Seven Suspenseful Sentence Sunday - Week Five

Below is the beginning of a mystery novel that I'm trying to sell.  Does it have suspense?  Unanswered questions?  Do you want to find out what happens?  I've changed the beginning several times.  Beginnings are hard.  Endings are even harder, but literary agents don't read the ending before they reject your novel.  Nope!  They read the beginning.  Because I worked in technology for a donkey's age, I usually put some aspect of technology into my writing. The novel is titled, Promiscuous Mode.  Tell me what you think.  Would YOU read on?

Sex seldom rears its head during a technical presentation, but the minute I noticed him, I knew he was going to hit on me. His just-for-you smile, like we shared a secret joke, and his half-lidded bedroom eyes gave him away. He sat in a Chicago hotel conference room with fifty other attendees, the audience for our dog and pony show, Conduct Your Own IT Autopsy, a snoozer for anyone but techies. We stood while the meeting honcho announced, “please  welcome Wayne Wendel and Emma Lee Devens of Nemecek Associates in Cambridge, Massachusetts.”  Thumbs flying, the mystery man keyed on his cell phone during our introducion. I suspected he had entered my name into contacts. 

Waste of time, Romeo.

One of my books that is available as a trade paperback AND on the Kindle is The Shadow Warriors.  It has lots of suspenseful scenes, and some funny ones, too.  You can find it on Amazon. 

Visit the other Seven Suspenseful Sunday Authors at: 
The Magnificent Seven

Congratulations to the players and fans of Green Bay.  What a great thing for a little city. 

Seven Suspenseful Sentence Sunday - Week Three

Proposed Cover of World of Mirrors

  This excerpt is from World of Mirrors, which will be published on the Kindle sometime in 2011.

 I stood still, listening, but the only noise was the insects calling and the blood rushing around in my head.  My mouth felt like dry cotton, and I couldn't swallow. Using the shadows of the tall bushes lining the parking lot as cover, I crept toward the disrobing statue, shovel in one hand, paving stone clutched in the other.  My feet crunched on the gravel, but the insect chorus in the bushes covered the sound.  Moisture made the air heavy, and although the night was cool, I had started to sweat.  With each step the paver felt heavier.

About World of Mirrors:

Zara Gray, a high tech consultant has just done something incredibly stupid. She has allowed herself be blackmailed into going to East Germany to help retrieve stolen state-of-the art software. Her partner in this misadventure is T.K. Drummond, a failed spy and Zara’s ex-lover. Now Zara, who barely speaks “survival German,” must navigate a landscape of sociopaths and unrehabilitated Stasi instead of the plummy assignment she has been promised.

 World of Mirrors is set in East Germany on the Baltic coast in the summer of 1990, after the Berlin Wall came down but before the two Germanys were united, during the Year of Miracles. Crumbling old resorts and a classic sailboat serve as backdrops as an international cast of miscreants vies for the digital jewels in this dark but comic adventure with strong elements of romantic suspense. As treacheries mount, Zara and T.K. must rely on a North Vietnamese “guest laborer” to sail them to safety as they play a nautical game of cat and mouse through the shipping lanes of the fog-shrouded Baltic.

 Zara is a strong female character who has taken this assignment in a moment of weakness. Not only does she have technical chops, she is the moral center of the novel and the character responsible for getting herself and T.K. out of a terrible jam.

Some scenes from World of Mirrors use lively Berlin as the settting.

Don’t forget to read all the other excerpts from our Suspenseful Sentences group of writers.  Hie your browser to: Suspense Sunday Seven Sentence Authors

If you're looking for a good Kindle read with technology, suspense and a touch of romance, try The Shadow Warriors by Judith Copek.

Seven Suspenseful Sentence Sunday - Week Two!

             I don't remember the explosion, only impressions.

            The air, a solid presence, a hot rushing wind, the odor of sulfur, like the doors to hell had been blown open.

            How did I come to be lying in the grass?  Sharp pain in my ears, as if they had been ravaged by a dentist's drill.

            Where was I?  Confused by my witlessness, I struggled to my knees. Pieces of leaf and grass stuck to my hands--and glass, bits of glass gleamed like raindrops, all over the lawn, everywhere.

           

These seven sentences  are from The Shadow Warriors.  Emma, the narrator has gone out late at night to investigate a break-in at a computer institute, only to have the building blow up.

Late in 2010, my novel of Information Warfare and software agents, The Shadow Warriors, was released to the Kindle.  Only $2.99 until end of February!

 Here is the blurb on the back cover of the trade paperback.

Emma Lee Davis must delve deep into the past to find a weapon to end the Infowar that threatens to de-stabilize a computer-dependent global economy.  Project manager of a  tiny firm of cyber-sleuths, Emma scrambles to make the connections between a body washing up on a beach in Singapore, and the technical derring-do at a German university.

She tracks a desperate hacker planning a unique software auction, a determined entrepreneur who will stop at nothing to acquire  ‘bleeding edge’ software and tumbles onto a new generation of terrorists with their own agenda. 

Emma and her colleagues are sucked into a vortex of lies, spies, and betrayals and ultimately into the sleaze and paranoia of Berlin in the months before the wall comes down. Not quite glamorous, sometimes nerdy, always nosy, irreverent and intuitive, Emma becomes the reluctant sleuth. She narrates the story as she scrambles to manage a software project and her complicated love life, while puzzling over the paradox, “if our mission is to stop computer crime, why are we abetting it?”

  The Shadow Warriors Kindle  

For more information about cyber-warfare see: Cyberwar

Don’t forget to read all the other excerpts of suspenseful sentences.  Hie your browser to:

Suspense Sunday Seven Sentence Authors

Suspenseful Seven Sentence Sunday

Maxine had told her to escape and that meant that Maxine must have some insight into the situation with the kids and El Tigre, but if Maxine was wrong . . . 

When the door opened, she almost knocked the woman down to get into the john where she locked the door and put her drink on the counter. She pulled the plastic bag with hand sanitizer, alcohol rubs, and mouthwash out of her handbag, along with matches from the bar. Oh God, she was dying of nerves, and her hands shook so badly she could barely strike the matches, but she doused the paper towels with the mouthwash and the sanitizer and lit the alcohol rub. Everything flamed up like the 4^th of July. Once she had the paper towels on fire, she lit the contents of her cocktail glass, and then the wastebasket.  She kept feeding and fanning the flames until the smoke alarm went off, emitting a shrill sound they must hear on Mars.

These seven sentences  are from my just completed (first draft) novel whose working title is In Flight.

Late in December, my novel of Information Warfare and software agents, The Shadow Warriors, was released to the Kindle.  Such a deal at $2.99.   Here is the blurb on the back cover of the trade paperback.

Emma Lee Davis must delve deep into the past to find a weapon to end the Infowar that threatens to de-stabilize a computer-dependent global economy.  Project manager of a  tiny firm of cyber-sleuths, Emma scrambles to make the connections between a body washing up on a beach in Singapore, and the technical derring-do at a German university.

She tracks a desperate hacker planning a unique software auction, a determined entrepreneur who will stop at nothing to acquire  ‘bleeding edge’ software and  tumbles onto a new generation of terrorists with their own agenda. 

Emma and her colleagues are sucked into a vortex of lies, spies, and betrayals and ultimately into the sleaze and paranoia of Berlin in the months before the wall comes down. Not quite glamorous, sometimes nerdy, always nosy, irreverent and intuitive, Emma becomes the reluctant sleuth. She narrates the story as she scrambles to manage a software project and her complicated love life, while puzzling over the paradox, “if our mission is to stop computer crime, why are we abetting it?”

  The Shadow Warriors Kindle  

Don't forget to read the reviews which are incorporated into the Trade Paperback version.  I love my Kindle.  Right now I'm reading Joseph Finder's Paranoia on it.

A recent photo of the author at the Pompidou Centre in Paris