Promo day: Your Saving Grace

Hope I'm not breaking any rules -- this book released last Thursday, so I think I'm in under the one week timeframe (insert questioning look here).

"Grace" is the second book I sold and the second book that's released. The fourth book I sold released first. The first book I sold isn't going to be released because the publisher is no longer in business. Confused? I sure was for about four months this year. I turned in the edits on "Grace" early in the year, moved on to other books, sold another one to another publisher and all of a sudden ... Grace released. It sort of took me by surprise because my first book released two weeks before Grace.

Anyway ... here's the thing about Grace ... like all my stories, the hero and heroine are older (40s and 50s). "Grace" is really Hannah Paxton, a single woman who lives alone on a hobby farm about 40 miles from the nearest big city. She works from home most of the time (high tech job), and she's asked to serve on a jury trial in the big city. During the course of the trial it comes out that she was a witness, 30 years ago, on a murder case. After the high profile trial wraps up, Hannah starts getting threatening phone calls.

Enter Jude Brenner, the detective who assisted the D.A. in selecting the original jury. Jude's been on medical leave from the police department and is just starting to get back into active duty. He sees the investigation of Hannah's threats as a way to achieve full active status.

Neither one of these people really wants to fall in love. They're both pretty content with their life as it is and don't want to make room for another person in their life. It's only when the threats escalate to something more that they realize how they feel about each other. Luckily Hannah and SpongeBob (yep, that SpongeBob) are able to save the day.

I wrote this book because I saw someone brutally beaten in front of me when I was 18 years old, just like Hannah did in this book. I was standing at a bar -- typical college bar, not rowdy or anything -- and getting refill on a pitcher of beer. A guy walked up to the guy who was sitting at the bar about a foot away from me, picked up my empty beer pitcher, and proceeded to beat the crap out of the sitting guy. All kinds of bodily things splattered me before my friend grabbed me and hustled me out of there.

The victim lived, believe it or not. The attacker was high on drugs and got time in jail, where he later died. I didn't have to testify. There were about forty other witnesses. But I always wondered, 'what would have happened ... if?'

Thirty years later I wrote a book about it all ... I exaggerated some details, added a few others, and finally sold it to Cerridwen Press where it came out in e-format last week. And you know, it's really weird. Whenever I read that opening scene, I can still see that bar in my mind and the people and hear the music ...

The power of memory is a marvelous and scary thing.