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Friday, August 19, 2016

The Double-Booked Tour

Featuring special guests Shannon Baker and Jess Lourey.


Hi, Marlyn!
Thanks for setting out the tea cups and –is that a plate of butter cookies?!-- for this stop on our cyber travels. We’re really tickled to be here today. We are Jess Lourey and Shannon Baker. We’re buddied up for this road trip because A) it’s always more fun to travel with a friend and 2) we’re a two-fer for blog readers, a real bargain!

Jess’s new release is Salem’s Cipher (Midnight Ink), a political suspense novel featuring Salem Wiley, an agoraphobic cryptanalyst who must crack codes that Emily Dickinson hid 100 years earlier in order to save the first viable female presidential candidate from assassination. It releases on September 6th and is available for preorder.

Shannon’s new mystery is the first in the Kate Fox series. Stripped Bare (Forge) is also landing on September 6th and also available for preorder Set in the Nebraska Sandhills, it’s been called Longmire meets The Good Wife.


Let’s get right to the questions of the day. 

Shannon: 
Jess, just like real life, our characters don’t live in isolation. Sometimes secondary characters are as interesting and fun as the main event. Tell us about your favorite secondary character in Salem’s Cipher.

Jess: 
Such a good question, Shannon. I fell in love with most of the characters in that book, but my *favorite* secondary character is actually one of the bad guys. His name is Jason, and he’s an assassin with a twist: due to a genetic mutation (sentient Sharpey’s fibers, the microscopic fingers of collagen that connected bone to muscle to skin), he’s able to reshape his face and thereby change his appearance. In his own words, “If he’d been born a hundred years earlier, he’d have ended up in a traveling freakshow, next to the Bigfoot Lady, the Man with Three Eyes, Camel Girl, and two-faced Edward Drake.” Jason bears an eerie resemblance to actor Michael Fassbender in his given face, but with slight twitching, he becomes unrecognizable. 
Who’s your favorite secondary character in Stripped Bare, Shannon?


Shannon: 
Kate is one of nine kids and lives in the tiniest dot on the Nebraska map. There’s no lack of secondary characters running around. In Stripped Bare, one of Kate’s older sisters, Louise, poked her head into Kate’s door and then pushed her sizeable self right on in. Since Kate’s mother is not exactly the nurturing type, Louise has declared herself the matriarch of the clan and administers advice, orders, and food, most of which is ignored by the rest of the brothers and sisters. She means well, of course, organizing family potlucks and delivering brownies and runzas uninvited. Kate calls her offerings turds of love.

One of my favorite characters in Stripped Bare plays a bit role and comes around again in Dark Signal (next year’s book). May Keller is old enough to have shared a kindergarten desk with Methuselah, has been a widow since WW II (under suspicious circumstances), and is as tough as buffalo jerky. We’ll be seeing more of her, I’m sure.

Jess, one of your secondary characters, Mrs. Berns, nearly takes over your Murder-by-the-Month series (Midnight Ink). She’s so much fun and has a lot in common with May Keller. Tell us how you came up with Mrs. Berns.


Jess: 
Ahh, thank you for caring about Mrs. Berns! She’s one of my favorite inventions, pulled half from real life and half from my neuroses. In 1988, country mouse me moved to the big city of Minneapolis, where I ended up working at an import shop with an east coast transplant named Berns. She was everything I wasn’t—articulate, confident, gorgeous. She so intimidated me that the only thing I could work up the nerve to say during our first shift together was that something in the garbage smelled like a rotten orange. She tossed her curls and said, “You know what would take care of that rotten orange smell? A bag of shit.” And then she walked into the next room. Mrs. Berns was born of that moment, except I made her an 85-year-old woman because I’m scared of getting old and want to envision it as a better time when I can say exactly what’s on my mind and not care what anyone thinks. 
Shannon, you had a similar life-based character near and dear to your heart in your fantastic Nora Abbot series with Midnight Ink, right?



Shannon: 
I loved Abigail, Nora’s mother in my first series. She started out based on the mother of one of my dearest friends, always socially correct, terribly concerned with image, and a big spendthrift. And yet someone I really love for her good heart. I added Abigail for some humor, to keep the books from getting too dark. Over the course of the three books, though, Abigail developed a character arc of her own, as well as being instrumental in Nora’s arc. Like a real person, as I got to know her better, I grew to love her more. 


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Shannon
Jess and I are each giving away a copy of our new books, Salem’s Cipher and Stripped Bare. For a chance to win, share your favorite secondary character or leave a comment below.

And just in case we haven’t been fun enough:

If you order Salem's Cipher before September 6, 2016, you are invited to forward your receipt to salemscipher@gmail.com to receive a Salem short story and to be automatically entered in a drawing to win a 50-book gift basket mailed to the winner's home!

If you order Stripped Bare before September 6, 2016, you are invited to forward your receipt to katefoxstrippedbare@gmail.com to receive a Kate Fox short story and be entered for a 50-book gift basket mailed to your home.

For a review of our books, join us Monday, August 22 as the Lourey/Baker Double Booked tour stops at Books and Needlepoint. We’ll be with Terry Ambrose on Tuesday, and Wednesday at Do Some Damage.



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A little about our books:



Salem Wiley is a genius cryptanalyst, courted by the world's top security agencies ever since her quantum computing breakthrough. She's also an agoraphobe shackled to a narrow routine since her father's suicide. When her intelligence work unexpectedly exposes a sinister plot to assassinate the country's first viable female presidential candidate, Salem finds herself both target and detective in a modern day witch hunt. Drawn into a labyrinth of messages encrypted by Emily Dickinson and codes tucked inside the Beale Cipher a hundred years earlier, Salem begins to uncover the truth: an ancient and ruthless group is hell-bent on ruling the world, and only a select group of women stands in its way.



Just when everything seems about perfect, someone leaves the barn door open and all hell breaks loose. At least, that’s what it feels like for Kate Fox. Born and raised in the Nebraska Sandhills, smack in the middle of eight interfering siblings, related to everyone in the county by one degree of separation or less, Kate’s managed to create a her perfect life.
A shattering phone calls hits Kate like a January blizzard. A local rancher is murdered and Kate’s husband, the sheriff, is shot. When her husband is suspected of the murder, Kate vows to find the killer.




16 comments:

  1. Good morning, Marlyn! I'm watching the moon set over the desert and happy to be here with you! Thanks for having us.

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  2. Mrs. Berns could only be based on a real person because there's no way anyone could make up someone so unique.

    And it sounds like Shannon went and got herself an older female character to compete with Mrs. Berns in May Keller. I'll look forward to meeting her.

    Just one more day before I allow myself to delve into both books. Thank you so much, Shannon and Jess, for running these giveaways and thank you Marilyn for hosting my lovely friends.

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    1. Can't wait to hear what you think of them, Aimee!

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  3. I could never pick a favorite! I usually end up enamored with most secondary characters, for better or worse!

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  4. You are so fair, Kim! :-) Thanks for stopping by and for leaving a comment! You've been entered to win either a copy of Stripped Bare or Salem's Cipher. Spread the word. Or don't, if you don't want competition. ;)

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    1. You're funny, Jess! Thank you for guesting on my blog!

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  5. Thanks for another great post, Shannon and Jess! I have many secondary character favorites, but I think my fav favs come from Louise Penny's books. I long to hang out with Myrna (the psychologist turned bookstore owner) at the local Bistro. Lucky me, my husband grew up about 20 miles from the villages the books are inspired by. So this summer we visited Brome Lake Books and a local Bistro. Sadly, Myrna could not be found. -Rochelle

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    1. A literary vacation! My favorite secondary character of all time is Piglet.

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  6. Good morning darlings!

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  7. Morning, Ann! Thanks for stopping by. Shannon, that is so perfect because my favorite secondary character used to be Eeyore. Rochelle, that sounds like an amazing road trip!

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  8. Oooh, and Salem's Cipher is a Goodreads giveaway for the next 12 days. Follow this link and scroll down--takes 2 minutes to enter.

    https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28700200-salem-s-cipher

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  9. Thank you so much to Marlyn for making us Beebe's Babies for a day, and thank you everyone for reading, and especially, thanks to the commenters above. I'm excited to report that The Write Coach Now! has won a copy of Stripped Bare, and Kim Moran has won a copy of Salem's Cipher. Woot! Rochelle, please send Shannon your address via a private FB message or by contacting her through her website: http://shannon-baker.com/. Kim, same for me, except my website is www.jessicalourey.com. Look for your books soon!

    Please stop by Books and Needlepoint on Monday for more chances to win! http://booksandneedlepoint.blogspot.com/

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  10. I will let you know about the characters once I get to read both books, how's that? I use the words STUFF and NONSENSE all the time but not usually together. I have a lot of "stuff" and my husband says it is "NONSENSE" to keep this much now that we are retired. I cannot see what that has to do with my stuff. Just saying it as I see it. :)
    Love you girls. Looking forward to reading soon.
    Cynthia

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  11. And we love you, too, Cynthia. You get to keep all your stuff, no matter if makes sense to anyone else or not! See you on the road!

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  12. Thanks so much!! I am thrilled to have won!

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