THE MAKING OF A
THRILLER WRITER
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I really don’t know
what makes a thriller writer other than the fact that they love thrillers. I
find myself personally drawn to cop thrillers, if they are not too complicated.
It’s not that I’m a simple person—all that much—it’s just that I like the
realism of simple cops and criminals. I enjoy reading police magazines. I love
stories of real police doing real things, which are incredibly amazing without
the need for all the CSI, ME and science to the point of science fiction.
That’s what I fear will come out next: a science fiction cop in a science
fiction world, using science fiction to solve science fiction crimes. Well,
maybe if done right, it might be pretty good. But I love the simple flatfoot
cop, the private dick of the 40s and 50s, who went about their job interviewing
people and going to places, immersing themselves in the lives of the people
that they were investigating until they uncovered the truth.
That’s what I did since
I was young. I dug into the old pulp fiction novels and absorbed the characters
that appeared and disappeared in the investigative efforts of the protagonist, and
left little traces of the truth behind for you to piece together. I like
following leads and tracking people who don’t want to be found. I like the
thriller because every step in the book is unknown. You never know if the
investigator is going to overturn a lovely woman, a femme fatale or a stick of
dynamite. That’s the love of the thriller that I have. This addiction to this
type of drug is what makes a thriller writer. When a writer can’t get the
thriller fix that they need from other authors, they’ll go into the lab and
make it themselves. And that’s what drives me to write thrillers—the need for a
new fix or a different kind of fix. The fix that suits me
like an extra blood cell, and that I hope fixes my readers the same way.
COVER
OF DARKNESS
By
Gregory Delaurentis
BLURB:
A
high profile murder of a Wall Street executive in Westchester pits three people
against the criminal underbelly of Manhattan nightlife. The key players are two
ex-cops turned private investigators—Kevin Whitehouse, whose sharpest tool is
his keen analytical mind, and David Allerton, a former Special Forces
operative—and Margaret Alexander, Kevin’s lover. In their search for a killer,
they are forced to travel to the edge of sanity and morality, while stumbling
onto their own confusing secrets as well. The Cover of Darkness is a
gritty noir saga that untangles a web of deceit in the course of tracking down
a brutal murderer.
Excerpt:
The
pool area was wide and reflected the sun on this hot summer day. It was edged
with white marble so polished that it looked like pearl. Deck chairs lined the
sides of the long pool, which was two lengths more than Olympic-sized. Outside
the deck area was the carpeted lawn of the vast backyard, dappled with sun.
Hugh
Osterman walked along the side of the pool wearing a heavy terry cloth robe and
sandals. In his right hand, he held a martini glass. He ran his left hand
through his sandy sun-streaked hair as he looked over his shoulder at the man
following him.
“What’s
going on? I don’t get it,” Osterman said, stopping at the end of the pool where
the flotation chairs were kept.
“They
said no,” the man replied. Considering the backdrop, he was incongruously
dressed in a dark suit and tie.
“They
said no . . . just like that?”
Osterman
sat his drink down on the marble surface, and pushed a flotation chair into the
deep end of the pool, sending it out and away. Then he peeled off the robe and
dove smoothly into the water, emerging next to the floating chair.
“You
go back and tell them that we aren’t pleased,” Osterman said sternly, pulling
himself up and into the seat of the chair. “You tell them that Hugh Osterman
wants to know what’s holding things up—what the problem is.”
The
suit just stood at the edge of the pool, opening his jacket against the heat of
the day. Osterman paddled to the side, and reached out and retrieved his
martini glass. “I take it you have nothing to say about this?” he persisted,
despite the other man’s silence.
The
suit shook his head.
“Well,
what are you waiting for?” Osterman said as he tipped the glass up to his lips.
Suddenly, the bottom of the stem shattered. Osterman gurgled as he dropped the
glass, blood bubbling from his mouth, an open tear in his neck. He jolted
upright in the chair as the suit closed the distance between them, his Colt .38
Super still trained on its victim, its silencer smoldering.
Osterman
slowly sat back as the suit pumped more rounds into Osterman’s bare, well-defined
chest—the hot shells of his pistol ejecting out and striking the surface of the
water, settling to the bottom. His life ended as his body tumbled from the
floating chair, his blood a widening crimson slick roughly in the area where
his body slipped through.
The
suit popped his clip, slipped in a new one, and headed for the sprawling house.
BIO:
Gregory
Delaurentis spent his adult life roaming from job to job, working for Lockheed
in California, various law firms in New York, and financial firms on Wall
Street. Throughout this period of time, he was writing—unceasingly—finally
producing a large body of work, albeit unrecognized and unpublished . . . until
now. Cover of Darkness is the first in a series of upcoming books that
include Edge of Darkness, Pale of Darkness and Cries of Darkness.
These novels follow the lives of three individuals who do battle bringing
criminals to justice, while they struggle to understand the complex
relationships that exist among themselves. This intriguing trio has absorbed
the attention of Mr. Delaurentis for the past year and a half, so much so he
decided to self-publish their stories to bring them to a wider audience. [AUTHOR’S DISCLAIMER: These are works of
fiction. Name, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the
author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual
persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.]
See YouTube Video http://www.youtube.com/watch?
See YouTube Video http://www.youtube.com/watch?
LINKS
Vendor
links
Delaurentis/dp/0989185702/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1365639244&sr=1-1&keywords=cover+of+darkness+gregory+delaurentis
2) KOBO http://www.kobobooks.com/ebook/Cover-of-Darkness/book-SydhWnuMdEGT2jO97s6rDA/page1.html?s=znZMkhZzw0yjFAMp-WIkpQ&r=1
3) BARNES & NOBLE http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/cover-of-darkness-gregory-delaurentis/1115107265?ean=9780989185707
4) SONY READER STORE https://ebookstore.sony.com/search?keyword=Gregory+Delaurentis
5) SMASHWORDS https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/304457
General links
7 comments:
I would like to take this opportunity to thank the host of Writing into the Sunset for featuring my book on their blog today and to thank all those who drop by and comment. Have a wonderful day.
Thank you for hosting
I really enjoyed the excerpt. I love stories about real cops.
Great excerpt, thank you.
Best of luck with the release!
vitajex(at)aol(dot)com
Glad to have you Gregory!
This sounds like an interesting book. Dark for my general reading but worth taking the chance with a new approach
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