Sinnerman .99 Today, One Day Only!

As part of a special promotion through eReader News Today, my thriller, Sinnerman, is .99 on the kindle TODAY ONLY. 

CLICK HERE

 

SINNERMAN PRODUCT DESCRIPTION

What if you’d been given a second chance to catch your sister’s killer—would you take it? And if you did, would a lifetime behind bars be justice enough, or would you need to see him dead?

MEET SLOANE

Private Investigator Sloane Monroe has solved every case that’s come across her desk with the exception of one—the brutal murder of her sister Gabrielle.

Three years have passed without a trace of the killer until today, when a young woman’s body is discovered on a patch of dirt in front of the local supermarket at daybreak. Now Sloane is faced with the most difficult challenge of her life—finding a man who’s a master at concealing his identity before he captures his next victim and sends them to eternal rest.

MEET SAM

Park City, Utah was a peaceful place until Sinnerman came to town.

Enter the mind of Sam Reids, a serial killer who slashes his trademark letter S into the wrist of his female victims before discarding their body in the same place he found them.

Who is he, and why does he prey on innocent women?
 

Chapter One Submissions: September

***THANKS TO ALL THOSE WHO SUBMITTED THEIR FIRST CHAPTER IN SEPTEMBER.  SUBMISSIONS ARE NOW CLOSED, BUT CHECK BACK IN OCTOBER FOR THE NEXT CONTEST***

 

 

What is it?

A contest for authors.

Each month I will be looking for the BEST first chapter of a novel. The winner will receive a $20 Amazon Gift Card AND will be interviewed on both my reader and writer blogs which have had over 30,000 page views in the past year. In addition, I will tweet about your book to my 17,000 followers and do a write up about why I chose your novel as my "chapter one" pick of the month. Read about the Chapter One winner for August HERE.

For this month, I will be accepting 50 entries. I might change this later...I need time to write after all ;) but I will do what I can to maintain this number. Once I receive 50, I will announce at the top of this post that submissions are closed for the month, so if you don't see that above, there's still an opening. Last month it was only open for two days, so don't wait around ;)

TO ENTER...

Comment on this blog post below. If you are one of the first fifty to comment, send the first chapter of your novel to my EMAIL ADDRESS.

In the subject line of your email put: CHAPTER ONE
And then please paste your chapter in the body of the email, and NOT as an attachment.

The winner will be emailed by the last week of the month, and look for their interview (and hopefully YOUR interview) the first week of the following month. If you were not chosen, you may submit the first chapter of a different novel the next month. Short stories are also eligible. BUT! Your book must be published to qualify.

Why am I doing this? Those who know me already know, but if you don't, one of my favorite things to do is promote up-and-coming authors. I received a lot of help in the early days of my journey from some amazing authors, and it's important to me to give back. 

Best of luck to everyone!

August Chapter One Winner - Sara J. Henry

As the months go by, I am having a harder time picking just one winner for the Chapter One contest.  There's a lot of good writing out there these days, and several excellent first chapters were submitted last month.  But there was something about the opening scene in Sara J. Henry's novel, Learning to Swim, that left me wanting more.  Read it for yourself and see what you think:



Learning to Swim: Chapter One

If I’d blinked, I would have missed it.

But I didn’t, and I saw something fall from the rear deck of the opposite ferry. It could have been a bundle of trash; it could have been a child-sized doll. Either was more likely than what I thought I saw: a small wide-eyed human face, in one tiny frozen moment as it plummeted toward the water.

I was on the late afternoon ferry on Lake Champlain, the big one that takes an hour to reach Vermont. It was overcast and misty, one of those in-between Adirondack days just before summer commits itself, and I’d pulled on a windbreaker because of the occasional chilly gust of wind. I was the only one out on deck, but the closed-in lounge with its narrow benches and tiny snack bar makes me edgy. And I love watching the water as the ferry carves through it. Today the water was calm, with no other boats out except this one’s twin, chugging stolidly in the opposite direction.

What I did next was a visceral reaction to those small eyes I thought I saw. Without conscious thought I vaulted onto the railing I was leaning against, took a deep breath, and dived.

It’s amazing what you can do if you don’t stop to think. The coldness of the water seemed to suck the air out of my lungs, but instinctively I curved upward, fluttering my feet.

In the weekly mini-triathlons in Lake Placid where I live, I’m always one of the last out of the water. The closest I’d ever come to underwater swimming was picking up my hair clasp at the bottom of a friend’s pool, and that had taken two tries. And whenever I see a movie with scenes where the hero has to swim through a long, narrow passageway, I always try to hold my breath. I never make it.

But I was in the lake, committed, and surging strongly underwater. By the time I broke the surface, I’d traveled more than a third of the way to where I’d seen the thing go in. Both ferries had gone onward, in their opposite directions. There was no one in sight. No shouts of alarm, no ferry slowing and turning about.

I kept my eyes fixed on the water ahead, and saw something bob up, too far away. My stomach gave a nasty twist. Then I swam, harder and faster than I ever had in a mini-triathlon with middle-aged tourists coming up behind me.

When I reached what I thought was the right spot, I took a deep breath and dived. The water wasn’t clear but not exactly murky, sort of a blurred translucence with a greenish cast. I didn’t get very far under, and had to try again. This time I saw only a few flat, colorless fish skittering by before I had to come up for air.

Gasping for breath, treading water while I sucked air, reason began to creep in. I wasn’t just cold; I was close to numb. I was alone in a very deep lake twelve miles wide, diving after what could be a bag of garbage somebody didn’t want to pay to haul to the dump. I was none too sure I had enough strength to get to shore. But I dived once more, and this time something led me straight to it.

It wasn’t a bundle of trash. It wasn’t a doll. It was a small boy, arms entangled in what looked like a dark sweatshirt, straight dark hair floating eerily above his head. For one awful moment I thought I was looking at a corpse, but then I saw a small sneakered foot kick weakly. By the time I got close enough to grab a handful of sweatshirt, I’d been without air far longer than I’d ever managed to hold my breath watching underwater scenes in movies. My throat was convulsing in an effort not to suck in water instead of the air that wasn’t there.

The boy turned toward me, looking at me with those wide dark eyes I hadn’t imagined after all. Then they slowly closed. I started upward, dragging him with one hand, swimming with the other, kicking as hard as I could.

It was endless. My ears were ringing, my body a marionette I was directing with an inner voice: Keep swimming, keep swimming, keep swimming.

I no longer felt cold, and my throat had stopped jerking. I began to wonder if I had drowned. But I felt a dull pain in the arm clutching the boy, and I wouldn’t, I thought, feel pain if I were dead.

I kicked on, and sensed rather than saw light above: either Heaven or the surface. In a burst of motion we emerged, the boy bobbing up beside me. I gulped in so much air it hurt, and shook water off my face.

The boy was limp, entangled in the sodden sweatshirt, and I couldn’t tell if he was breathing. I struggled to get the sweatshirt off over his head and tried to thump his thin back. I’d taken CPR, but it was several years ago, and no one tells you how to do CPR when you’re treading water in a deep, cold lake.

No response. I pulled the boy toward me, put my mouth over his and blew, turning to suck in air—once, twice, three times. Now I was feeling almost furious, at fate or irony or whatever had put me in this cold water with a thin dying child in my arms. I’d found him, and damn it, he needed to start breathing.

The boy coughed, spewed forth a gush of water, then opened his eyes.

“Yes!” I whispered, “yes, yes, yes!” and I think I shook him a little. I might have cried if I hadn’t learned a long time ago you can’t cry and swim at the same time.

Now we had to get to shore, which looked a lot farther away than I’d ever swum in a mini-triathlon.

I’ve read that drowning victims are likely to drag you under and you’re supposed to tow them with one arm around their neck so they can’t grab you. But I knew I’d never make it swimming with one arm. I pushed his hands under my belt, and squeezed them into tiny fists.

“Hold on,” I told him, looking into the dark eyes, and he seemed to understand.

The swim to shore wasn’t dramatic, just grim. There’s a formula that predicts how long you can survive in cold water before hypothermia renders your brain foggy and your arms and legs useless, and it was probably a good thing I couldn’t remember it.

This is the part of Rescue 911 you never see—the long, slow, dreary stuff. I did the crawl; I did the sidestroke. In my head I sang a slow dirge from Girl Scout camp: Mandy had a little bay-bee. Had that baby just for me. Stroke, breathe. Mandy, oh, my Mandy oh, my Man- dee mine. Stroke, breathe. Baby made my Mandy cry. Cried so hard she soon did die. Stroke, breathe.Mandy, oh, my Mandy oh, my Man- dee mine.

At one point the boy’s hands slipped from my belt, and I spun and grabbed him as he was sliding under. He opened his eyes halfway and looked at me dully. I cradled him in my arms as the water sloshed around us. “Just a little farther, just a little farther,” I pleaded, and his eyes flickered. Now maybe I was crying, but I was so wet and cold I couldn’t tell.

I could see details of the shoreline, rocks and a big tree that seemed to beckon to me, and damned if we were going to drown this close to land. I yanked the drawstring from my windbreaker hood, pulled one of his hands underwater, and lashed it to my belt. We swam on, in awkward tandem.

We had been carried well past the ferry dock, and reached shore in a rocky area. I swung my feet down to feel for bottom, and there it was, sandy and shifting and at tiptoe length, but there it was. I yanked my belt loose to free the boy and pulled him toward me, hoisting him to my hip. I staggered as we came out of the water, him clinging to my side like a baby orangutan, and sat down on the first big rock I came to.

We sat there for a moment in silence, sucking in air, both of us shivering. My inner voice was saying Thankyouthankyouthankyou, but to whom or to what, I don’t know. I was strangely conscious of the hardness of the rock I sat on and the fact that I was no longer being rocked by the water.

The boy stirred, and turned toward me, his dark hair plastered around his thin face. For the first time, I heard him make a sound.

“Merci,” he whispered.

***

 

 

The wording in this chapter is excellent; it compels the reader to keep reading so they can find out what happens next.  I found myself interested in why the little boy was in the water in the first place.  It's exactly what an author needs to do in their first chapter to capture their audience.  Now let's learn a little about Sara J. Henry...

 

Tell me about yourself: Where are you from and how long have you been writing?

I’m from Oak Ridge, Tennessee, a town constructed to help build the atom bomb during World War II. I started writing at the age of 5 with a very short short story. I began a novel at age 11, got as far as setting up the characters and place and situation, and stopped (that’s where it gets hard). I didn’t try writing fiction again until I wrote this novel. (In the interim I was a newspaper feature writer and sports editor, book editor, magazine editor, and various other jobs, including a stint as a soil scientist and one as a bicycle mechanic.) 

Tell me about the novel—what inspired it?

I was visiting the Adirondacks in upstate New York where I’d lived, and while driving along the huge Lake Champlain on a misty day I envisioned a woman on one of the ferries, seeing something she thought was a child fall from a ferry going the other direction – and imagined what she would do. That scene stuck with me, and when I sat down to write a novel, it became the opening chapter that’s posted here. (I’d say my primary writing influences were from my early teen years, when I devoured John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee series and Mary Stewart’s suspense novels.) 

What genre do you write in and why?

I suppose you’d call it suspense - I think my publisher is calling them “psychological suspense” – but I expect the real question is why. Genres are tricky – my books are sort of crossovers. I avoid calling them mysteries because many people have set ideas of what makes up a mystery, and my books don’t particularly fit that. Someone told me this one was “slightly literary,” which I could certainly live with! 

What’s the next project for you?  Tell the readers about it.

It’s the sequel to this novel, A COLD AND LONELY PLACE, coming out in February 2013.  It’s set in the Adirondacks, in the winter, with many of the same characters as the first book – and explores how deep friendships run, long-held secrets, and a tragic death that threatens to shatter the serenity of these mountain villages and several families’ lives.  

Let’s put the novel aside and talk about YOU for a minute—what are your hobbies and what can’t you live without that’s non-book related?  What do you do when you are not writing?  If you could live anywhere in the world, where would that be?

These days it’s almost hard to think of anything non-book related – seems I’m almost always writing, reading, editing, critiquing, doing web work. But I have several dogs, and a bicycle, and live in beautiful Vermont, so I try to find time to enjoy all of these. And I love to travel, to visit friends or go to book events. I will also admit to watching Survivor. I don’t know where else I’d like to live, but I’d like to visit friends in Costa Rica, spend some time in the UK and the south of France, and Australia and New Zealand. 

If a reader asked you to recommend the three BEST books to read, aside from your own, what would they be?

This would change from moment to moment, but off the top of my head, some of my favorites – and this is a very disparate list:

WINTER’S BONE, by Daniel Woodrell

BRAT FARRAR, by Josephine Tey

PLEASE IGNORE VERA DIETZ, by A.S. King 

If you could have dinner with one author, who would it be and why?

My friend Simon Toyne, because he makes me laugh, and appreciates my sense of humor. (Again, this answer would likely change depending on the day it was asked.)

Post where you can be found—website, blog, twitter, facebook, etc.

www.SaraJHenry.com

http://sarainvermont.blogspot.com/

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Sara-J-Henry/92608031036

http://twitter.com/SaraJHenry

 

August "Chapter One" Finalists

 

Here are the finalists for the month of August.  Any of these books are worth a second look!

 

Michelle Muto: Don't Fear the Reaper

 

Roger Stouff and Kenneth R. Brown: Firekill

 

Linda Welch: Along Came a Demon

 

Anne R. Allen: Ghostwriters in the Sky

 

Cheryl Shireman: Cooper Moon

 

Keri Knutson and Susan Branham: Director's Cut 

 

 

Sloane Monroe Series eBook Sale! One Day Only!

August 7th is my birthday, and to celebrate I've decided to discount my eBooks from their regular price to 99 cents.  This is for one day only.  On August 8th, they'll go back to the regular price. 

Here's what's I've discounted: (Click on the book photo to be linked to Amazon)

Sloane Monroe Series #1: Black Diamond Death

Sloane Monroe Series #2: Sinnerman

Sloane Monroe Series #3 I Have a Secret

My Novella: Whispers of Murder

Indie Writers Unite 2012 Cookbook

Chapter One Submissions: August

***SUBMISSIONS FOR AUGUST ARE NOW CLOSED.  FOLLOW MY BLOG TO BE ALERTED ON WHEN I OPEN FOR SEPTEMBER SUBMISSIONS (FIRST WEEK OF SEPT).  THIS MONTH IT TOOK LESS THAN TWO DAYS FOR ME TO REACH THE MAX NUMBER OF ENTRIES***

What is it?

A contest for authors.

Each month I will be looking for the BEST first chapter of a novel. The winner will receive a $20 Amazon Gift Card AND will be interviewed on both my reader and writer blogs which have had over 30,000 page views in the past year. In addition, I will tweet about your book to my 15,000 followers and do a write up about why I chose your novel as my "chapter one" pick of the month.

For this month, I will be accepting 50 entries. I might change this later...I need time to write after all ;) but I will do what I can to maintain this number. Once I receive 50, I will announce at the top of this post that submissions are closed for the month, so if you don't see that above, there's still an opening. Last month it was only open for two days, so don't wait around ;)

TO ENTER...

Comment on this blog post below. If you are one of the first fifty to comment, send the first chapter of your novel to my EMAIL ADDRESS. 

In the subject line of your email put: CHAPTER ONE
And then please paste your chapter in the body of the email, and NOT as an attachment.

The winner will be emailed by the last week of the month, and look for their interview (and hopefully YOUR interview) the first week of the following month. If you were not chosen, you may submit the first chapter of a different novel the next month. Short stories are also eligible.  BUT!  Your book much be published to qualify.

Why am I doing this? Those who know me already know, but if you don't, one of my favorite things to do is promote up-and-coming authors. I received a lot of help in the early days of my journey from some amazing authors, and it's important to me to give back.

Best of luck to everyone!

July Chapter One Winner: PJ Jones

If you are a writer and would like to sign up for the Chapter One contest in July, click HERE.

I continue to be amazed with the wonderful submissions that are coming my way for the Chapter One contest!  In July, I narrowed it down to ten, and then five, and then selected the winner.

The Finalists

Teresa Bellew - Letters From Inside

Roger Stouff  and Kenneth R. Brown - The Dark Lands (Book Two)

Liz Long - Gifted

Stacey Turis - Here's to Not Catching Our Hair on Fire

Marsha A. Moore - Heritage Avenged (Enchanted Bookstore Legend Two)

The Winner

PJ Jones

Here's a good portion of chapter one:

It was a nice day to go for a drive in the Texas hill country. Especially if the car you were driving belonged to Mr. Otis. Mr. Otis had a ‘69 Mustang convertible with clean seats and an ashtray full of quarters. He also had an expired inspection sticker. That was Ruckus’s favorite feature of his stolen car. Mr. Otis knew how to break the rules. He knew how to live life on the edge. Too bad Mr. Otis was neck deep in triple tequila peach lime smoothies or Ruckus would have invited him along.

Or maybe not.

Mr. Otis didn’t always break the rules. Lights out at nine-thirty. That was one rule Ruckus wished Mr. Otis would bend. No pissing on the lunch trays. That was another rule.

One of Ruckus’s biggest pet peeves was inconsistency. Either break all of the rules or none at all. People and their ‘socially acceptable behavior’ bothered him.

“I’m almost to the last chapter, Ruckus,” Fred frantically whined beside him, eyes glued to the unbound pages of his latest romance novel.

“Quit reading that damn book until we get there,” Ruckus muttered while tapping the accelerator. White puffy clouds had gathered overhead, shading the thirsty soil from this spring’s unusual dry spell, which meant the deer might come out to feed. At the risk of losing life and limb, and maybe putting a scratch on Otis’s car, Ruckus didn’t dare go faster than 90 mph.

“I can’t stop,” Fred sniffed while dabbing his glossy eyes with the back of his sleeve. “She’s almost got her happy ending.”

Ruckus groaned.

Sometimes Fred could be a real pain in the ass.

Fred liked books.

Correction.

Fred liked girly romance books with happy endings. The more happy shit in the books, the better. Fred especially liked books with pregnant chicks who married millionaires. Like that was ever gonna happen. But those books made Fred happy. And Ruckus didn’t climb down three story buildings and steal his orderly’s car just to disappoint his best friend.

“We’ll be at Maureen’s in five minutes,” Ruckus reassured Fred while he tapped the accelerator. Ninety-five mph and no faster or he was sure to hit a deer.

Maureen’s Used Book Exchange was located just on the edge of town, twelve miles from Shady Grove Home for the Mentally Insane. Maureen was a nice old lady, as nice as a social conformer could get. She always set aside a stack of millionaire baby smut books for Fred and she never minded being paid in quarters.

Usually, they had enough quarters left over for chocolate dipped cones at Dairy Queen. Shady Grove didn’t serve ice cream. Not the good stuff, anyway. They never had toppings. Who ate ice cream without toppings?

By the time they pulled into Maureen’s, Fred was sobbing like a baby.

“Girl get her happy ending?” Ruckus asked.

“Yeah,” Fred sniffled. “He saved her baby’s life and he married her.” Fred blew his nose into Mr. Otis’s gym shorts.

“That’s just great, buddy.” He leaned over and patted Fred’s back. Ruckus knew better than to show Fred no more affection than a few pats. The last time he gave Fred a hug, Fred called him ‘Daddy’ for a month. And Ruckus was nobody’s daddy.

Since their hospital pants didn’t have pockets, Ruckus dumped the contents of Otis’s gym bag onto the floor and filled the bag with quarters. Otis never went to the gym, anyway.

They walked down the gravel path to the front of the store. Ruckus had to push hard with his shoulder to get the warped door to open. Maureen’s Used Book Exchange used to be a farm house. Fred said it smelled like dead chicken ghosts. Ruckus thought it smelled more like dusty books.

Either way, Ruckus didn’t like the smell, but he put up with it for Fred.

Maureen looked up from a stack of books and straightened the rim of her glasses while running a hand through her white up-do.

“Hey, Fred,” she cooed, her scratchy voice laced with Southern sugary sweetness. She pulled out a tube of red lipstick and applied it to her mouth. Then she pressed her lips together, smearing the color all over her bleached upper lip hairs.

Ruckus got the feeling that Maureen had the hots for Fred even though she was old enough to be his grandma.

“Hi, Mrs. M.” Fred beamed as he stepped up to the other side of the counter. “Have any books for me?”

“I sure do.” Maureen fiddled with the fabric of her tank top before lifting her sagging breasts off her stomach and arranging them on the counter.

Women were always flirting with Fred. Ruckus could never understand it. He supposed Fred was good looking, in a Ken Doll sort of way, tall and blond, with straight teeth. Ruckus was too average to attract women, from his dull brown hair to his size ten shoes. He was just plain old Ruckus, with the exception of his eyes. Fred told him his eyes were dark and brooding.

Fred’s eyes were green. Women liked green. He’d read once that green made them horny.

But Fred was nuts.

Fucking nuts.

He had nothing to offer a woman. No toaster. No laminate flooring. No white picket fence.

“You’re in luck,” Maureen drawled. “A lady dumped off her Harlequin collection yesterday.” She slid her stack of books toward Fred.

“O-mi-god!” he cried, totally unfazed while Maureen stroked his forearm with her bony fingers. “Can I borrow your box-cutter, Mrs. M?”

“Yeah, Fred,” Maureen answered in her usual deflated tone. “Here you go.”

He eagerly took the box-cutter from her, sat at his table and got to work.

When Ruckus first started bringing Fred to Maureen’s bookstore four years ago, she’d argued with Fred for almost an hour when he wanted to cut the spines off the books.

“Spines are too restrictive,” he’d told her. “They hurt my fingers.”

But Ruckus knew the real reason Fred cut off the spines. He’d seen Fred throw away entire chapters - the unhappy parts of the stories. Fred didn’t just need a happy ending. He needed the entire book to be happy. And if he’d accidentally read something sad, he’d cry for weeks.

It took Fred two hours to meticulously cut all the spines off his books, speed read through them, throw out the sad parts, then rebind each chapter in paperclips, and finally bind each book with rubber bands.

By the time they left the book store, Ruckus’s mouth was watering for a chocolate dipped ice cream cone. When they pulled into the pot-hole-filled parking lot of the old Dairy Queen building on Crocket Street, he could almost taste the chocolaty crunchy bliss melting on his tongue.

He grumbled as Fred bumped into him on the way into the building. Eyes glued to his latest novel, Fred was too distracted to watch where he was going. Ruckus ushered Fred to their usual table, then he went to the register and laid his quarters on the counter.

Maria was already dipping the cones.

“Hola, Ruckus.” Maria, a middle aged, buxom Latina woman who always wore her dark hair in one long, thick braid, held out two cones, each layered with a generous amount of ice cream and chocolate topping. “Here’s your usual.”

“Thanks, Maria.” He smiled as he reached for the cones. “You make the best ice cream.”

Maria knew the secret to good dipped ice cream cones. The secret wasn’t in the ice cream or the crunchy chocolate shell. The secret was in the cherry she buried inside. Somewhere in that smooth creamy goodness was a hidden morsel of ripe sweetness. Ruckus and Fred liked to play a game. Whoever found their cherry first was the winner. Nobody really won anything because they didn’t have many possessions at Shady Grove, but they still liked to play the game.

In the past six years he’d spent at Shady Grove, Fred was the only person Ruckus had learned to trust. The only person who’d convinced him to conform to a routine. The bookstore and Dairy Queen - his one little tradition amid the chaos of pissing all over the cafeteria.

Fred dropped his book on the table and eagerly held out his hands when Ruckus sat down with the cones. He plowed his face into his ice cream, coming up only to breathe and to wipe chocolate stains off his lips.

Fred found his cherry first. Even though Ruckus had seen where Maria hid his cherry, he let his friend win the game. In fact, Ruckus always let Fred win. Ruckus found satisfaction in making Fred happy, and making Fred happy was easy.

***

I like the author's quick, witty sense of humor as well as the flow of this first chapter.  It moves well and holds my interest.  It's edited well and written well.  I love the description that's used for the main character.  Right away, the reader gets to know what he's like--what he likes, what he doesn't like--what makes him happy, upset, etc.  It's good writing.  To purchase Driving Me Nuts, click HERE.

***

Want to know more about PJ Jones? Read the Q&A:  

Tell me about yourself: Where are you from and how long have you been writing?

*

I’m from Texas, not far from the fictional town where Ruckus and Fred live. I have been writing since I could hold a pencil. I majored in English in college and taught high school English and writing for several years before becoming a full-time author.

*

Tell me about the novel—what inspired it?

*

Like all my books, this one was inspired by a dream. I was dreaming that Owen Wilson was sitting beside me, crying as he ripped unhappy scenes out of a romance novel and I kept telling him to stop. I woke up and wrote the first scene of Driving Me Nuts! I decided to give each character a tragic backstory, because I had overcome my own adversity, a health crisis that I’d believed would take my life. I connected with these characters by likewise dragging them through hell and then offering them the shot at healing and redemption. Of course, I had to infuse my own brand of PJ Jones humor throughout because I’ve always believed that the best way to deal with adversity is through laughter.  *

What genre do you write in and why?

*

As PJ Jones I write dark comedy and paranormal parody. I write it to make myself and others laugh. When reviewers write that they spewed orange juice, coffee and tea through their noses while reading my books, I know I’ve succeeded.

*

What’s the next project for you? Tell the readers about it.

*

I am currently trying to finish up a novel under another penname, which is my bread and butter at the moment. Then, I’m going to finish up my Jane Austen parody, Pride, Prejudice and Sparkly Vampires.

*

Let’s put the novel aside and talk about YOU for a minute—what are your hobbies and what can’t you live without that’s non-book related? What do you do when you are not writing? If you could live anywhere in the world, where would that be?

*

I love photography, swimming, and researching healthy living. I couldn’t live without my family. They have supported me throughout my writing career and I love spending time with them. If I could live anywhere, it would definitely be near a beach where I could catch and eat fresh seafood and swim with my family.

*

If a reader asked you to recommend the three BEST books to read, aside from your own, what would they be? 

*

That’s tough. I have read so many good books lately, all by indie authors. If I HAD to narrow it down:

The Sable City by M. Edward McNally

Wool by Hugh Howey

Kissed by Darkness by Shea MacLeod. 

* 

If you could have dinner with one author, who would it be and why?

*

You! To thank you for choosing Driving Me Nuts! as this month’s winner, and to tell you that your success has inspired me as a writer.

(Comment by Cheryl Bradshaw: Thanks PJ, that means a lot!)
*
Get in touch with PJ here:

WEBSITE AND BLOG

TWITTER

FACEBOOK

EMAIL

Welcome Summer Splash Blog Hoppers!

Welcome to your first stop on the Summer Splash Blog Hop blog tour.  I hope you'll all take the time to visit each author's page--there are many, many prizes to be won.  But since you're here, let's get to mine ;)

I am offering several prizes.  So make sure you read through the entire post.  Enter one or enter them all--the choice is up to YOU!

PRIZE #1 - SIGNED COPIES OF MY BOOKS

I will sign and send a copy of one of my books in my Sloane Monroe mystery/thriller series to five winners.  

TO ENTER 

1. FOLLOW ME ON TWITTER = 1 ENTRY

2. FOLLOW ME ON FACEBOOK = 1 ENTRY

3. COMMENT BELOW ON THIS POST = 1 ENTRY

PRIZE #2 - GIFT BASKET FROM CHERYL'S GOURMET

If you haven't tried cookies from Cheryl's, you've been missing out!  The beautiful blue wrapping on the boxes reminds me of the clear blue skies in Park City, the setting for the first novel in my Sloane Monroe Series, Black Diamond Death.  I want to give one lucky winner the chance to win the Summertime Gift Tower which includes 28 cookies and brownies. $40 value.

TO ENTER

Purchase a copy of Black Diamond Death by clicking HERE, and answer this question:

In chapter 27, first paragraph, what was happening when Sloane woke up?

Send me your answer HERE.

PRIZE #3 - A TWO POUND BOX OF SEE'S CANDIES

In Sinnerman, book #2 in my Sloane Monroe series, serial killer Sam Reids is as sinful as they come, quite like these sinfully sweet chocolates from See's Candies, a store that originated in California.

I grew in California and know a good piece of chocolate, or in this case, two pounds of chocolate.  If you enjoy chocolate, you'll love these.  $40 value

TO ENTER

Purchase a copy of Sinnerman HERE and answer the following question:

In chapter 34, first page, how far was it to the gas station?

Send me your answer HERE.

PRIZE #4- KINDLE GIFT CARD

PI Sloane Monroe is all ready to soak up the sun in I Have a Secret (Sloane Monroe Series #3).  She's brought along her kindle, but needs some good books to read.  This is where you get to decide.  The winner of this prize will receive a $50 gift card to Amazon. 

TO ENTER

Purchase a copy of I Have a Secret HERE and answer the following question:

In chapter 31, first page, what is the name of the person Sloane searches on the internet?

Send me your answer HERE.

AND NOW THAT YOU ARE FINISHED, CLICK HERE TO GO BACK TO THE HOP!