Deadly Chance by Talia Logan

May 1, 2020 Jean Grant

Welcome Talia!

What do you write?

As Talia Logan, I write romances with suspense or a crime.

When did your writing journey begin?

I wrote my first book at age 7 – it’s what I always wanted to do. As an adult, I wrote my first novel (140,000 words. HA!) because I was daydreaming constantly and thought if I wrote it down it would get it out of my system. But instead, when I finished it, I felt so drained and lost that I wrote 3 full-length books.

What was your inspiration for Deadly Chance?

I’m fascinated by SEALs and spent a weekend with several in a house in Florida. But the real spark was when I went skydiving with one of them – I wanted to use that experience in a story.

Do you find inspiration in your own life for your writing?

I draw on my own experiences and places I’ve been, but my characters are much cooler than I could ever be.

Find DEADLY CHANCE:

iBooks ~ Amazon ~ Barnes & Noble

Any new projects on the horizon?

Yup! I’m working on a light paranormal romantic suspense series, and a beach read romantic suspense series.

Words of advice for fellow writers in the trenches:

Don’t. Stop. Writing. My biggest mistake was not writing for almost 20 years. I wrote those 4 books in 1996-97, and didn’t pick up the pen again until 2008. But it wasn’t until I had cancer and conquered it in 2015 that I really got back into writing, and wrote Between Nowhere and Lost, which won a Maggie Award from Georgia Romance Writers, and then I resurrected Hitchin’, which won the James River Writers Best Novel award.

What was the hardest part of the story to write/research?

The kitchen scene after the hero has finally agreed to help the heroine. I got stuck on it and let the book sit for 10 years. Probably not the longest writer’s block in history, but it’s close.

((now I am wondering what this kitchen scene might be….?))

How about watching the trailer for the book?

EXCERPT
When she opened the door, he forgot his irritation. She wore a short suede skirt with a hip-hugging sweater. Soft leather boots wrapped around her calves. Everything matched in a deep shade of forest green, but with her dark auburn hair falling on her shoulders, the outfit did anything but camouflage her.
“I need to get my purse.”
Chance sauntered inside and closed the door behind him. Ahead and to his left, he glimpsed a living room stacked with piles of mail and newspapers. Amused, he asked, “Do you ever read your mail?”
She reappeared carrying a small clutch. “I’m still sorting through everything that collected while we were gone. And I had a choice. I could either clean the apartment or get dressed.”
His gaze fell to her chest. “You didn’t have to dress on my account.” He snaked his arms around her waist, dipping his head to speak in her ear. “In fact, undressed sounds like a much better idea.”
She wriggled from his grasp, shaking her head. “I wish you’d make up your mind,” she muttered.
“I made up my mind a long time ago. I just haven’t decided what to do with you yet.” He appraised the long lines of her body. “Or when.”

Find Talia online:

Website ~ Facebook ~ Twitter ~ Goodreads ~ BookBub ~

The Incongruity of Beauty: A "glimpse" into Stephen B. King's 2nd book in the series

April 5, 2019 Jean Grant

The Incongruity of Beauty

We use the word beauty in many different scenarios and situations, but could we ever use it to describe death? In Glimpse, the Beautiful Deaths, criminal psychologist Patricia Holmes, attached to the Major Crime Squad of the Western Australian Police Department, certainly does.

That’s a beautiful dress, we might say, or what a beautiful day, those flowers are beautiful, that child has a beautiful personality, she has a beauty spot on her cheek……….You get the idea for how often we can use the adjective. I’ve even heard sports commentators say what a beautiful shot, he’s swimming beautifully and once, in a heavy weight boxing match, what a beautiful knock out punch.

It seems to me to be over-used, and in some cases is completely opposite from what the word actually means. Patricia Holmes asks us to consider beauty in its purest from. She describes a man who has an obsession to own and possess beautiful things so badly it leads to six cases of murder.

The second book in the Glimpse series releases April 10th.

During a meeting with homicide detectives where she delivers the profile of the man they are hunting, she nicknames him Gordon. She urges the men to think of him that way: an ordinary man, not a master criminal or Serial Killer. She believes he doesn’t even consider what he has done to be murder and she poses the riddle to the men:

When is a serial killer not a murderer?

The bodies of six young girls, each of them the epitome of beauty when they were alive, have been found in a cave system in the South of the State. Malnourished, dehydrated, and showing no signs of violence, they appear to have wasted away until death overtook them. Then, they were interred in the caves, each with flowers left with them, at an average of once every year or so.

The caves are hard to get to, and located near a breathtakingly beautiful place called The Blue Lake, and Pat thinks it’s the beauty of the place which led him to bring the bodies there. She describes how she believes Gordon had a hideous life since childhood; that he was born a gentle, caring, artistic child who was treated abysmally by one or both parents.

She says they would have said things to him like: “You’re bloody useless, Gordon! Why can’t you ever do anything right, Gordon? You’re not trying hard enough, Gordon!”

She further thinks he wanted to follow his artistic ideals but received nothing but criticism and ridicule from the two people who should have encouraged it. They stifle him, yet he is too downtrodden to resist or even speak up for himself. Instead he develops his passion for beauty in things like gardening and collecting things which to him signify true beauty. Pat predicts he has a secret room where he can indulge himself and enjoy all the beautiful things he isn’t permitted outside his secret world. He will collect things like African Butterflies, postage stamps, or porcelain dolls, paintings – anything which allows him to forget how ugly his real life is. He lives in a fantasy world, far removed from his real life.

She goes further, by saying Gordon tried to escape when he married, but being so meek and mild he would have attracted a dominant woman, and for him, it would have been a case of out of the frying pan, into the fire. She will be even worse, she predicts, than his parents were, and she forbids the beauty he craves which is denied him.

And so, Sgt. Rick McCoy, with Patricia Holmes and the rest of the task force hunt a man addicted to beauty. They believe when he came across each stunningly beautiful young girl, he had to own and possess them, to capture the very essence of them, to idolize them. But when they were imprisoned, they were no longer free, and they ceased to be what they were before he took them. They slowly lost the one thing that he craved from them: their beauty.

Meanwhile Rick and Pat are each fighting their own cravings. They are married, yet the more they work together, the more they are attracted to each other, and the more they want to take the irrevocable step, from friendly, flirting work colleagues, to lovers. But if they do, what will the effect be on their relationship, and their marriages?

There are many dark clouds on Rick and Pat’s horizon; a storm is coming. Solving the beautiful deaths will be the least of their problems. The storm has a name: PPP; the serial killer locked away by them in a mental hospital. He is plotting his escape, and revenge.

Glimpse, The Beautiful Deaths is released on April 10th, available on Amazon and other online vendors.

Find Stephen online along with his other books

in print, e-book, and audio:

Glimpse, Memoir of a Serial Killer, Book 1, now on AUDIO!

March 23, 2019 Jean Grant

If I can be still living my dream at age sixty-three, so can anyone.

The journey of living my dream continues…

I’ve told anyone who wanted to listen, and some who didn’t, that for all of my life I had a dream of being a published author. Now I know lots of people share that dream; and anyone who has signed a publishing contract knows what it feels like when that is achieved. In my case I reached that wonderful milestone at age 58 when my first book, Forever Night, was contracted to The Totally Entwined Group (Bonnier UK). So, you could say it took 58 years to become an overnight success. I’m 63 now, and who knows how many books are left in me before the grim reaper comes calling – lots I hope, but really, who knows? A good friend of mine said recently at a poker game that men between the ages of 55 and 65 are in the sniper’s telescopic sight, a sobering thought indeed. My tenth book is now in the editing stages with my wonderful publisher The Wild Rose Press (NY) and I have to keep pinching myself to make sure I’m awake. Yes, I know that’s a cliché and authors should never use them, but in this case, it’s true.

Very recently Book 1 of The Deadly Glimpses trilogy, Glimpse, Memoir of a Serial Killer, was released on audio, and while this is my second audio book, it was much more involved in production than my first (Thirty-Three Days) due to the subject matter. The point is, that it is another example of me being lucky to be ‘living the dream’ I’ve had all my life. It’s important to me that I don’t trivialize any of the rungs on the ladder I’ve climbed, or bucket list things I’ve ticked off, so please believe that this book coming to audio is one of those, OMG moments in time for me.

To try to put this into context, from writing the first line of this book [“I was five years old when I first saw someone bleed out”] to the audio release took over a year. In that time I performed rewrites galore, worked with two editors, which meant six editing rounds. So, safe to say I know every word off my heart. We were very fortunate to snap up the wonderful narrator Geoffrey Boyes who did Thirty-Three Days for us; he read the book and volunteered to do the whole trilogy, because he loved it so much. So then I worked with him, listening to his work, and offering edits and suggestions. An example of his dedication to his craft was that he was concerned he had to get the Serial Killer just right and he did three different characterizations and sent them to me for my approval.

Slowly the project came together.

When it was released, I bought a copy from Audible.com. I didn’t have to, I had the files, but I did, and then spent the next few days listening to it on my long drives to and from work. I don’t want to sound in any way conceited, but……….. It gave me goosebumps. Geoffrey’s portrayal of all the characters, but of PPP, the murderer, in particularly, still makes the hairs on the back of my arms raise up. I wrote the story, I knew what was coming next, but can I say in all truthfulness, listening to it was fantastic? Because so much of the book is in memoir form, Geoffrey had to distinguish between what the killer thought (and wrote) and what he said in dialogue, and he nailed it. There were a few occasions I arrived at my destination, but had to keep listening because it was exciting.

Sure, I get that for many people, this story isn’t their cup of tea. A romance lover may not want to read about a serial killer, even though there is a very distinct love story across the three books. I don’t know how many people will read, or listen to the book, but for me, this blog post isn’t about that. I’ve brought up five children, and for all their lives I’ve tried to teach them to dream high, never give up, never stop trying and never listen to the people who would try to stop them reaching their goals. If I can be still living my dream at age sixty-three, so can anyone. My kids are proud of me, and I can take that to my grave with a smile on my face.

Find Stephen online: Website ~ Twitter ~ Facebook

What are people saying about Glimpse?

5.0 out of 5 stars edge of your seat thriller

REVIEWED BY: LINDA TONIS
MEMBER OF THE PARANORMAL ROMANCE REVIEW TEAM

Detective Sergeant Richard “Rick” McCoy of the Australian Police Department is struggling to deal with the fact that his wife discovered he cheated and threw him out leaving him missing both his wife and five year old daughter Amy. Rick knew that he was to blame for his marriage falling apart but when he is assigned to a murder of a woman found in pieces in a suitcase in the rubbish dump he has no idea how his life will change.

This is not the typical story of who done it but it is a story told in detail by the serial killer himself. The killer’s dad was a butcher whose wife left him and her son when he was just five. As a young boy he would watch as his father butchered meat and found himself fascinated by the sight of blood but just before his twelfth birthday he discovered his mother didn’t leave but was lying dead inside his dad’s freezer and his dad was lying in a pool of blood after killing himself. In spite of the fact that his dad beat him, he loved him but now he was put into an orphanage where his dad’s beatings were nothing compared to what he suffered there.

When his uncle finally took guardianship of him he learned what real abuse was because his uncle was a pervert and a homosexual who used him till he was eighteen. Instead of trying to go back to the orphanage he chose to stay with the monster he knew and not risk finding himself with a worse one.

Rick is trying to find the killer but there are no clues, no fingerprints, nothing to lead them to him. The only good thing that happened for him was he was reunited with his wife and child and this time was determined to change and be the husband his wife deserved. As time went by the case was cold but the killer was far from done and a finger is sent to Rick at the station with a note threatening to remove a body part every two days if Rick didn’t catch him, the note is signed PPP. The note was addressed to Rick personally and in time his connection with the killer would be revealed, but not by me.

Patricia Holmes a forensic psychologist is enlisted to help and she seems to have an uncanny insight into the killer but more are dead and they are no closer to catching him. This story is not for the weak of heart because some of the very explicit violence can be disturbing to say the least. The hunt for the killer is done so well that I could not put the book down. Although this is fiction it is scary in the fact that we know that monsters such as this exist and we have had our fair share in the United States.

I was hooked from the first page and watched as the killer was tormented his entire life and although I found myself feeling sorry for him at times I don’t believe that how you grew up is a cause for what you become when you are an adult. I can’t wait for the next book in the series and hopefully the wait won’t be too long.