I had planned to return to Castle Killing, book 7 in the Jill Quint series, but I’m really enjoying the Damian Green Series and so began work on Willow Glen Heist, book 2 in that series. It‘s the continued story of the search for Hermione’s parents, the setting up of Damian’s new technology company, and a cold case that’s a bank heist.
Readers in the UK were recently polled on what they would like to read in their mystery books and they said they wanted to read fictionalized stories of the Hatton Garden Heist. I found it so interesting that I read about many of the major bank heists in the last twenty years. Hatton Garden was an actual heist in April of 2015 and the elderly men that stole an estimated $60M from the bank vault were sentenced recently by the courts. Justice appears to be quicker in the UK.
Willow Glen Heist is going to have a little Hatton Garden Heist flavor about it. It will be set in California, and in fact a neighborhood of San Jose called Willow Glen. In another day, I’ll already have 10,000 words of the book complete! If my pace of writing stays with me, it will be published around October/November.
I’m working on the book cover now and asked my local bank if I could take a picture of the door leading into their vault. They looked at me strangely and gave me a definite ‘no’. I guess I should be grateful that the FBI didn’t meet me in the parking lot. I even told them I was a mystery writer and my current work in progress was a bank heist. Of course as soon as I’d provided that logical explanation, I realized it was like saying ‘bomb’ in an airport security line. Whoops.
I’m working with my cover artist to create my vision for the book as I find having the cover close to the start of a new book, gives me a visual to think about the story. If you read Red Rock Island, then you know the story ends with a plan to travel to Australia’s Great Barrier Reef via Papua New Guinea just before Hermione returns to school, and that’s where Book two starts.
If you’ve read one of my books, please consider leaving a rating on Amazon. Many readers, myself included, look to those ratings when taking a chance on an author they haven’t read before. Getting ratings is one of the toughest things in this book writing business. I did half of my Christmas shopping during Amazon Prime Day recently and I was amazed with the flood of email requests for each item I purchased requesting that I leave a positive review and furthermore if I couldn’t leave a positive review to contact them first to make it right. Every business the world over no longer has a word of mouth reputation. It’s online reviews that drive addition purchases and books are no exception.