“The Killing” Has Been Uncancelled and I’m Ecstatic

When “The Killing,” the only show I watched with anything approaching devotion, was cancelled I wanted to cry. Don’t they know what good TV is? Don’t they care about decent crime fiction? Apparently not!

But then AMC uncancelled it and I can’t contain my glee.

The audience became hugely upset when at the end of the first season Rosie Larson’s killer was not revealed. When the producers assured the killer would be revealed by the end of the second season, many testy viewers didn’t return. With poor ratings, the show was cancelled.

However there was enough interest on many fronts and the show is coming back. In its third season, the show will depart from the coattails of its Danish predecessor Forbrydelsen. The third season will be entirely an American crime fiction tale. The producers have announced characters who have built up a loyal viewer following will continue on their journey. It will still be rainy and deadly. For the new season, a serial killer preying on homeless street kids is on the lose in show’s Seattle.

The new season will air Sunday, June 2nd on AMC at 8/7 central. Crime fiction enthusiasts, be there or be square.

Mark Young Nails It Again with FATAL eMPULSE

Mark Young is a name that comes up all the time in purpose-driven crime fiction. I’ve read his work and I’d put his heroes in the classical “warrior” archetype – self-controlled, possessing moral courage. Taking full responsibility for his actions in the mission. Demonstrating an ethical code of personal honor, noble restraint, and individual humility for his deeds. These qualities in Mark’s heroes intrigue me and make me want to keep reading.

So, I thought I’d get him over here and ask him a few questions about his writing and his new novel FATAL eMPULSE.

Nike: What about Gerrit O’Rourke intrigues you the most? Why did you create him?

Mark: Gerrit is a man of contrasts. His eidetic memory allows him to recall sensory as well as visual information, allowing him to master languages, laws of science, and the intricate rules of combat and survival, but he is a dismal failure in the area of personal relationships.

I created Gerrit with a set of unique abilities that he will need to face the future. Off the Grid, and its sequel, Fatal eMpulse, embark on a journey that will take us from now to the tribulation. We have all read biblical prophecies about end times, but how about the time between now and then. How do we get to a point where there are ten kings ruling the world, and the anti-christ desecrates the temple mount. What part does the U.S. have in this…if any. Gerrit and his crew of characters will have to struggle through all this as Gerrit is forced to consider his own faith, his own beliefs, in the contact of these perilous times. Gerrit—through each novel—must deal with the rise of new technology, the dynamics of world politics, and the clash of good and evil.

Nike: What impresses many readers is your talent for hiding who the villian is. In fact, you sometimes hide who several of the bad guys are until the end. Is this a talent you simply have, or do you have to plan and plot this out in your novels?

Mark: Thank you, Nike, but everything about writing comes hard for me, particularly when I struggle to orchestrate a dynamic, ahh-got-you moment. If a writer miscalculates, it’s like a comedian messing up the punch line—the story goes flat and dies. The reader becomes disappointed. So I kick it around in my head for a while, maybe even months at a time. An idea might pop up out of nowhere and I run with it. Other times, I’ll settle on an outcome and carefully go back through the novel—planting little hints like seeds—before the reader finally discover who the true villain might be. Now my next novel, Broken Allegiance (A Tom Kagan Novel), coming out this summer, has more villains than you can shake a stick at. Take your pick.

~~~

So, let’s find out a little bit about FATAL eMPULSE…

A presidential edict hurls Gerrit O’Rourke and his international team deep into the heart of the Mid East to prevent an aerial attack threatening to start another world war. To make matters worse, a traitor close to the president alerts others of Gerrit’s mission. Only days away from the attack, the team must stay alive long enough to complete their mission and thwart whoever is trying to orchestrate their deaths.

Racing from the blue waters of Florida’s Key West and California’s Lake Tahoe to the Persian Gulf and the Caspian Sea, everything comes down to this—who will survive? Gerrit’s past again rises to create conflict between himself, his Mossad-trained partner Alena Shapiro, and a flame from the past—CIA agent Shakeela Vaziri. Beyond romance, beyond survival, Gerrit and his team must race against the clock as attack planes launch. Every second counts.

Amazon/Kindle. http://is.gd/9aL6ao 

Mark’s first novel in the series is OFF THE GRID. Readers can follow this main character from the moment he first appears on the page.

Amazon/Kindle. http://is.gd/ieNNqN

Mark Young is an American novelist. He worked as a police officer with the Santa Rosa Police Department in California for twenty-six years; an award-winning journalist; and a Vietnam combat veteran. He served with several law enforcement task force operations, including the presidential Organized Crime and Drug Enforcement Task Force targeting major drug traffickers, and the federal Organized Crime Task Force charged with identifying and prosecuting prison gang leaders. He lives in the Pacific Northwest with his family.

MarkYoungBooks.com

Mark Young: Arresting Fiction Blog

Hook’em & Book’em Blog

Crime Fiction, Sin, and Easter

I’m a traditionalist, I call the day Easter, where as some call it Resurrection Day. I guess I’m showing my age and perhaps my grumpiness.

Without going on and on about it, I’ve researched the word Easter, and its origin is that it came from the Celtic word for “east” as Jesus was crucified, died, and resurrected in the east. Of course the ancient Celts would select a word from their own language to describe the day…just as the Greeks chose the word pasha from their language.

The notion that Easter came from a pagan goddess of spring has largely been debunked by serious scholars. In fact, scholars can’t find any definitive proof there was a Germanic or Norse goddess Eostre. The major reference we have is the Venerable Bede, but scholars can’t find any evidence to back up his assertion. The reason this notion is so generally accepted in modern pop-culture is that as far back as the early 1900s modern pagans picked up the idea and ran with it. However, the truth is, it’s much more a neo-pagan fantasy. Fundamentalist Christians have done their share to muddy the waters as well. Early on, they supported this idea, without delving into historical, archeological, or linguistic scholarship on any deep level because certain fundi groups had no truck with the Easter holiday, or any holiday not set out in the Bible for celebration. There you have, as far as I know, the skinny on the word Easter.

Crime Fiction and Sin

Oh goody, we’re getting to the sin part. The fun part.

But this is why I deeply feel crime fiction is well suited to Christian fiction. It deals with sin, with the all too human sin nature. It gets in there and mucks around in the established values of our modern society, or the lack thereof. More than that, a good writer of whodunits explores the human heart. And in Jeremiah we learn the human heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Yes, yes, indeed…this is the realm of the crime fiction writer. I’m getting excited already.

Crime Fiction is a Sin

Now there are those who claim crime fiction itself is sinful, or the writing of it is a sin. Some feel the nature of murder is so sinful that it couldn’t be anything but sinful to write about it, especially the horrid crimes some serial killers have committed. I agree, serial killers are heniously sick individuals. I don’t like to read stories about them, but oddly enough have. I’ve also said I wouldn’t write those types of stories. Yet, I found myself creating a few abhorently sick killers in my Sanctuary Point historical murder mystery series. The fact that these stories are set in the 1940s, a gentler and classier era, didn’t prevent my killers from possessing truly evil hearts.

The Way Some Write Crime Fiction is a Sin

I might as well throw out a few of my pet peeves about the state of crime fiction writing. I hate it when the writer doesn’t get their police procedure set out in an accurate manner. Just as bad is when their detective hasn’t solved the crime so the writer makes the bady guy confess. It’s true you want to surprise the reader regarding the identity of the killer, but hey, come on, it has to be within the realm of possibility. I can go for a coincidence happening once in the story, but if the author has a string of coincidental happenings leading the main character to catch the killer, I’m going to cry foul.

Notes:

1. The Meaning of the Word Easter, by Caedmon Parsons http://www.celtic-catholic-church.org/oak_tree/easter.html

2. Eostre - Teutonic Goddess or NeoPagan Fancy?  by Patti Wigington http://paganwiccan.about.com/od/ostarathespringequinox/qt/Eostre.htm

3. The modern myth of the Easter bunny, by Adrian Bott http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2011/apr/23/easter-pagan-roots

Interview with M.K. Gilroy, Author of Cuts Like A Knife

It’s a real treat to have Mark Gilroy, author of  CUTS LIKE A KNIFE, here. Just love that title. Can’t wait for him to share a bit of his writing journey.

Nike: Mark, you’re probably asked this all the time, but what prompted you to write a series about a female detective? And what makes Kristen Conner unique?

Mark: I think you will fall in love with my lead character, Detective Kristen Conner. She’s tough and in your face. And she’s a fragile mess. She loves God, her family, the Chicago Police Department – her dad was a cop – and anything you put on her plate. Doesn’t mean she gets along with all parties mentioned – except the food.

But why Kristen? I am the father of three sons and three daughters. My daughters always supplied the lion’s share of drama in the home, so it was actually a lot of fun to write in female voice. It really took a lot of people by surprise, including my publisher, that I was able to let Kristen and her sisters provide a humorous and occasionally poignant backdrop within a manhunt of a serial killer.

Kristen is a unique among literary characters as a good Baptist girl who is very committed to her faith and family—though the book is not written as a religious novel. Her commitment to faith and family doesn’t mean she doesn’t fight with everybody as noted above. But she has a good heart and does the right thing.

She can’t shoot a handgun straight (something else that makes her mad), but she is a great athlete and workout warrior and has turned her attention on mixed martial arts – from Israeli krav maga to Brazilian jujitsu. She’s lightweight but packs a punch.

Nike: What is your favorite scene in CUTS LIKE A KNIFE?

Mark: The book mixes action and character driven dialog throughout. I like a lot of the humorous scenes, but CUTS LIKE A KNIFE begins and ends with hand-to-hand combat scenes. I really enjoyed writing them and had many readers say they are technically spot-on. Women love the relational aspect of the book, but the fight scenes became a hook that helped male readers relate to a female lead character.

I did research the psychopathic mindset, and I really liked interspersing short chapters from the serial killers voice, including the opening scene when he is at a Cubs game. He is calm, focused and organized—and a lot of readers have told me he was scarier than if I had played him as raving lunatic.

Nike: Tell us something about your writing journey we wouldn’t discover in your author bio

Mark: Having been in the publishing industry for 30 years –and being an avid reader of the suspense-action-thriller genre, I wonder why I waited so long to write a first novel! I guess I’m just slow!

What really taught me to write (and get paid to do it) was an internship I landed during my junior year of college. I worked for a newspaper, The Kankakee Journal, as a sports writer. My first gig was to write short stories on 15 to 20 games and make it sound like the newspaper was covering all these games live. That was fun and taught me to use imagination—and meet a deadline.

Nike: Have you always been drawn to suspense novels?

Mark: I have always loved character driven mystery and suspense. From the Hardy Boys in grade school; to James Bond, Sherlock Holmes, and Nero Wolfe in my teen years; then on to spy thrillers by Deighton and LeCarre in college; and then discovering a plethora of great writers from Hillerman, Block, Grimes, Child, Leonard, Mosely, Crais, Silva and a host of others throughout my adult life. I even went through a crime noir faze where I had to reread everything from Chandler, Cain, Marsh and Hammet. I can’t forget Graham Greene. The common denominator? Great character development. Heroes and anti-heroes.

I’ve spent 30 years in publishing and have a couple graduate degrees, but the best training I’ve received to pen my debut mystery thriller comes from the sheer volume of great books I’ve read. I’ve had a tremendous amount of fun writing CUTS LIKE A KNIFE – and count it as a tribute to the writers who have brought me so much enjoyment as a reader.

Let’s Take A Sneak Peek At CUTS LIKE A KNIFE…

“An intense, eerie, funny and suspenseful thriller … M.K. Gilroy’s debut is a sure-fire winner.” - USA TODAY

Detective Kristen Conner goes undercover to find a serial killer who selects his victims – all successful young professional women – in the most unlikely of places – only to find herself as his next favorite target.

When Leslie Reed is found dead in her fashionable townhome, a red flag goes up in Washington, D.C. The FBI knows an elusive “organized killer” on a decade-long crime spree is at work again.  The problem is the Feds have only one tenuous lead to assist local police in the manhunt … where the killer likes to find his victims.

Conner is light one her feet and packs a powerful punch – growing up in a cop’s home, intense hand-to-hand combat training, and not being able to shoot a handgun straight – all encourage that. Her life is built on faith and family: she coaches her 7-year-old niece’s soccer team, the Snowflakes, always shows up hungry for family dinner, and only misses church when she is fighting with her mom and glamorous TV news reporter sister – or relentlessly tracking down a ruthless killer.

Kristen is a good cop but she’s never faced an adversary like the man the alternative press has dubbed the Cutter Shark.  From the opening chase scene that leads her to a back alley where a punk with a knife awaits her, to the climactic scene where she goes one-on-one with the hauntingly familiar man who is killing innocent women in her town, Cuts Like a Knife, is loaded with action, humor, a dash of romance, and wry introspection through the voice of its irrepressible lead character.

Cuts Like a Knife is the debut book in the Kristen Conner Mystery Series. Every Breath You Take is slated for October 23, 2012 release.

Mark “M.K.” Gilroy is a 30-year publishing veteran, having worked in just about every area of the industry, from his first job as a sports writer – to proof reader and occasional box packer – to executive vice president and publisher and just about everything in between.

Gilroy’s debut novel, CUTS LIKE A KNIFE, is a tribute to his love for character-driven mysteries and thrillers. His second novel will once again feature Detective Kristen Conner and unique cast of characters. EVERY BREATH YOU TAKE, hits the market October 23, 2012.

Gilroy’s education includes the BA in Biblical Literature and Speech Communications, the M.Div, and the MBA.

Gilroy is the father of six children. He resides with his wife Amy in Brentwood, Tennessee.

AVAILABLE AT BOOKSTORES EVERYWHERE. AVAILABLE AS E-BOOK. AVAILABLE AS AN AUDIO BOOK.

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Gun Toting Mommas ~~ Happy Mother’s Day

When readers think Christian Fiction, they usually don’t think of a “mother character” in terms of a woman with children at home who is carrying a gun. Yet, more than one Christian author has penned mother characters who are packing heat.

Kathy Herman’s THE REAL ENEMY, first in the Sophie Trace Trilogy, comes to mind with its heroine Police Chief Brill Jessup. This police chief got her nickname Brill due to her 18-year career filled with brilliant detective work before accepting the position of police chief in a small town. She most assuredly carries a weapon and knows how to use it.

http://goo.gl/qAaQa

Issie Putnam, the heroine in Fay Lamb’s BECAUSE OF ME is a mom on a mission to keep her son’s insane rapist father from learning about the precious boy she loves. Issie doesn’t like guns, so she carries and .22 caliber pistol and she shoots it with deadly accuracy at its farthest range. Issie and Cole are the only ones who know about the safe room Issie built in the attic of their farmhouse, and Cole knows exactly what he is to do if he ever needs to seek refuge there. No one will hurt Cole, including the man Issie loves. If Michael Hayes can’t see past the ugly truth of Cole’s beginnings and learn to love her son, well, he can’t love her. Even if Michael is the only safe refuge Issie’s heart has ever known. At Amazon. http://goo.gl/6ab3i

Christine’s Lindsay’s heroine Abby Fraser has brought her young son to India intending to begin life with her British Army lieutenant husband now that WWII is over. She’s faced with one disappointment after another, threats, and danger to herself and her son during periods of upheaval in the colonial sub-continent. The wives of British officers have been advised they must learn to be proficient with firearms. Abby, who learned to shoot in the states, shocks them all by repeatedly hitting the bull’s-eye on her first try. SHADOWED IN SILK recently won the 2011 Grace Award in the Action-Adventure/Western/Epic Fiction category.

http://goo.gl/49Vy6

Author Wendy L. Young’s creation, Laura Harmon, is a gun-toting Momma with four kids and a fifth on the way. Licensed to carry a concealed weapon, she knows her rights and knows how to use them. She grew up with a much-older brother who was a Marine and Police Officer and has been married to another officer for over 25 years. Until recently, she never had a cause to use a weapon but things are changing in Campbell Creek and she aims to protect herself and her family. Soon she will have her gun trained and know that she is ready to use it, whatever the cost. This third novel in the series is coming in Summer 2012.  Laura and her husband Will are the main characters in The Campbell Creek Mysteries:  COME THE SHADOWS http://goo.gl/cE0Ax and RED SKY WARNING http://goo.gl/OlJG3 .

*****

I’d like to wish a Happy Mother’s Day to gun toting mommas wherever they may be: in law enforcement, on the battlefield, driving bank armoured cars, and so much more.