Parallax View by Allan Leverone - Guest Post

Join Allan Leverone, author of the thriller, Parallax View, as he tours the blogosphere May 6 - June 28 on his third virtual book tour with Pump Up Your Book!

 

 

                            ABOUT ALLAN LEVERONE

Allan Leverone is the author of five novels, including the Amazon Top 25 overall paid bestselling thriller, THE LONELY MILE. He is a 2012 Derringer Award winner for excellence in short mystery fiction, as well as a 2011 Pushcart Prize nominee. Allan lives in Londonderry, NH with his wife and family, and a cat who has used up eight lives.

 

Visit his website at  www.allanleverone.com.

                                                            Follow Allan!

 

 

                           ABOUT PARALLAX VIEW

It’s late in the Cold War, and the Soviet Union is slowly disintegrating.

 

In the midst of this uncertainty and upheaval, a mysterious group of KGB officials has concocted a desperate plan in an attempt to maintain power.

 

And one beautiful young CIA operative is all that stands between this shadowy cabal and the outbreak of World War Three.

 

Spring, 1987. CIA Special Operations agent Tracie Tanner is tasked with what should be a relatively straightforward mission: deliver a secret communique from Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev to U.S. President Ronald Reagan.

 

After smuggling the document out of East Germany, Tracie believes she is in the clear. She's wrong. There are shadowy forces at work, influential people who will stop at nothing to prevent the explosive information contained in the letter from reaching the White House.

 

Soon, Tanner is knee-deep in airplane crashes and murder, paired up with a young Maine air traffic controller and on the run for their lives, unsure who she can trust at CIA, but committed to completing her mission, no matter the cost.

 

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Parallax View Virtual Book Publicity Tour Schedule

Monday, May 6 - Book reviewed at Author Rebecca Graf

Wednesday, May 8 - Interviewed at Examiner

Thursday, May 9 -Book featured at Authors and Readers Book Corner

Monday, May 13 - Interviewed at Literal Exposure

Wednesday, May 15 - Guest blogging at Janna Shay

Thursday, May 16 - Guest blogging at The Book Connection

Monday, May 20 - Book reviewed at Vic's Media Room

Tuesday, May 21 - Guest blogging at My Cozie Corner

Wednesday, May 22 - Interviewed at Digital Journal

Thursday, May 23 - Book reviewed at Miki's Hope

Monday, May 27 - Guest blogging at Rainy Day Reviews

Wednesday, May 29 - Book feature at Book Lover Stop

Friday, May 31 - Interviewed at Review From Here

Wednesday, June 5 - Interviewed at I'm Shelfish

Monday, June 10 - Book reviewed at Celtic Lady's Reviews

Monday, June 10 - Book featured at Laurie's Thoughts and Reviews

Tuesday, June 11 -Book reviewed at Mary's Cup of Tea

Thursday, June 13 - Interviewed at Broowaha

Monday, June 17 - Book Featured at Community Book Stop

Tuesday, June 18 - Guest blogging at Allvoices

Wednesday, June 19 - Guest blogging at The Writer's Life

Thursday, June 20 - 1st Chapter Reveal at Gina's Library

Friday, June 21 - First Chapter revealed at Rainy Day Reviews

Monday, June 24 - Book reviewed at Create with Joy

Tuesday, June 25 - Book reviewed at Queen of All She Reads

Wednesday, June 26 - Book reviewed at Review From Here

Wednesday, June 26 - Book featured at Confessions of a Reader

Thursday, June 27 - Book featured at My Cozie Corner

Thursday, June 27 - Book reviewed at My Reading Table

Friday, June 28 - Book reviewed at My Book Retreat

Friday, June 28 - Book reviewed at Must Read Faster

 

Excerpt:

 

The car sped around a corner, and a couple of hundred yards away Tracie could see the control tower and FAA base building. She slowed slightly, trying to come up with some kind of action plan, when a side window in the base building shattered. The glass exploded outward as a metal folding chair flew through the window, followed a heartbeat later by a tumbling body. It looked like Shane Rowley.

He dived through the window and landed on top of the chair, then rolled onto his back and looked up at the window. A second man appeared. The man was older, and as he tried to climb out, his body began to stutter as bullets ripped into him from behind, and then he slumped across the frame.

Shane scrambled to his feet and ran along the narrow alleyway between the base building and the control tower. He burst into the parking lot and ran straight into a man holding a silenced handgun. The man was facing away from Tracie, but she could see him raise the gun and shove the barrel into Shane’s forehead.

And she didn’t hesitate.

She drove her foot to the floor and aimed the Datsun straight at the pair. The gunman didn’t seem to have heard the sound of the little car’s engine, or perhaps didn’t comprehend the significance. Shane was facing the vehicle and Tracie hoped he would understand her intent.

The car leapt forward and the two men grew steadily larger in the windshield. The gunman seemed to be talking, asking Shane a question or maybe threatening him. Nothing in Shane’s demeanor gave away the fact that a speeding car was hurtling toward them. At the last moment Shane dived to the side, just as it seemed to occur to the man in the suit that something was wrong.

Shane hit the pavement and rolled. He disappeared from sight as the Datsun plowed into the man with the gun, catching him in the side with a sickening thud. His body flew up and over the hood. He crashed into the windshield and then tumbled over the roof in an ungainly somersault.

Tracie watched in the rearview mirror as the man dropped onto the pavement and lay still. She slammed on the brakes and skidded to a stop just shy of a big vehicle with U.S. Government plates. Then she jammed the car into reverse and began backing up, one eye on the gunman, still crumpled in an unmoving heap in the middle of the parking lot, one eye searching for Shane.

She spotted him crouched between two parked  cars just as the base building’s front door crashed open and two more men exited the building at a dead run. The men wore suits similar to the downed gunman and each was holding a gun. They turned right and ran toward Tracie and their injured conspirator.

And Shane.

Tracie leaned across the front seat and shoved the passenger door open. “Get in here, now!” she screamed.

 

The White Queen by Philippa Gregory REVIEW

(#1 in The Cousin's War Series)

  
"Philippa Gregory presents the first of a new series set amid the deadly feuds of England known as the Wars of the Roses."

Brother turns on brother to win the ultimate prize, the throne of England, in this dazzling account of the wars of the Plantagenets. They are the claimants and kings who ruled England before the Tudors, and now Philippa Gregory brings them to life through the dramatic and intimate stories of the secret players: the indomitable women, starting with Elizabeth Woodville, the White Queen.
The White Queen tells the story of a woman of extraordinary beauty and ambition who, catching the eye of the newly crowned boy king, marries him in secret and ascends to royalty. While Elizabeth rises to the demands of her exalted position and fights for the success of her family, her two sons become central figures in a mystery that has confounded historians for centuries: the missing princes in the Tower of London whose fate is still unknown. From her uniquely qualified perspective, Philippa Gregory explores this most famous unsolved mystery of English history, informed by impeccable research and framed by her inimitable storytelling skills.


A widow, a beautiful young woman, is in the eye of to be crowned Edward. King Edward makes his move and tries, unsuccessfully to seduce her. But she holds her ground, not because she isn't attracted to him, but because she doesn't want to bring shame to her family. But it doesn't stop there. King Edward can think of no one else.
He marries Elizabeth in secret in attempt to give himself time to explain marrying an ordinary girl; especially when his hand was already promised to another..
As this historical story unfolds for Elizabeth and her two sons along with the mystery that is all around them I wonder...did they know what was coming..? And the Tower of London that to this day is an unsolved mystery lost probably forever in the sea. 

I enjoyed this read, even with the fiction thrown in. It was interesting to read it from another perspective. For those out there who don't know this part of history, it may be confusing..but a good incentive to read up on it :)
I do highly recommend this book, along with the rest of The Cousin's War series by Philippa Gregory.




My book group The Parchment Society read this book, this is my review on the book.

Book Spotlight - Dealing with Violence in Fiction By Allan Leverone

Dealing with Violence in Fiction
By Allan Leverone

A co-worker friend of mine recently underwent arthroscopic knee surgery. Afterward, he came into work on crutches and with the knee immobilized in a brace, and was showing me the very tiny holes made in the vicinity of his knee, into which the arthroscopic devices had been inserted.

The holes were tiny. Minimally invasive.

I could hardly stand to look.

If you’ve read any of my books, you might find that assertion hard to believe. I don’t write violence just for violence’s sake, but I’ve spilled my share of fictional blood. Some would say more than my share. When the majority of your work is in the horror and thriller genres, violence and mayhem seem to naturally follow.

I’ve had people shot, stabbed, and beaten up. I’ve written car crashes, explosions, mining disasters and terrorist attacks.

And I have trouble looking at a tiny incision. In someone else’s knee.

My wife, on the other hand, enjoys watching those documentary-type TV shows about operations. You know the ones, on the Science Channel or whatever, where they show actual footage of surgeons repairing a hole in an infant’s aorta, or trying to fix the tissue trauma from a nasty gunshot wound, that sort of thing.

If I walk into the room while that kind of show is playing, I either turn around and walk right back out (okay, I run), or I ask my wife to change the channel (okay, I beg).

Why is that? How is it possible I can describe the most horrific scenes of carnage and destruction in the pages of a book, but my stomach does flip-flops at the sight of a beating heart muscle on television. How can I write about one human being shooting another at point-blank range, but when my kids were little, had to force myself not to panic beyond all reason when one of them suffered even a minor cut?

I suppose the answer would be the same thing that’s bothered human beings from the beginning of time, when we huddled in cold, cark caves hoping tonight wouldn’t be the night that pesky saber-toothed tiger prowling around outside didn’t tear us apart and eat us for dinner: fear of the unknown.

When I’m writing, no matter how gruesome the scene or how distasteful the subject matter, I can see it unfold in my head and I know where I’m going with it, more or less.

A surgical procedure taking place on TV, on the other hand, presents a cornucopia of potential outcomes, none of which are pleasing to my hyperactive imagination. Will blood start spurting from that beating heart the surgeon is holding in his gloved hand? What if he drops it? How about if he sneezes while making an incision? Will that be the end of the patient?

The same mindset applied when my kids were young and dripping blood from their cut fingers. They were injured and they were depending on me to care for them. Me! The guy who has a habit of entering rooms and forgetting why. The guy who can’t stand watching a surgical procedure on TV.

In the real world, the range of possibilities outside my control are endless, whereas when I’m writing, even if I don’t have a clear idea where I’m going in a scene, the range is limited to whatever I’m willing to write. There are lines that I know will never be crossed.

And that makes all the difference in the world.

In the case of PARALLAX VIEW, you can sense almost from the very beginning of the book that a violent confrontation – a showdown – is coming. That is the case in virtually all thrillers, so the reader knows going in to expect it and shouldn’t be terribly surprised when it happens.

What form that confrontation will take, and what outcome will result, is obviously up in the air, but a reader of genre fiction, particularly thrillers, presumably isn’t going to be turned off merely by the description of violence.

How about you? As a reader, do you tend to cringe when you come to the most explicitly violent portions of a book? Do you skip over those passages? How does your reaction to blood spilled on a page differ from your reaction to real-world violence, either televised or happening in front of you?

And can you remember why I came into this room?


Dealing with Violence in Fiction
By Allan Leverone