Want a traveling vacation as part of your reading?
The settings in my novels are a bit more varied than those of my life, but they often reflect my wanderlust, some travels done for work (around the US, South America, and Europe), others as a tourist. About half the novels in the “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco” series start in New York City near where I now live (the pair are NYPD homicide detectives) but go elsewhere. The books in the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series often take place in the main character’s England but also in other places around Europe and South America. The novels in the “Mary Jo Melendez Mysteries” series have settings in the US, South America, Europe, and China.
I’ve visited some of those places during my wander-years, living and traveling. For others, Google and Google maps as well as travel websites have been my tour guides. (Hopefully the reader can’t tell the difference!) I loved to directly experience diverse cultures and different places, though, my traveling now regrettably reduced to zero by Covid and old age, and believe readers will too, if only in their reading. After all, reading fiction is always about adventure!
I hope readers will help celebrate my wanderlust by traveling with me in novels I’ve written. To make your travels economical ones, all the month of August I offer three “travel guides” on sale at Smashwords, each only ninety-nine (99) cents! (See below for details.) For whatever reason—crazy air travel delays, a new Covid variant, economic insecurity, gas prices—you might not want to travel this summer. But you can…with me! With these three novels, you can travel a lot for only 99 cents!
In Aristocrats and Assassins, Castilblanco takes a rare vacation with his wife. A terrorist, an old nemesis of the ex-SEAL, is kidnapping European aristocrats. To find out why, you’ll have to travel along with Mr. C with me as your tour guide. (By the way, Mr. C’s vacation is such a bust, his wife takes advantage of her husband’s business trip to see London in Defanging the Red Dragon, a complete novel that’s a free PDF download—see my “Free Stuff & Contests” web page.)
In Death on the Danube, I got about as close as I ever have (at that time) to writing a romance novel, because Esther Brookstone and Bastiann van Coevorden celebrate their marriage with a honeymoon cruise down that favorite river. (My wife and I took a similar cruise—see the end notes of the novel for details. I surpassed the romance in this novel with the sci-fi rom-com A Time Traveler’s Guide through the Multiverse, which takes you on quite a different voyage!) The trip becomes similar to Dame Agatha’s Death on the Nile or Murder on the Orient Express as Bastiann investigates a murder that has a moving crime scene.
The third novel that could be considered a travel guide is Muddlin’ Through. Ex-Master-at-Arms Mary Jo Melendez is framed for the murder of her sister and brother-in-law and spends the rest of the tale traveling to various countries in an effort to clear her name. It turns out Russia has stolen the MECHs (“Mechanically Enhanced Cybernetic Humans,” battle-field cyborgs par excellence) from the US government, and a secretive CIA-like organization will do anything to get them back, including killing Mary Jo.
Of course, these novels are more than travel guides! I’m particularly fond of the stories. They’re all mystery/thriller novels where I can proudly say, “I wrote’em!” Let me know whether you like them too.
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Come globe-trot with me! Three evergreen novels from three different series will take you, the reader, to many different countries. Aristocrats and Assassins (UN52Q) finds Detective Castilblanco and his wife on an European vacation that becomes deadly. Why is a terrorist kidnapping Europe’s royals? In Death on the Danube (AR72S), you’ll cruise down that famous river along with Esther Brookstone and Bastiann van Coevorden on their honeymoon voyage…right into danger, as the two sleuths try to find a murderer. And in Muddlin’ Through (TV85M), you can go along on a dangerous tour with Mary Jo Melendez around Europe and South America as she tries to prove she was framed for her sister and brother-in-law’s murder and tries to save the MECHs (“Mechanically Enhanced Cybernetic Humans”). All these globe-trotting adventures that will leave you breathless and asking for more are on sale now at Smashwords for only 99 cents. (Use the indicated promo codes if you don’t see that price.) Bon voyage!
Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!
