Sariah Wilson Interview - A Tribute of Fire

Photo Content from Sariah Wilson

USA Today Bestselling author Sariah Wilson has never jumped out of an airplane, never climbed Mt. Everest, and is not a former CIA operative. She has, however, been madly, passionately in love with her soulmate and is a fervent believer in happily ever afters—which is why she writes romance. She grew up in southern California, graduated from Brigham Young University (go Cougars!) with a semi-useless degree in history, and is the oldest of nine (yes, nine) children. She currently lives with the aforementioned soulmate and their children in Utah, along with cats named Pixel, Callie, and Belle who do not get along. (The cats, not the children. Although the children sometimes have their issues, too.)

Sariah's book ROYAL DATE was selected as one of the first winners in Amazon's Kindle Scout program. Her novella ROYAL DESIGN helped launch Amazon Publishing's Kindle in Motion technology, and she had her own Kindle World for THE ROYALS OF MONTERRA. Her books THE FRIEND ZONE and ROOMMAID were selected by Amazon as one of the Best Romances of 2019 and 2020, respectively. She has repeatedly hit Amazon's overall Top 100 (both in and outside the USA) and been a #1 bestseller on Amazon category lists multiple times. Her book ROOMMAID was the most read book from Amazon's website in September 2020.

       

What fiction most influenced your childhood, and what effect did those stories have on A TRIBUTE OF FIRE?
Romance and fantasy, because that’s what I grew up with. My mom devoured romance—she used to get those Harlequin subscriptions by the truckload—and my dad loved fantasy. We were pretty poor growing up but there were always books in our home. And after I’d read through everything from the library, I would read my parents’ books, and it gave me a deep love for romance and fantasy.
I knew when I started writing that I would write romance as that was the thing that interested me the most in books, and I had found it very lacking in fantasy. So when authors like Sarah J. Maas and Rebecca Yarros started combining the two, I was very, very excited. My time had come to combine my two favorite genres!

What’s one thing that readers would be surprised to find out about you?
I skipped a grade and it’s kind of a family tradition now—my dad skipped a grade and my youngest son skipped a grade.

TEN RANDOM  FACTS ABOUT A TRIBUTE OF FIRE

• It is based on a real life but obscure event—the Locrian maidens.
• Enemies to lovers is my absolute favorite trope, and this book has it!
• This story is set in an alternate universe of ancient Greece and I could have made everything up, but because I have a degree in history I spent months researching and speaking to professors of classical antiquity to get the details right. (And then I made stuff up anyways, LOL.)
• This book was definitely inspired by Reylo and Reylo fans will see Easter eggs that other readers will miss entirely.
• I wrote this book (156,000 words or about 520 pages) in 39 days.
• Spartans are among some of my favorite ancient warriors, so you’ll see them represented here through the Daemonians.
• This was the easiest writing experience I’ve ever had—it just poured out of me. I edit as I go, but what you’ve got in your hands is what I turned into my publisher. There weren’t very many changes!
• The cover artist for this book is the same one who did “Fourth Wing.”
• The audio is being done by Therese Plummer. I don’t usually listen to audiobooks very often but people who do gasp when I tell them that fact!
• Some readers have been confused by the name "Jason" in the book—but that is an ancient Greek name! (In Greek mythology Jason led the Argonauts, a collection of heroes (and one heroine!) who went to retrieve the Golden Fleece.)

What advice would you give to someone who wanted to have a life in writing?
Do the work. Read, read, read in the genre you want to write. Understand the conventions and tropes and expectations. Read craft books. Join a writing organization that is dedicated to teaching aspiring authors. Search on Google for how to get published (authors are a very giving bunch—all the information you need is out there!).

Are there authors that you’re excited to engage/work with?
I actually feel like I’ve already had this opportunity—I was invited to do a collection with Amazon Original Stories called “The Improbable Meet-Cute collection” with some other authors you might have heard of—Christina Lauren, Abby Jimenz, Jasmine Guillory, Ashley Poston, Sally Thorne. I felt a little like that song on Sesame Street, “One of these things is not like the others.” But that was a really, really amazing opportunity to work with some of the biggest names in rom-coms!

Which character have you enjoyed getting to know while writing A TRIBUTE OF FIRE?
All of them? It’s true. I have a great love for each and every character in this book, even the ones that don’t get very much page time. They all have their unique quirks and weaknesses and strengths and it was a lot of fun exploring that!

The fate of a cursed nation depends on a princess who must outwit a mortal enemy and outlast the trials of a death-defying ritual in a thrilling adventure by USA Today bestselling author Sariah Wilson.

Lia is the princess of Locris, a dying desert nation cursed centuries ago by an earth goddess—one still worshipped by the thriving and adversarial nation of Ilion. Every year, Ilion offers the goddess a sacrifice: two Locrian maidens forced to compete in a life-and-death race to reach her temple. In a millennium, no maiden has made it out of Ilion alive. This year, Lia is one of the hunted.

An education in battle gives her a fighting chance, but the challenges are greater than she feared: Lia’s beloved but untrained sister Quynh has been put in the path of danger. The winding streets of Ilion itself have been transformed into a labyrinthine maze of countless choices and dead ends. And if the risks weren’t significant enough, Lia is reluctantly drawn to the commandingly attractive Jason, an Ilionian sailor she loathes to trust and desires like no man before.

The tribute game is on. It’s up to Lia to lift the goddess’s curse, restore Locris to its former glory, and change the fate of every young woman destined to follow in her path.

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Allison Winn Scotch Guest Post - Take Two, Birdie Maxwell

Photo Credit: Kat Tuohy Rosenberg

Allison Winn Scotch is the New York Times bestselling author of eleven novels, including Cleo McDougal Regrets Nothing, In Twenty Years and Time of My Life. She lives in Los Angeles with her family and their two rescue dogs, Hugo and Mr. Peanut.

     

YOUR FAVORITE QUOTES/SCENES FROM TAKE TWO, BIRDIE MAXWELL
There’s a scene early on in the book after Birdie, one of the most famous actresses on the planet who has recently been cancelled, slips into her best friend’s bar in her quiet, small hometown that she has slunk back to in order to escape her real life and the bad press. This was definitely one of my very favorites to write and remains one of my very favorites to read. For a lot of reasons! The bar is teeming with old high school friends, none of whom Birdie remembers very fondly but now she’s famous, and people are starting to ogle. She’s a character who definitely believes that her best revenge is living well, but she also can’t help but tell one of her nemeses off – so that is always fun to write. J If memory serves, we toned down that dialogue because I had her tee off a little too much!

But even more fun was reuniting her with her forbidden high school crush – and one time one-night stand – her best friend’s twin brother, who may or may not become the leading man in both Birdie’s story and the book. What was most fun about this scene was that there were so many moving parts between Birdie and Elliot: the electricity that they still share for each other, the fact that neither one of them wants to or can acknowledge this electricity, the fact that Mona, Elliot’s sister and Birdie’s best friend, doesn’t know about their fling, and then the general discombobulation that they both feel being back in their hometown after they’ve both chosen to flee. They each harbor secrets about their return, and they each harbor secrets about each other. Put all of those together, and I had an absolute ball writing that scene, moving the characters around like Birdie and Elliot were on a chess board, not to mention their dialogue. It also sets everything in motion for what’s about to come next for all three characters. Which is all you can ask for in one scene: a little humor, a little drama and a lot of anticipation for what’s to come.

Hollywood’s biggest rom-com star tries to recover from her damaged reputation by staging her own rom-com and following a lead on a lost love.

Birdie Robinson thought she’d gotten everything she wanted out of life: fame, adoration, and an A-list Hollywood career. But after an on-set feud goes viral, she leaves L.A. for the one place where no one would think to find her: her hometown. She’s startled to stumble upon a love letter from a former boyfriend asking for a second chance. And there’s just one issue: the letter was unsigned and she’s not sure which ex sent it. Still, a public reunion with an ex-boyfriend could turn the wave of public opinion back in her favor. Life imitating art. What could go wrong? 

Elliot O’Brien, star reporter, knows that life isn’t an actual rom-com. Case in point, he’s spent two decades repressing his long-simmering feelings for his twin sister’s best friend, Birdie. But with his journalism career cratering and Birdie back in their hometown at the same time he is, he realizes that chronicling her search for her long-ago ex may be his opportunity to right some wrongs.

As they hit the road in an ancient RV, Birdie and Elliot retrace her romantic history for clues to who wrote the letter and come face to face with their own romantic missteps, all while grappling with whether happy endings are found only on the big screen—or whether their own happier ever after could be closer than they both ever imagined.

You can purchase Take Two, Birdie Maxwell at the following Retailers:

        

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1 Winner will receive a Copy of Take Two, Birdie Maxwell by Allison Winn Scotch.

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Taylor Hutton Interview - Strike and Burn

Photo Credit: Indy Flores

Taylor Hutton is the pseudonym of a pair of writer friends, one of whom has twice been a finalist for the National Book Award and the other who is a New York Times bestselling author and Edgar Award finalist. Between the two of them, they have written over forty books. When they are not passing their latest sexy thriller back and forth on Google Doc, they are browsing bookstores, sending each other ridiculous memes, walking their dogs Trudy and Potato around their Los Angeles neighborhood, and making their children cringe with their TikTok videos.

WEBSITE | TIKTOK | INSTAGRAM | GOODREADS

Greatest thing you learned at school. 

Learning to read and love books!

Tell us your most rewarding experience since being published. 

It’s been such a pleasure and a joy going through this publication experience together, and we hope that readers have even half as much fun reading STRIKE AND BURN as we did writing it.

What advice would you give to someone who wanted to have a life in writing? 

Read everything you can get your hands on, and read like a writer not like a reader--which is to say critically and with curiosity about how the author pulled the book off.

What was the single worst distraction that kept you from writing this book? 

THE WORLD BEING ON FIRE.

What chapter was the most memorable to write and why? 

Neither of us had ever written a steamy book before—or even a steamy scene for that matter—so working on and talking through those parts of the book turned out to be hilarious and very memorable and surprisingly fun.

Why is storytelling so important for all of us? 

We use books to escape our own lives, but we also use them to process our own experiences. Books like STRIKE AND BURN are intended to give readers the romantic fantasy we all want, while at the same time providing much needed catharsis. So many of us have experienced real trauma, and we turn to the lens of fiction—to storytelling—as an effective and healthy way of coping.

Can you tell us when you started STRIKE AND BURN, how that came about? 

When we first came up with the idea for STRIKE AND BURN, we weren’t sure if we’d actually write the book. We had never written together before, we were relatively new friends and neighbors, and had actually never read anything the other had written despite both of us having published books in similar genres. We started a shared google doc and set some ground rules: No writing more than an hour a day to start, and ONLY work on the book if we’re having fun with it. When we somehow had accumulated 150 pages and we were still having a blast, we decided we were all in and were going to actually write the book together!

FAVORITE QUOTES/SCENES FROM STRIKE AND BURN
Here are some of our favorite quotes from the book:

“My hunger for him is obvious, and I’m tired of hiding it. I want him in all his strange, confusing, complicated glory.”

“…[M]aking art wasn’t about the other person for me. It isn’t a conversation, it’s a monologue. It’s about me reaching inside myself and finding the stranger within. “

“And there it is: my favorite and least favorite thing about making art. You can’t help but reveal your own subconscious.”

“What happens when the person who shares your secrets dies? Do the secrets die too? That could be a mercy.”

“I realize I’m being very stupid. As a survivor, you’d think I’d have some instinct for self-preservation. I’ve thought a lot about how much grief can warp a person. Maybe it’s time I realized that love can warp you too.”

What is the first thing you think of when you wake up in the morning? 

We try for gratitude, but usually it’s coffee.

Which would you choose, true love with a guarantee of a heart break or have never loved before? 

True love every time.

At a movie theater which arm rest is yours? 

Umm, both?

What is your greatest adventure? 

Writing books together! It has been such a wild ride!

What is one unique thing are you afraid of? 

Adele has a cat named Toby. Julie is terrified of him.

What is the weirdest thing you have seen in someone else’s home? 

Toby? Just kidding, Adele!

What were you doing the last time you really had a good laugh? 

Working on our second book, AXE AND GRIND, coming in 2026. We’ve had a ridiculous amount of fun writing those characters.

When was the last time you told someone you loved them? 

This morning and every morning when we send our kiddos off to school.

A breathless romantic thriller that doesn't just toe the line between danger and desire—it burns it to the ground.

Honor Stone is all alone in this world. No family, no money, no future. So when she locks eyes with Strike Madden– in the morgue of all places– she’s not in the mood to be seduced. Sure, he’s drop-dead gorgeous, and the sizzle of attraction between them is undeniable, but she’s reeling from her identical twin sister’s murder. It’s the wrong time, wrong place, wrong everything.

Still, the enigmatic billionaire hires Honor as an artist to spearhead his carefully curated erotic animation studio – a job they soon find to be a dangerous mix of business and pleasure.

But when her twin’s obsessive killer targets Honor, the painful secrets of Honor’s traumatic past will finally be exposed with devastating consequences. Strike will stop at nothing to protect her, uncovering his own bone-chilling demons– a beautifully broken, dark side that doesn’t scare Honor…

It consumes her.

You can purchase Strike and Burn at the following Retailers:

        

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1 Winner will receive a Copy of Strike and Burn by Taylor Hutton.

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Heather McBreen Interview - Wedding Dashers

Photo Content from Heather McBreen

Heather McBreen currently lives in Seattle, WA, but spent the best year of her life living in London where she completed an MA degree in arts and cultural management. When she’s not writing or reading books about kissing, she can be found surfing the web for travel deals and plotting her next adventure. Wedding Dashers is her debut novel.

        

   

Greatest thing you learned at school. 

How to write! I still remember my very intimidating 10th grade English teacher staring down the class and telling us that this was the year we would either figure out how to write, or we wouldn’t.

When/how did you realize you had a creative dream or calling to fulfill? 

Is it dorky if I say I think I always knew? I’ve been making up stories basically my whole life, and I think there was a part of me that always knew I would write a book. It was just a matter of building up the stamina and determination to do it.

Beyond your own work (of course), what is your all-time favorite book and why? And what is your favorite book outside of your genre? 

My favorite book of all-time, any genre, is Beach read by Emily Henry. Nothing has ever made me feel the way that books has. It’s a masterclass in tension and fraught encounters (my favorite kind!) and I often return to it hoping to feel a fraction of the magic I felt the first time I read it. It’s truly a perfect book.

What advice would you give to someone who wanted to have a life in writing? 

I think there’s a lot of advice out there about growing a thick skin and learning to let things roll off your back, and while I totally understand the advice and why it’s important, I would also say that softness is what allows you to write with empathy and compassion. It’s a feature, not a bug, and something you should try to preserve and protect as much as you can.

Why is storytelling so important for all of us?
Can you tell us when you started WEDDING DASHERS , how that came about? Yes! I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing when the idea came to me. I’d had two separate ideas pinging around in my head for a while: one about two strangers who meet on a layover and find out they are both headed to the same destination wedding, and another about a pair of enemies-to-lovers who find themselves in a situation where they must pretend they are married in order to secure lodging for the night. I had the realization that I could combine these two into one story, and thus the idea for WEDDING DASHERS was born. I think I waited about ten minutes before I dove in and started writing.

TEN RANDOM FACTS ABOUT WEDDING DASHERS

• The designer of Allison’s veil, Demi Karina Custom Bridal, is my real life best friend who does in fact own her own custom bridal business. She made my veil when I got married, and as my Maid of Honor, was in charge of transporting it to Mexico for the wedding.
• I have the same tattoo––a compass on my wrist––that Ada designs for Jack
• I also had a destination wedding, though with far less drama and antics.
• I got the idea for Jack’s zebra print eye mask when I came to bed and found my husband wearing one and couldn’t stop laughing.
• Jack and Ada’s experience driving on the left hand side of the road was inspired by the time my dad and I rented a car in Edinburgh and drove to St. Andrews. We had dozens of people give us the “peace sign” before realizing we were being flipped off.
• When writing the scene where Jack changes a tire, I had to watch a YouTube video on how to change a tire since I myself don’t know
• The scene where Jack and Ada watch the naked dating TV show is inspired by the time my British friend showed me this exact show while I was living in England. Like Ada, I couldn’t believe full frontal nudity was allowed on cable TV in the UK.
• The setting for this story was very much influenced by my time living in England during grad school, and all the traveling I did while I was there
• Unlike my characters, I actually don’t like pizza that much, and when I do eat it, I’m definitely with Jack. Pizza and pineapple don’t mix.
• Just like Ada’s sister, Allison, The Parent Trap is also my favorite comfort movie.

What was your favorite subject when you were in school and why? 

Surprise, surprise, it was language arts!

What is your greatest adventure? Writing and publishing books! 

It’s a wild ride!

What is your most memorable travel experience? 

My most formative travel experience was definitely the first time I went abroad. I was 16 and it was on a WWII tour of Europe with my high school class. We spent a whirlwind nine days traveling between Berlin, Amsterdam, Normandy and Paris and I’m pretty sure to this day nothing has ever felt as seismic as that trip did to my 16-year-old self

What do you usually think about right before falling asleep? 

It’s always an idea for a story that I think is AMAZING in the moment, but not-so-great when I wake up the next morning. Or, conversely, it actually is great, but I don’t remember it because I didn’t write it down!

After a case of mistaken identity and an almost one-night stand, two stranded wedding guests have to find their way to their final destination together, in this riotously fun debut romance.

Ada’s little sister is getting married. Which should be a happy thought, right? But the once close sisters have been in a year long fight, the wedding is all the way in Ireland, and Ada is so broke that she just barely managed to get a ticket on a budget airline. And as if things couldn’t get worse, said airline just cancelled her connection. Which means Ada is stuck in London with no way to make it to the wedding.

Surely she’s hit rock bottom?

So, there’s no reason for her not to spill her heart out about the over-the-top wedding, her sister’s worryingly quick engagement, and the womanizing best man she’s dreading meeting to a handsome also-stranded stranger at the bar. Until she realizes the stranger is headed to the same wedding. Oh, and he’s the infamous best man.

Now, Jack and Ada must put their simmering attraction behind them to make it to Belfast before they miss the nuptials. But between flat tires, missed trains, and suspect hostels, Jack and Ada start to question whether their feelings are worth going the distance, or just a distracting detour along the way.

You can purchase Wedding Dashers at the following Retailers:

        

And now, The Giveaways.

1 Winner will receive a Copy of Wedding Dashers by Heather McBreen.

Please comment below/share on Instagram to enter and tag JeanBookNerd.

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Logan Terret Interview - Agates Are Forever: A Nick Cameron Mystery

Photo Content from Logan Terret

Logan Terret grew up in Northern Michigan but has lived in the Southwest for the last twenty years. Formerly the chief software architect for one of America’s largest financial firms, he is now
retired and devotes himself to desert wanderings, mystery novels, machine learning, dog walking, and other pursuits. He is an inventor and licensed attorney. He lives in Phoenix, Arizona.

WEBSITE | FACEBOOK | GOODREADS

  

Greatest thing you learned at school.
Tough question. Either Latin or the General Linear Model. Latin helped me understand other archaic Indo-European languages. The General Linear Model allowed me to forecast all sorts of things.

If you could have written one book in history, what book would that be?
Don Quixote. Probably the first modern European novel. Part I gets a little repetitive. You know, Don Quixote wants to do something stupid, Sancho Panza tries to talk him out of it, Don Quixote does it anyway, and they both get the crap beaten out of them. But hey, if you have a formula, why not stick with it? And Cervantes acknowledged he went a bit overboard when, in Part II, a character says "Still, there are those who have read the history who say they would have been glad if the author had left out some of the countless cudgellings that were inflicted on Senor Don Quixote in various encounters."

What chapter was the most memorable to write and why?
Chapter 27, From China, with Love. The soldadera’s story was hard to write because it required writing from the viewpoint of a Mexican soldadera in 1916. Anyone who pretends to know how anybody thought in 1916 is crazy.

The US-Mexico border was a complete zoo from 1848 until post WWI, with hostile Indians, freebooters, robbers, smugglers, rogues and vagabonds, all both Anglo and Mexican, and the U.S. Cavalry trying to keep a lid on things. The crisis came with the Mexican Revolution, which was a very big deal for Mexico and the United States. It occupied much of President Wilson’s time, many Americans were killed, and Wilson eventually sent General John Pershing into Mexico to stop Pancho Villa’s freebooting across the border. (Trivia: the last horse cavalry charge of the U.S. Army occurred May 5, 1916 when the 11th Cavalry charged Villistas at Ojo Azules, Chihuahua.)

My interest springs mainly from stories my father told me (he was in the 11th Cavalry when they still used horses and knew people who had chased Pancho Villa.) Also a long survey of Taft and Wilson’s response to the Mexican Revolution of 1910-20, which I did for a noted diplomatic historian when I was at the University of Michigan. Novelists Martin Luiz Guzmán and Nellie Campobello, both contemporaries of the Mexican Revolution, helped. My knowledge of old houses and firearms, and how people lived at the turn of the last century, helped. The fact that my mother was a lieutenant in the Women’s Army Corp in WW II gave me some insight into how hard-assed women think, too.

Can you tell us when you started AGATES ARE FOREVER, how that came about?
It started with an email of the opening scene, which was intended as a joke. I’d been reading some very bad detective novels set in Chicago and written by an Englishman who had obviously never been there. You know, like “Whilst I was stuffing the cadaver into the boot of my car.”

What was the most surprising thing you learned in creating your characters?
If your inspiration is real people you have known, it’s easy to avoid stereotypes because real people are not stereotypes. Stereotypes are generalizations based on group averages, and as with all averages, nobody is really average, at least on any continuous attribute that can be measured with high precision.

What were your inspirations for the character development?
People I have known. Being older, I’ve known tons of people, so this makes it easy. A female Chinese chemical engineer? No problem, I knew one. A crusty Black army retiree? Knew one. An East Indian female computer scientist? I’ve known a few dozen. A gentleman sheriff? I knew one. And so on.

YOUR FAVORITE QUOTES/SCENES FROM AGATES ARE FOREVER
Most guys go their whole lives without finding a corpse. I need to stop finding them.

From her emerald eyes to her marathoner thighs, with stratovolcano breasts in between, she’s hotter than a Soviet drill bit at the bottom of the Kola Superdeep Borehole. She sears her eyes into me—her left elbow is on the table and her chin rests on her knuckles as she scans me like a pyrometer drone checking out hot spots on Stromboli.

“Jägermeister, which is like a handful of black jelly beans with an Everclear chaser.”

“Is he dead?” she asks calmly.

“Yeah. Paco Madero has gone to the big gem show in the sky.”

So now the cops have two murders on their hands with nothing to go on but some low-resolution video showing a short, dumpy guy who looks like a hobo. The action plan? Run around town stopping every short, dumpy guy who looks like a hobo.

In Quartzrock, that’s half the male population.

She’s hotter than a uraninite vein at the Oklo natural fission reactor in the Statherian Period.

“You bastard!” she shrieks, then starts hitting me. “What if that horrible hobo had been here? He might have killed me!”

She grabs a hiking stick from the back seat and chases me down the gulch, madly flailing away and screaming she’ll rip my heart out with a gaff hook and skin me alive with a potato peeler. Presumably not in that order, but she’s agitated.

Now clearly, when a woman smacks you in the face, beats you with a stick, and threatens you with grave mutilations, it usually means she’s lookin’ for it. Happens every day, all over the world. So I have a feeling this will be a good night.

Well, that feeling didn’t last long….

She’s hotter than the Liuhuanggou mine fire.

She’s hotter than a pyroclastic flow sizzling down the flanks of Mount Pelée.

Around 01:00 I wake up to the seductive heat of Theo’s soft hands stroking my bare shoulders. She leans close, her warm breath on my forehead, her long, scented hair caressing my chest with a velvet touch. In the dim light filtering through the drapes, her emerald eyes have turned dark and deep, like the green water turns abyssal black when night falls on the lagoon at Midway.

“You were snoring,” she says.

Janie’s there, looking hotter than a pyroclastic bomb in the Lupanar of Pompeii.

She rises, takes me by the hand, and leads me toward the door. My internal seismograph is thrashing. Her hand emits strong compressional waves, coinciding with some thrust faulting on my side, if you get my drift. The sound gets louder. Then she opens the door, and it’s piercing.

A big 3D printer is making a very detailed model of the Car of Juggernaut.

Then she jumps out and runs after him, brandishing her little revolver and threatening to cut out his liver with a filleting knife and skin him alive with a fish scaler. Does she have the hots for this guy?

What is the first job you have had? 

Paper route.

What is your happiest childhood memory? 

Building a treehouse with my friends in a big oak tree. In beautiful June weather. With some long rope swings.

What was your favorite subject when you were in school and why? 

In elementary school,

What decade during the last century would you have chosen to be a kid? 

1990’s. Fairly peaceful and prosperous, we had computers and the worldwide web, and the future looked bright. Then, after 2000, the idiocy started.

Name one thing you miss about being a kid. 

Having unlimited opportunities before you, and not having to choose.

Best date you've ever had? 

There are some things a gentleman does not discuss. As for the WORST date, the woman who raised endangered reptiles and lived in a camper trailer. I’m not making this up.

Which incident in your life that totally changed the way you think today? 

An old, rusty pickup truck loaded with firewood and a Volkswagen Rabbit collided at an intersection. I was young at the time. I looked at the scene and assumed the pickup truck was at fault. Not for any good reason, but because I assumed the person in the new vehicle would be the more prudent. I was wrong. This taught me to avoid making inferences based on appearances and stereotypes. It was a vivid lesson and I remember it distinctly today, decades later.

What is the weirdest thing you have seen in someone else’s home? 

I was taking singing lessons from an old opera singer. She suggested I say for lunch. She brought me a plate with a hotdog and canned beans. A piece of chewed chewing gum was stuck on the lip of the plate. I didn’t say anything.

When was the last time you told someone you loved them? 

 Today.

What were you doing the last time you really had a good laugh? 

Watching the movie American Fiction

Any Camp stories you would like to share? 

I once saved a cat. I was in college and a little cat had climbed up an ash tree and couldn’t or wouldn’t come down. The tree had no branches for the first ten feet, so nobody could climb it. Except me, since I knew how to shinny up flag poles and so forth. So I did. I got to the branch the cat was on, approached the cat hanging from the branch like a sloth, took it in one hand, hung from the branch by my knees, and gently placed the cat in the upstretched hands of the girl who owned it. She looked at me like I was Superman.

What is your most memorable travel experience? 

The sewers of Paris are pretty cool, but my most memorable travel experience was staying for a week in a weatherbeaten shack at an abandoned silver mine at high elevation in Colorado. At the time, this was a place nobody knew about except the guys who were hiding out there for some reason or other.

Mix the western setting of C. J. Box’s Joe Pickett with the noir tropes of Raymond Chandler and the humor of Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum, and you get this witty, thrilling mystery fueled by diverse characters and set against the stunning backdrop of the Arizona desert.

Nick Cameron is a PhD geologist of independent means who boxes for fun, packs a Colt Commander, and has a knack for finding bodies—dead and alive.

When an agate heiress arrives in Quartzrock, Arizona, on the eve of a gem show, she asks Nick for help selling some gemstones—and soon becomes a suspect in the bizarre murders of two prominent lapidaries. Stalked by the mysterious killer, she and Nick dodge police while Nick works with his friend Frankie Benally—a Navajo jewelry artist and brilliant armchair detective—to unravel the case. But even Frankie is stumped—until, at an isolated hacienda deep in the Sonoran desert, Nick meets the great-granddaughter of a soldadera who served with Pancho Villa’s División del Norte.

Along the way, Nick gets help from an old-fashioned gentleman sheriff, a crusty army retiree, and a clutch of feisty dames. He navigates plot twists and red herrings that would make Sam Spade reach for the aspirin. And he does it all with deadpan humor that’ll make you spit up your bourbon.

You can purchase Agates Are Forever at the following Retailers:

        

And now, The Giveaways.

1 Winner will receive a Copy of Agates Are Forever by Logan Terret.

Please comment below/share on Instagram to enter and tag JeanBookNerd.

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