Welcome to Summer Splash Blog Hop; Signed Copy of Blow Up the Roses is my Offering

Thanks for checking in during the Summer Splash Bog Hop that Cheryl Bradshaw at Indie Writers Unite! started July 26.

I'm offering a signed, paperback copy of Blow Up the Roses to two persons (random draw) who leave a comment with their email address so I can contact them later for snail mail delivery of this novel. Curiosity Quills, publisher of this novel, is running a special so you kindle readers can grab it as an ebook for 99 cents until Sunday.

But, wait. You may not want to be a winner or get the book.

Blow Up the Roses is a very dark suspense/thriller. More than one reader said they wanted to stop reading it, but couldn't. We've got some serious serial killing going on here. Mr. Brown, who rents his side of the duplex from Mrs. Keene, is a very nasty and troubled person.

Some of the back story: I was managing editor of the mid-sized Kansas daily, The Olathe Daily News. from 1978 to 1988. During that time, we lived in half of a duplex on a cul d'sac. An horrific murder occurred in Olathe. Home was entered through one of those unlocked sliding doors from a walk-out basement. A teenage girl was left dead, bludgeoned, her younger brother alive, but with head wound, and elder teenage sister missing. Her body was found a few days later.

The town was terrified and it took the cops way too long to solve this case. It was a tough reporting job for us because we learned that the autopsy of the elder teen showed she was pregnant. To report or not? We reasoned, and I stand by it, that at that time the killer was on the loose and the more people knew all the facts, the more they might come forward with information to find the killer.

The family was not pleased. For me, it became difficult because that family moved out of their death-ridden house and moved into another duplex on my cul d'sac. So I had to drive by where they now lived on my way to work.

Blow Up the Roses is not a fictional retelling of those events. It's a complete new creation, but those events certainly were in my psyche when Mr. Brown made his appearance through my keyboard.

Here's a video trailer I had more fun producing than I should have.

If you live in the Kansas City area, let me know and you'll go in another drawing, winner to be invited to the house for one of my cocktails or, shudder, a non-alcoholic beverage. 

Here's the link to the other authors participating in the Summer Splash Blog Hop.

And, finally, here's where you can find all of my fiction. Well, except for my Philip McGuire mystery Tortured Truths that Curiosity Quills will publish in the fall and its sequel, Heart Chants, in winter. More about those later. If interested, go back to the top of the page and enter your email address for further updates.