Shattered Silence - Interview & Giveaway!

UPDATE Saturday 10/13/12 10:00 pm

The first winner never responded to my email so here is a new winner

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10
Timestamp: 2012-10-14 02:57:55 UTC
Congratulations to Louise. Email me your address by 6:00 pm CDT Tuesday (10/16/12), please, and I'll send the book your way!

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Shattered Silence
(Men of the Texas Rangers #2)
Margaret Daley
(Abingdon Press)
ISBN: 978-1426714290
September 2012/336 pages/$14.99

A serial killer is targeting illegal aliens in southern Texas. Texas Ranger Cody Jackson is paired with a local police officer, Liliana Rodriguez, to investigate the murders.

While the case brings Cody and Liliana ever closer, the tension between Americans and Mexican Americans heightens. Fighting their attraction, Cody and Liliana race to discover who is behind the murders and bring peace to the area. What they uncover isn’t what they expected. Will Cody and Liliana’s faith and love be strong enough to survive the storm of violence?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Margaret Daley, an award-winning author of eighty-two books, has been married for over forty years and is a firm believer in romance and love. When she isn’t traveling, she’s writing love stories, often with a suspense thread and corralling her three cats that think they rule her household.

Her latest book is the Christian fiction suspense Shattered Silence, about a series of murders that seem like a hate crime, but things aren’t what they appear.

To find out more about Margaret visit her website at http://www.margaretdaley.com.

Follow Margaret Daley at Twitter

Become a fan of Margaret Daley at Facebook.

Purchase your copy of Shattered Silence at Amazon.

MY THOUGHTS
Beginning with the opening pages when little Maria Martinez was playing Hide 'n Seek with her brothers and inadvertently witnessed a murder, I could not put this novel down. The tensions along the Texas-Mexico border seem ripped from the headlines, and the suspense grew with every page as glimpses into the murderer's thoughts increased as the book progressed. A sub-plot involving Texas Ranger Cody Jackson's troubled son, Kyle, grabbed my heart as well, and Daley portrays this storyline so well that my heart simultaneously ached for Kyle even as I wanted to straighten him out! Full of great characters and hold-your-breath moments, Shattered Silence is a great choice for your fall reading list.

MY INTERVIEW WITH MARGARET DALEY

I always smile when I think of or see Margaret Daley. She is winding down a two-year term as the President of ACFW, a huge time-commitment and responsibility. While I am relatively new to ACFW, I love being part of this organization and am grateful for Margaret's leadership. She also manages to write four or five books a year, which would be amazing even without her ACFW responsibilities! I loved sitting down with her this past summer at ICRS in Orlando, chatting with her about her books and how ACFW can benefit you as readers. We had a great time and only got off track a time or three!

I loved reading and reviewing the first book of this series, Saving Hope. Tell me about Shattered Silence and this series.

There are a women who are Texas Rangers, but not very many. I'm focusing on men of the Texas Rangers and going to different places around Texas and illustrating different stories. Each book is a stand-alone book; the only tie is the Texas Rangers. This second book is on the Texas-Mexico border. I usually use a fictitious town because by the time I get through with a town, it needs to be fictitious! (She laughs.) When you have corrupt people, it just doesn't work to place a story in a real town! So it's set in a town on the border not too far from Del Rio.

It begins with a little girl in an abandoned house at the end of her block. It's somewhat like what my son used to have; we had this big field at the end of the street with this old abandoned house, and it was such a great place for the kids to play. She's playing Hide 'n Seek with her brothers (except they didn't come looking for her because they just wanted her to quit bothering them!) and she witnesses a murder. The book begins with the murder of this woman who has been brought across the border illegally and no one knows who she is. It's about a serial killer who they think is targeting Mexican-Americans, but he's not. He has an agenda but they don't know it. Essentially, my theme is bullying across all levels. The Texas Ranger has a sixteen-year-old son that he has moved from Houston; the son did not want to move and is basically a racist; he's had some peer influence and his stepfather's influence that has led him to look down on Mexican-Americans. The Ranger's ex-wife has died and he has custody of his son and is hoping to form a new relationship with him and counter the influence of his step-dad. That's a side story--the journey and growth that the son experiences. The murderer was bullied and eventually explodes. There's also a marriage in the story; a woman has an abusive husband--that's a form of bullying--and she has to learn to leave. I have three stories going on but they all tie together.

That sounds really interesting. What will the third book be?

It's called Severed Trust, and it's about the judicial system. The heroine is a state judge and she is over a trial of Russian mafia which is trying to take over a territory that has been mostly controlled by Mexican-American gangs just outside of San Antonio. She's been threatened and at first, they think it's because of the trial, but some of her past comes back to haunt her. That story is about revenge and not being able to let go of anger and forgive and move on--and what it actually does to a person inside when it festers. When we don't learn to do what God asks us to do, to forgive and move on, we're in prison more than anyone else. This one is more issue-driven than the others.

The fourth one, which I just sold and I'm writing now, is about the misuse of legal drugs, which we know is a huge problem. I have a friend who is an investigator, and he says 50% of their cases have to do with legal drugs being misused and sold or similar abuses. There are so many different scams and so many different ways they're using them, so I'm taking some of the ones he's told me about and using them in the book to show that it's everywhere. The sad thing is that it's very much in the schools. Kids in middle school now are going and getting their parents' drugs and abusing them. Just because they're prescription doesn't mean they can't hurt you. My opening scene is a pill party. A pill party is very frightening. Kids get some of their parents' pills--a couple from this bottle, some from that bottle; they don't care what they're getting. They take them to a party and they dump them all in a big bowl. Then the kids just reach in and grab a handful and take them. They don't know what they're taking, or the combination. We had a kid in Tulsa last summer die from one, and I had already written my scene.

(I gasped when she got to the point "grab a handful." As a nurse, this absolutely made me shudder at the potential for damage.)

I asked my friend what the thrill was and he said, "It's because they don't know what they're taking or what's going to happen. It's Russian roulette with pills." I had written the scene before the situation in Tulsa. It opens with this pill party and a kid dies. The girl that goes to the party with him is a friend of the Texas Ranger's niece. It's in a small town near Paris [in East Texas]. Everyone leaves this warehouse where the pill party took place, except for the girl, who had passed out. When she wakes up, she thinks he just left her. But then they find his body later and realize he's taken a mixture of pills.

See why people need to know about these things?! I don't think parents know about this.


I have the ACFW Fiction Finder button on my blog. Tell me how else ACFW can benefit folks who are not authors.

ACFW has a book club which discusses two books a month.

I love the Book Club discussions! You don't have to be a member to participate?

No. We just want readers! The writers nominate their books, depending on the categories, which rotate each month. We take the top two books that are voted on. It's a good way for readers and authors to connect and talk about books. About half the month is the book discussion, and the other half is just chit-chat. If someone has a giveaway or an author interview, they announce it on that. You can find out more about the ACFW Book Club and sign up here.

Fiction Finder is the other thing that is helpful for readers. It's a great way for them to find books.




Thanks so much, Margaret, for the interview, for writing great books, and for serving ACFW so well!


GIVEAWAY!

I have an extra copy of Shattered Silence that I received at the ACFW Conference that I am going to give to one of you! To enter, leave a comment on this post by 8:00 pm CDT Saturday, 10/6/12, and I will randomly draw a winner. US residents only. You must include an email address if you don't sign into Blogger to comment so I can contact you if you win.




Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from Abingdon Press and Pump Up Your Book as part of their Blogger Review program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”