hope you will be too.”

Granite rested his powerful hand on Noah’s knee, and whispered, “Cheryl favors Tim Sim. Tim’s twin Kim is my bet to win the competition.”

I removed Granite’s hand from Noah’s lap.

Manuello asked, “Anything else, Professor Stryker?”

Cheryl nodded. “Jonathan was a good student, and a good bodybuilder, but unfortunately he wasn’t always a very good person.”

Manuello took out his pad and pencil. “Can you elaborate, Professor?”

 

Lethe Press:

http://www.lethepressbooks.com/store/...

Amazon:

myBook.to/DramaMuscle

 

Excerpts from The Pride Trilogy: Three Kyle Callahan Mysteries by Mark McNease

Excerpts from The Pride Trilogy: three Kyle Callahan Mysteries by Mark McNease

The Pride Trilogy consists of three of the existing five Kyle Callahan Mysteries: Murder at Pride Lodge, Pride and Perilous, and Death by Pride. They were written in that order, with a break between the second and third to write Death in the Headlights featuring lesbian Detective Linda from the series. She and Kyle become partners in crime solving and she’s in all the books (soon to have her own in 2016!).

My intention when I created the series was to write one book featuring older characters, centered on a male couple modeled after myself and my now-husband Frank. As the publisher and editor for a website for over-50 LGBTQ people, lgbtSr.org, I wanted to write a book with and for people who were my own age. If the first book sold, I told myself, I would write a second. It did, and here we are five books later.

Here are short synopses of the three books making up the Trilogy, followed by single, selected excerpts from them. It seemed a better choice than just providing the first chapters. I hope you enjoy them!

Murder at Pride Lodge

Who killed Teddy the handyman – if anyone killed him at all? Was it Sid, one of the new owners of Pride Lodge whose past gets darker the closer you look? Was it the woman whose name was once Emily, when she witnessed the murder of her parents in a burglary gone bad, and who has waited thirty years for vengeance? Was it young Happy Corcoran, promoted to bartender only to vanish three days before Teddy was found dead at the bottom of the empty pool? Find out as Kyle Callahan refuses to believe it was an accident, doggedly pursues the truth in his friend’s death and does his best not to join him. Kyle and his life partner Danny Durban live in New York City, where murder never seems to be more than a subway stop away. In this first story, they head to Pride Lodge, their favorite getaway from the City, over what they expect to be a festive Halloween weekend. What they find instead is a web of murder, deceit, and revenge served cold as a knife blade.

Pride and Perilous

The Katherine Pride Gallery is the center of high art and low death in Pride and Perilous, book II of the Pride Trilogy and the second of the Kyle Callahan Mysteries. Kyle, an amateur photographer, is about to have his first exhibit at the gallery, in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District. As time ticks away, bodies begin to fall and Kyle realizes somebody wants this gallery closed forever. Join the chase as Kyle and his partner Danny Durban reunite with Detective Linda Sikorsky from the New Hope, PA, police force. They met solving the murders at Pride Lodge, and Linda has come to town for Kyle’s opening, only to find herself joining forces with him again to capture a killer … before he captures them.

Death by Pride

The Pride Trilogy concludes with ‘Death by Pride.’ It’s Gay Pride weekend, the most festive weekend of the year in New York City. Hundreds of thousands of partygoers arrive to show the world how to have a good time.  Stalking the party is the most successful serial killer the city has ever seen. He claims his victims in threes and has just begun his newest spree. Detective Linda Sikorsky comes to town to visit Kyle Callahan and his husband Danny Durban. It’s her first Pride Parade and may well be her last. Harmless fun turns to terror in a frantic effort to stop the killer once the first body floats to the river’s edge. This time it’s personal, and this time one of them might not make it out alive.

Murder at Pride Lodge – An Excerpt

Sam Tatum was found flat on his back in a parking garage three blocks from the Glendale Galleria at three o’clock on a Wednesday afternoon. Had it started raining an hour later he would have parked on the street and died in a puddle, his face wet with drizzle and his eyes staring up, unblinking, as rain flushed the life from them. The garage had been fate’s one courtesy, saving him the embarrassment of dying even more publicly than he did, insofar as corpses can be embarrassed. It was an ignominious death. While he’d expected to die from one too many lines of cocaine up his old man’s nose, or murdered, even, in a fit of pique by one of the hustlers he’d been too fond of for too many years, ending his life on the concrete floor of a parking garage, his head in an oil stain, was too seedy even for Sam. Had he been able to think once he was dead, he would have found it a tawdry end to a tawdry life and been glad it was over.

The woman who found him, walking with her 12-year-old daughter to their newly purchased Prius parked three cars to the left of Sam’s Camry, had worked as a nurse before marrying well and was familiar enough with dead bodies to make the call. The poor guy was old, out of shape, uncommonly pale, and obviously lived an unhealthy life. He was lucky to make it this far, she thought, more disturbed that her child had seen a corpse than that he was actually dead. She didn’t know him, what was it to her? Mostly it was an inconvenience, since she had the decency to call an ambulance, knowing it was much too late to save the poor slob, and stay around to speak to the police. She’d considered making it an anonymous 911 call, since her daughter’s ballet class started at 3:30 and this would mean missing it for sure. But something in her, that old nurse calling, that instinct to do the right thing, made her give her name and location and wait patiently for the paramedics who would try to resuscitate a man she knew was dead. His eyes were open, for godsake, and what life had been in them had slipped away some time ago. Anyone could see that.

She’d told her daughter Kelly to get into the car the moment she saw the man’s feet come into view. Kelly, being a precocious, ballet-class-taking 12-year-old, wanted the full view and instead of doing what she was told rushed around ahead of her mother to get a good look. She had never seen a dead body before and she could tell by her mother’s lack of urgency that the man was probably beyond help. After an inappropriate but predictable, “Cool!” she obeyed her mother and skipped ahead to their car. Once inside, she tweeted that she and her mother had found a dead guy, and waited for her friends’ texts to start flooding in.

**

Thus it was that someone on the other side of the country who happened to read DeathWatchLA took notice and knew that the email he’d gotten from Sam two weeks earlier was not the panic of a man who had used too many drugs and bought too many young men. Sam Tatum was dead. He had not been paranoid, but convinced someone was after them, and he had been right. Three months earlier there had been another death, a man named Frank Grandy, this one in Detroit. Neither of them had spoken to Frank in years, and it was only when Frank left Sam $2000 in his will as a very belated repayment of a loan, that Sam knew their old partner in crime was dead. No suspects had been named, no one identified, but the report mentioned an antique pocket watch Frank was selling on an internet auction site. The watch case was there, but the watch was gone. Robbery, they assumed, but the investigation had gone nowhere. That was what rang the alarm bell for Sam, the watch. He was surprised Frank had kept it all these years, but not surprised it had led to his death. The past, it seems, had been waiting patiently to find them, and it had.

The two deaths spoke not of coincidence, but of a plan, with a planner and only one target left. The DeathWatchLA reader logged off his computer, swiveled around in his desk chair and cheerfully took a cup of coffee from his partner, smiling as if nothing had changed and they were simply beginning another gorgeous day. Time to get started.

Pride and Perilous – An Excerpt

It had been five years at least since Devin had worried about being followed. That’s how long he had been living as Devin 24/7. Denise Ellerton had ceased to exist – officially, legally, physically, psychologically, and every other way in which each person functions in the world.  For Devin, she had ceased existing long before that, when he had realized as a teenager that he was not like other girls; that the simple reality of pronouns was different for him, as he thought of himself as “he” while everyone else insisted on calling him “she.”  Tom-boyish Denise, odd Denise, rough-and-tumble Denise.  He had wanted to correct them then, and even younger, as early as the third grade.  “I’m not a girl,” he had wanted to say, but it wasn’t until he was in college that he fully understood what was going on with him, and when he finally had the distance from his family to do something about it.

The sensation of being shadowed down a dark street was one of those things that belonged to Denise, to women. Devin had long been aware of the differences in experiences men had from women; to suggest there were no differences was to choose denial over reality. There were experiences unique to men, and experiences unique to women, as well as experiences unique to those who did not fit readily into either. Devin had become a man in every way possible. The transition had been made, the journey completed, and not since before it had he worried about being followed down his own Brooklyn street, late on a rainy Friday night. There was something different about this, too. It wasn’t random, as if he’d crossed paths with the wrong person in an accident of fate, as so many people did who found themselves the victims of crimes of opportunity.  Devin had the very distinct and unsettling feeling that the man coming up slowly behind him had been there for awhile, had followed him off the R train, along the platform, up the stairs, and now, six blocks later, nearly to his apartment on Prospect Avenue.

Devin was tall at five-eight, and worked out religiously at the local New York Athletic Club. He’d had a trainer for two years and always believed he could handle himself in a tight situation. Not that it happened often: he didn’t drink, didn’t stay out late unless he had a showing of his artwork or was attending one of a friend’s exhibits; he hadn’t dated in three years, and he was a night person, meaning he worked at night in his studio apartment and made every effort to be home by 7:00 pm, when he would start his routine of coffee-fueled creativity, putting together his latest collage or designing a multi-medium piece that he would then spend the next two or three weeks bringing to life.

He was an attractive man, too, or so he’d been told enough times to believe. His natural height was complimented by a thin frame, short black hair he gelled back, a high, wide, forehead, moist brown eyes that had never been bothered by glasses, a thin but ready smile, and a nose that had once been broken in a fall, although he told everyone it had been a boxing match. It was the one lie he allowed himself. He just liked the idea of having a nose broken by a fist in a boxing glove. And it made the person who had once been Denise all but unrecognizable.

He’d stayed out later then usual tonight and had been cursing his lapse in discipline when he first realized someone was behind him. This stretch of Prospect Avenue, unlike nearly all streets in neighboring Manhattan, was sparsely populated at night and the presence of other people was noticeable, especially other people who were shadowing you. He’d become aware of the man behind him not long after coming up the subway stairs but had thought nothing of it at the time. Then, a block later, he could hear the footsteps, as if he were in some B-movie thriller and a stalker was shortening the distance between then. Now, four blocks from the subway and just one from his apartment building, he became convinced he was the object of the man’s attention.  Had it not been so worrying it would have been interesting: why would a strange man be following a reclusive artist down a deserted Brooklyn street on a rainy Friday night?  He decided to ask the question directly.   He adjusted his umbrella, with its caved-in side to his back, letting rain trickle down and soak his jacket, and he turned around to get a look at the man he now knew was his pursuer.

As Devin turned to face him, the stranger stopped. He was only about thirty feet away now.  Devin saw that he did not have an umbrella, but his face was hidden by a hoodie pulled down over it.  In late April the air was still chilly at night and most people wore jackets, sweaters, other clothes that kept them warm in the cool darkness.  Hoodies were especially popular, but also had the disconcerting effect of hiding the person’s face. It was only human nature to want to know who was beneath the hood, and why he was covering his face.

The man made no attempt to pretend he was not following Devin. He didn’t keep walking with a turn this way or that; he didn’t cross the street and continue; he didn’t even keep coming, as someone would who really was just walking along the same street at the same time.  He stopped.  In the rain.

“Who are you?” Devin shouted, tilting his umbrella back to show himself and improve his line of sight.

The man just stood and, Devin assumed, stared. It was dark out and raining, and neither could see the other with any great clarity.

Then the man began to walk toward him.

Decision time. Devin could run for his apartment, which was only a block away; he could call for help, someone would throw open a window and call 911 – or would they? – or he could do what he decided to do and stand his ground. He was tough, he trained two hours, three days a week; he was quick and fit and thin, and above all he was not Denise, not anymore. He had not endured the challenges of his life, the demands of simply being and becoming who he was, to flee in front of some punk on a Brooklyn street. He eased his shoulders back, loosened his grip on the umbrella to free his hands, and prepared for a fight.

The closer the man got, the more familiar he looked. He was wearing jeans, red sneakers and the green hoodie, and although his face was hidden, something about his overall presence rang a bell. There was also the limp, if that was the right word, a way of walking that made it appear one leg was shorter than the other, but housed more in the pelvis, a sort of up and down motion, like a piston misfiring every time the man took a step. Devin noticed the emblem on his sweatshirt, a rainbow flag with wording underneath it he couldn’t read.  He relaxed; it must be a neighbor after all, or someone coming to visit a neighbor.  At the very least the stranger was gay and, by inference, non-threatening.

But still he had not responded to Devin’s asking him who he was. And he had stopped, then kept coming.  He was only about ten feet away now, and Devin put it all together: the walk, the sweatshirt, and finally, as the man drew close and eased his hood back – the face.

“You!” Devin said, startled.

Death by Pride- An Excerpt

Killing wasn’t as much fun as it used to be. He expected to be a bit rusty after three years, but he had never anticipated this … dullness, this sense that, in the words of bluesman B.B. King, the thrill was gone. Maybe he had just been away from it too long; maybe he needed to get up to speed. The man whose body he deposited into the East River just before midnight was, after all, only the first in his current series. There would be two more before the week was out, and maybe the old rush would return with the next one. He had to trust it would, to believe as a child believes that Santa Claus is real and will come shimmying down the chimney every Christmas Eve. Or how Dorothy believed, clicking her slippers in that dreadful movie. That might be a more appropriate comparison, given the occasion. Click, click, click … and he was home.

He did not come all the way back to New York to resume his annual ritual for something as lackluster as this first kill. Had it been the young man himself whose death stirred so little response in him? What was his name? Victor? Victor Someone. Dense and inattentive; he had been too easy, and far too handsome. Cute, really. The kind of cute that becomes very sexual in manhood. Innocent smile, calculated shyness. Victor Someone knew exactly what he was doing flirting in the store that afternoon, and he had succeeded, much to his regret.

Unfortunately, Victor wasn’t nearly as enjoyable to kill as he was to look at. Too easy, too unchallenging. Like a cat who had no trouble capturing a wingless bird, he had not had fun with this one. He would have to analyze the experience, figure out why it had not been as satisfying as it was before, and what he might need to do to reignite his excitement. Did he need to be more brutal? Did he need to introduce tools into the game, a scalpel, perhaps, or a drill of some kind? He would think hard on it. A decision had to be made quickly; he’d already placed an online ad looking for the next one and the emails were flooding into his special account, the one no one would ever trace no matter how hard they tried. A phantom as elusive as he was deserved a phantom email routed through Chicago, then London and Tokyo, server after server erasing any clue to its origin.

**

He would look at Victor Someone’s driver’s license in the morning. Sense memory was a beautiful thing, and nothing brought it back quite like his keepsakes. The license was his souvenir—his thirteenth. Lucky thirteen. The rest of the wallet stayed with the body. He wasn’t interested in making identification difficult. It didn’t matter if the police knew who had been killed, only that they would never find the man who did the killing.

It had been dark when he parked by the river. The new moon had worked to his favor, a first. No one had been around; he made sure no one saw a man with a heavy, strangely shaped object wrapped in black plastic trudging his way to the river’s edge. Then a simple heave and splash, and he was on his way home.

Bedtime at last. But before then, for a few minutes anyway, he wanted to go through those emails. He’d requested photos, knowing many of them would be old and meant to trick him, and that was okay. He was less interested in finding a man who looked exactly like his picture than he was in finding a man who made him want to kill. It was like falling in love with an image: he never knew which one it would be, but knew it when it happened. This one. Oh yes. This one will be here soon.

He turned off the kitchen light, took his tea cup with the little chain from the tea ball hanging over the side, and headed to his large master bedroom on the second floor. His laptop was open and waiting for him. He would sift through a dozen or so email responses and see if any of them struck his fancy. But first, the pictures of Victor. Victor Someone. He would enjoy those before sleeping. He always took pictures.

 

Amazon Author Page:

http://www.amazon.com/Mark-McNease/e/...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Remembering Author Dorien Grey, aka Roger Margason

It’s been a little over a month since author Dorien Grey, aka Roger Margason passed away and yet his final words to his friends and fans shared by his good friend Gary Brown still bring me comfort, and I am sure to others as well. “It seems I have reluctantly been called away. But I wanted to thank each of you for the pleasure of your company on my journey through this all-too-brief life. I would hope I might remain, occasionally, in your thoughts, and that you might help my books, blogs, and other writings remain alive though I no longer am. “I have returned to the eternity from which I—from which we all—emerged at birth, and to which we all return. As a writer, I should be able to come up with a few memorable last words of my own, but I can think of none more fitting than those of Peter Pan, with whom I have always identified: ‘Second star to the right, then straight on till morning.'” — Dorien Grey

Below is a re-posting of the interview I did with Dorien in November 2013.

My sit down with the wonderfully gifted “Dick Hardesty” creator – Author Dorien Grey

Where do you live? I live in Chicago, to which I returned after a 40-or-so-year absence, and now live on the same street and within five blocks of the apartment I moved into straight from college. Eerie to walk down the same streets, past the same buildings I was so familiar with so very long ago.

Writers rarely like to toot their own horns; seriously! What would you say is your greatest accomplishment?  Well, I assume the question was somewhat satirical, since I not only toot my own horn and often and loudly as possible, but have a full symphony orchestra of which I am the only member. It’s seriously difficult, though, to pick out one thing as my “greatest accomplishment” other than managing to live as long as I have. My life is my greatest accomplishment, I think.

Without getting too personal, can you share a little about your home life? I live alone, alas, with my black cat, Sheba (pathos, anyone?). I spend about 10 hours a day on the computer, too much of it spent directing my little symphony orchestra to convince people to read my books. I am grateful to my best friend, Gary, who lives in the next building to mine, without whom I might get out far less than I do, to plays and concerts and museums and coffee and…the usual big city stuff.

What inspires and challenges you most in writing?  My ever-active mind, which is like an industrial-strength popcorn popper churning out an endless flow of thoughts and ideas which I then enter into the computer in various ways. I will not be here forever, so I am almost obsessed with preserving in some form as much of my life and myself as I can. Words are my posterity.

You’ve probably answered this question a hundred times, but please indulge as our readers and fellow writers) would like to know: Do you fly by the seat of your pants when writing or plot out your storylines?

I’ve always felt that, while detailed plotting works for some writers, plotting in advance, other than the sketchiest of ideas where I want to go, would be like wearing concrete boots. I sit down at the computer and turn my mind on, then just sit at the computer and watch what my fingers have typed. (Okay, it’s not quite that easy, but I often surprise myself by what appears there.) The classic example of this, which I’ve quoted often, happens in “The Good Cop,” book #3 of the Dick Hardesty series. I have Dick walk into a bar to pick up a local gay paper and…with absolutely no planning on my part…he meets Jonathan Quinlan, who turns into the love of his life and with whom he has shared every book since. I’m still both amazed and delighted to tell this story. How do you deal with the constant distractions such as blogs, FB, promo and real life (like that dreaded daytime job)?  I’m fortunate enough not to have a daytime job, and it often seems my life is one long series of distraction. Like trying to run between the raindrops, I just do the best I can. I do admit, lately, to have been very negligent on working on my current WIP, but I’ve decided not to let myself get too upset by it. I’ll know when it’s time.

You currently have two gay mystery/suspense series known to fans as the “Dick Hardesty” and “Elliott Smith” mysteries, with the Hardesty mysteries at fourteen books now! How do you sustain serialized, continuing characters? 

One of the nice things about a series is that I–and the reader–get to know each of the recurring characters as real people, and just as real people change and evolve over time, so do the characters in a series. Of all my characters, I think Jonathan has evolved the most, from an awkward young kid who Dick tended at times to treat as a surrogate son to a full partner in the relationship. The addition of Joshua, Jonathan’s young nephew, to the series had solidified many of both Dick and Jonathan’s traits.

Well, I’m waiting for The Serpent’s Tongue…Dick Hardesty #15…to be released

As am I, Jon…as am I. I have never had a shred of patience, and while one might think patience would come with age, one would, in my case, be wrong.

Have had you ever had to deal with homophobia after your gay novels are released, and if so, what form has it taken?

I can honestly say I have never encountered any overt homophobia surrounding my books. I’m sure there must be someone out there who has it, but I’m not aware of it, thank God. I do not suffer bigots gracefully.

Last question; can you share with us a little about your current release and/or WIP? One of the reasons I have been neglecting work on Cameron’s Eye, book #5 of the Elliott Smith paranormal mysteries is that I have been concentrating on having all my books done as audiobooks. I’ve become intrigued with audiobooks and their ability to reach out to markets regular print and e-books cannot; specifically to the blind and dyslexic, as well to those who enjoy listening to novels while traveling to and from work or longer distances. I’m going to start beating the drums for giving audiobooks (as well as all other forms of books) as holiday presents; they’re the perfect gift and you don’t have to go any further than your computer to shop for them.

On behalf of the Facebook Gay Mystery-Thriller-Suspense Fiction Group, thank you for giving us a little of your time today, answering questions fans of the genre really want to know.

And I am really grateful to you and your readers for allowing me this opportunity for my “orchestra” to play a few selections.

UPDATE – December 19, 2015

All of Dorien Grey’s Dick Hardesty Mysteries are currently being re-released by Untreed Reads, the most recent, The Bottle Ghosts, a Dick Hardesty Mystery  released December 15, 2015.

Find Dorien Grey on the web: Dorien’s website is www.doriengrey.com. His Facebook page is still live https://www.facebook.com/dorien.grey His past blog posts: www.doriengreyandme.com.