Dishing it up with Brett Battles

Folks, I’m thrilled to have author Brett Battles dishing it up with us today. Brett has published eight thrillers since 2007, including The Cleaner and The Deceived. He was born and raised in southern California where his parents, avid readers, instilled the love of books in him early on.


Though he still makes California his home, he has traveled extensively to such destinations as Ho Chi Minh City, Berlin, Singapore, London, Paris, and Bangkok, all of which play parts in his current and upcoming Jonathan Quinn thrillers.

Welcome and thank you for hanging with us for a bit.

JET: Can you tell us about your latest thrillers Little Girl Gone and The Silenced?

Brett: The Silenced is the fourth in my Jonathan Quinn series. Quinn is a cleaner whose job it is to make bodies disappear. In this latest installment, the unthinkable happens. His past, a life he’s tried hard to bury, collides with his life in the secret world, and he has to do whatever he can to keep people he loves alive.

Little Girl Gone is the first book of my Logan Harper series. Unlike Quinn, Logan isn’t a professional working in the world of spies. He’s a former Army soldier who then worked for several years at a defense contractor training private troops before a horrible event caused him to quit. He now lives in his hometown, a small place on the California coast, working as a mechanic at his father’s auto garage. One morning he interrupts the attempted murder of his father’s friend, then is pulled into a search for the man’s missing granddaughter.

I also have a third thriller out right now called Sick. I’ll sum it up this way. Humanity is on the brink of extinction, and man is pulling the trigger. And a Middle School/Tween book called Here Comes Mr. Trouble about an unusual family that helps kids with a certain type of trouble.

JET: What drew you to writing thrillers?

Brett: They’ve always been a part of me. I’ve been a fan since I was a kid, reading Alistair MacLean and Jack Higgins. It was just a normal progression, I guess. I don’t think I realized I was even writing a thriller the first time I did it. I was just writing what was naturally coming out of me.

JET: What’s been your most challenging hurdle on the road to publication?

Brett: Getting a publisher to buy that first book. While The Cleaner was the first book I sold, it was the third I wrote, and I actually had a fourth done when I got the call. I think I sent out 100 queries each for the first two, and about seventy for The Cleaner. But I knew then that it was all about persistence. If one book didn’t sell, I immediately moved onto the next. I felt to do otherwise would have been to insure failure.

JET: What was your favorite moment in the journey?

Brett: Getting that phone call from the publisher saying they wanted to buy The Cleaner. I was sitting at Starbucks, working on edits on that fourth book. I had to stop him in mid conversation and say, “Wait. Are you saying you want to buy my book?” Everything after he said yes, I forgot.

JET: Which authors had the most influence over you growing up?

Brett: I couldn’t say it wasn’t just one. The sci-fi troika of Clarke, Asimov, and Heinlein were huge for me. Thriller-wise, Alistair MacLean. Later it was Ludlum, Graham Greene, Stephen King, and a rotating stack of other amazing authors.

JET: When did you know you wanted to take the plunge into the writing world?

Brett: Fifth grade. That’s not an exaggeration. I remember telling my friends that I was going to be a novelist. I loved stories even then, and I wanted to be the one to tell them. From that point on, I always knew it would be my future.

JET: What’s the craziest thing you’ve done in the name of book research? Most interesting fact you uncovered?

Brett: My most interesting research is location research. I love to travel, so I’ve made that a part of my work. Not sure what the craziest would be, but one of the coolest was taking the overnight train from Bangkok to Chiang Mai. I was in the second class sleeper car. It was like one of those 40s movies with each berth covered by a curtain. Spent several hours in the restaurant car with some Irish and German backpackers, drinking beer and sharing stories. Oh, for crazy, I also spent two day on Khao San Road in Bangkok for Songkran, Thai New Year. It’s four days of INSANITY. Basically a 12 hour long water fight each day on a street as crowded as Disneyland on it’s busiest day with music and drinks and dancing and water, water, water. To say that I was constantly soaked would be an understatement. While I’ve worked the train ride into a story already, Songkran hasn’t made it yet, but it will.

JET: Of all the novels and stories you’ve written - which one is your favorite? Why?

Brett: Impossible to say. I love each of my books for different reasons. I guess The Cleaner will always have a special place because it was my first published work. I love my three latest – The Silenced, Little Girl Gone, and Sick – a lot! But I’m honestly happy with all of them.

JET: Any advice for the novices out there?

Brett: Write, write, write, everyday. Even if you write crap keep going. It’s through practice of the craft that you improve. One of the most important qualities for a writer: perseverance.

JET: All right - now that I’ve hammered you with the big questions, let’s tackle my favorite (and geeky) quick ten. . . starting with: Paper or Plastic?

Brett: Paper

JET: Steak or Tofu?

Brett: Steak

JET: Beach or Mountains?

Brett: Yes

JET: Country or Rock-n-Roll?

Brett: Rock-n-Roll

JET: Paper or Digital?

Brett: Paper transitioning into Digital

JET: Silent Film Classics or Cheesy B Rated Horror?

Brett: Silent Film Classics

JET: Coffee or Tea?

Brett: Tea

JET: Salty or Sweet?

Brett: Both

JET: Top 10 best seller or Unknown Back Shelf Find?

Brett: Back Shelf Find

JET: 2012 Mayan Prophecy Believer or Ain’t Gonna Happen?

Brett: Ain’t Gonna Happen, but it’s going to be amusing watching people go a little nuts as the date grows closer.

JET: Thank you for indulging me. Before we wrap this up, can you tell us what you're working on now? What's next?

Brett: In the middle of the follow up to Little Girl Gone. Then it’s on to the sequel to Sick. This fall I’ll be diving into the new Quinn…I’ve got them lined up back to back to back.

Thank you so much for taking the time to chat on my blog. Folks, you can find out more about Brett Battles and his work at his website: www.brettbattles.com

Join us next Friday when we dish it up with Ian Barker.

Until next week,

Ciao

JET

First Friday - and April Fool's Day to boot!

Happy April Fool’s Day!


April 1st and I’ve survived a month of my daughter’s driving. The weather is poised to warm up this month – or so they say. As I write this blog it is freezing outside and I’m itching for the warmer New England weather. So light a fire and curl up with one of these books until spring shows her warm face…

J.E. Taylor - Hunting Season - Available Now!

When Kyle Winslow escapes from custody and targets everyone Special Agent Steve Williams cares about, a turn of fate brings Steve face to face with Ty Aris – a criminal mastermind topping the FBI’s most wanted list. Torn between justice and vengeance, Steve must make a decision. Join alliances with Ty, or arrest him and lose his best chance to catch the bastard who destroyed his family.


"Unstoppable, breath stealing, and terrifying all at once." - Cat Connor, author of killerbyte, terrorbyte, and exacerbyte.

"Hunting Season goes where few venture, mixing a compelling crime thriller with supernatural forces. The action and drama is thick and fast and I guarantee you will not be able to put this book down." - Poppet, author of Seithe and Darkroom.

Jonathan Maberry – The King of Plagues – March 29, 2011

Saturday 09:11 Hours: A blast rocks a London hospital and thousands are dead or injured… 10:09 Hours: Joe Ledger arrives on scene to investigate. The horror is unlike anything he has ever seen. Compelled by grief and rage, Joe rejoins the DMS and within hours is attacked by a hit-team of assassins and sent on a suicide mission into a viral hot zone during an Ebola outbreak. Soon Joe Ledger and the Department of Military Sciences begin tearing down the veils of deception to uncover a vast and powerful secret society using weaponized versions of the Ten Plagues of Egypt to destabilize world economies and profit from the resulting chaos. Millions will die unless Joe Ledger meets the this powerful new enemy on their own terms as he fights terror with terror.

Ty Drago- The Undertakers – Rise of the Corpses – April 1, 2011

"On a sunny Wednesday morning in October, a day that would mark the end of one life and the beginning of another, I found out my grouchy next door neighbor was the walking dead. When you turn around expecting to see something familiar, and instead see something else altogether, it takes a little while for your brain to catch up with your eyes. I call it the 'Holy Crap Factor.'"

Forced to flee his home and family, twelve-year-old Will Ritter falls in with the Undertakers-a rag-tag army of teenage resistance fighters who've banded together to battle the Corpses.

Brett Battles – The Silenced – April 5, 2011

Professional “cleaner” Jonathan Quinn has a new client and an odd job: find and remove the remains of a body hidden twenty years ago inside the walls of a London building, before the building is demolished.

But Quinn and his team are being watched. Suddenly caught in the cross fire between two dangerous rivals, Quinn must unravel the identity of the body and why it still poses so great a threat even in death. Because a plot stretching from the former Soviet Union to Hong Kong, from Paris to London, from Los Angeles to Maine, is rapidly falling apart. And Quinn hasn’t been hired just to tie up loose ends—he is one.

Jael McHenry – The Kitchen Daughter – April 12, 2011

After the unexpected death of her parents, painfully shy and sheltered 26-year-old Ginny Selvaggio seeks comfort in cooking from family recipes. But the rich, peppery scent of her Nonna’s soup draws an unexpected visitor into the kitchen: the ghost of Nonna herself, dead for twenty years, who appears with a cryptic warning (“do no let her…”) before vanishing like steam from a cooling dish.

A haunted kitchen isn’t Ginny’s only challenge. Her domineering sister, Amanda, (aka “Demanda”) insists on selling their parents’ house, the only home Ginny has ever known. As she packs up her parents’ belongings, Ginny finds evidence of family secrets she isn’t sure how to unravel. She knows how to turn milk into cheese and cream into butter, but she doesn’t know why her mother hid a letter in the bedroom chimney, or the identity of the woman in her father’s photographs. The more she learns, the more she realizes the keys to these riddles lie with the dead, and there’s only one way to get answers: cook from dead people’s recipes, raise their ghosts, and ask them.

Various Artists – With Love – March 22, 2011

A short while ago, when the news and images of the Japanese earthquake found its way into our homes through that same internet and on our TV screens, we watched bodies being recovered. We watched homes being swept away. Some of us shed tears, some were stunned, but we all wanted to do *something*, anything, something....

We wanted to reach out, to help.

But we're not wealthy, we're not trained in search, rescue or other emergency services. We have families and jobs that we can't just leave...

But we can write. We can edit and we can publish.

We are a group of talented writers and some of us have donated our words, someone donated a cover, some have donated time, some have donated editing skills, Ethics Trading has donated the publishing portal, and we have pulled together this ebook of a selection of our work.

While working on this project we realised that although Japan was the trigger and the inspiration, we wanted to establish an ongoing project to aid disaster relief and aid across the globe - so proceeds from sales of this project will be offered to Medecins Sans Frontieres, (Doctors without borders) to support the work they do.

Thank you for your support. It really does mean a lot.
Sarah Barnard
Freelance Author and Publisher.

Sibel Hodge – Be Careful What you Wish For – April 2011

Armed with cool sarcasm and uncontrollable hair, feisty insurance investigator Amber Fox is back in a new mystery combining murder and mayhem with romance and chicklit…

Three deaths.
A safety deposit box robbery.
The boxing heavyweight champion of the world.

Somehow, they’re all related, and Amber has to solve a four year old crime to find out why.

As she stumbles across a trail of dead bodies and a web of lies spanning both sides of the social divide, it’s starting to get personal. Someone thinks Amber’s poking her nose in where it’s not wanted, sparking off a game of fox and mouse – only this time, Amber’s the mouse.

Amber’s forced to take refuge in the home of her ex-fiancé, Brad Beckett, and now it’s not just the case that’s hotting up. So is the bedroom…

All Levi Carter wanted to be was the boxing heavyweight champion of the world, but at what cost?
All Carl Thomas wanted was to be rich, but would his greed be his downfall?
All Brad Beckett wants is to get Amber back, but there’s a reason for the ex word.

Be careful what you wish for…you might just get it.

Georina Young-Ellis - The Time Baroness - April 2011

It started out as such a simple experiment: time-travel to Jane Austen’s England, live a quiet, rural life as a woman of independent means, observe and notate. I never thought I would fall in love or... end up planning a prison break! When did everything go so terribly wrong?

October 24, 1820 - Dr. Cassandra Reilly



 

 

Susanne Dunlap - In the Shadow of the Lamp – April 12, 2011

It's 1854 and sixteen-year-old Molly would give anything to change her circumstances as a lowly servant in a posh London house. So when she hears of an opportunity to join the nurses who will be traveling with Florence Nightingale to the Crimea, she jumps at the chance. The work is grueling, the hospital conditions deplorable, and Miss Nightingale a demanding teacher. Before long, the plight of British soldiers becomes more than just a mission of mercy as Molly finds that she's falling in love with both a dashing young doctor and a soldier who has joined the army to be near her. But with the battle raging ever nearer, can Molly keep the two men she cares for from harm? A love story to savor, and a fascinating behind-the-scenes imagining of the woman who became known as “the lady with the lamp”.

Next week, I have Susan Helene Gottfried here to talk about her latest book.

Until then,

Ciao

JET