Author interviews

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I love a good whydunnit!

Greg Hickey’s novel, Parabellum, is structured differently from the average mystery novel. This book starts with a horrific, terrifying event and then jumps back in time by a year. It follows four individuals, the ex-athlete, the programmer, the veteran, and the student, and examines their lives and what may have cause any one of them to take their pain out on the group of innocent people from the event at the start of the book.

After Greg reads Chapter 1 of the book to us, I ask him about this structure and what inspired him to write the book this way. We also talk about the themes in the book, including the responsibility of society to take care of its members.

Also in our interview, Greg mentions the free novella available at his website called The Theory of Anything. You can learn more about the book and get your free copy here.

Today’s show is supported by my patrons at Patreon. Thank you! When you become a patron for as little as $1 a month you receive a short mystery story each and every month. And the rewards for those who love mystery stories go up from there! Learn more and become a part of my community of readers at www.Patreon.com/alexandraamor

This week’s mystery author

Greg Hickey is a former international professional baseball player and current forensic scientist, endurance athlete and author. He is the author of three novels, including the recently published crime novel Parabellum.

His debut novel, Our Dried Voices, was a finalist for Foreword Reviews’ INDIES Science Fiction Book of the Year Award. He lives in Chicago with his wife, Lindsay.

Learn more about Greg and all his books at GregHickeyWrites.com

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Like so many authors, Mark Edward Langley was inspired by many of the great mystery authors of the past.

Mark began writing seriously when he retired and now has many book ideas waiting to be written. He is inspired by the Four Corners area of Arizona, a place familiar to Tony and Anne Hillerman fans. In our interview Mark shares the story of driving through this landscape and recording what he saw into a tape recorder so that he would have that information available to him when he wrote.

We mention an interview with Mark’s at the International Thriller Writers site and you can read that here.

Today’s show is supported by my patrons at Patreon. Thank you! When you become a patron for as little as $1 a month you receive a short mystery story each and every month. And the rewards for those who love mystery stories go up from there! Learn more and become a part of my community of readers at www.Patreon.com/alexandraam

This week’s mystery author

Mark Edward Langley was instilled with a love for the American West by his father at a young age. After revisiting it throughout adulthood, his connection to the land and its people became more irrevocable. After spending almost thirty years working in business, he retired at the end of 2016 and began to focus on writing his first Arthur Nakai Novel, Path of the Dead, which was released August of 2018.

Mark’s latest novel in the series, Death Waits in the Dark, was released on August 4, 2020. Mark has already written book three of the series, When Silence Screams, and is currently working on book four, Midnight Harvest.

Mark and his wife, Barbara, live in Indiana and spend their time between there and Santa Fe, New Mexico.

To learn more about Mark and all his books visit MarkEdwardLangley.com

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Small towns feature their own kind of danger.

Judy Toews and I both live in small towns in British Columbia and she has set her Stella Mosconi books in the town where she lives, Nelson. As she points out in the interview, after she reads from Lucky Jack Road, it’s intriguing to set a murder mystery in a small town because most people know one another. And Judy wanted readers to feel like the murders in her books were situations that could actually happen.

In the introduction to the show I mention that if you’d like to know what Nelson looks like you could check out the Steve Martin movie Roxanne. It’s a very funny movie, and very sweet as well, and it was filmed entirely in Nelson so you’ll get a good understanding of the landscape and architecture in this small Canadian town.

Today’s show is supported by my patrons at Patreon. Thank you! When you become a patron for as little as $1 a month you receive a short mystery story each and every month. And the rewards for those who love mystery stories go up from there! Learn more and become a part of my community of readers at www.Patreon.com/alexandraamor

This week’s mystery author

JG Toews is a health professional turned crime writer. She lives in Nelson, BC, an artsy mountain town that inspires the setting for her Stella Mosconi mysteries. Give Out Creek (Mosaic Press) was shortlisted for the Arthur Ellis Unhanged Award and the 2019 Lefty Award for Best Debut Mystery Novel.

Book two, Lucky Jack Road, was released in September 2020.

To learn more about Judy and her books visit her website at JGToews.com