Kelley Armstrong's new series

I first encountered author Kelley Armstrong as the writer of the Otherworld urban fantasy series, which I loved. I remember reading somewhere that Angelina Jolie had optioned Bitten but I never saw any follow-up on that so I thought the project had died. And then it showed up on the Syfy network. Her first book was published in 1999 and since then she's been busy, some years publishing as many as eight books in one year, which would be a blistering pace for an indie author and is almost unheard-of for a traditionally published author (with the exception of Stephen King and James Patterson who basically create their own weather when it comes to publoishing).

I just found out she has embarked on a new series, this time of thrillers "starring" a female detective with a dark secret. When she was younger, she killed the son of a mob boss.
The series is already two books in, which means (yay) that I'll get to read two before I have to wait for the next one.
Here's the blurb for the first book in the series, City of the Lost:

Casey Duncan is a homicide detective with a secret: when she was in college, she killed a man. She was never caught, but he was the grandson of a mobster and she knows that someday this crime will catch up to her. Casey's best friend, Diana, is on the run from a violent, abusive ex-husband. When Diana's husband finds her, and Casey herself is attacked shortly after, Casey knows it's time for the two of them to disappear again.
Diana has heard of a town made for people like her, a town that takes in people on the run who want to shed their old lives. You must apply to live in Rockton and if you're accepted, it means walking away entirely from your old life, and living off the grid in the wilds of Canada: no cell phones, no Internet, no mail, no computers, very little electricity, and no way of getting in or out without the town council's approval. As a murderer, Casey isn't a good candidate, but she has something they want: She's a homicide detective, and Rockton has just had its first real murder. She and Diana are in. However, soon after arriving, Casey realizes that the identity of a murderer isn't the only secret Rockton is hiding—in fact, she starts to wonder if she and Diana might be in even more danger in Rockton than they were in their old lives.

New Orleans, Prohibition, and a mystical speakeasy. I'm there!

I've only visited New Orleans once and it was before Hurricane Katrina devastated the city. But it really is one of those places that isn't like any other. I'm a sucker for stories set in the big easy, and this one, V.R. McCoy's The Merchant, looks like it's right up my alley. The author cites Walter Mosley, James Patterson, Stephen King, and Tom Clancy as his inspirations, and just reading the blurbs of the other two books he's published, I believe his work has "commercial" encoded in its bookly DNA.

This is how The Merchant begins:  It was the year 1187 after his death. It had been raining fire for most of the night ..."  I don't know about you, but there's no way I'm going to stop reading after that. Kindle "look inside" tool--you just made a sale!

The Angel Artifact

Sometimes you get a story bunny that just will not leave you alone, no matter how often you push it aside. The last time that happened to me was when the "Vampire Cinderella" idea pushed me to write Bride of the Midnight King.  I know where this one came from--hours spent refining my entry into the "Be James Patterson's co-author" contest, along with thinking about under-used supernatural beings in paranormal books.
The idea is that a little kid, a girl, I think, finds an angel feather in the woods. It's big--bigger than she is, anyway, and looks like a piece of brushed steal sculpture until you touch it. She brings the angel back home and takes it upstairs to show it to her little brother, a kid with some congenital and fatal disease who is bed-bound. And when he touches it,he's healed.
And consequences ensue.
I figure there are several of these angel feather artifacts scattered all over the world and some have been used for harming as well as healing.
How do you destroy such an artifact? It's not like you can throw it into the fires of Mt. Doom.
And of course, word of this object would get out.
And the government would probably get involved.
Maybe now that I've written this much down, the idea will be happy to sit in the back of my unconscious.
i know there's something there, but not sure what to do with it.

Just for Precious in Canada about James Patterson's Masterclass

but also fo anyone else who has tried to post a comment here. My comments section seems to be broken. Precious, I read your question about the James Paatterson masterclass and wrote a long reply and that was deleted too. How. Very. Annoying.
For those of you just joining us...
The question was--is it worth it?
I said YES and here's why.

Master classes all around!

I have mentioned my enthusiasm for the James Patterson masterclass video learning experience and now it seems Writer's Digest books has taken note of it as well. They're offering a fantastic deal on 14 of their books and recordings on every aspect of writing. The bundle is currently selling for $50, which is a little more than $4 per item. The item that caught my eye was a recording of this: Thrillers, Killers, and Fanboys: How to Succeed as a Writer by Knowing What Not to Do: Writer's Digest Conference Session Recording

It's really exciting to me to know that I have such great tools available. Add Stephen King's On Writing and you're good to go.

Masterclass with James Patterson

As you know, I habitually cruise Craigslist looking for jobs and gigs. I'm on there enough that I've seen the same scams posted over and over ("Quick, fast writing gig") and noted the emergence of the phony Yelp rating business and marveled at the unbelievable gall of people who are trolling for people to exploit. But I've also made about 50 percent of my income from CL ads in the last eight years and among the gigs I scored was one beta-testing this MASTERCLASS WITH JAMES PATTERSON.

Yes, I was paid to take a class (complete iwth workbooks and assignments) that is being offered to the public for $90.  the "lessons" are edited from a series of interviews and in them Patterson takes his "students" through his process--from getting ideas (one of the lessons I found most engaging) to marketing. Along the way he tells some engaging stories.

You might want to check it out.  Here's more information on the people behind the Masterclass concept.

When someone gushes over a book

I was wearing the earrings I bought in New Orleans today and the checker at my supermarket complimented me on them. I told her I'd bought them in NOLA and she told me she'd loved the city. I told her about a cab driver taking me by Anne Rice's house and she told me how much she loved Anne Rice's books. And that made me think of the time I was in a supermarket in L.A. looking over the new paperback books. An older woman, a total stranger, pointed out a book by James Patterson--The 9th Judgment, a book in the Woman's Murder Club series. "That's a really good book," she said.

How cool is that? Can you imagine how great it would be to have total strangers recommending your book to people? You cannot buy that kind of word of mouth. When the first of the Twilight books came out, they came highly recommended to me by a friend's daughter, who was in middle school at the time. She's now in college, a writer herself, and I still rely on her for opinions in all things YA and paranormal. Forget being a best-selling author. What I want to be is an author that people recommend to strangers. (Well, don't forget it but you know what I mean.)