The Thrill Begins

During the month of March, The Writers Chatroom (TWC) is proud to host its first virtual book tour. The cyber-tour will feature debut author Jordan Dane and her back to back releases with Avon HarperCollins: NO ONE HEARD HER SCREAM (April 08), NO ONE LEFT TO TELL (May 08), and NO ONE LIVES FOREVER (June 08).

TWC’s Linda Hutchison had arranged the event after ‘virtually meeting’ Dane in MySpace. “I knew Jordan was doing everything we had ever thought of telling writers to do to market their wares. She had sold three novels to a major publishing house and three more in 2007. She also had a professional website and several very visible marketing strategies in place. She was definitely on my ‘to be watched’ list.”

Publishers Weekly calls Dane’s NO ONE HEARD HER SCREAM a “dynamite debut” and compares Dane’s intense pacing to Lisa Jackson, Lisa Gardner, and Tami Hoag—romantic suspense that “crosses over into plain thriller country”. Avon/HarperCollins bought Jordan Dane’s debut suspense series in auction and is launching this eagerly awaited trilogy in a back to back publishing event April through June 2008. “We are pursuing an aggressive release schedule,” says Avon publisher Liate Stehlik, “because we believe strongly in this author. Jordan Dane is poised to be the ‘next big thing’ in the romantic suspense genre.”

Many of TWC’s authors have reviewed advance copies of NO ONE HEARD HER SCREAM and will post their reviews and their own Q&A interviews with Jordan during March. And the event will culminate in a live moderated chat on March 30^th. See dates and hosting authors links below. For more information on The Writers Chatroom, please visit their website at www.writerschatroom.com, voted as Writer’s Digest “101 Best Websites for Writers”.

Virtual Tour Dates and LinksMarch 5 - Billie Williams http://printedwords.blogspot.comMarch 8 - Linda J. Hutchinson http://reviewhutch.blogspot.com

March 12 - Kim Richards http://kim-richards.livejournal.com/

March 15 - Lisa Haselton http://lisahaselton.tripod.com/reviewsandinterviews/

March 19 - Cricket Sawyer http://www.Cricketshearth.blogspot.com

March 22 - Diana Castilleja http://dianacastilleja.blogspot.com

March 26 - Renee’ Barnes http://msqtpi.livejournal.com/

March 29 - Glenn Walker http://www.monsura.blogspot.com

March 30 - TWC Launch PARTY – Moderated Chat (7pm EST) March Chat Guests: C. Hope Clark, Kathryn Lilley, James McMullen, Darlene Hartman/ Simon Lang, and Jordan Dane.

AuthorLink has posted a video interview CJ Lyons did with them, discussing the trials and tribulations of getting published.

Click HERE if you want to see CJ up close and personal….

Plus more great reviews for CJ’s debut, LIFELINES! This one from Sunday’s Baltimore Sun, from Sarah Weinman:

Readers who prefer their medical thrillers to have characters with beating hearts and three dimensions are well advised to pick up this series debut by Lyons, a veteran of trauma centers and pediatric emergency medicine…Lyons captures the frenetic setting of the ER with a smooth style that demands the reader move forward to keep up with the piece, but she also creates winning portraits of the supporting players set to anchor the series.

And, if you are at Left Coast Crime, be sure to give a shout out to all of us ITW members (especially the Debuts!) who will be there!!

As my debut novel prepares to launch with a bang on Nov. 3, 2008, I thought I would look back to where this overnight success began.

I wrote my first novel at 14 when a junior high classmate ran away from home. After school, my best friend and I hopped on our bikes and scoured the suburban neighborhood, calling the girl’s name and looking in her usual haunts.  Although we came up empty in our search, the girl eventually showed up safe and sound. But it was that event that ignited in me an idea for a “What if?” story that eventually grew to be my first novel-length work.

I wrote that first draft in longhand — despite having some of the worst handwriting to ever spring from the Scottish education system — and became so enamored of the possibilities that I begged my parents for a portable manual typewriter for Christmas. With the typewriter in my eager little hands, I began the second draft of the novel that I titled, He Climbed A Crooked Ladder. The story was set in Baltimore — a city I had never been to, so all the descriptions were of my local non-Baltimore neighborhood; the protagonist drove a car, even though I didn’t have a driver’s license; and it featured a rather interesting sex scene even though I was a virgin.

I finished the novel to my satisfaction sometime in high school (a third draft was written on a fancy new electric typewriter) and it has rested in a dusty box ever since. No one has ever read the finished script, but it taught me one of the most important lessons of bring a writer: I could turn an idea into a whole, novel-length story. Sure, the writing may not have been any good and the plot was probably a meandering mess, but I proved to myself that I could stick at a story and work through it until it was complete.

After that, I turned my attention to poetry (as being around pretty girls at school all day has a tendency to do) and published dozens of horrible ones in the school newspaper. This was also a very valuable lesson. Being published, even in such a small arena, meant people could read my work and offer their opinion. As you can imagine, some people (the closeted poets and lovers of secret diaries) thought I was incredibly brave, while others mocked and laughed at me to no end. Being able to accept this criticism for what it was is something every writer needs. It builds our armor for the future and strengthens our resolve to succeed.

Resolve, determination and pure pigheaded stubbornness was something I would soon discover I needed by the semitruckful.

— Grant McKenzie 

September 18 - 21, 2008
Meijer Book Tour 2008 - Five Cities in Michigan

Jordan Dane will be one of the featured authors for a book tour of Meijer Supercenters in Michigan hosted by Levy Entertainment. The tour will spotlight “lead title” authors for all the major publishing houses. The highly promoted event with its huge book signings will cover 9 stores and 5 cities–including Detroit, Ann Arbor, Kalamazoo, Grand Rapids and Lansing. The tour begins Thursday, September 18 and will end at the last store in Detroit on Sunday, September 21 at 6:00 pm. Stay tuned for more details, and be sure to check out Jordan’s website for an updated schedule!

LIFELINES will be out in the stores next month (March 4th, to be exact) and in addition to a glowing review from Publishers Weekly, it received 4 1/2 stars and a Top Pick from Romantic Times Book Review!!!

AND, I just learned that I’m being featured as a New and Notable Author on Celebwire. They’re giving away free downloads of my short story, TOXICITY, a prequel to LIFELINES. My work is appearing alongside fellow ITW members Heather Graham and Brett Battles. Just click here.

To celebrate, I’m hosting several contests–prizes include DVDs, t-shirts, free books, gift cards, and even an iPod.

For more info go to my website. You can also read an excerpt from LIFELINES, check out the photos, and other fun stuff.

Take care all and thanks for letting me share this exciting time with you!
CJ

By Theo Gangi

My debut novel, Bang Bang, has been coined a gritty urban thriller. I’ve always written about urban dynamics, since I’m a city kid and don’t know much else.

I found the thriller genre by accident—a professor of mine at Columbia’s MFA program saw a gun in a chapter of a previous novel and said, ‘So, clearly we’re dealing with noir here.’ I hadn’t read noir at that time—I thought I was writing literature.

Once I dove into thrillers—starting with Hammett and Chandler and working up to Connelly and Child– I realized that these guys were not only having more fun, their work was culturally viable, personally engaging and readers didn’t need a PHD to get it. I always felt my work should appeal to everyone. Read the rest of this entry »

By Joe Kolman

NAKED OPTION, my first novel, is about a disgraced options trader who tracks a multi-million fraud and a murder through Wall Street’s gay subculture.

I wrote it because I couldn’t find many novels that fit the reality that I saw as a financial journalist. Most of the characters in the Wall Street thriller genre are one-dimensional portraits of greed. There’s certainly plenty of greed on Wall Street, but it’s only one of many powerful emotions — and not necessarily even the dominant one.

I tried to make the plot as exciting as I could – without bending reality. Dave Ackerman, the narrator of NAKED OPTION, is a brilliant young trader, but one day, recklessly trying to one-up his firm’s superstar, he goes naked on an option trade — and loses $112 million in two hours. His career is over. Then he hears about an auditing job at an investment bank. He knows within minutes that something is very wrong, but he’s so desperate he takes the job.

Read the rest of this entry »

By Karen Dionne

January 8, 2007 might not seem like a particularly memorable date to most people, but it will always be a red-letter day for me. That’s the day my thriller about an environmental disaster in Antarctica sold to Berkley. Think Jurassic Park on ice — a solar energy company melting icebergs into drinking water while environmental extremists plot to stop them — neither realizing that the water is contaminated with an unknown, deadly disease. Read the rest of this entry »

By Jordan Dane

I sacrificed a body part to write my debut novel – No One Heard Her Scream. Now that’s commitment. I suspect there are more than a few aspiring authors out there who by now are looking down at their own bodies and wondering what they could do without. Anything for the cause—but let me explain.

While recovering from major surgery, I wrote No One Heard Her Scream in six weeks during a medical leave from my day job. The best remedy for the body is to fill it with passion and I did that. I kept insane hours and my body pumped full of adrenaline instead of pain meds. I wrote and edited until the day prior to my return to work. Since the start of my journey toward publication in 2003, I had completed my fourth manuscript (my second suspense plot). Read the rest of this entry »

by CJ Lyons

Twice a Virgin!

Thought that would get everyone’s attention!

Ask any published author and they can tell you about their first time…first time getting The Call, that is.

They will remember exactly where they were, what the weather was like, who was there. They’ll tell you about that giddy feeling when their editor (or agent) said those magic words: we want to buy your book.

My Call came in 2004. I experienced all the usual spectrum of emotions: elation, terror, skepticism—this must be a joke, right? Or some horrible mistake? Followed by the glow of accomplishment.

Read the rest of this entry »