No Home for Killers
By E.A. Aymar
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Author's Note
New Releases (That I'm Excited About!)
Two Writers You Should Read
Events
It's Contest Time!
Other Writing
No Home for Killers
Truthfully, there haven’t been many times that publishing has made me emotional. I mean, alternately excited and dejected, sure. That happens with any job in any industry. But those emotions tend to follow within a predictable range, even when they’re the result of something unpredictable.
But when my agent sent me a text to let me know that Jessica Tribble Wells, a senior editor I admire a great deal with Thomas and Mercer, loved my next book and had an offer for it…well, I got emotional.
That isn’t meant to disparage, in any way, the good things that have already happened to me in publishing. Having my first book accepted for publication, almost a decade ago now, was truly lovely. Working with people I admired, and publishing alongside writers I’d long looked up to, was and still is a living dream. And, look, none of this just happened for me. In fact, it probably took me longer than it did for others. As I’ve said before, I started writing on a serious, daily basis, back in 1997. I didn’t have a book published until the 2010s. It’s been a while.
But this one hit me differently than my other books. The Unrepentant was destined to be a small book, something I realized as I wrote it. A small, violent story that examined the unsettling practice of sex trafficking wasn’t going to be a “book club” book, but I thought the story was necessary and wanted to tell it.
They’re Gone was, intentionally, far more commercial than The Unrepentant. But, like all books, it was a learning experience, and I was learning to write a commercial thriller…but one that still felt like it was very much my book. And, truthfully – and, as regular readers know, I want to be entirely honest in these newsletters (as opposed to my social media and personal relationships, which are strewn with lies) – not having my name on that book distanced me from it. I’ll write more about that decision someday. It was a decision I blame myself for, incidentally. Pen names aren’t a bad thing, but you have to have the right attitude and approach. I had neither.
No Home for Killers, which will be published under my own name, is a step forward for me, as a writer and probably as a person. It’s intensely personal, in that I took it as an opportunity to write what I wanted, entirely what I wanted. I was inspired by my friends S.A. Cosby and Alex Segura and Jennifer Hillier and Nik Korpon, who have written books that are resolutely, unabashedly, their books. They gave me the courage to create characters I found intensely intriguing, to write about concepts and themes I wanted to explore in a thriller – music and art and hate and family and love. I wanted to write a story that made me, and hopefully you, laugh (at times). And, like all thrillers, I wanted it to move. Once it was finished, I thought it was good.
But I truly didn’t know if anyone else would feel that way about it.
And that feeling was scary and exciting, and maybe that’s how you should always feel when you finish a book.
When I received the offer from Thomas and Mercer, by leaps and bounds the largest publisher I’ve ever worked with, with the potential to reach a larger audience than I ever have, I felt such a lovely moment of dizzying happiness.
Here’s what happened:
My agent sent me a text on a Friday afternoon. It just said “EDDDDDD” followed by a million exclamation marks. And then she sent the details of the proposed contract. I promptly called her, and my voice was shaking. I talked to my agent and I talked a lot…I'm not sure what I said, exactly. I told her that I was aware I was blabbering, and that the only other time I’d felt this way was when I proposed to my wife, and I have no idea what I said then either.
I told her how thankful I was for her, for sticking with me through the good and bad times. I told her that I wanted this deal for her, and for my wife, two of the people in a very small group who have been unwavering in their support and faith. Not that I have people rooting against me (I don’t think), but there aren’t many people who intimately know how rough this business can be for writers, who personally experience those lows with you, who watch you struggle. You want those people to share your highs. It’s not about proving yourself (although it’s always a little of that); in this case, for those people, it’s about thankfulness.
I think about this deal and this book and there are moments when that intense happiness again hits me, like a searing light flipped on. These moments don’t last forever and aren’t promised and a successful future is never guaranteed. I know to savor this.
But, as of right now, at this moment in my life, No Home for Killers is going to be published and it’s a book I truly love. And that feeling is like milk and honey.
Speaking of books, They're Gone, is an Amazon Kindle deal for the month of December! Right now the Kindle version is on sale for $1.99. Click HERE for more information.
Berlin Walls
Bill Rapp
In Berlin Walls, CIA officer Karl Baier finds himself back in the city where his career as an intelligence officer began: Berlin. Or more properly, West Berlin. The time is August, 1961, and the Agency has sent him there to arrange the defection of his former nemesis and sometime KGB collaborator, Sergei Chernov. In years past, this would have been a relatively easy task. You simply walked across the sector boundary. Assuming you were properly disguised and had eluded any surveillance. But now there is a new wall going up that will split the city in two and turn the western half of the city into a virtual island. It will also change the very nature of Cold War espionage and bring the world to the brink of nuclear war. Meanwhile, Baier's German-born wife wants him to help smuggle her parents out of East Germany, where they ended up on the wrong side of the border at the end of World War II. And then Chernov eludes his CIA handlers to pursue his own personal agenda, and Baier's superiors back in Washington begin to wonder just whose side this Russian is really on. Baier soon has his own doubts, but he is determined to bring this KGB officer in from the cold.
Three May Keep a Secret
Richard T. Ryan
When a meeting with a client goes disastrously wrong, Sherlock Holmes soon finds himself involved in a case of murder with two dead bodies and too few clues.
From some clear pieces of glass and a raven's feather, the Great Detective must divine exactly who the client was and what prompted him to seek assistance at 221B. Fortunately, Holmes has a number of experts upon whom he can rely as well as his own vast store of esoteric knowledge.
Treading a twisted path, Holmes soon finds himself matching wits with an unseen criminal, who appears to be the equal of the late Professor Moriarty. At the same time, he is tasked with sparing the monarchy any possible embarrassment that may stem from the investigation.
It's a deadly game of cat-and-mouse that finds Holmes and Watson attending underground auctions, using rare and priceless artefacts as bait and holding a late night vigil in anticipation of deterring a theft, all the while trying to understand how a priceless antiquity fits into their investigation.
Her Name is Knight
Yasmin Angoe
Stolen from her Ghanaian village as a child, Nena Knight has plenty of motives to kill. Now an elite assassin for a powerful business syndicate called the Tribe, she gets plenty of chances.
But while on assignment in Miami, Nena ends up saving a life, not taking one. She emerges from the experience a changed woman, finally hopeful for a life beyond rage and revenge. Tasked with killing a man she’s come to respect, Nena struggles to reconcile her loyalty to the Tribe with her new purpose.
Meanwhile, she learns a new Tribe council member is the same man who razed her village, murdered her family, and sold her into captivity. Nena can’t resist the temptation of vengeance―and she doesn’t want to. Before she can reclaim her life, she must leverage everything she was and everything she is to take him down and end the cycle of bloodshed for good.
Cry of the Hangman
Susanna Calkins
London, 1667. Printer’s apprentice Lucy Campion is unsettled when, on a frozen December morning after church, an elderly woman dressed in mourning clothes whispers an ominous warning in her ear.
Lucy sternly tells herself it’s nonsense, but then her much-loved former master, Magistrate Hargrave, is viciously attacked with a brass hourglass during a break-in. But what exactly was the intruder searching for? And why did they first stop to steal a piece of Cook’s lamb and lentil pie?
The puzzling case is just the start of a series of dark, bizarre crimes. Lucy’s determined to uncover the truth and see that justice is done. But someone is equally determined to stop her – whatever it takes.
The Company Files: The Devil's Music
Gabriel Valjan
Stalin is gone. The Cold War is on. Better dead than red.
With victory comes revenge, and both Attorney Roy Cohn and his supporter, J. Edgar Hoover, wish to settle accounts. In a race to protect his associates, Jack Marshall relocates them to off-off-Broadway. Walker, Vera, Leslie, and Sheldon swelter under more than stage lights in New York City.
Before the summer is out, before the strange music subsides, there is a mob war and another unexpected addition to the Company Files.
All Her Little Secrets
Wanda Morris
Ellice Littlejohn seemingly has it all: an Ivy League law degree, a well-paying job as a corporate attorney in midtown Atlanta, great friends, and a “for fun” relationship with a rich, charming executive, who just happens to be her white boss. But everything changes one cold January morning when Ellice arrives in the executive suite and finds him dead with a gunshot to his head.
And then she walks away like nothing has happened. Why? Ellice has been keeping a cache of dark secrets, including a small-town past and a kid brother who’s spent time on the other side of the law. She can’t be thrust into the spotlight—again.
But instead of grieving this tragedy, people are gossiping, the police are getting suspicious, and Ellice, the company’s lone black attorney, is promoted to replace her boss. While the opportunity is a dream-come-true, Ellice just can’t shake the feeling that something is off.
When she uncovers shady dealings inside the company, Ellice is trapped in an impossible ethical and moral dilemma. Suddenly, Ellice’s past and present lives collide as she launches into a pulse-pounding race to protect the brother she tried to save years ago and stop a conspiracy far more sinister than she could have ever imagined…
Fogged Off
Wendall Thomas
When her client and Jack the Ripper expert Shep Helnikov is found dead in London, travel agent Cyd Redondo is on the hook for thirty thousand dollars to return his body home. So when his university offers to cover the costs if she’ll go in person to collect him—and his Ripper research—she jumps at the chance, even if it means bringing her wily uncle along. But no sooner does Cyd arrive in London than her client’s death by natural causes starts to look most unnatural.
Cyd’s only hope for recovering the body and vamoosing back to Brooklyn is to find the killer herself—but she’s thwarted at every turn by Scotland Yard, Shep’s former girlfriends, a sinister mortuary service, an old nemesis, and her taxidermist uncle himself. And when Shep’s apartment is ransacked and a second Ripper expert is found murdered, Cyd knows she’ll have to solve the crimes fast, before someone books her on a one-way trip to the morgue . . .
No Love Lost
Lyndee Walker
A trail of dead bodies throws Texas Ranger Faith McClellan into a race to catch a serial killer obsessed with stealing organs…
The Rangers are running an active shooter simulation in an empty mall when they find a young woman’s body, wrapped in plastic in a mechanical closet. When the medical examiner discovers that this woman is missing several organs, it is Faith’s first clue that this is not your average murder.
Soon, Faith discovers a trail of bodies matching the killer’s M.O., all stored in remote indoor locations, all with organs removed, each one closer to the last. With the missing organs affecting the decomposition timeline, it’s almost impossible to pinpoint the time of each murder, and the investigation takes on a life of its own.
Faith will risk everything to put a stop to the murders—but the killer is smarter than she thinks, and they won’t hesitate to cut down anyone who interferes with their lethal plan…
Eliza Nellums has been in this space before, but I invited her back because she has a new book out and she's a close friend and a powerful writer and I'm determined that EVERYONE I MEET reads her work. I was stunned by her first novel, All That's Bright and Gone, and I cannot wait to read her next, The Bone Cay. Her prose is enviable and subtly arresting, and she has a way of luring in a reader until you're gripping the pages, wracked with worry about what's going to happen to her characters. That's the shit!
And a writer Eliza Nellums recommends?
One of my favorite books this year has been P.J. Vernon's BATH HAUS, which I first heard pitched as "a gay Gone Girl" and was immediately psyched about. An initial indiscretion in a marriage leads to a bunch of twists and thrills - I finished the whole thing in about 24 hours, not at all how I usually read!
Another book that's still on my mind is THE SOUTHERN BOOK CLUB'S GUIDE TO SLAYING VAMPIRES by Grady Hendrix. This is horror, but not too intense for me - there are some gory scenes but it's more about the mood being set ("Steel Magnolias meets Dracula"). I feel like the main character, a stay at home mom and housewife, was a type I haven't seen depicted very often with this much depth and thought. But maybe don't read it too late at night ...
To learn more about these authors, click on the photos above.
The Return of D.C.'s Noir at the Bar!
This Sunday, at 8 PM ET, D.C.'s Noir at the Bar returns! It's been a long time but I'm so excited that we're back! The lineup is amazing, and Sara Jones will be singing and Chantal Tseng will be making a custom cocktail! And, as a special treat, we'll be joined by special guest Ron Charles from the Washington Post! Click HERE to register.
Sara Jones in Concert
And, for those of you in D.C. area, you can check out my good friend and fantastic singer Sara Jones in concert for the holidays! Sara puts on an unbelievable show and the band she's working with is amazing. Next Saturday night starting at 8 PM (doors open at 6 PM). Click HERE for tickets!
It's contest time! The monthly contest winner wins copies of the books listed in my "Two Writers You Should Read" segment. And the winner is...
p___childvta@gmail.com
Congrats, and keep your eye out for a separate e-mail from me!
I got nothing here people, so I'll just wish everyone a happy holiday! Thank you for reading and for your replies and enthusiasm for this newsletter. You all made these past couple of years better for me, and I hope this newsletter has done the same for you.
Until next time, much love and happy reading!