Vengeance in My Heart

L.C. Hayden's second installment in the Aimee Brent series is Vengeance in My Heart. Aimee paves a dangerous road for herself when she leaves Rich Cole and South Lake Tahoe to trace the man who murdered her mother.
The man she seeks is her biological father who today is rich and powerful with many employees who execute his commands with little regard to the consequences. He will stop at nothing to wipe his past clean when he is ready to move on the a new life under a different name. Aimee is at the top of Lee's list of expendables from his past.
Their purposes collide when Aimee's reporter skills bring her to Los Angeles to Disney World following the lead of a twenty-year old photograph of her father standing in the background of a picture that was taken at the famous theme park. The photo was taken months after he had supposedly drowned in a boating accident.
A master technician of voice, pace, place, and plot Hayden weaves a mystery of adventure and suspense.
Vengeance in My Heart should come with a warning label: Do Not Read in Bed. This title does not permit sleeping until after the reader reaches the final page. The bags under my eyes from lack of sleep are so puffy my glasses are resting on them.

 http://amzn.com//1505509157

Nash Black, author, Games of Death.

Spycatcher

Matthew W. Dunn's Spycatcher is an espionage novel that reads like reading eye-witness newspaper reports from the Middle East.
Due to be released in July, Mr. Dunn brings years of experience in the field as an M16 operative who writes under his own name. Spycatcher is not a biography, but fiction that will keep you glued to you chair as Dunn sweeps you from Central Park across Europe and back again in an outstanding thriller of the dark side of undercover work.
Will Cochrane knows he must kill his contact to Iran before the man is captured and tortured to reveal secrets no man must divulge. The contact is not a friend in Will's friendless world, but his job and the safety of many others demands he must act with hesitation.
Will is wounded in the resulting gunfire and pulled from the fray in time to save his life. He awakens in a blank room and is confronted by a man who knows about his entire life. As they sit on the floor of a bare room Will knows the stranger must be a CIA operative who has a use for him outside of the conventional bonds of spying.
Patrick knows of his code name, Spartan. This is a position that can be held by no other man while he lives. His controller, Alistair is one of the most senior officials of M16. Only the British prime minster authorize the release this name. Patrick is a powerful and trusted man in the world of international intrigue.
Between Alistair and Patrick they send Will on a mission that will uncover his own past to flush out an operative high in the Iranian command to convince him to "betray" his country or die. Betrayal is a two-way street when power and wealth beyond imagination are at stake.
Spycatcher moves with the speed of jet planes and each character has an agenda that must be completed. The innocent become embroiled in the morass of empire decaying and rebuilding. No life is too valuable to be allowed to be a hindrance to success. I lost count of the bodies that fall across the landscape as Will endeavors to bring Megiddo out of hiding before he can complete his plans for world domination.
Nash Black, author of Sandprints of Death.

Sandprints of Death

Nash Black's Sandprints of Death opened to a five star review from Alina Holgate, a resident of Australia. I normally talk about other writer's work on Bird's Eye View, but this time I want to toot our own horn and share with you Alina's review.

"Set a While"

"The best thing about this book for this Australian was that reading it was like going on holiday. I was transported to an island off South Carolina, rich in unique history where various members and neighbors of the Young clan have congregated to lick their various wounds. A series of murders occurs on the island thus trapping them together. They are further trapped by the weather. In the course of dealing with these challenges the Youngs become integrated into the local community and the history of the Young clan and the island is revealed.
"The murder mystery, which is the occasion for all these different characters being thrown together in a particular locale, could have been more carefully plotted and its resolution seemed rushed. However the strength of the book is not a great murder mystery. The strength of the book is the beautifully drawn characters and their intricately portrayed clan stories that make you feel connected to them like family. The strength of the book is in the incredibly atmospherically drawn portrait of this island, its history, its inhabitants, and the constantly shifting mood ot the weather and the sea that seeps into our characters bones. The strength of this book is that it makes you want to set a while and just listen to the cadences of the stories and the voices in which they are expressed and watch as island life passes you by.
"I think if you like The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society: a Novel you would like this. It has a similar feel in terms of becoming drawn in to an isolated, self-reliant community of loveable people who have a tough life but who welcome the right kind of strangers into the fold.
My best recommendation is that I immediately rushed off to buy more of Nash Black's books. And there is a recipe at the end of this book that's worth the price of admission alone."

Thank you, thank you Alina.

Nash Black (Irene & Ford)

the four corners of the sky

The four corners of the sky by Michael Malone is difficult to categorize. Is it a mystery, a romance, a family saga, or an adventure story? It doesn't matter because the four corners of the sky is one of the best books you will read this year.

The story of Navy pilot Annie Peregrine-Goode and her extended family will stay with you long after you have closed the volume.

Abandoned by her father, Jack Peregrine, at Pilgrims Rest his family home she is a lost little girl who gets The King of the Sky for her seventh birthday. As she hugs the Piper Cub she chants to herself, "I'm a flyer."

Reared and formally adopted by her aunt, Samantha "Sam" Peregine and Dr. Clark Goode, Annie spends her childhood flying, which becomes her life when Sam arranges for her to have a balloon ride with D.K. Destin for her eight birthday. Annie flies as a runner and a pilot to out-pace the loneliness of being left behind, but never wins either race.

Annie is a fighter. The story opens when Annie realizes she married for all the wrong reasons and her father steps back into her life with a pull that may destroy her career and her life.

Nothing is ever as it seems with Jack Peregine at the controls. The pace is fast, surprises at every corner, the intricate plot and threads are woven with expert prose into an exceptionally well told story that will keep your eyes glued to the page.

Michael Malone has ten award winning novels to his credit and is a professor at Duke University. the four corners of the sky is available on line at Amazon.com or bookstores everywhere.

Nash Black, author of Indie finalists Writing as a Small Business and Haints.

A Kidnapping Gone Wrong

Fran Stewart's Biscuit McKee makes her fifth appearance in Indigo as an Iris, which was my introduction to the series. Indigo is a complete cozy, with nice people caught in extra ordinary events.

A one page introduction of a kidnapping victim regaining consciousness leads the reader to turn the page to discover who was bound in the backseat of her own car while a mother drove and feed her child the cinnamon buns the victim had purchased? The kidnapping is planned by the most mathematically inept abductors on the planet. It has no hopes of success, but leads to lives twisting and ending. The murder does not occur until the climax of the story and there is never any doubt as to the killer.

Biscuit McKee, who is Martinsville's librarian and Marmalade, her cat find their way into homes and shops they pass on their walks through the close knit community. Family members create problems with their fractured relationships and friends refuse to behave as expected in this complex cozy.

Biscuit's reactions to her daughter, her sister, and her husband give the reader a clear picture of her insecurities. It is the charm of those insecurities and the distinctly southern voice that gives the story its flow as one event intertwines and leads to another.

The cast of characters fascinated me so much I ordered Orange as Marmalade (the first of the series) to expand my appreciation of Biscuit, her family, her friends, and Marmalade who behaves as a cat whose humans never understand her language.

You can visit with Fran Stewart at Mystery Matters: where murder is an open book http://www.franstewart.com/ and listen to her outstanding radio interviews of mystery celebrities. Fran's books are available at Amazon.com and other retail outlets.

Nash Black, author of Indie finalists Writing as a Small Business and Haints.

Creative Thinking

We had the privilege of sharing both a signing table and a dinner table with Robert Alan Black and discussing the cognitive thought process that guides an author's style.

Broken Crayons is a guide book designed to be used in group sessions for executives and employees to solve problems, but many of the concepts he details in a simple, easy to remember pattern apply to writers who work alone.

One of my favorites is a list of activities that can easily generate a new way of thinking. Alan's text is on p. 17-18, but I'm semi-quoting as I've changed items to suit my purpose.

Broaden Your Interests searching many areas for information.

Reverse Perspectives to see things a different way.

Open Yourself to an infinite number of ideas.

Kickback and let your imagination run around.

Eliminate Steps in Procedures to discover new ways to solve problems.

Never say Never. Keep yourself open to positives in all things.

Combine Ideas, new & old, tried & experimental, ones you agree with, ones you know will not work.

Rearrange steps, facts, data, ideas, characters to create unique approaches.

Adapt or alter existing ideas to produce new ones.

Orient differently, switch, change, alter combine past, present, and future, here, there, somewhere, nowhere.

Noodle around, play with ideas, look at it from the perspective of a child or an animal.

Sleep On It For a While, let your intuitive or subconscious mind work on the situation in your story.

Coloring inside the lines of our dime store book was a skill we learned as children. Now Alan gives us dozens of guidelines for breaking our crayons and working outside the lines.

His Cemetery of Creativity is one we've visited many times. Add your personal monuments to his forty-tombstones, and give them a proper burial.

Broken Crayons: Break Your Crayons and Draw Outside the Lines by Robert Alan Black is available from him with a unique signature at alan@cre8ng.com or from Amazon.com.

Nash Black, reviewers and author

http://pennhand.blogspot.com/