Next Big Thing

I was actually tagged by Katee Robert back in mid-December, but with the death-plague and holidays, I decided to wait until now because I'm just a rebel like that.


The book I'm using for this is the first in my new series with Entangled Publishing.

What is your working title of your book?

Gaming for Keeps, and I just found out that we're keeping the title. Yay!

Where did the idea come from for the book?

This manuscript was written specifically for Entangled's “Geek Collection” call. From there, I started thinking about when I used to play EverQuest and the drama and fun had with my guildies. The idea kind of took hold from there.

What genre does your book fall under?

It’s kind of a romantic suspense. Sort of. Imagine Chuck meets DragonCon with lots of sexy thrown in for fun.

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

Our hero, Cal, would be played by Garrett Hedlund of Tron: Legacy and Country Strong fame (gotta love a man who can sing). And our heroine spitfire would be the lovely Amber Tamblyn from Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, House, and a whole bunch of other things.

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

TRAIT agent Cal Burrows just wants to spend the weekend with his new girl, Penelope, at ConDamned, but a terrorist with a taste for the dramatic puts his job as well as their lives and budding romance at risk.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?

It was written for the submission call, but it was truly inspired by my love for quirky-straddling-the-right-and-wrong-sides-of-the-law shows like Chuck, Leverage, and White Collar. With a little bit of The Avengers (minus the super-powers) thrown in. But the basic idea at its core was inspired by my guildies who taught me that a game could be more than just a game.

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

Gaming for Keeps is contracted with Entangled Publishing and will be released as part of their Geek Collection in September.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

The first draft? A month? It’s a novella, so that’s not at all unreasonable. Then it went to my crit partners and through some significant revisions before I ever sent it in. 

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

I am so bad at this. I really don’t have specific books within the genre that fit both the type of story as well as my voice. So… Voice and stylistically, my work has been compared to Katee Robert's and Allison Pang's, but for story content, I still refer back to Chuck and Leverage.

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

TRAIT itself is a construct of my imagination created for this book. It’s an intelligence agency composed of the rejects (though I prefer the term misfits) who didn’t make the cut for the better known agencies but were too valuable to let go. The team is full of quirks and different from your average spy network. For example, Cal is a computer genius with… we’ll call it severe anger-management issues when things get ugly.

From the inception of the agency, it was almost inevitable that a series would spring up, and I’m currently working on another story in the same world and featuring a couple of the TRAIT agents introduced in Gaming for Keeps.

Now onto the next victims! The only downside is that I can't hear the screaming through the internet:

First up is Graylin Fox.

And next is M. Andrew Patterson.

Have fun!