Five Questions for Jerry Hatchett

Best Selling Thriller Author

By

Dora Machado

 

 

 

Jerry Hatchett writes unputdownable thrillers. The bestselling author of Seven Unholy Days and The Pawnbroker, Jerry is one of only a handful of self-published authors who has managed to ride the publishing revolution's wave and stake a solid competitive claim in the thriller market. Some of his books have over four hundred Amazon reviews!
 
Jerry's mind is a lot like his characters, an eclectic product that combines southern charm with American grit, everyday man with high tech smarts.  In "real life," Jerry is also the inventor and patent holder of the 1990's phenomenon “EasyBraid,” a licensed private pilot, a self-described “gadget freak,” an “IPO chaser,” and a digital forensic specialist. With all of that background condensed and poured into his novels, it's no wonder his thrillers have claimed the readers' attention.
 

Welcome to MB4, Jerry. It's a pleasure to have you here today. Word is you've got a new thriller coming out, Unallocated Space. What is it all about?

It’s about a guy named Sam Flatt stumbling into a situation he couldn’t have imagined. He’s a digital forensic expert, a digital detective brought into to find out who’s electronically stealing money from SPACE, which is the biggest, glitziest, and most futuristic casino in history. Flatt is a man with a dark past he thought he had left behind, but this case may just drag him back into that darkness.

 

How's Unallocated Space different from your previous best sellers, Seven Unholy Days and Pawnbroker?

Seven Unholy Days is a grand global adventure built around a character who’s a little bit larger than life from the beginning of the story. Pawnbroker is about an everyday guy who finds himself completely out of his element and in over his head. Unallocated Space’s main character is very different. He’s quiet and dark with a past that has shaped him into an eccentric fellow. (Despite a very high-tech career, he has no house, but instead spends most of his time living off the land with a very special horse he loves more than life.) It’s also a unique setting, with most of the action taking place inside a futuristic wonderland.

What do you think readers will like best about Unallocated Space?

If I’ve done my job, they’ll love everything about it!

What do you hope readers will say when they read the last line?

“I love this guy, Sam Flatt!”

What did this latest release teach you about writing, reading and yourself?

As with every book I write, it taught me that writing is a wonderful and difficult process that always presents lots of room for improvement. Reading continues to inspire me as a writer. Nothing excites me more than discovering a new author I love, and the publishing revolution has yielded several of those for me over the past couple years. I still have a lot of traditionally published authors I love, but now I’m also discovering indie authors who are loaded with talent and able to bring splendid entertainment to the market that’s free of the previous constraints. About myself? Hmmm. I continue to be reminded that I always underestimate how long writing a book will take! I think the main personal lesson I take away from the process, though, is that I’m very blessed to be able to tell stories that entertain people by allowing them to meet new people and visit new worlds that I get to create.

******

ABOUT JERRY HATCHETT

Jerry Hatchett grew up in the creatively fertile Mississippi Delta. His stories often draw from his eclectic background, providing a foundation for intriguing tales populated with everyday people who often find themselves in extraordinary circumstances. His business experience runs the gamut from pawnbroker to inventor to technologist to specialized expert in digital forensics.

Hatchett lists John Grisham, James Rollins, Nelson DeMille, and Ken Follett as major influences on his writing. “I want to entertain people by creating new worlds and people for them to love and hate, and I always try to write a story that you just can't put down, ” he says.

A lifelong fan of Ole Miss and SEC football, he awaits each fall with zeal. He’s also a movie fanatic, an avid reader, and with uncharacteristic immodesty claims to cook the world’s best ribeyes. He currently resides in The Woodlands, TX, a suburb of Houston.

JERRY HATCHETT'S BOOKS

PAWNBROKER    Would you give killers what they want to get them to leave you and your family alone? Gray Bolton might, if he knew what "it" was. Life as a Mississippi pawnbroker is good, with a beautiful family and a bright future. Then he kills an armed robber and trouble cascades upon Bolton from everywhere. They all appear to be after the same thing and they will all do anything to get it. Unfortunately, Bolton has no idea what that thing is; but its discovery will test him in ways he couldn't have imagined, and the stakes are simple: Everything.

 

  

 

SEVEN UNHOLY DAYS     Technology and insanity combine to create a very bad week for the United States and the world. In this unputdownable thriller from breakout author Jerry Hatchett, tech celebrity Matt Decker is on top of the world until his flagship creation, the system that runs the U.S. power grid, suffers a crippling cyber attack. Chaos follows as a ruthless maniac sets out to create his own version of Revelation's battle of Armageddon. And he's making it personal as he blames Decker for the escalating disasters that stretch from New York to Israel to the "sulfurous scarps of hell."  Seven Unholy Days, should come with a warning:  Don't start this one unless you're ready to be sucked into a story that never lets go!

 

 

 

E-JERRY

Seven Unholy Days:  Kindle     Paperback     Audiobook

Pawnbroker:  Kindle     Paperback     Audiobook

******

Dora Machado is the award-winning author of the epic fantasy Stonewiser series and her newest novel, The Curse Giver, available from Twilight Times Books. She is one only a few Hispanic women writing fantasy in the United States today. She grew up in the Dominican Republic, where she developed a fascination for writing and a taste for Merengue. After a lifetime of straddling such compelling but different worlds, fantasy is a natural fit to her stories.

When she is not writing fiction, Dora also writes features for the award-winning blog Murder By Four and Savvy Authors, where writers help writers. She lives in Florida with her indulgent husband and two very opinionated cats.

 To learn more about Dora Machado and her award winning novels, visit her at www.doramachado.com , email her at Dora@doramachado.com, find her on Facebook, or follow her on Twitter.

 

The Grace Painter by Mark Romang

Thanks very much to Tribute Books for allowing me to do this review.


My review:

The Grace Painter is about people who change from what the world thought they were to who God intended they become. Matthew London went from a NYPD hostage negotiator to a painter of Renaissance style art.  Annie left behind her childhood's painful memories to stop the same thing from happening to another. Even the bad guys- those nasty Boudreaux brothers- found out that you can run but you cannot hide from God.

This book has mystery, suspense, romance, and faith-based concepts all rolled into one. Each chapter is almost like a vignette of a person and their world and how it intersects with London's, aka, Jon Rafter- and the author creatively brings all that intrigue into the story and makes it fit somehow. If the plot suspense isn't high enough for you, there are bullets flying everywhere, and a monster hurricane stirring up the tension in this story as well. Mr. Romang didn't disappoint in the end, either, tying all these threads up with a big blue bow for the reader.

The Grace Painter was my first Christian mystery, and the first book I have read by Mr. Romang. Not for the last time, I will warrant. His ability to inject human nature and how it reacts to life into his work was true art. Art, like a painting. Pun totally intended.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________

Rafflecopter GIVEAWAY HTML embed code:
a Rafflecopter giveaway

Mark Romang's Web Site:
http://www.markromangbooks.com/

Mark Romang's Facebook:
http://facebook.com/mark.romang.18

Mark Romang's Goodreads:
http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6606226.Mark_Romang

The Grace Painter's Goodreads:
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16210809-the-grace-painter

Tribute Books Blog Tours Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Tribute-Books-Blog-Tours/242431245775186

The Grace Painter's blog tour site:
http://thegracepainter.blogspot.com/

The Grace Painter Book Summary:



Sometimes the hardest person to forgive is the one reflecting back at you from inside a mirror. Matthew London can attest to this difficult truth. Ever since the former NYPD hostage negotiator changed his identity and fled New York City for the backwaters of Louisiana, regret has ruled his life.

For eight years London has lived like a hermit in a declining plantation house. Only his talent for painting Renaissance-style murals and paintings keeps the inner-demons from totally destroying him. Each day the disgraced hostage negotiator longs for a chance at redemption, never expecting it to actually happen. But then a down-on-her-luck FBI agent shows up on his doorstep one evening. It turns out Jean-Paul and Sebastian Boudreaux, two local brothers famous for lawlessness have inadvertently kidnapped a little girl.

London is quickly thrust into the starring role of a daring rescue attempt. But before he can rescue the child from the dangerous Boudreaux brothers, he first must find a way to forgive himself for a past misstep, a blunder that forever altered his once promising life. But in the Atchafalaya Basin swampland, nothing is promised. Grace cannot be purchased or earned. It can only be given.

Mark Romang's Bio:

I was born in 1967. Avid reader, suspense novelist, faithful husband, baffled father, factory worker, reformed head-banger, failed musician, contact sports lover, MMA enthusiast, distressed KC sports fan, Lord of the Rings geek, workout fiend, dog owner, nature lover, proud American, disgruntled voter, pistachio addict, caffeine-riddled, screw-up saved by grace, sojourner. This is me in a nutshell.

Price/Format: $0.99 ebook
Pages: 303
Publisher: self-published
Release: November 26, 2012

Kindle buy link ($0.99):
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ADWZ4M4?tag=tributebooks-20

Nook buy link ($0.99):
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-grace-painter-mark-romang/1113848026?ean=2940015785463

Smashwords ($0.99):
http://www.smashwords.com/b/259249

What makes a good suspense novel?

I know I am wrongly phrasing this, but to me, a mystery is eating dinner with someone you don't know. You have to spend time with them to learn about their tendency to steal small dishes from restaurants.

So a mystery has a lot of elements to it.

And to rephrase someone else's thought: a suspense is when you discover a bag under the table where you are eating and a  thriller is discovering that the bomb inside the bag is ticking.

So what makes a good suspense?

Characters that we care about mostly. We have to invest in the story people and the life they are struggling with before the suspenseful things that happen to them make us sit up and notice. A good example would be the character of Daniel Silva's stories, Gabriel Allon. He is a master art restorer, and an assassin. Good combo, huh?

 Secondly, I would have to say the events in the story. I love a good action suspense where everything is moving toward a deadly and urgent conclusion.

"The grip on my neck intensified, cutting off some of the blood flow to my brain. The vampire spoke.".... from Monster Hunter International by Larry Correia

What do think, Murderers? Would you say suspense is the bag, or the bomb?

Clinchers, aka Crisis

This week I decided to write about those moments between turning points. I call them Clinchers, they are also known as a (or) the Crisis. They are those times that make the reader's heart beat faster and make them turn the pages. It is where the bad guys attack the good guys, it is where the girl finds out something about the boy (or vice versa)that makes them question their love, and it is where the evil wizard sends his minions after the hero and the hero has to fight.

Now, the hero of this story you are writing is given the opportunity to follow his heart, but choices are oftentimes hard and this is how you know when a Clincher is about to happen. Something comes along to make this hero act. Heart or not. These Clinchers make the hero do something. Anything, to move this story along. It might even be better if he or she makes the WRONG choice. Sometimes characters making mistakes are a good thing.

If you were making a pudding, this is the ingredient that makes it thick. These Clinchers are scenes where there is so much tension and suspense, the reader has to gulp. And when it is over, they go ahhh.

If you are a story structure person, novels often have two of these Clincher scenes, the first one being sometime before the midpoint of the story, and it sometimes is used to introduce the villain character, ah yes. What a great Clincher that is!

Can you think of three stories where the villain is introduced? What surrounded that scene? YES!!! that's a Clincher.

Come on back next week, and I will discuss the middle of a novel and how it should behave.

Review for THE TANGLED WEB by JP Lane, review by AP Lazar

Title:  The Tangled Web: an international web of intrigue, murder, and romance

Author:  J.P. Lane

Publisher: Amazon Digital Services

Genre: Thriller/Suspense

eBook $3.97

ASIN: B007Z5Y3ZQ

Author’s website: www.jp-lane.com

The Tangled Web is a fast paced and well told international thriller. I know I’m dating myself, but Ms. Lane’s book reminds me of Helen McInnes’s wonderful espionage thrillers that I used to read back in the seventies when I was in college. (Ms McInnes’s books were in fact written in the second half of the last century, and I stumbled upon them in my parents’ piles of books along with Agatha Christie, Rex Stout and John D. MacDonald.)

I was hooked from the start by the exotic setting(s), international verbage/dialects, and the spy-novel type thrills that run rampant in The Tangled Web.

Ms. Lane’s thriller is set primarily on a Caribbean island, replete with tropical lush scene painting and intriguing local color. The characters who hail from the island range in character and style from rich white landowners to the delightful housekeeper, Ivy, who was one of my favorite (albeit minor) characters.

The dialog felt genuine, as did the frustration experienced by main characters Logan Armstrong (international tycoon) and Lauren Anderson (journalist) as they plummeted through this adventure without being able to fully communicate their feelings or intentions until the very end.

I won’t rehash the plot here—since so many others have done so very thoroughly—but suffice it to say there is great treachery ongoing in the Caribbean political scenes behind the bright and touristy island of blue oceans and heady-scented flowers. The Prime Minister has become corrupt, putting his island’s future in peril due to his links with the drug cartels and his own selfish purposes. Two plots interweave to assassinate this monster–one driven by a truly frightening cartel head, Maria Echevarria, and the other by well-meaning government officials who know that the Prime Minister must go.

I enjoyed this romp across the globe: from New York to London, from Prague to the Caribbean, it held my interest throughout. Well done, Ms. Lane!

Recommended by Aaron Paul Lazar, www.lazarbooks.com.

Back from the Brink, by Michael Prescott

Hi, folks.

Please join me in extending a warm welcome to Michael Prescott, author of numerous bestselling thrillers and one of the hottest authors on the Kindle scene. This man has sold over a million eBooks, and we are honored to have him here on Murderby4 today. Not only is Mr. Prescott a phenomenal success and a true gentleman, but in my humble opinion, he is one of the finest suspense/thriller/mystery writers of the century. 

Writers, if you're looking for an example of how to "get it right," how to capture audiences with unrelenting action and tension, with psychological premises that both shock and awe, with twists and turns that'll spin your head around...just pick up one of his books. 

I'm just starting Grave of Angels, but I highly recommend such books as Stealing Faces, Blind Pursuit, Mortal Pursuit, Deadly Pursuit, and Dangerous Games. Writers, these books are primers for how it's done!

Please help us welcome Mr. Prescott and leave a comment in the section below. 

Aaron Paul Lazar

www.lazarbooks.com

Back from the Brink

copyright 2012, Michael Prescott

In 2009 my career was over.

I'd been writing suspense novels for twenty-three years and had published twenty of them. Some were modest bestsellers, though I remained securely ensconced in the dreaded "midlist" - halfway between stardom and oblivion. Beginning in 2007 it all fell apart. My longtime publisher, Penguin, dropped me, along with many of its other veteran authors; the company announced it would now focus on "vampire erotica" for its mass-market paperback titles. Being neither a vampire nor erotic, I was shown the door. 

At first I didn't worry too much. There were other publishers. Well, four or five of them, anyway. But my efforts to find a home in one of the other big New York houses went nowhere. What I was selling, they weren't buying. My sales record was too uneven, my books weren't enough like The Da Vinci Code, and the whole industry was suffering a crisis of confidence as paperback sales circled the drain. 

By the summer of 2009, I had to face facts. I was no longer a publishable writer. So I started writing something else - option calls. I would buy some stock and write (sell) options on it; the option premiums provided an income stream. With stocks on the rise, writing calls was a pretty easy way to make money. No, I wasn't being creative and I couldn't honestly say I was contributing anything to society, but I was paying my bills. 

In 2010 I had an idea for a sideline. I would take an unsold novel, Riptide, heavily revise it, and publish it myself using print-on-demand technology. My expectations were minimal. I thought I might sell a couple of hundred copies. Mainly I wanted a copy of the book for my shelf. At the last minute, I decided I might as well make Riptide available as a Kindle ebook also. It cost nothing, and who knows, the book might sell a few more copies. 

Nothing much happened with Riptide for a while, but I'd enjoyed the process of putting out the book, so I decided to start digitizing my out-of-print backlist titles. The rights to these books had reverted to me, and I wanted to keep them around. 

Then in the spring of 2011, my friend and fellow author J. Carson Black (The Shop, Icon) suggested that I drop the price of my ebooks to only $0.99 and promote them on Amazon's discussion forums. This strategy was working well for her, and similar strategies had worked for Jay Konrath and others. I was dubious, but I gave it a try. 

Thus began the most unexpected run of luck I've had in my life. In retrospect, I really should have visited Atlantic City and put down some bets on the roulette wheel. Sales of my ebooks went up … and up … and up. I was hitting #1 in Amazon's Suspense category. Some of my titles began appearing on the bestseller lists of the New York Times and USA Today - self-published ebooks sharing the list with the latest releases from the New York houses. Yes, the same outfits whose editors had turned off the lights and hidden behind the sofa when I came knocking on their door. 

By the end of 2011, I was closing in on a million ebooks sold. USA Today ran a feature story about me and other indie ebook writers. Amazon Publishing contacted me to ask if I wanted to do a deal. 

And in fact, I did want to do a deal. For all my success at self-publishing, I was interested to see what Amazon could do for me. As it turns out, they can do a lot. My first book with them, Grave of Angels, benefited immensely from the contributions of developmental editor David Downing, while acquisitions editor Maria Gomez gave me significant input into the cover design and promotional copy. Now the marketing team is doing a bang-up job of promoting the book through targeted emails and onsite ads. 

Grave of Angels, probably the last book I'll write with a southern California setting, focuses on Kate Malick, a former Carmelite nun turned security consultant to the stars. Her most troublesome client is teenage Chelsea Brewer, a hard-partying, self-destructive train wreck. When Chelsea is kidnapped, Kate swings into action, hunting the city's darkest corners over a long and dangerous night.  

I hope it's a gripping thrill ride, but I have to admit it can't hold a candle (or even a Kindle) to the roller coaster I've been riding since 2009!

Michael Prescott

www.michaelprescott.net

Author bio:

Born in 1960, Michael Prescott grew up in New Jersey and attended Wesleyan University, majoring in Film Studies. In 1981 he moved to Los Angeles, where he wrote scripts for independent producers and worked as a magazine freelancer, archival researcher, and editor. In 1986 he sold the first of five horror novels, then moved on to suspense novels, some of which appeared under the pen name Brian Harper. Praised for "brilliant elements of psychological horror" (Publishers Weekly), Prescott 's novels have sold more than one million copies in print editions, and have found a new audience among ebook readers. At last count he had sold more than one million ebooks, making him one of today's  bestselling ebook writers. 

Suspense, it's in the future

This past weekend, I went to visit my local Books a Million and while perusing the magazines came across the 101 Best Sites for Writers list in the May/June Writers Digest. As some of you know, Mb4 made it into that list once again. We thank you, our fans and followers, for supporting this blog and voting for us in all the ways you do. We always want to give you what you want so if there are suggestions on something you are not getting here, please leave us a comment and let us know. Keeping a blog going as long as we have done on this one-to coin a phrase-takes a village. So, since we are listed under thrillers/suspense, I thought I would make a few comments about why suspense is different than mystery. Well, for one thing, suspense is in the future and mystery in the past. What do you mean, you ask? It's elementary dear Murderer, elementary. For a suspense/ thriller to work the main thrust of the plot is something that hasn't happened yet. It's something that the reader is anticipating with sweating palms and racing heartbeat. The characters are working round the clock to keep something from occurring. Sometimes they succeed. Sometimes it happens and they are forced to fix the situation, which can be another sort of fun read, my particular fav, a mystery. When the murder or high stress event happens in the first chapter and the characters are sent off trying to find the perp, well that my dears, is a mystery. My husband is a thriller junkie. He would rather watch the latest James Bond movie, or Mission Impossible movie than anything. I wonder, is thriller fever a man thing? Because my girlfriends and I would rather catch the latest Nicolas Sparks movie than suffer through another two hour harangue of blown up cars and high-risk theatrics. If you think it is a man thing, let me know. Maybe I will do a survey. Happy Thursday, Murderers.