Jeffrey J. Mariotte is our special guest today!

Welcome to the blog, Jeffrey! Could you tell us a little bit about The Devil’s Bait?
Thanks, Rachel!

The Devil’s Bait is a new sort of thing for me. Most of my many novels have been horror (or else what’s called “licensed fiction”—books set in existing fictional universes, and written with the approval of the copyright holder. I’ve written novels set in the worlds of CSI, Buffy and Angel, Spider-Man, Conan the barbarian, and others). But this one is all mine, and a straight thriller—pure suspense, nothing horrific or supernatural about it. So I was exploring new territory that way... and exploring new territory by choosing to publish it as an e-book instead of sending it to my agent and letting him shop it to the traditional publishers.

As for the story itself, it’s about Jessie Dawn Cutler, who’s a single woman in Manhattan, a banker trying to work her way up the ladder of success in a huge multinational bank. But along the way, she discovers that her biggest client is also a criminal—and a killer! When she tries to take action, she learns that he’s well protected, both inside her bank and by the people who should be regulating this sort of thing.

So by trying to do the right thing, Jessie becomes a target herself. She’s just a regular person, not an action movie superhero, but she’s brave and resourceful, and she seeks out a few trusted allies who can help her survive—most notably Morgan Byrd, an aging mercenary who’s feeling like he needs to balance out some of the awful things he’s done. Together, Jessie and Morgan have a chance to survive, and maybe even come out ahead.

To find out if they do or not, though... you’ll have to read the book!

What led you to write this novel?
There were a few different factors behind it. First of all, the big bankers were largely responsible for the near-destruction of the global economy, so it seems like they should be the villains in fiction, too. But I haven’t seen any other books take them on. Then, while researching banking, I became fascinated with the ins and outs of money laundering. If you have a lot of loose money lying around, how do you hide it from the authorities? How do you move it out of the country? Where do you put it?

So those things played into it. The other main ingredient was the relationship between a fairly sophisticated young woman from the city, who’s maybe a little naive about the real world outside New York, and the older, gruff, part-time rancher and world-weary mercenary who’s seen and done it all, and sometimes wishes he hadn’t.

Do you have any favorite authors we should be reading? Who are your influences?
I’m the owner of a bookstore, Mysterious Galaxy (in San Diego and Redondo Beach, CA) that specializes in mystery, science fiction, fantasy, and horror. So I have a lot of favorite authors, and a lot of authors who’ll get mad at me if I mention someone else and not them. Given that, I’ll stick for the moment to thriller authors—some whose names are very familiar to most of the reading public, and some who should be better known.

In no particular order, then: William Goldman, David Morrell, J. Carson Black, T Jefferson Parker, James Lee Burke, Laura Lippman, John Connolly, Michael Connelly, George Pelecanos, Don Winslow, Dennis Lehane, Richard Price... that’s probably enough for now. I can rattle off another list any time!

What are the ingredients in the perfect thriller? How do you create suspense?
Hmmm... good question. I think there are a few important items to toss into the stew. You’ve got to have a good villain, because a large part of any thriller’s plot is the heroine responding to the villain’s actions. In many ways, the villain is the driving force behind the story, because if it wasn’t for him, the heroine could spend the whole book sitting on the beach sipping an iced tea. The villain should be a real person, with some good and a lot of bad, but he should think that he’s doing all those evil things for the best possible reasons. He doesn’t think of himself as a bad guy. And the heroine (of course, your heroine could also be a hero, and the male villain could as easily be a woman), should have some bad in her as well as a lot of good.

After you have a villain to drag the hero or heroine into the story, you need supporting characters, who are also real people that the reader should be concerned about—because they are now in terrible danger, just by having walked onto the pages of a thriller.

You need plenty of action. It doesn’t hurt to throw in some exotic locales (the action in The Devil’s Bait goes from Manhattan to rural Iowa to Paris to Geneva to the Cayman Islands to Florida, and back). You’ll have plans that don’t work out, clues that don’t pan out, dashed expectations at every turn. And all of it is in the service of something very important—a goal, something the hero or heroine needs to gain or learn or find. Trouble is, the villain’s goal is in direct conflict with the hero’s, and they can’t both win.

If you want to study a perfect thriller, read William Goldman’s novel Marathon Man. The movie is great, too. It’s like a textbook on plotting a thriller.

What is your best advice on writing?
I believe that people write using their writing muscle. Like any other muscle, it gets better and stronger the more it’s exercised. If you want to write, you have to write. Daily, if you can. Set aside a time to do it, and then do it. Nobody ever got a book finished by being afraid to put their bottom in the chair and write.

It helps to read a lot, too, and not just in the area or genre you’ve chose to write. It helps to be a well rounded person with lots of interests and knowledge. But you could win Jeopardy every day for a year and still not be a writer, unless you exercise that writing muscle!

Thanks so much for stopping by, Jeffrey!
Thanks for having me—it was fun!

Bio
Jeffrey J. Mariotte is the award-winning author of more than forty-five novels, including the supernatural thriller trilogy Missing White Girl, River Runs Red, and Cold Black Hearts, horror epic The Slab, the Dark Vengeance teen horror quartet, and others. He also writes licensed fiction, comic books (including the long-running horror/Western comic book series Desperadoes, original graphic novel Zombie Cop), and more. He’s a co-owner of specialty bookstore Mysterious Galaxy in San Diego and Redondo Beach, and lives in southeastern Arizona on the Flying M Ranch. 

Jeff’s website is  www.jeffmariotte.com and his blog is http://jeff_mariotte.typepad.com. He’s on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/jeff.mariotte, but almost never on Twitter: @JeffMariotte.

The Devil’s Bait is available at Amazon and Smashwords.

If you enjoyed this post, please subscribe via email. You can even follow me on Twitter!

Today's guest author is A. F. Stewart. She's written numerous short stories, poems, and even a non-fiction book!

Welcome to the blog, A. F.! Could you tell us a little bit about Killers and Demons?
Killers and Demons is a short collection of five stories about unrepentant villains and their poor hapless victims.  Three of the stories give the reader a tale about serial killers with dark and unhappy endings.  With Devoid you see the narrative from the victim’s point-of-view, in You Got to Have Heart the reader sees the crime through the eyes of the killer and in London, 1888 the reader experiences a bit of serial killer history.

The other two stories, Victorian Shadows and Advent of Night, are paranormal chillers about nasty demons, one a bounty hunter, the other a soul collector.  These two pieces of fiction are bit more in the thriller vein, pitting human adversaries against the demons.

What is special about the horror genre?
I’m not certain I’m the right person ask, since I wandered into writing horror accidentally.  I view myself more of a dark fantasy writer who strolls over into the horror genre because I have a tendency to kill off characters (often in nasty and macabre ways).  I don’t even read horror novels or watch scary movies because I’m too much of a chicken.  But I can say what I like best about writing darker stories is the psychological creep factor, that “what if” idea of something lurking in the dark.

You’ve written a number of collections of horror stories. Do you have a favorite?
I think my preferred collection is Once Upon a Dark and Eerie… which is a mixture of straight horror tales, dark fantasy and sci-fi and dark poetry.  The book contains some of my favourite stories and poems including, Home for Christmas, Numb, The Legend of the Haunted Tree, Supernatural, Cherry Blossoms, and Winter’s Frost.

You also have a few books of poetry and a humorous non-fiction look at action movie clichés. What are the pros and cons of writing in several genres?
Writing in several genres allows me to indulge a few of my other passions besides fantasy fiction.  I’ve written poetry for years, so it seemed natural to gather it all into a series of books, and the content of my poems don’t stray far from the darker themes of my fiction.  The non-fiction began as a whim, a way to pay a tongue-in-cheek homage to action movies, and I ran with the idea because I loved doing it.  And the different genres keep me from getting too bored.  I’m not sure I’ve found a downside to the genre hopping, yet.  I like mixing it up.

What is your best advice on writing?
My advice is to love what you are doing and write the stories that feel right for you.  I tried writing in the mystery and romance genres (with less than stellar results) before realizing fantasy and horror was where I belonged.  I think a writer’s best work flows from where they are most comfortable.

Thanks so much for stopping by, A. F.!

Bio
A. F. Stewart was born and raised in Nova Scotia, Canada, and still calls it home.  She is fond of good books (especially science fiction/fantasy), mythology, history, action movies, and oil painting as a hobby.

Ms. Stewart has been writing dark fantasy and horror for several years, with side trips into poetry and non-fiction.  Her published books included Killers and Demons, Once Upon a Dark and Eerie..., Chronicles of the Undead, Shadows of Poetry, Passing Fancies and The Incomplete Guide to Action Movies.

She is putting the finishing touches on two new books, Ruined City, a dark fantasy novel that tells the tale of a cursed city in twelve short stories and Gothic Cavalcade, a horror novel set amid a paranormal carnival.

A.F. Stewart can be found on her website, http://afallon.bravehost.com/, and on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/scribe77.
Killers and Demons is available at Smashwords, Nook, and the Apple iStore. 

If you enjoyed this post, please subscribe! You can even follow me on Twitter!

Since I started the blog, I've met authors from all over the world. Today's guest author is Tarek Refaat, who is in Egypt! If you're interested in social justice or want a thought-provoking read, seek out his novel Ruptured.

Welcome to the blog, Tarek! Could you tell us a little bit about Ruptured?
Well, thank you, Rachel, first of all, for hosting me on your blog! It’s a true pleasure to be here. As to Ruptured... It’s my first published novel and it basically discusses a common issue that, despite it taking place more often in eastern societies, I believe it might be all over the world but in different grades: and it is how societies deal with rape victims. Basically, I want to voice out that people who pass through such situations or even similar or slightly different still have the right to live as a decent normal human being, they cannot be simply marked or labeled as expired goods.

What led you to write this book?
Well, the book’s idea itself; I wanted to write something related to such an incident but wanted a different flavor to it. It was hanging in the back of my mind for almost 3-4 months before I actually began to write the story. And then one day on my way to work it just struck me and I began to write.

How did you handle writing about such a difficult subject?
Well, I’m a person who doesn’t prepare a script or a storyboard, I just see the characters…the events, and I begin to instantly write. I do not like to try to constrain or narrow my vision, I just let it come as it is. In some parts it was so emotional during the writing, sometimes it brought me to tears; at other moments I felt rage. Such a type of story is usually full of mixed emotions.

Who are your favorite authors? How have they influenced you?
Well, believe it or not, I am mainly a history reader, and not much of  a literature reader, so I’d say two of my favorite authors are Paul Brickhill, author of the biography of Sir Douglas Bader which was called Reach for the Sky, and also famous author Tom Clancy, author of The Hunt for Red October, which was transformed into a movie starring Sean Connery. And other famous movies.

What is your best advice on writing?
My main advice which is one I took from Tom Clancy in person when I first sent him a something I wrote; he said, “Write, write every damn day!” This advice has come in very handy for me. And I believe it would be very beneficial for fellow writers and authors.

Thanks so much for stopping by, Tarek!

Bio
I'm an Egyptian author who works in the field of information technology, not exactly the closest job to writing! I've been into writing since I was thirteen.. But I never really gave it serious thought until a few years back. I am currently working in the field of Information Technology, but that doesn't hold me back from pursuing my passion for writing!

Tarek Refaat can be found online at his blog, energizre.wordpress.com, and on Facebook, Goodreads, and Twitter under @energizre. There is also a Facebook group for Ruptured.

Ruptured is available at Amazon and Lulu. Unfortunately, printed copies are only available in Egypt at the moment.

When I'm daydreaming, I sometimes picture a character with an awesome ability or bizarre physical attribute. Sometimes I think up a really out-there name. Occasionally, I even get glimpses of plots that are so fascinating they stay with me for months, years. As soon as I sit down to write, though, those wild thoughts run smack into the realism filter. Will anyone believe my main character is named Plum? Do I have to make her parents hippies in order for this to make sense? I better get rid of the talking animal, since this is supposed to be a somewhat realistic book. I'm slowly starting to realize those thoughts are totally detrimental to my writing! Of course realism is important in some cases - but I'm no longer going to let it wreck my creativity.

Today's guest, Stephen White, has written a book with a unique premise, an idea that could have easily been dismissed as "too unrealistic". Instead, he ran with it. Enjoy!

Welcome to the blog, Stephen! Could you tell us a little bit about Clump: An American Splatire?
CLUMP is a very black comedy about a huge, headless man who becomes the most popular – and most dangerous – celebrity in America. But more than that, the novel is a pointed satire of our society at the present; the business practices, the seeming worship of brainless celebrities, the entertainment industry, and how moral erosion has real consequences.

All of which sounds very heavy. But the book is actually funny, as long as you like your humor pointed and very adult. I’d like to think that the book’s thematic elements outweigh the frequently graphic language and the sporadic sex and violence – but sensitive readers may need to keep a defibrillator handy.

What led you to write this book?
I’ve been fortunate to have a successful writing career which has covered a lot of areas. I’ve written children’s books, television, feature film, stage productions, humor books, and a lot more – but I’d never written a full length novel for adults.

I was preparing to write a different novel entirely, but a few days prior to my self-assigned start date I happened upon a photo of “Mike the Headless Chicken” (confession: I’ve got a real fascination for sideshow performers, human or otherwise). Back in the 1940’s, Mike had his head chopped off…but his body continued to live for another 18 months. He became a celebrity and traveled the country.

And out of the blue, I had one of those wonderful “what if?” moments. What if it was a man who was decapitated…but his body wouldn’t die? How would our celebrity-obsessed, Internet-driven culture react?

At that moment, I threw out my previous notes and decided to dive in to CLUMP. In part because I really wanted to spend time discovering for myself what would happen, and in part because I was drawn to the challenge of writing an engaging novel in which the protagonist essentially had no goals, no awareness, no obstacles, and no real possibility of a character arc.  It seemed like such an impossible task that I had to do it.

And happily, it all works because, being a social satire, the novel isn’t about what’s going on inside Clump…it’s about what’s going on in the world around him. And around us.

Would you classify Clump as an anti-hero? Why or why not?
Clump (the nickname he’s been given owing to a small clump of nerves and tissue attached to his neck stump) is neither hero nor anti-hero. He is a huge presence with some surprising and frightening abilities – but he has no awareness of himself or the world around him. He doesn’t want anything. He doesn’t even have the capacity to want anything. Except to not be touched – which usually has very bad consequences.

But with celebrity comes power, and that power is available to be used by the many people who surround Clump. In that way, Clump becomes something of a moral amplifier. What is deep inside Clump’s handlers is drawn to the surface and empowered, for good or bad. Which, for a novelist and satirist, is a great jumping off point to comment on today’s media, medicine, politics, fads, and overall moral direction.

Who are your favorite authors? How have they influenced you?
Kurt Vonnegut is way, way up there. He melds humor, horror, and history into satires which are wildly entertaining and deeply thought provoking. Joseph Heller’s “Catch 22” is another satire that transcends its time and genre. The wordplay in that book is incredible. Personally, I like writing a lot of dialogue (no doubt owing to my scriptwriting career) and so I try to incorporate some of those same verbal fireworks when I can.

Of current authors, Chuck Palahniuk is a definite inspiration. The man is fearless about combining humor, horror, and the scatalogical. I’m hoping that some of the readers who have enjoyed his works like “Fight Club” will discover and embrace “CLUMP.” 

What is your best advice on writing?
I’m afraid it’s going to sound pretty familiar: WRITE! Even if you have all the natural ability in the world, you’re going to be a fairly bad writer until you’ve written (and discarded) enough bad words, sentences, paragraphs, and pages to get them out of your system. There’s just no way to skip that step.

The other advice I’d give is to free yourself from self-judgment while working on your first draft and focus on your daily word count. At that stage, momentum is far more important than perfection. If you get bogged down, don’t be afraid to insert a parenthetical note saying “Hero reveals surprising ability that amazes everyone” and then move on. When I’m writing, I’ll change the font color of those notes so I can easily come back to them later.

Thanks so much for stopping by, Stephen!
My pleasure! There’s very little point in being a writer other than connecting with readers, and I really appreciate this great forum for doing so!

Bio
Note: “CLUMP – An American Splatire” has been released under the name S. Redman White because there’s already a bestselling novelist out there named Stephen White and I didn’t want to create any confusion.

I’m originally from Indiana, attended Indiana University, and wrote advertising and performed stand-up comedy and music in Bloomington, Indiana. Subsequently, my wife and I moved to Dallas, Texas where I continued working in advertising and audio production.

This transitioned into a job writing and producing musical comedy scripts for the “Chuck E. Cheese” robotic characters, which in turn took me to a startup home video production in Dallas called “Barney the Dinosaur”. I joined the Barney team and wrote the first episode of the PBS television series “Barney & Friends,” and continued as Barney’s primary (but not only) writer for the next 16 years. Television episodes, home videos, live concerts, a feature film, audiobooks, children’s books and more. And while Barney was unloved by many who didn’t understand the needs of our preschool audience, I’m still proud of how many young lives were touched positively by the work we did, especially in the franchise’s earliest years.

Stephen White can be found on http://www.StephenWhiteOnline.com

You can find purchasing links and other info at http://www.ClumpTheNovel.com

The novel is available on Amazon and Createspace in paperback, and available in ebook form on Kindle, Barnes & Noble Nook, Apple’s iBookstore, and it should soon be available for Sony eReaders.

We’re kicking off a great week full of awesome interviews! Today’s guest author is Lisa Adams, author of Assassin’s Café.

Welcome to the blog, Lisa! Could you tell us a little bit about Assassin’s Cafe?
First, thank you for having me as a guest. I love the blog and the exposure it offers. Assassin’s Café is a tale of contemporary relationships both between people and with one’s profession, and the ethics involved in dealing with both. It is also about finding family in a generation where everything is instantly available and the past deemed not so relevant to many. Ariel Evans, the lead character, is a deputy prosecutor in Seattle, Washington. She, like many women today, is both entwined with, and repulsed by, her profession. Her work “family” consists of her longtime boyfriend, David Iron Necklace, and a Seattle detective, Rene Lisojo. David is the assistant King County coroner. When Ariel is assigned to cover her first homicide, she, Rene and David eventually uncover something untoward about the whole affair, not the least of which is a very “convenient” suspect. Ariel is torn between bringing forth the truth, protecting her own ascending career, and giving her heart and soul to one she truly loves. It has a lot of action, suspense and, yes, romantic drama.

What led you to write this novel?
I had the privilege of having author Ruth Beebe Hill as a friend and mentor when I first graduated from law school and moved to Seattle. I began corresponding with her in 1991 or 1992 when my husband asked me to write to her and introduce myself. She was a friend of my husband’s mother and had known my husband since he was a little boy. Mrs. Hill felt I had the ability to become a professional author, but emphasized that I needed to focus less on making a story up and more on basing my first “professional” novel on reality. Every time a possible storyline presented itself, I would run it by her. Finally, in 1996, my husband and I had the rare opportunity to live in New Jersey in an historic house that had belonged to my grandparents. Built in 1710, it was full of family secrets that even my father did not know. I started reading through family papers and made some startling discoveries. I called Mrs. Hill and she said simply, “There’s your story.” And I began writing. 

How did your experience as a prosecutor shape the story? What other experiences contributed to your novel?
I was a prosecutor in New Jersey. And the opening scene where a body of a young woman is driven to the justice complex that housed the police station, courts, and prosecutor’s offices really happened just as it is written. Sometimes truth truly is stranger than fiction. Rene Lisojo really was a detective (he is now a sergeant and remains one of our closest friends) and much of the dialogue derives from conversations we had over the years. Working for over five years with many police officers, attorneys and judges in a fast-paced, huge city gives a lot of insight into people and how they behave. Law enforcement has its own code, its own way of handling a life where 99% of what you deal with is extremely negative and depressing. So that little microcosm of people becomes like a second family. Sometimes this closeness during work leads to illicit relationships and major drama; other times it works out for the better for the parties involved. So my actual work experience contributed almost 100% to the legal/police part of the storyline. Living in the colonial-era home and the diaries of my great-grandfather and grandmother gave me a real feel for how people lived then, how they communicated with each other, and how family worked. Some of the dialogue quoted appears as they wrote it. My husband is an Oglala Sioux who practices his traditional religion; and so David Iron Necklace, how he thinks and lives, reflects how he was raised and what his beliefs are. As Mrs. Hill noted, we can draw the best stories from life.

What was the biggest challenge of writing this book, and how did you overcome it?
Hands down, it was changing it from a work of literary fiction into something more appealing to the modern audience. It meant, to a degree, undoing what I had done with Mrs. Hill’s assistance. For example, I would write “he did not” in a conversation, as opposed to “he didn’t”. I had to “listen” to my characters speak to each other – which meant reading passages of dialogue out loud – to create a dialogue that flowed and language that did not seem stilted and outdated. It meant leaving my ego at the door and accepting that the first draft needed lots of work.

What is your best advice on writing?
Start every project as if you have never written anything before. Let the characters speak through you, not to you. And above all, whatever you write, always read it aloud. Who cares if someone thinks you’re a major loon? It will let you hear your mistakes and better perceive holes in the dialogue, plots and storyline.

Thanks so much for stopping by, Lisa!

Bio
Lisa Adams is a practicing attorney who wrote her first book when she was eleven years old. She currently resides in Nebraska near her husband’s family home. She shares a home with several dogs and cats and many, many books.

Lisa Adams can be found on: www.authorsden.com/lisaadams and www.villagegreenpressllc.blogspot.com and on Twitter under @nanikaua.
Assassin’s Cafe is available at: Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

If you enjoyed this post, please subscribe! You can even follow me on Twitter!

I know things have been slow here lately, mostly due to the extremely busy nature of the past few weeks, but I'm planning a great comeback! I have high hopes of sharing some book reviews and Tweeterviews next week. If you'd like to be Tweeterviewed (interviewed in a format that is posted live to Twitter), please get in touch with me through my Twitter account!

You know what inspires me to write? Good advice from other writers! I'm sharing a few of my favorite quotes and I hope they inspire you!

Language is a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, while all the time we long to move the stars to pity. - Gustave Flaubert

To me, the ending felt so correct and so appropriate that it seemed to bend over backward to kiss the beginning.
- Elizabeth Gilbert

Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.  - Anton Chekhov

The essence of drama is that man cannot walk away from the consequences of his own deeds. - Harold Hayes

Do you have a favorite writing quote?

Today's guest is Rod Pennington! Check out the cool giveaways he's offering at the end of the post.

Welcome to the blog, Rod! Could you tell us a little bit about The Fourth Awakening?
The concept of the Fourth Awakening had its genesis in the research of my co-author Dr. Jeffery A. Martin. While the story is fiction, the science in the book is based on cutting edge research. There have been three previous times where mankind has undergone radical and unexpected changes that, once they occurred, there was no turning back. Our theory is, we’re currently moving towards another shift.    

What led you to write this novel?
The type of person who normally would read about this type of science is typically a non-fiction only person. What we wanted to do was wrap the science in a fast-paced, character driven suspense story. We hoped to draw in a new audience by providing a nice “page turner” that would suspend reality for those who didn’t buy into the concept that we’re sitting on the cusp of a massive societal change.     

What was the toughest challenge you faced when writing The Fourth Awakening, and how did you overcome it?
For me, the biggest challenge was writing with a collaborator. My six other novels had all been solo ventures on my part. Even when I was working in Hollywood, I didn’t have to deal with a committee mentality. I worked directly for the VP of Creative Affairs of a major studio and once I turned a script or treatment in, I was done with it. Here I couldn’t necessarily go off in certain directions because the science, and Jeffery, served as guardrails.    

I like the idea of cultural awakenings. How did you make this fictional awakening believable?
I used the combination of classic Joseph Campbell “myth” storytelling with Syd Field cinematic pacing. I “showed” the story through the dialogue exchanges of the highly suspicious Penelope and the unflappable Michael Walker.

By having two characters challenge each other, I was able to drive the story with dialogue and not narrative. 

What is your best advice on writing?
Write to communicate and not to impress. I have a short piece, “Five Tips to Make You a Better Writer Today”, which I’ll send to anyone who requests it at FreeTips@RodPennington.net. 

Next, read the famous Chris Vogel coverage of Joseph Campbell’s storytelling technique. This especially true if you have any aspirations of selling scripts in Hollywood.

It is available HERE on my webpage.

Thanks so much for stopping by, Rod!

Bio
Rod Pennington has published seven novels and sold or had optioned numerous screenplays and treatments. His 2009 novel, The Fourth Awakening, has spent extended periods at #1 in multiple Kindle categories. On June 29th, Amazon listed it as their #1 recommendation in their “Mystery Thriller” newsletter email.

The follow up to the bestselling TFA, The Gathering Darkness, will be released as a “Kindle Exclusive” on October 1, 2011.

He has just released the first in another “Kindle Exclusive” series entitled A Family Reunion. This is a dark comedy about a dysfunctional family of four of the world’s best assassins. The next book in the series, Family Business, will be released in December 2011. If the series develops a following, Pennington says he will add two more titles per year, “until people get tired of reading them or I get tired of writing them.”     

Pennington began his novel writing career in the “Men’s Action” genre in the 1980s. In addition to his own bestselling “Devon’s Way” series he produced “work-for-hire” novels for the Worldwide Library/Gold Eagle imprint of Harlequin Books based on the characters created by the late Don Pendleton in his Mack Bolan “Executioner” series.

When, along with the Berlin Wall, the men’s action genre collapsed, Pennington was recruited by the VP of Creative Affairs of a major motion picture studio and worked directly with him for many years.

Pennington also was an instructor at the Writers’ Digest Novel Writing Workshops.

Rod Pennington can be found on FaceBook as Rod Pennington and his book page is on FaceBook here: The Fourth Awakening.

The Fourth Awakening is available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Note: I’m currently giving away FREE Kindle copies of “A Family Reunion” to everyone who requests it at Comments@RodPennington.net.  I also have an obscure literary reference buried in the book and I’m offering a $100 Amazon card to the first one to figure it out. I’m posting clues on my FaceBook pages.