Wednesday, September 18, 2013

The Making of a Thriller Writer - Gregory Delaurentis


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?v=-dJ10pSUwaM

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:

Gregory Delaurentis said...

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.

Goddess Fish Promotions said...

Thank you for hosting

MomJane said...

I really enjoyed the excerpt. I love stories about real cops.

Rita Wray said...

Great excerpt, thank you.

Anonymous said...

Best of luck with the release!

vitajex(at)aol(dot)com

Paty Jager said...

Glad to have you Gregory!

Rain Trueax said...

This sounds like an interesting book. Dark for my general reading but worth taking the chance with a new approach