Rogue's Angels Present: My Darkest Prayer by S. A. Cosby

Please welcome S. A. Cosby author of My Darkest Prayer

S. A. Cosby will be awarding a $25 Amazon or Barnes and Noble GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.

My Darkest Prayer

by S. A. Cosby

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

GENRE:   mystery/suspense

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

INTERVIEW:

1. What or who inspired you to start writing? 

S.A.: My mother. My family was extremely poor when i was a child. My mother was disabled and my father left us when i was five. We didn’t get a television until i was nine. To keep me occupied my mother would get me books from a thrift store, a library or a yard sale. Many times after I read these books i would sometimes complain about the ending. Finally one night she told me to if i had such a big problem with the way the story ended I should write my own. And i’ve been writing every since.

2. What elements are necessary components for this genre?

S.A.:  I have been called a rural noir writer. it’s a title i embrace wholeheartedly. In my mind a good rural noir story has to take place in a pastoral  setting. The main character must be a resident of this setting. There should be some acknowledgement of the class and racial struggles inherent to this setting. The protaganist  should be someone on the edges of the criminal underground but that criminality should never be glorified.  The nature of small town life should play a pivotal role in the narrative. There should be at least one showdown in an area that is decided by a combination of the combatants skill and their knowledge of the area. 

3. How did you come up with your idea for your novel?

S.A.: The inspiration for MY DARKEST PRAYER was two fold. I was fascinated by an unsolved murder in my small rural town. I also had a desire to write a private eye novel in a setting that I was intimately familiar with starring a protagonist not usually represented in crime fiction. A black man in the present day American South. I used these dual motivations to create a story that allowed me to create an interesting mystery set a world not often explored in crime fiction.

4. What expertise did you bring to your writing?

S.A.: Well the main character of MY DARKEST PRAYER is an assistant at a funeral home and I happen to work at a funeral home in real life. I used some of the behind the scenes knowledge I’ve gained working at a mortuary to imbue the story with a sense of realism. 

5. What would you want your readers to know about you that might not be in your bio?

S.A. I am huge fan of English drawing room mysteries. i also love playing chess but I am not very good at it.

6. As far as your writing goes, what are your future plans?

S.A. I have a few projects I am working on now. I am in the final stages of editing a heist novel set (suprise suprise) in rural Virginia. I am also finishing the rough draft of a revenge thriller about two fathers seeking justice for their murdered sons who were in a relationship and were killed in an apparent hate crime. Other than that I am appearing at Noir At the Bar readings in New York, Washington D.C. and North Carolina. I also be a panelist at several writing conferences this spring. 

7. If you could be one of the characters from this book, who would it be and why?

S.A. That’s a good question. I think I’d like to be Shade. He is a crime boss in MY DARKEST PRAYER… He is as cool as I would like to imagine I am in my own life. 

9. Do you belong to a critique group? If so how does this help or hinder your writing?

S.A.: I was in a critique group in college for about two weeks. Personally I didn’t find it beneficial but I can see how it would work for other folks. I do enjoy talking about the art of writing with my friends who are also authors over a nice libation. I find that helps my writing  more than a strict structured environment

10. When did you first decide to submit your work? Please tell us what or who encouraged you to take this big step?

S.A. :I finished writing MY DARKEST PRAYER in the spring of 2015. I had wanted to write a novle for a long time. My friend and fellow writer Todd Robinson had given me some great advice about how to make the novel work in conjunction with the motifs i was trying to express. Shorty after the book started making the rounds i got an agent. I thought i was on my way to being a best seller. Then nothing happened. After six months the agent and I parted ways amicably and I started trying to sell the book on my own. i thought the story was worthy of publication, as all writers do when it come to their work, but I also had a chip on my shoulder. The reasons the book was rejected again and again had nothing to do with the quality of the writing and more to do with the unusual space it occupied in a staid genre. I think the thing that kept me going after numerous “no”s was the idea that if i didn’t tell this story no one would. 

11. What is the best and worst advice you ever received? (regarding writing or publishing)

S.A. The best advice i ever got was that a hundred people may have a talent for writing but only five or six people will actually stick with it. Make sure you are one of the five or six. 

The worst advice i ever got was to print out my entire story to edit it. I have terrible handwriting so that was just an exercise in futility. 

12. Do you outline your books or just start writing? 

S.A. : I usually write a synopsis of the story i have in mind then i work off of the synopsis which is inherently flexible. 

13. How do you maintain your creativity? I actually watch a lot of movies. Not just crime but anything that has a certain darker sensibility. I also love looking at old black and white photos. Something about that visual stimuli gets my creative juices going. 

BLURB:

Whether it's working at his cousin's funeral home or tossing around the local riff raff at his favorite bar, Nathan Waymaker is a man who knows how to handle the bodies. A former Marine and Sheriff's deputy, Nathan has built a reputation in his small Southern town as a man who can help when all other avenues have been exhausted. When a local minister with grandiose ambitions is found dead, Nathan is approached by his parishioners who feel the local police are dragging their feet with the investigation. What starts out as an easy payday soon descends into a maze of mayhem filled with wannabe gangsters, vicious crime lords, porn stars, crooked police officers and a particularly treacherous preacher and his mysterious wife. Nathan must use all his varied skills and some of his wit to navigate the murky waters of small town corruption even as dark secrets of his own threaten to come to the surface.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

EXCERPT:

I handle the bodies.

That's what I say when people ask me what I do for a living. I find that gets one of two responses. They drift away to the other side of the room and give me a sideways glance the rest of the night or they let out a nervous laugh and move the conversation in another, less macabre direction. I could always say I work at a funeral home, but where's the fun in that?

Every once in a while when I was in the Corps, someone would see me at Starbucks that modern mecca Wal-Mart in my utility uniform. Sometimes they’d catch me in my dress blues after a military ball just trying to grab something before heading back to the base. They would  walk up to me and say, “Thank you for your service.” I'd mumble something like “No, thank you for your support” or some other pithy rejoinder, and they would wander away with a nice satisfied look on their faces. Sometimes what I wanted to say was, “I took care of the bodies. The bodies with the legs blown off or the hands shredded. The bodies full of ball bearings and nails and whatever some kid could find to build his IED. I loaded the bodies up and dragged them back to the base, then went back out on another patrol and prayed to a God that seemed to be only half-listening that today wasn't the day that someone would have to take care of my body.”

But I don't think that would have given them the same warm and fuzzy feeling.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

AUTHOR Bio and Links:

S.A. Cosby is a writer whose work has been published in numerous magazine and anthologies. His story "Slant-Six" received an honorable mention in Best Mystery Stories of 2016. His life experiences include being a retail manager, a bouncer, a forklift driver, a landscaper, a roadie, a construction worker, a mortuary attendant, and he once wore a cow suit when he worked for Chik Fil-A. He majored in English at Christopher Newport University and now lives in Gloucester, Virginia.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/blacklionking73/

Twitter: @blacklionking73

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1940758866/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_taft_p1_i0

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

GIVEAWAY INFORMATION and RAFFLECOPTER CODE:

S. A. Cosby will be awarding a $25 Amazon or Barnes and Noble GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.

http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/28e4345f2910