Blog Archives
The Chaos Behind Them
Murder at the Aphrodisia follows a former soap-opera star whose grand reopening of her restored beach mansion turns deadly. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
This book is a sequel to my first book, Death by Chaos. It picks up 10 years after Tasha and her friends help solve a cold case and thankfully, put all the chaos behind them. I originally planned to make that book a one-off but over time, I found myself missing these vibrant characters. Plus, readers kept asking me if there would be any more stories. The characters are now 10 years older and wiser, so I wanted to place them in a more grandeur environment and have them rely more on their individual skills to solve a mystery. Plus, they are goddesses, so I wanted to create a scenario where they would be dressed in their appropriate togas.
What made you want to tell a mystery through such a strongly character-driven lens?
I tend to write stories that I would want to read. I am attracted to fun, colorful, witty characters who somehow always seem to get into a mess and then needs to use their wits to get out. I also enjoy dialogue. Just the way characters speak to each tells volume about their dynamics, and their reactions to discovering a crime scene or new evidence helps move the plot along.
How did you balance the mansion’s glamour with the darker secrets hidden within it?
From the beginning I wanted the mansion to be a main character. I spent hours researching famous Hollywood mansions and home remodeling articles. Tasha spent years and a fortune renovating a dilapidated mansion on the beach, restoring it to its glory. But all the fresh paint in the world cannot hide the dark history, nor the tendency for history to repeat itself.
What is the next book you are working on, and when will it be available?
I have just started my fourth book and much to my surprise, I am creating new characters in a new environment. It may be because I have recently attended school reunions, have reconnected with childhood friends, and have had some wonderful visits with cousins, that I have decided to embrace my Polish heritage and create a mystery that forces my main characters to revisit and reexamine her childhood, the good, the bad, and the ugly.
The Shadowy, High-contrast Look
Double On The Murder follows a private investigator who gets pulled into a missing persons case that engulfs everyone connected to it in violence, secrets, and grief. What attracts you to the hardboiled detective tradition?
My father was a fan of noir / hardboiled detective movies. That’s where my exposure to the genre came from, when I was a kid. And being a photographic artist, I was drawn to the shadowy, high-contrast look. I liked the way the men and women dressed, too, especially the sexy femme fatales. As for the violence, secrets, and grief, that’s part of what makes the genre tick. By the time I was in my twenties, I had read Hammett’s and Chandler’s works, along with many other writers of the genre, which amounted to more influence and inspiration.
How much of the plot was planned in advance, and how much developed as you wrote?
For DOUBLE ON THE MURDER, the plot developed on its own. I wasn’t looking for it. I didn’t plan it. Didn’t have notes to follow. Didn’t have a storyline. I got the characters talking and moving around and they told me what they wanted to do, where they wanted to go. As a first time novelist it was an exciting process, that is, the challenge to finish a crime novel and to have it make sense – without days or months of planning it. As the novel developed, and seeing the style that was evolving, my aim then was to incorporate that classic crime noir format into the story without being too cliché, while manipulating that style into a more cinematic-poetic form, and then adding as much originality as I could conjure. I never stressed over having to complete the story, though. Either I finished it or I didn’t. It was that simple, that relaxed.
Despite its violence, the book pays close attention to grief and loss. Why was that emotional dimension important?
It wasn’t important to me other than the fact that I had experienced a good amount of loss in my life, starting at an early age. So I know what genuine grief and loss feels like, which made it effortless for me to write those feelings into the story.
What is the next book you are working on, and when will it be available?
Novel Two is another Joe Stone mystery. I’m thirty chapters into that story. The title of the book is under wraps until it’s published, maybe in late 2027.
Author Links: GoodReads | X | Facebook | Website
Motivated by the murder of his closest friend, Joe Stone investigates several brutal killings that lead to a trail of grim secrets. Troubled by childhood tragedies and by his all-consuming drive to stop the elusive killer. Stone comes to the realization that life is nothing more than a slap in the face and a lonely funeral.
The Druggist: Inside the Murder Castle of Dr. H.H. Holmes
The Druggist, by Mark Vickery, follows Ben Pitezel, a rough-edged, vulnerable workingman who becomes entangled with the charming and monstrous Dr. H.H. Holmes in Chicago. Hired to help build and alter Holmes’s hotel-pharmacy, Ben slowly becomes both witness and instrument as secret rooms, trap doors, missing women, fraud, and murder gather around the so-called Murder Castle. The story tracks Holmes’s predations through Ben’s blunt, woozy, oddly tender narration, ending with betrayal, confession, and the doctor’s grim appointment with the gallows.
I found the book’s greatest strength in its voice. Ben’s narration isn’t polished, but it’s alive: smoky, bruised, comic in strange corners, and often heartbreaking without announcing itself as such. His grammar and phrasing make the world feel bodily rather than merely historical; Chicago isn’t a backdrop here but a place of soot, meat, gin, debt, and bad bargains. That choice gives the novel a slantwise intimacy. Instead of watching Holmes from the clean distance of a case file, I felt trapped beside someone who keeps mistaking danger for opportunity.
The book also works because Holmes isn’t presented as a simple midnight ghoul. He’s theatrical, fastidious, vain, and horribly practical, a man who turns language itself into another hidden corridor. I liked how the novel lets dread accumulate through workmanship: a chute here, a sealed room there, a door that opens to nowhere. The horror comes not only from what Holmes does, but from the ease with which ordinary people explain it away when money, status, romance, or survival are on the table. The dialect-heavy narration may not suit every reader, but for me, it created a mesmerizing feel that fit the material.
This book is best suited for readers of historical fiction, crime fiction, psychological horror, serial killer thrillers, and dark crime novels who appreciate voice-driven storytelling more than a clean procedural march. Fans of Erik Larson’s The Devil in the White City may be intrigued by the shared Holmes territory, though Vickery’s novel is grimier, more intimate, and less architectural in its pleasures. The Druggist is a lurid little furnace of a book: sad, funny, and hard to look away from.
Pages: 137 | ASIN : B0GSHCM8D6
Take Drastic Measures
Rough, Rough Country follows a former Army Ranger as he tries to rebuild his family’s outfitting business, only to be pulled back into a brutal fight with a cartel boss whose obsession threatens everything he loves. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
Rough, Rough Country is the second novel about Graham. It takes place roughly eight months after No Easy Way Back where Graham returns to Utah when his older brother is framed for murder by Greg Langston. Graham’s pursuit of the truth to clear his brother’s name forces Langston to take drastic measures and call in the cartel whose money he manages (and then loses) through his real estate empire is the motivation of the cartel to strike back against Hayes.
The Utah setting gives the novel a rugged, lived-in atmosphere. What drew you to Payson and the surrounding mountain country as the heart of this story?
I’m a third generation Utahan and was raised in Payson like both of my parents were in addition to my grandfather. My friends and I drove the backroads and up the canyon multiple times a week to go fishing or simply explore. The mountain country is the beating heart of my story because its a huge part of who I am. Those roads Graham Hayes drives? Those are my memories.
Graham Hayes is highly trained and dangerous, but his family ties keep him grounded. How did you balance his tactical competence with his emotional vulnerability?
The thriller genre is full of characters who are power fantasies who kill by the hundreds and always know exactly what to say and never doubt themselves. In my own life I’ve known people who have served in the special forces, as US Marshals, etc and they’re all people like anyone else with their own quirks and demons. I strive to write people rather than tropes.
The novel blends family drama, military brotherhood, small-town legacy, and cartel violence. Which part of that mix came first for you: the character, the setting, or the conflict?
The setting for sure. I grew up wandering the foothills and imagining stories that could happen in the places I went fishing and camping with my family and things like that. There’s not many thrillers out there with Utah as a setting, so I think it’s a ton of fun to explore the underutilized place for my books.
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Graham Hayes is trying to build a life in Utah. He spends his days struggling to restart his father’s outfitter business and looking over his shoulder, waiting for inevitable retribution from a cartel kingpin known only as Montezuma.
When a mysterious stranger arrives in town, Graham calls in Luis Romero — a fellow former Army Ranger and one of the few men he trusts.
After a gunfight in the mountains, Graham knows his family won’t be safe, and he won’t be free, until Montezuma is dead.
The two friends set off on a brutal journey through the underworld, outnumbered and outgunned. But as Luis confronts the ghosts of his past and Graham’s crusade grows more desperate, both men are pushed to the limits of their bodies, their minds, and their souls.
The High Country Frontier continues in this explosive follow-up to the 2025 BIBA Award–winning thriller No Easy Way Back.
PISMO BEACH SNIPER: A Thad Hanlon/Bri de la Guerra Mystery
Pismo Beach Sniper by Topper Jones opens with a nightmare in broad daylight: a sniper fires on young surfers during the California Central Coast Surf Trials, and private investigator Thad Hanlon watches his own son, Zael, become one of the targets. What begins as a beachside attack soon widens into arson, bodyguard work, old enemies, federal secrets, and a revenge plot that reaches back into Thad and Bri de la Guerra’s dangerous past. The mystery keeps its feet in the sand and its eyes on the rifle scope, blending surf culture, family trauma, and PI procedural tension into one restless case.
I was pulled in fastest by the emotional torque of the story. Thad isn’t just solving a case; he’s trying to keep fatherhood from cracking open under pressure. His fear for Zael gives the investigation a raw, salt-stung immediacy, and the scenes around the wounded kids have more weight than a standard whodunit setup. Jones also has a gift for making the Central Coast feel lived-in rather than postcard-pretty. The ocean isn’t scenery here. It’s witness, threat, chapel, and proving ground.
The book’s energy is rangy in a good way. It moves from hospital rooms to surf-team councils, from tactical planning to old wounds, from wisecracks to grief rituals, sometimes with a slightly overcaffeinated momentum that fits Thad’s voice. I liked the partnership between Thad and Bri most when it felt practical and battle-tested: two people who know each other’s rhythms, flaws, and blind spots. The mystery itself is layered, but the best through-line is simpler and stronger: how far people will go to protect the young, the guilty, the beloved, and themselves.
The target audience is readers who enjoy mystery, private investigator fiction, crime thrillers, action suspense, coastal noir, and family-driven detective series. Readers who like Robert Crais’s Elvis Cole and Joe Pike novels may appreciate the same mix of banter, loyalty, violence, and wounded-hearted heroism, though Jones swaps Los Angeles grit for Central Coast surf and spiritual undertow. Pismo Beach Sniper is a tense and fast-moving mystery with real emotional stakes.
Pages: 342 | ASIN: B0GZL2Q17G
Being Hunted By A Shark
Curse of the Caribbean centers around an ex-commando whose vacation turns dangerous when he meets with cartel violence and modern day piracy in the Caribbean. What do you find to be the most challenging aspect of writing a thriller series?
Curse of the Caribbean is book 5 in what is now a 7-book series. I find the most challenging aspect is developing a unique enough storyline for the reader, so that each episode is fresh and unique.
How much research went into portraying the islands, waterways, ports, and maritime culture featured in the book?
I am constantly amazed at how much research goes into writing a book of fiction. I’ve visited just about every island in the Caribbean, so had that knowledge to fall back on. Because I changed the usual location for this storyline, the amount of time devoted to research was considerably longer than the earlier episodes. Getting the marine setting accurate represented the bulk of the research as well as the tropical flora and fauna on the islands and the reefs.
Which scene was the most fun to create?
Perhaps the scene that stands out the most is the one where Lou is unknowingly being hunted by a shark.
Can readers expect more adventures for Lou Gault, and if so, where might his next challenge take him?
Yes. As I mentioned, Curse of the Caribbean is book 5 in the series. In book 6, Eyes of the Assassin, an ancient cult re-emerges and begins sending assassins into the world. A high-profile politician in Washington DC, who frequents Lou Gault’s resort is targeted and the assassin ends up following him to Lou’s. In book 7, Kate’s Reckoning, the action takes place in Ireland. Lou and his family travel to attend a family wedding only to discover Kate’s fiancé wasn’t killed in a hit-and-run, 20 years earlier, he was murdered.
Author Links: Website | Amazon
Left to die on a small, isolated island in the Lesser Antilles, Lou and Kate are forced into survival mode as they desperately try to find a way off the island and back to civilization. Lou plans on hunting down the people who betrayed them and to retrieve the sacred Abenaki artifact he left onboard their boat before being marooned.
Intrigue, murder, deceit, cartel money, MI6 agents, tropical rain forests, and the discovery of a mysterious ancient island culture intertwine as the plot twists and turns in this harrowing, action-packed adventure.
As alluring as the Caribbean appears, it is still a land where evil lurks.
Literary Titan Gold Book Award: Fiction
The Literary Titan Book Award honors books that exhibit exceptional storytelling and creativity. This award celebrates novelists who craft compelling narratives, create memorable characters, and weave stories that captivate readers. The recipients are writers who excel in their ability to blend imagination with literary skill, creating worlds that enchant and narratives that linger long after the final page is turned.
Award Recipients
The Corridor by William Klenk
Visit the Literary Titan Book Awards page to see award information.
