Tuesday, September 9, 2014

Nowhere to Turn and Interview with Lynette Eason

I am completely addicted to Lynette Eason's books. I generally read them in one sitting because I just can't put them down! I met her in person at ICRS in 2013 and was thrilled to have some time to reconnect with her back in June at this year's show. Read about her latest and newly released novel, then get to know her better with my interview.

Nowhere to Turn
(Hidden Identity, Book Two)
Lynette Eason
(Revell)
ISBN: 978-0800722098
August 2014/320 pages/$14.99

The day Danielle Harding takes her eleven-year-old son and flees from her abusive husband is the same day Kurt Harding dies. A relieved Dani believes she and her son are finally safe--but in reality, things are just heating up. When Kurt was alive, he took something important from a mysterious individual--who wants the item back and believes Dani now has it. As she and her son run for their lives, they have nowhere to turn, until she hires Adam Buchanan of Operation Refuge and goes into hiding. Unfortunately, she won't be able to hide for long . . .

From the first breathless scene, this tension-laced story will hold you in its iron grip as bestselling author Lynette Eason propels you along in a race to discover the truth.

Read an excerpt.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Lynette Eason is the bestselling author of the Women of Justice series and the Deadly Reunions series, as well as No One to Trust. She is a member of American Christian Fiction Writers and Romance Writers of America. She has a master's degree in education from Converse College and she lives in South Carolina. Learn more at www.lynetteeason.com.

MY THOUGHTS

Ooh, I love me a Lynette Eason book! I know not to start reading unless I have several hours free because I generally read her books without stopping. Nowhere to Turn grabbed me from the opening scene (my heart was pounding by the end of page two!) and the action and suspense only escalated from there. Eason is a pro at pacing the action; actually, she hardly slows down! The combination of unrelenting action plus excruciatingly fleshed-out scenes of terror and suspense kept me glued to my chair. There is Nowhere to Turn but another page when you are reading this spine-tingling novel! Don't miss it!


Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a copy of this book free from Baker/Revell Publishing as part of a blog tour. 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.”


Tell me what's going on with you. Your most recent release is No One to Trust, which I absolutely loved, as I do all your books!

Yes, that came out in January, and the second one [in the series] comes out in September, and the third one comes out early next year. Then I will start a new series, which will be about female bodyguards.

What is the September release about?

It's called Nowhere to Turn. It's about a woman on the run from a stalker, her brother-in-law, who has decided he wants her now that her husband is dead. She gets help from Operation Refuge, which was introduced in No One to Trust. However, there's an underlying reason her brother-in-law needs to find her, and that is because people are after him. There are a lot of subplots and layers. It's more than just a simple stalker story. Other things are happening behind the scenes. Since it's part of the Hidden Identities series, people are disguised, but they keep being found. And the heroine's son is deaf, which factors into the story. He's a brilliant kid and is somewhat based on my own son, who isn't deaf but is hard of hearing and wears hearing aids. It's a cool story and I like it!

Oh, I can't wait to read it! Does the third book have a title yet?

Yes, it was just titled recently and is called No Place to Hide.

That sounds intriguing! Of course, I love all your books. You write such tight suspense and keep me glued to the page. Most of the time I read them in one sitting because I can't put them down! Where do you come up with all of these bizarre ideas?

(She laughs.) I get asked that question a lot and to me, everything is a story. I can look out this window and make a story out of that window over there. I get ideas from newspaper articles or headlines. Watching CNN or Fox News, of course, gives me a plethora of ideas! I don't know – everything I see is a story. I see killers everywhere!

Do you ever scare yourself?

No, I actually laugh at myself because of the way my brain works. I can write late at night, all by myself, about scary stalker stuff and people breaking in houses without any problem. But to read someone else's story? That scares me! I can't read it at night, but I can write my own because I'm in control. I know what's going to happen so I don't have to worry about it.

You don't get nervous if you hear a creak when you are writing.

Not when I'm writing. But when I read someone else's story, I might!

I know you and some of the other ACFW suspense writers, as well as secular authors, go to an event called Writers' Police Academy. What is that?

The Writers' Police Academy is held this year on September 4-7 in Jamestown, North Carolina on the campus of one of the technical colleges where they train police officers, firefighters, and EMTs, so they have all of the equipment there. They bring in every area of law enforcement you can imagine: ATF, homicide detectives who talk about working the streets of New York, forensics experts, canine demonstrations. One year they set off a bomb in the parking lot! They had the robots and the bomb squad work the whole scene. They set up scenarios and actual law enforcement officers show authors how they would deal with it if it were a real situation. We just take notes and try to process everything like crazy so that things will be accurate in our stories. It's a really cool experience. Everyone is so nice and helpful. They want our stories to be right. They want to be represented correctly and well in our stories. It's definitely a secular conference but a bunch of ACFW authors go and we enjoy being there together.

Have you ever asked them a question where they've said they couldn't divulge the answer?

No. A Secret Service agent was there and you could tell he was careful about what he said, but it wasn't like, "If I tell you this, I'm going to have to kill you!"

Have you ever done the Citizen's Police Academy in your city?

I want to do that, but it's never worked out with my schedule. I hope I can do it at some point.

You said you have another contract after this series?

Yes, they haven't named it yet so I'm just calling it the Bodyguards series. It's about four female bodyguards who meet in training. There is a real female bodyguard school in Athens, Greece.

Ooh! Research trip?!

I'm trying to! I'm hoping that will happen in April. My husband and I are still talking about it and looking at finances. I have the dates on the calendar that I want to go. It's called the Athena Academy, and it's just for females. They have a branch in Dallas so if I can't go to Greece, I'll probably go visit the one in Dallas.

So these four friends meet and come back to the United States to open their own bodyguard business, and each one has her own story. I had written the proposal, originally, for three books and the publisher asked me to add a fourth one. That was pretty cool. They want a Lynette Eason book to come out every January and August, with a new series starting in January. I wrote the first paragraph for the first book the other day. It's really exciting to start a new series!

What do you like to do when you're not writing? Besides juggling a busy life!

Yeah, I have kids and I home school and teach online! I try to read sometimes. You know, writing is relaxing for me. Even though it's stressful to meet deadlines. If I find myself with some downtime, I generally just start writing. I'm pretty uninteresting! I used to be really involved in sports and ice skating and scrapbooking, and that stuff just bores me now. I'd rather write! So writing is my hobby!

What is the most unusual thing that has happened to you related to your writing?

I haven't had much, in spite of the genre I write. I did visit the morgue. Now all the HIPPA regulations make it harder to do that. But my mother-in-law was a hospital nurse before she retired and she was good friends with the morgue technician. The technician took me on a tour of the morgue and pulled out an unidentified John Doe that they had, only he was just bones. She showed me how they identify different things, such as age, and how they know it's a male, medical stuff. (I found out later they did identify him.) Then she put him away and got a call that they were bringing in two car wreck victims. And she knew one of them. It was an older lady who had been a nurse at the hospital who had been hit by a drunk driver and been killed instantly. It was awful but it was interesting, too, if you can remove yourself from the emotional aspect of it, to see what she had to do to prepare for them to come in. She also showed me all the autopsy stuff and explained how she used the saw and opened up people's heads. It sounds so sick but it was really interesting! That's probably the most bizarre thing I've done.

I think that's fascinating but of course, I'm a nurse! I hope we haven't scared off any readers!

That's true, that you would get the whole autopsy thing. I really like medicine. I went into education but then decided I didn't want to teach other people's kids. I got tired of dealing with behavior issues. If I had it to do over, I'd probably go into medicine. I think it's fascinating. I guess that's why I write about it so much. Medicine or law enforcement. Although I don't think I'm brave enough to go into law enforcement. When I saw the bad guys, I'd probably just run!

Oh I would, too! Well, this has been such fun! Thank you so much!










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