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Travel and Book with

Gary Guinn

In the fall of 2014, I was uptight about my writing. I was generating nothing new. I spent all my time revising unpublished stories and slogging through another revision of the sequel to my first novel, a sequel that seemed dead in the water, with no energy, no compelling life. Stagnated writing can be very depressing. 

Then in the middle of October two things happened that transformed stagnation into a period of dynamic production that has not let up. First, my wife and I dropped everything and headed to New Smyrna Beach, Florida, to spend a couple of weeks with two close friends who lived in a beach condo. The beach has always been a magical place for me, and the beach at New Smyrna, with a little help from my friends, worked its magic. All the frustration melted away. 

 

And coincidentally, a couple of days after arriving at New Smyrna, I read an article about NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month. I was aware of the movement, but had never looked closely at it. As I read the article, it hit me. It was time to take the plunge, literally into the ocean and figuratively into a whole new writing experience.  

And so the idea for my current release with The Wild Rose Press, the mystery/thriller novel Sacrificial Lam, was born. I had always loved reading the genre, but had never written in it. Deciding to follow the old maxim “Write what you know,” I transformed my own experience as a liberal English professor teaching at a conservative southern college into fiction. Professor Lam Corso arrives at his office one beautiful fall morning to find an anonymous death threat tucked under his door. And so it goes from there. The idea for that particular catalyst came from an actual incident at the college some twenty years earlier, in which three of my colleagues, all liberal professors in other departments, received similar threats couched in violent terms. Those threats were never carried out, but the threat to my character Lam Corso quickly escalates to action. 

I am now halfway through the second novel in the Lam Corso series and loving every minute of it. Oh, and I’ve also finished the revisions on that other sequel, and it has so much more life and energy now. There’s nothing like getting away to discover your way back home. 

  

Sacrificial Lam is a wild ride of a mystery, full of thrills and threats. Lam Corso, professor of literature, will become your new best friend, a man who is brilliant but still not smart enough to predict his own crazy ending. 

       In the silence immediately after Susan screamed, Simon’s high wail came from upstairs. Billy’s voice broke through, “Mom? What happened, Mom?” His voiced moved to the top of the stairs. “Mama, I’m scared. Where are you?” Simon was sobbing. 

Susan grabbed the flashlight and scrambled to her feet. The darkness of the room pressed in on her, weighted with threat, the silence in the downstairs smothering her voice. She shined the flashlight toward the stairway, heading that way, and yelled, “Boys, can you see the light from the flashlight?” 

She flicked the light around the room, and seeing nobody, she yelled again, with less panic this time, “Nothing to be afraid of, Billy. I’m sorry I scared you. You and Simon come on downstairs right now.” She shined the light on the stairway steps, fear crawling up her spine from the darkness behind her. 

  

Find Sacrificial Lam at: Amazon

  

Find Gary Guinn at: Website