Jane Blythe, a USA Bestselling Author, is a must read for me. I have been loving her books and the River’s End Rescue series has been a wonderful adventure into the small town life of some fabulous characters that have stolen my heart…and the serial killers that hunt them.
Maggie woke up early, and seeing she had a routine, she couldn’t figure out why…until, she smelled the smoke. Her hotel was on fire and she was trapped…no way out.
Theo, and the rest of the team get the call…Honeysuckle Hotel. They all know Maggie and her hotel, that it had been in her family for generations. After serving in the Marines, Theo had come home to be a firefighter. I wouldn’t mind a hunkalicious fireman throwing me over his shoulder and saving me from…anything. LOL He had been friends with Maggie, so he thought nothing of offering her a place to in his home while the hotel was being repaired.
Somniphobia: The fear of sleep. Nightmares have plagued Maggie her entire life, so I know there has to be a horrible story there. She sleeps with the light and TV on. I don”t sleep with the light on, but I do sleep with the TV on. I need the noise to cover up all those creaks and groans the house makes when things are too quiet.
River’s End is a small town, where everyone knows ones everyone’s business. People think Maggie is sweet, cool, calm and collected. But, they don’t know her secret.
I first me Theo in a Broken Gems novel. He has a broken heart and felt he did Maggie wrong when she reached out to him because of it. She felt she deserved to be punished, alone with her nightmares.
I love books with secrets and I am curious what Maggie’s will be. The villain has a plan and the fire is only the first step. He doesn’t care about anything or anyone. It’s all about what he wants, how he feels…and he feels monstrous,wants revenge. For what
Have you ever looked at someone, and all of a sudden you see them in a different light? As if they are a different person altogether? And, sometimes a character…or two…need to be slapped upside the head.
I love that no two of her romantic suspense scenarios are the same. She always manages to tweak them in an engrossing way.
I voluntarily reviewed a free copy of Some Lies Will Haunt You by Jane Blythe.
4 Stars
GOODREADS BLURB
Everyone has told lies but hers might get her killed.
Maggie Wilson has spent her entire adult life pretending she’s self assured and confident, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. When her hotel catches fire she finds herself looking at a childhood friend through new eyes, but as she falls for him she realises that if she wants to have a future with him she’ll have to admit to the lies that have hung over her head for half a lifetime. If she does that she’ll lose him.
Firefighter Theo Black walks through the flames to rescue his friend Maggie without a second thought, that was easy but realizing things are changing between them isn’t. He’s already done the whole falling for a friend thing before and it didn’t work out, he has no intention of going through that again. However when it becomes clear someone keeps setting fires when Maggie is around he’ll do whatever it takes to keep her safe, even if it means risking his heart.
ABOUT JANE BLYTHE
Jane
has loved reading and writing since she can remember. She writes dark
and disturbing crime/mystery/suspense with some romance thrown in
because, well, who doesn’t love romance? She has one completed series,
Detective Parker Bell, and one new series, Count to Ten.
When she’s not writing Jane loves to
read, bake, go to the beach, ski, horse ride, and watch Disney movies.
She has a black belt in Taekwondo, and a 200+ collection of teddy bears.
She has the world’s two most sweet and pretty Dalmatians, Ivory and
Pearl. Oh, and she also enjoys spending time with family and friends!
WOW…I mean…WOW. Each story in Michaelbrent Collings Stranger series keeps getting better and better, but seeing my rating system only goes to 5…I have a full page of notes and I think that means I’ll be doing some editing. Don’t want to give away too much…only want to teeeeease you. 🙂
Not everyone that Legion seeks out dies, but you better be on your best behavior. If he has any doubts….
Legion is one of those characters I fall in love with and never want to lose, never want his story to end, even though I wonder how it will. He reminds me of Dexter, meting out his own version of vigilante justice. How can his ending be a good one? I don’t see it, yet I want it. Like all people, he is neither all good or all bad. Where his journeys are taking him, I don’t think even he knows, but there is a destination he seeks.
Warning…Set aside some time. Once I began, I couldn’t stop. Listening to him talk to Fire, Water and The One had my head spinning, at times. Each individual voice has it’s own personality. But…something is changing. He doesn’t know what, but he feels it all the same.
There are discriminating, racist, sexist, gangs, white supremicist elements, but isn’t that like real life? A mother trying to save her and her son, a Wolf after revenge…and Legion. Even with all the danger and violence…no punches are pulled… in Michaelbrent Collings Stranger series, there are moments of levity.
Michaelbrent Collings Stranger series is at the top of its class. Love, love, love Legion. He is such a tortured, complex individual. I don’t know how Michael takes each story to a new level of breath taking suspense and so many book surprises, they even last until the last page. I am desperate for more!
What a fabulous TV series The Stranger stories would make!!!! I’m sure it would do fantastic as movies, but I am a TV addict. Is anyone listening? Who would you choose to play the lead? I’m going to have to think on that.
I voluntarily reviewed a free copy of Stranger Danger by Michaelbrent Collings.
5 Stars
GOODREADS BLURB
He will teach you the lesson… … he knows you’re dying to learn.
Legion is a teacher. An avenging angel. A murderer.
A madman.
Raised
in the underground hideout of an insane father, he searches for those
who keep secrets and sins. Then he teaches them how to leave those
mistakes behind. Even if it means killing them to do it.
Because sometimes murder is the cost of a proper education.
That’s why, when he comes to a neighborhood in the grips of a vicious gang war, he knows the time has come to teach.
Soon
Legion – and his imaginary brothers, Water and Fire – are caught in the
middle of a vicious fight for control of the Downs, the worst part of a
city on the verge of anarchy.
Legion is facing enemies on all sides. Hundreds of men will stop at nothing to capture or kill him.
Legion will teach the lessons. And the students will never forget, no matter how long – or short – their lives may be.
The students are ready.
And the teacher will never stop.
ABOUT MICHAELBRENT COLLINGS
Michaelbrent Collings is an internationally-bestselling novelist,
multiple Bram Stoker Award nominee, produced screenwriter, and one of
the top indie horror writers in the United States.
He hopes someday to develop superpowers, or, if that is out of the question, then at least to get a cool robot arm.
Michaelbrent
has a wife and several kids, all of whom are much better looking than
he is (though he admits that’s a low bar to set), and also cooler than
he is.
Michaelbrent also has a Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/MichaelbrentC…
and can be followed on Twitter through his username @mbcollings.
Follow him for cool news, updates, and advance notice of sales. You
will also be kept safe when the Glorious Revolution begins!
It is so good to be back with the Broken Gem family and I can hardly wait to see what Jane Blythe has in store for me in Shattered Amethyst. Each gem has been severely damaged and Amethyst Hatcher will have her day. Will Zeb, her bodyguard, be her salvation?
Amethyst, like her four sisters, had been sold by their parents to sex traffickers.
“This one is going to be moved quickly”…but she isn’t going without a fight.
The writing flows smoothly, leading me, taking me to her, sensing her betrayal and terror. Amethyst may not be able to control what was happening to her, but she refused to let them own her mind. Anger is her best friend. When death no longer scares you, it can give you a sense of freedom.
Amethyst was supposed to die on her eighteenth birthday,yet, by some miracle, she lives. Or does she?
I felt anger and outrage….a lot of it. The Broken Gem series feels too real, at times, getting my emotions riled up. I feel my muscles tense and if I was watching this on TV I would be screaming at it. Instead, I am gobbling up the words, hoping THEY get theirs.
Jane doesn’t go into a lot of detail about the time Amethyst is kept in captivity. Most of it covers what she is doing with her life now, seven years later. She is a firefighter. The danger makes her feel alive, so she seeks it out.
Zeb is a police officer and we have met him before. This time we are getting his story…and the wooing will begin shortly. We already know he is in for a tough time with the prickly Amethyst.
There are a lot of triggers in Shattered Amethyst, so if the dark isn’t to your liking, this may not be for you. That being said, GIVE ME MORE…and I do have Splintered Emerald on my Kindle right now…waiting.
Even though I know the ending, it never stops me from grabbing the next romantic suspense novel that comes my way. I LOVE them and Jane Blythe is one of my favorite authors. Sometimes, like with Shattered Amethyst, I feel like she wrote the book just for me.
I voluntarily reviewed a free copy of Shattered Amethyst by Jane Blythe.
4 Stars
GOODREADS BLURB
Betrayed. Sold. Tortured. Now she’s fighting to rebuild her life.
Amethyst Hatcher was supposed to die on her eighteenth birthday, against all the odds she survived, and now lives her life searching for her next adrenaline rush. When the firefighter is assigned to work with the cops, she finds herself completely unprepared for the sexual tension smoldering between her and Detective Zeb Tuck to develop into something more.
Zeb can’t deny the sizzling attraction between him and Amethyst, but he fights against it. He’s already lost so much and doesn’t want to get involved with someone who seems to have a death wish. When his newest case, hunting a sadistic fire-starting killer forces him and the sexy firefighter to work together, he’ll have to decide whether falling for Amethyst is worth the risk.
↝ Trigger warning – mature content, issues of sexual assault/abuse, violence ↜
SHATTERED AMETHYST is the fourth book in the Broken Gems series by USA Today bestselling author Jane Blythe. Murder, mystery, suspense, and love in this thrilling romantic suspense! Each book in the series can be read as a standalone but reading in order is encouraged, a guaranteed HEA!
Other books in the series Cracked Sapphire – Sapphire and Gideon’s story Crushed Ruby – Ruby and Judah’s story Fractured Diamond – Diamond and Elijah’s story Shattered Amethyst – Amethyst and Zeb’s story Splintered Emerald – coming October 5th 2020 Salvaging Marigold – coming November 2020
ABOUT JANE BLYTHE
Jane
has loved reading and writing since she can remember. She writes dark
and disturbing crime/mystery/suspense with some romance thrown in
because, well, who doesn’t love romance? She has one completed series,
Detective Parker Bell, and one new series, Count to Ten.
When she’s not writing Jane loves to
read, bake, go to the beach, ski, horse ride, and watch Disney movies.
She has a black belt in Taekwondo, and a 200+ collection of teddy bears.
She has the world’s two most sweet and pretty Dalmatians, Ivory and
Pearl. Oh, and she also enjoys spending time with family and friends!
Any book by Britney King is high on my reading list, so as soon as Kill Sleep Repeat hit my Kindle, I was all over it. Britney has never disappointed me and this one was so much more than I expected.
As soon as Kill Sleep Repeat hit my Kindle, I began reading. I cannot let one of her thrillers sit on my virtual bookshelf. I must know who will be put through hell this time.
Stay focused. Remain in character. Don’t get murdered. For Charlotte, they are rules to live by.
Charlotte is a flight attendant and an assassin, which makes it easy to travel to her marks. Her victims pay the ultimate price. She’s married to Michael, with two daughters, but no one knows her secret. She is a sociopath, no conscience, no remorse and revels in wrapping her hands around her marks neck until no sign of life is left, but they are all villains in their own right. Her father was a sheriff, so maybe that’s where she comes by her need for justice.
She killed for the first time when she was in college, but Britney King doesn’t let it be just a murder. This the first twist that caught me offguard and I am loving it.
Do we ever really know someone? Their true thoughts and feelings? What they are doing when we are not with them? How long can someone hide the truth from their spouse, their family, their friends? How long before they all figure out who you really are…a sociopath.
Henry…is a good or bad? Can she trust him?
JC…well, I see him being a big problem and I’m not sure who he really is…until…
The website. I love how she handled that. Adds a little something extra, which is something Britney King manages to do in each and every story. It’s the little details that make a story something special.
Britney King is excellent with book surprises and I was hit with one after another, each larger than the first. I never saw the direction we would go, the danger and intrigue. I want to say more, but I want you to experience this for yourself, so mum’s the word.
As I read Kill Sleep Repeat, I was totally in Charlotte’s corner. She may be a vigilante, taking the law into her own hands, but I want her to succeed and survive. I want her to get her revenge when she is faced with the ultimate betrayal. Kill or be killed.
I bounced between 4 and 5 stars, but because it is an ARC, I will overlook the tiny issues I had because it is just that good!
I voluntarily reviewed an ARC of Kill Sleep Repeat by Britney King.
5 Stars
GOODREADS BLURB
From the bestselling author of The Social Affair and HER comes an intense and deadly provocative thriller which follows a woman who, in a fight for survival, realizes her job may cost more than it pays.
Several times a week, Charlotte Jones leaves suburbia behind and boards a chartered flight to parts unknown, where she wraps her hands around the necks of marks for just as long as she has to.
Then she goes back to domestic life with a paycheck, defense wounds, and the sense that she can handle anything.
Which is good, because being a wife, mother, and sociopath, with an insatiable taste for murder, gives the term work-life balance new meaning. When one life unexpectedly bleeds into the other, leading to a secret admirer and borderline insta-fame, Charlotte is forced to ask herself if she really can have it all.
Slick and unsettling, Kill, Sleep, Repeat is a cunning tale of deception and desire that begs the question: Do we ever really know people the way we think we do?
ABOUT BRITNEY KING
Britney King lives in Austin, Texas with her husband, children, two dogs, one ridiculous cat, and a partridge in a pear tree.
When she’s not wrangling the things mentioned above, she writes
psychological, domestic and romantic thrillers set in suburbia.
Currently, she’s writing three series and several standalone
novels.
The Bedrock Series features an unlikely heroine who should have
known better. Turns out, she didn’t. Thus she finds herself tangled in a messy,
dangerous, forbidden love story and face-to-face with a madman hell-bent on
revenge. The series has been compared to Fatal Attraction, Single White Female,
and Basic Instinct.
The Water Series follows the shady love story of an
unconventional married couple—he’s an assassin—she kills for fun. It has been
compared to a crazier book version of Mr. and Mrs. Smith. Also, Dexter.
Around The Bend is a heart-pounding standalone, which traces the
journey of a well-to-do suburban housewife, and her life as it unravels, thanks
to the secrets she keeps. If she were the only one with things she wanted to
keep hidden, then maybe it wouldn’t have turned out so bad. But she wasn’t.
The With You Series at its core is a deep love story about
unlikely friends who travel the world; trying to find themselves, together and
apart. Packed with drama and adventure along with a heavy dose of suspense, it
has been compared to The Secret Life of Walter Mitty and Love, Rosie.
The Social Affair is an intense standalone about a timeless
couple who find themselves with a secret admirer they hadn’t bargained for. For
fans of the anti-heroine and stories told in unorthodox ways, the novel
explores what can happen when privacy is traded for convenience. It is
reminiscent of films such as One Hour Photo and Play Misty For Me.
Without a doubt, connecting with readers is the best part of this
gig. You can find Britney online here:
To get more– grab two books for free, by subscribing to her
mailing list at britneyking.com or just copy and paste bit.ly/britneykingweb
into your browser.
Dead Or Alive by Jane Blythe is Book III in the Detective Parker Bell series and it is wonderful to be back with such a fabulous group of characters and to see what trouble they find themselves in this time.
Dead Or Alive by Jane Blythe starts out with a BANG…and keeps on going.
Detective Parker Bell is doing his grocery shopping, just a mundane chore we can all relate to, when he hears a gunshot and sees a car screeching out of the parking lot. Two bodies are lying on the pavement…
The characters all have their heavy baggage to bear and miscommunication abounds because of their need to protect themselves, and their secrets. Parker and Tessa are together, but she holds tight to her thoughts and feelings. It’s a good thing he has patience and so much love for her.
Wyatt is Parker’s partner, but he thinks of him as his brother. Parker has a tendency to let his emotions rule him, becoming personally involved in many of his cases. That is how him and Tessa came to be together, but that is another story.
I love Jane Blythe’s ability to put me in the middle of the suspense and danger, Darkness and their past seem to dog their every footstep.
Tessa…she is my favorite character. If something needs to be done, she feels she must do it herself. She will sacrifice everything for Parker and her friends and family. She puts herself last.
I had trouble with a few things, but as the story came together and Jane was wrapping everything up, it all became clear. I love when an author leads me down a path that trips me up and leaves me saying, AHA, I get it now.
When Parker comes up missing, she makes a deal with the devil…and that is the tease for the next book in this standalone series. I do recommend beginning at the beginning because I have loved every step of the way, but Jane Blythe recaps a lot of the past action so that you can know why these characters do what they do.
SO…What’s the cost of making a deal with the devil? Find out in Little Girl Lost.
I voluntarily reviewed a free copy of Dead Or alive by Jane Blythe.
4 Stars
GOODREADS BLURB
She was so close to finally being happy.
Lila
and Eric Abbott’s world spins out of control in an instant when their
young son is shot and their infant daughter abducted in a seemingly
random car jacking.
While working on the case Detective Parker
Bell disappears without a trace leaving his friends and family,
including new wife Tessa, frantic to find out what has happened to him.
Tessa clings to the belief that Parker would never abandon her, despite
the insistence of those around her that his recent behavioral changes
may mean he has left on purpose. What’s worse, a husband who’s dead or
one who’s alive but walked out on her?
↝ Trigger warning – themes of sexual assault ↜
ABOUT JANE BLYTHE
Jane
has loved reading and writing since she can remember. She writes dark
and disturbing crime/mystery/suspense with some romance thrown in
because, well, who doesn’t love romance? She has one completed series,
Detective Parker Bell, and one new series, Count to Ten.
When she’s not writing Jane loves to
read, bake, go to the beach, ski, horse ride, and watch Disney movies.
She has a black belt in Taekwondo, and a 200+ collection of teddy bears.
She has the world’s two most sweet and pretty Dalmatians, Ivory and
Pearl. Oh, and she also enjoys spending time with family and friends!
The fantastic book trailer for Method 15/33 only gives you a glimpse of what is to come. As she sits on the bed and raises her head, I thought of Poltergeist. I expected her to reach out and…
Method 15/33 by Shannon Kirk is an amazing, top shelf, must read suspense thriller that will have you wondering, will the prey become the predator. I can hardly believe Method 15/33 is a debut novel for Shannon Kirk, it is so damn good!
Winner Of 2015 National Indie Excellence Award For Suspense!
Finalist in the 2013 William Faulkner-William Wisdom Creative Writing Competition as novella 15/33. Method 15/33 is now a full-length novel coming from Oceanview Publishing.
I heard about Method 15/33 by Shannon Kirk through a friend and reached out to her. The novel sounded like one of my favorite type of reads and I could hardly wait to pick it up. The suspense had me holding my breath, rooting for her, then afraid of her.
She is a pregnant teenager, abducted and held captive. Her mother had filled her with self esteem and confidence. Is she a sociopath? She is able to turn her feelings on and off, like a light switch. As Shannon describes her attempts to mimic feelings and doing the right thing, it makes me think of Sheldon on the Big Bang Theory.
The vivid detail of the trip to her cell makes me able to picture the wild daisies and devil’s paintbrush on the side of the road. I felt the breeze as she prepared to exit the van. I could smell his stale body odor and his sewer breath.
No matter, she loves her baby and will not give up. She has hope. Her hurt and rage would help her to do what is necessary to exact her revenge. Escape wasn’t enough. They would pay and pay dearly.
My first asset is terra firma…thus begins her plotting – Escape/Revenge Plan 15.
It had been 20 days, but she was constantly thinking, planning. As she runs through scenarios, it made me think of the computer in Person of Interest, going through scenarios, changing them, ruling one out and trying another. She knew she could outwit him.
Alone, locked in a cell, praying the butterfly in the window will calm her, save her. She doesn’t know what loneliness feels like, is this it?
Butterfly (c) Sherry Fundin
She may have her issues, but I love her. My empathy is such, that I want to wrap my arms around her and offer her comfort. She tries and means well…sometimes. Isn’t that what we all do? Even dysfunctional families have their moments of humor, love and togetherness.
Shannon Kirk’s words allow me to feel HER pain, HER loneliness, HER anger and HER rage. I want to scream, yell and cry with her.
FBI Special Agent Roger Lui and partner, Lola were assigned the case. They have been together for five years and know each other better than a spouse would. He is a flawed hero, carrying heavy baggage with his failure to find Dorothy Saluce, an abducted, pregnant teen, deja vu. Lola is someone I can relate to, a tough, no nonsense, one of the guys kind of woman.
She counts seconds, minutes, steps, inches, plotting, planning…a piece of elastic, a pail handle…She didn’t know what would be valuable, so she collected it all. I wonder if she used to watch MacGyver too.
The kidnappers…a fantastic surprise. Twisted. Evil.
She makes herself sick and Shannon Kirk’s mastery of words makes this so gross and disgusting it makes me want to puke too.
33 is water. You will be surprised at its use and importance.
They escape, but OMG, Shannon, you didn’t. My heart fell. I can’t believe it. What an awesome twist. I felt complete terror for her, wanted to yell, hurry, hurry, what the hell are you waiting for? As if it isn’t bad enough, Shannon makes it even worse. How can that be? It just keeps coming and coming, the badness rolling over me like a tsunami wave. Overwhelming, the pacing gripping me as if I’m on a runaway train and hanging on for dear life.
Method 15/33 keeps getting scarier and scarier, the badness goes on and on…out of the frying pan and into the fire.
I love the characters, right to the end, especially HER. This 16 year old sociopath stole my heart.
I don’t know what to say about the emotion roiling inside me as I reach the end. I can’t help but just sit…thinking…thinking…
Shannon wove an awesome story that has left me screaming for more.
To love someone so much you are heartbroken just to look at them.
This, is to have a child.
5+++++
I received a copy of Method 15/33 from Shannon Kirk in return for an honest review.
GUEST POST
I am so excited to have Shannon Kirk here today. I love her debut novel, Method 15/33 and I could not help but fall for the main character, Lisa Yyland. I also, would like to congratulate Shannon on Method 15/33 is being devloped for a feature film. How cool is that? I, for one, can hardly wait to see it!
LET’S TALK ABOUT PSYCHOPATHS
-By Shannon Kirk
Let’s talk about psychopaths. Or, maybe you prefer sociopaths. I’m no psychiatrist, so what I’m talking about are persons whose brains are physiologically wired in such a way that they do not experience emotions as others feel joy, fear, excitement, happiness, remorse, guilt. I’m not talking about people who may be deemed “sociopaths,” not from the physical construction of their brains, but because of environment, a traumatic childhood for example.
What I understood from reading the non-fiction book, The Sociopath Next Door, is there are persons who simply do not understand the sensation of effervescent bubbles rising in your chest when a baby giggles at you, and you giggle back. They might, however, understand the action of smiling in reaction to a baby smiling, the simple physical learned act of social parroting, which is very different from feeling the urge to giggle or smile because of that elusive thing called happiness.
As a lay person, far from being a licensed psychiatrist, I had to read articles and books of the very real medical condition of psychopathy so as to form some basis for the main character in Method 15/33. She holds the traits of a clinical psychopath; for example, she disassociates, lacks empathy, feels no remorse, and plans actions in a way to benefit herself and minimize risk. She’s exceptionally practical in all she does and thinks.
We see this type of character all over popular culture. Hollywood just loves the psychopath. But psychopaths are very real, and indeed, as suggested in The Sociopath Next Door, could be living right next door. The book suggests that some folks who seek out management and politics might hold the common traits of the psychopath or the sociopath. Is this any surprise? How could a billionaire business baron axe 25,000 jobs and the next day be golfing in Tahiti, a smile on his face, and a mai tai with umbrella in his hand? I’m not saying all bosses and all politicians are psychopaths, but when I’ve raised this premise to any group, someone always raises their hand and says, “Oh damn, that’s my boss. He totally fits those traits.”
What got me thinking after reading articles and books on psychopaths was how this condition can exist simply by how someone’s brain is constructed. And if that is so, what natural variations exist in our population? We know that not all psychopaths are “evil,” not all kill women for sport, and not all stalk and kill bad guys according to some “code” (Dexter). So is there a spectrum of psychopathy? On one end you would have Heath Ledger’s Joker or Christian Bale’s American Psycho, on the other you’d have Ms. Whiney Crybaby. You know, the girl who cries at every Kleenex commercial, who yells and stomps and throw pillows and jewelry if her man so much as looks at another woman. No emotion vs. Too much emotion. So what’s in the middle of the spectrum? Normalcy? There must be a middle and ripples from there. This idea, I got stuck on this idea.
I wanted to explore the idea of a spectrum of psychopathy in a fictional way. For example, what if a psychopath was wired in such a way that she could choose to feel emotions? If a person can be wired in a such a way that they physically cannot feel emotions, then why couldn’t a person exist who can control when they feel certain emotions? Also, what if there are people who sometimes slip into a form of psychopathy, while at other times are fully emotionally functional. Have you ever been so absorbed in a work project that you cannot understand why a person is crying in your doorway about the same work project until you stop what you’re doing, calibrate your mood, take a minute to absorb, and then when you take a breath or two, you finally empathize? If that is possible for most everyone, then what if such moments of disassociation are prolonged in certain people? I have to believe this is possible. In the very least, the idea, this spectrum of possibilities with psychopathy, is a breeding ground for fiction.
In my novel Method 15/33, I chose to contort the medical condition of psychopathy and create a character that controls emotions. She often chooses not to feel any emotions, and because of this, like true psychopaths, has had to “learn” appropriate social reactions. I then wanted to meld with this condition another condition in psychology having to do with “cross modal neuroplasticity”—essentially, how a person who loses one sense, gains a “super” sense in something else, such as how a deaf person might have exceptional eyesight. What I wanted to explore, again entirely on a theoretical fictional basis, basically I just made it up, was a psychopath character, who controls emotions, and her emotions are “senses”, such that since she often lacks them, her other senses are somewhat enhanced. For example, although she is blindfolded, because she is not experiencing fear or any other emotion, her smell of the air and her feel of the temperature, the precise weight of her steps on the ground, tell her the type of terrain she’s on, how long a stretch of forest is through which she is forced, what specific trees scrapes her arms, and what the nature, climate, look, and use of the land is where she is taken, as if she were seeing it with her very eyes.
So while any psychiatrist could probably poke a thousand million holes in my writer’s theory, I do actually believe that in our world, there is a wide spectrum of psychopathy, of cross-modal neuroplasticity, and that emotions just may be some form of “sense.” Who knows if we’ll ever crack the code to our brains, and frankly, I hope we don’t. It’s just too much fun to make up stories, twisting the boundaries of psychology we think we know.
SYNOPSIS
Kidnapped, pregnant teen turns the tables. Who is the victim and who is the aggressor?
.
Imagine a helpless, pregnant 16-year-old who’s just been yanked from the serenity of her home and shoved into a dirty van. Kidnapped…
Alone…Terrified.
Now forget her…
Picture instead a pregnant, 16-year-old, manipulative prodigy. She is shoved into a dirty van and, from the first moment of her kidnapping, feels a calm desire for two things: to save her unborn child and to exact merciless revenge.
She is methodical—calculating— scientific in her plotting. A clinical sociopath? Leaving nothing to chance, secure in her timing and practice, she waits—for the perfect moment to strike. Method 15/33 is what happens when the victim is just as cold as her abductors.
The agents searching for a kidnapped girl have their own frustrations and desires wrapped into this chilling drama. In the twists of intersecting stories, one is left to ponder. Who is the victim? Who is the aggressor?
Praise
“Method 15/33 is crowded with fascinating characters—even the spear carriers pop off the page—but the standout is the kidnapped pregnant teenager. Her captors want her baby. Little do they know they’ve brought an insanely brilliant, angry, vengeful, borderline sociopath under their roof. Somebody’s in big trouble… and it isn’t the teenager.” —F. Paul Wilson, New York Times best-selling author of Santa Jack
“Completely original and totally kick ass! Shannon Kirk pulls no punches in this adrenaline rush of a thriller where the victim is the one to watch, while the kidnappers learn to fear. Loved it!” —Lisa Gardner, New York Times best-selling author of Fear Nothing
“What happens when infant traffickers kidnap the wrong pregnant teen? You get Method 15/33, a cross between The Lovely Bones and Silence of the Lambs. Shannon Kirk’s debut thriller is a dark, literate page-turner, utterly compelling. I read it in one sitting.” —Leonard Rosen, Award-winning author of All Cry Chaos and The Tenth Witness
“Wow. Ridiculously good. Crazy good. Brilliantly heart-stoppingly nail-bitingly original, this is a true thriller tour de force. Shannon Kirk is an instant star.” —Hank Phillippi Ryan Agatha, Anthony winning author of Truth be Told
ABOUT SHANNON KIRK
Shannon Kirk is a practicing attorney and a law professor. She attended West Virginia Wesleyan and St. John’s Universities, is a graduate of Suffolk Law School, and was a trial lawyer in Chicago prior to moving to Massachusetts. She has been honored three times by the Faulkner Society in the William Faulkner-William Wisdom Creative Writing Competition. She lives in Massachusetts with her husband, a physicist, and their son. Method 15/33 is her first novel.
ALERT: Due to illness, I was unable to promote this properly so I am extending the giveaway for another week. Be sure and enter know for your chance at a copy of Method 15/33 by Shannon Kirk.
Shannon Kirk is offering a a print autographed copy of Method 15/33 to a US or Canadian resident. To enter, leave your email and answer the question:
What would be your first response if you were kidnapped?
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5+++++
