I’m hosting a guest post today for the book tour for “Southern Heat” about the story behind the book. Enjoy!

The Story Behind Southern Heat

What inspired me to write Southern Heat was really a collection of details.  I lived in Charleston on Sullivan’s Island for almost five years. That alone gave me the setting. My landlord had a large second row house with apartments on the back side. Second row, for those who don’t know, and I didn’t until I lived there, means the house was in a line of homes across the street from the beach front homes.  He gave his tenants a lot of liberties, including allowing us to head to the unoccupied second floor with an ocean view patio.  In Charleston, homes built after hurricane Hugo had to be elevated. The ground level was a concrete slab that a lot of people turned into an above ground basement. The first floor was really the second floor and the second floor was really the third floor.  Confused yet?  So, the house was really three levels.  One fourth of July, I climbed onto the roof and had a 360 degree view of the Charleston harbor and fireworks in at least five different directions.

Why did I spend so much time talking about the house?  Because I learned the island way of life there—laid back.  The first rule, and there weren’t really many others, was when you crossed the Ben Sawyer Memorial Bridge onto the island, your problems stayed on the mainland.

The city of Charleston is such a gem.  It is like no place on earth, with its palmetto tree lined Meeting Street, premier shops on King Street, and historic homes on the Battery.  As a single man at the time, I also enjoyed the night scene.  Great bars and clubs within close proximity meant my friends and I could walk and hit three different locations on a Friday night.

I tried to capture the healing magic of the city in my book.  Just as I am not the same person I was when I first moved there, I wanted my protagonist to be changed.  Brack Pelton came into being after several failed attempts, the first being a close carbon copy of Mike Hammer with an office on King Street.  That character and the next one didn’t ring true, and members of the South Carolina Writers Workshop critique group I belong to let me know as much.

I wish I could stay the story just wrote itself, but that would be a false statement.  It took a lot of rewriting, and I mean a lot.  I heard that Robert B. Parker could write a first draft and only have to change a few words to make it his final.  Well, I am not Robert B. Parker.  And my first manuscript took six drafts.  Writing is work.  Fun work, but work nonetheless.

What motivated me to finally put fingers to the keyboard was a feeling that I had for most of my twenties that I was wasting time.  I’d come home from work and park in front of the TV for hours.  Looking back, the shows I watched helped develop my imagination, but I knew I was frying my brain.  My soon-to-be wife could tell I was unhappy and urged me to find my passion.  As I was walking back from the exercise room in the apartment complex I was living in at the time, it hit me that I wanted to write a novel. I’d always liked writing.  The “mistake” I made was mentioning this to my fiancé.  Once we were married and living under the same roof, she took every opportunity to remind me what I told her I wanted to do.  Six years later, I had a contract for Southern Heat and I owe a lot to her.

Author Bio

David Burnsworth became fascinated with the Deep South at a young age. After a degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Tennessee and fifteen years in the corporate world, he made the decision to write a novel. Southern Heat is his first mystery. Having lived in Charleston on Sullivan’s Island for five years, the setting was a foregone conclusion. He and his wife along with their dog call South Carolina home.

His latest book is the southern noir/mystery, Southern Heat.

Visit his website at www.davidburnsworthbooks.com.

Connect & Socialize with David!

TWITTER * FACEBOOK

About the Book

Gunshots echo down an antebellum Charleston alley. Brack Pelton, an ex-racecar driver and Afghanistan War veteran, witnesses the murder of his uncle, Reggie Sails. Darcy Wells, the pretty Palmetto Pulse reporter, investigates Reggie’s murder and targets Brack.

The sole heir of his uncle’s estate, Brack receives a rundown bar called the Pirate’s Cove, a rotting beach house, and one hundred acres of preserved and valuable wetland along the Ashley River. A member of Charleston’s wealthiest and oldest families offers Brack four million dollars for the land. All Brack wants is his uncle’s killer.

From the sandy beaches of Isle of Palms, through the nineteenth-century mansions lining the historic Battery, to the marshlands surrounding the county, Southern Heat is drenched in the humidity of the lowcountry.

Purchase your copy at AMAZON

Discuss this book in our PUYB Virtual Book Club at Goodreads by clicking HERE

I’m hosting a guest post today for the tour for “Fog City Strangler” by Greg Messel. Enjoy the guest post, and I’ll leave the word to the author now.

Tis the Season

I live in Seattle, which is a beautiful, wonderful place to live. I live two blocks from the beach of the Puget Sound and I love to be outside enjoying it all.

However, we are now in the dead of winter and most days it’s rainy, blustery and cool. This is why cups of coffee are very important to Seattlelites. It’s that kind of vibe and that kind of weather. Put on your sweater, grab a good cup of coffee.

Maybe go cozy up to a good book or go see a movie–two other favorite past times of people who live in Seattle.

As the leaves turn in the fall and the rains move in, that’s when I get some serious writing done. I usually spend the summer contemplating and planning my next novel.

Then as the weather turns cool and rainy, I become immersed in the new world I’m creating in my new novel. This is my favorite part of the entire journey as an author.

Marketing not so much, but when I’m creating a new world and new characters it is a magical high. I can live in a time and place where I’ve never been.

The world which now exists in my mind is 1958 in San Francisco. As I research what life was like in that time and place,it’s amazing to realize how much the world has changed.

I did live in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1958 but I was eight years old.

I’m currently working on my new mystery novel “Shadows in the Fog” which is a sequel to my current book “Fog City Strangler.”

“Shadows in the Fog” will be the fifth novel in the Sam Slater Mystery series.

I’m about halfway through the first draft. I expect to spend the rest of the winter finishing it and polishing the story. I love that process, especially where the story starts evolving and starts writing itself.

I’ve heard writers describe the development of their book as somewhat “organic.”  I was always a little puzzled by that term in regards to writing but I have discovered what that means.

I start with a basic outline of where I thought I wanted to go with the story and characters. However, at some point you depart from the outline and the chapters are tumbling out. The story and characters are going places I did not imagine.

It is hard to describe how that happens to someone who is not a writer. I heard a story about a wood carver. He was asked by an admirer how he made these wonderful carvings. The wood carver simply explained, “I take a piece of wood and just start making some chips.”

I’m at the point where the chips are flying on my new novel. Ultimately, I hope it will be the best thing I’ve ever written. Next year, I hope it’s finds an audience and readers enjoy it.

However, for now, it’s that wonderful time when I’m promoting my new book “Fog City Strangler” and I’m in the process of writing my new novel, where, when the characters live only in my imagination. They are my private property for a few months this winter. Then they will become public and everyone will start giving their opinion of my story and the characters.

This process is what keeps urging me on to write on these rainy fall and winter days in Seattle. It’s magic.

Author Bio

Greg Messel grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and now lives in Edmonds, Washington on the Puget Sound with his wife, Carol.  Fog City Strangler is his seventh novel and is the fourth in a new series of Sam Slater mystery novels. Greg has lived in Oregon, Washington, California, Wyoming and Utah and has always loved writing, including stints as a reporter, columnist and news editor for a daily newspaper.

Follow news about Messel’s writings and books at www.gregmessel.com.

Connect & Socialize with Greg!

TWITTER | FACEBOOK

About The Book

As 1958 nears an end San Francisco is being terrorized by a man who calls himself the “Fog City Strangler,” who preys on pretty young blonde women.  The strangler announces each murder by sending a note and piece of cloth from the victim’s dresses to the local newspapers.

Private eye Sam Slater is worried that the Fog City Strangler may be eyeing his beautiful blonde wife, stewardess Amelia Ryan. Sam’s angst mounts as the strangler continues to claim more victims. His anxiety is further fueled when TWA launches an advertising campaign with Amelia’s picture on a series of billboards plastered all over the city. Sam fears the billboards may attract too much attention–the wrong kind of attention.

Meanwhile, Sam and Amelia are hired to try to find the missing daughter of a wealthy dowager who fears she has lost her only child. The missing woman went for a walk with her dog on Stinson Beach, near San Francisco, and seemingly vanished into thin air. The woman’s husband arrived at their beach house and found the dog running loose but there was no trace of his wife. The police are stumped in their investigation.

As Sam and Amelia look into the disappearance of the woman on the beach they discover that nothing is as it seems at first glance. On a stormy night a shadowy figure sets fire to the beach house where the couple is staying–hoping to stop their investigation.

Fog City Strangler is a stand-alone thriller but is part of the Sam Slater Mystery Series–Last of the Seals, Deadly Plunge and San Francisco Secrets.

Purchase your copy:

AMAZON | BARNES & NOBLE

Discuss this book in our PUYB Virtual Book Club at Goodreads by clicking HERE.