Rogue's Angels Present: Westobou Gold by Hawk MacKinney

Please welcome Hawk MacKinney author of Westobou Gold

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

Westobou Gold

by Hawk MacKinney

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GENRE:  Mystery/Suspense

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INTERVIEW:

1. What or who inspired you to start writing?

At the age of 6 thru the early teens with my grandmother spinning wild yarns of magic worlds. In the evening after supper, the lightning bugs out over the smooth surface of a coal mine water pond, its mirrored reflections became other worlds far far away where galaxies and creatures were alive in our fancies.

2. What elements are necessary components for this genre?

The necessary component is the people-to-people interactions/relations be it thriller, sci-fi, or romance. A tale is only a skeletal framework without the characters coming alive.

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

Interests in histories ancient and otherwise across this blue-marble globe came pushing with archeological remains, contemporary abandoned dreams gone to ruin. Places that haunt with haints that call to be made living again. Grandma planted the seeds, and made sure libraries were a regular visit.

4. What expertise did you bring to your writing?

The feeding of an endless curiosity – it’s still voracious. No matter how many years ago my tales were spun and knitted, or how recently, there’s no end to the questions my curiosity stirs. Go Walt Disney!

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

How well my German shepherd has managed to train me.

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

Two manuscripts are in edit…one title is Book 3 in The Moccasin Hollow Mystery Series and the other is Volume III in the science fiction, The Cairns of Sainctuarie Series. Both series have serial characters, spanning generations of families.

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

Probably one of the bartenders in the sleazy bar, watching the comings and goings of lost dreams or wild successes or wilder distractions.

8. Can you give us a sneak peek into this book?

His life would have been a lot longer if Johnny Crockett had ever learned that just about anybody could do things the easy way. Blessed with brains, no-boundaries imagination, and little-to-no street sense, it made the shortcuts too easy. He never worked for things he liked, ‘specially if it meant he had to sweat. Johnny was made for trouble. Johnny was greedy. The more money he had, the bigger a man it made him.

He slowed the old pickup to a stop at the edge of the canebrake clearing. Sea-blue shifty-mean eyes cut sharp and cunning as he checked for any uninvited snooping eyes. He brushed the sandy brown lock of hair back from a rugged face that had been called handsome. It was a damning gift, one he bent to his advantage anytime he wanted someone else to cover his backside.

The slippery red-clay ruts mired in a once-upon-a-time gravel road curved up toward the house. The extended eaves of the porches of the great age-worn house that was Redcliffe shadowed its tall windows. Gaunt un-curtained windows gaped like empty eye sockets in a sun-bleached skull. Johnny couldn’t keep his bone-deep trepidations at bay. The old lady had been dead for a number of years, but her cantankerous overseer was very much alive. Crockett half expected the wrinkled, toothless old man to burst out one of the doors, carrying the same long-barrel shotgun as last time. The man had threatened to gut-shoot him if Johnny trespassed again. Johnny hadn’t forgotten. He kept Redcliffe and the peeling stucco hunting lodge located behind it at a distance.

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

No. Editing and rewrites are personal. It’s a process that can be destructive and constructive within writers. One must be brutally, unemotionally honest with the figure in the mirror to the point of becoming a deliberate schizophrenic. In a manuscript if something isn’t flowing or coming together, something is wrong. Do something! It’s an inherent knack within the writer—trust your feelings and their emotional connects. Critique groups can’t do that…superficial distractions completely muddle the process. I won’t edit someone else’s work. The emotional ties underpinning characters with a writer aren’t there.

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

Both. Sketches and scenes are filled out daily – unless I’m editing a manuscript. That is a commitment made to the publishing/marketing/editing team that I trust. Outline – yes – but it’s fluid. Like the first and last chapters written from the gitgo…the outline must be malleable. It’s more than an expanded index…included are hidden codes that tell me who did what, when, how & where.

11. How do you maintain your creativity?

I don’t know how to answer that. It’s like being asked what I do when writer’s block strikes. I can define it…sort of. I’ve never experienced it. If I were to bypass Methuselah in birthdays, I’d still not be able to get all the stories that tumble endlessly behind my eyes fleshed out.

12. Who is your favorite character in the book? Can you tell us why?

Lt. MacGerald’s [one of protagonist Craige Ingram’s SEAL buds] guard dog secretary…she’s one street-smart matronly lady; considerate and courteous when possible, voraciously loyal in protecting the boss. She’s honest; has the hots for Craige; they flirt endless – BUT nothing beyond that. Both MacGerald and Ingram trust her implicitly. I thoroughly enjoy the women in my tales. They’re one reason for serial characters…there’s NO intention of letting them get away.

BLURB:

The Indian Queen would risk torture and worse to keep her secrets from these barbarians in suits of metal and their search for cities of gold. They never found the gold. Empires rose; empires fell, the centuries passed. Legend became fireside myths, but no treasure was ever found. Yet, among the grey-green drapes of wisteria and wild jasmine along the misty shrouded lowlands of bayous and marshes of the Westo River, the folktales persisted.

In the lazed creep of a near-tropical dawnlit the pungent Turkish coffee permeated Moccasin Hollow. Beyond the kitchen door Lucky, Craige Ingram’s German shepherd gnawed a favorite bone. Looted burial mounds seemed a world away until plundered mounds on Moccasin Hollow land brings amateur archeologist PI Craige Ingram into the crosshairs of kidnapping. Stealthy hideaways are concealed in old colonial brick-lined river grottos beneath the big house of Ardochy plantation. Sex-tape underage blackmail and thrill killings on federal land spur a medical examiner’s preliminary postmortem to more than a hired cleaner’s quickie cover-up passed off as drug deals gone sour. Greed tangles a witch’s pigswill of illicit affairs and murder-to-hide-murder. Shady investigators and shadier politics stir an unexpected concoction that threatens the lives of those at Moccasin Hollow in a spiteful plot against ex-SEAL Craige Ingram and the woman he loves.

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EXCERPT:

His life would have been a lot longer if Johnny Crockett had ever learned that just about anybody could do things the easy way. Blessed with brains, no-boundaries imagination, and little-to-no street sense, it made the shortcuts too easy. He never worked for things he liked, ‘specially if it meant he had to sweat. Johnny was made for trouble. Johnny was greedy. The more money he had, the bigger a man it made him.

He slowed the old pickup to a stop at the edge of the canebrake clearing. Sea-blue shifty-mean eyes cut sharp and cunning as he checked for any uninvited snooping eyes. He brushed the sandy brown lock of hair back from a rugged face that had been called handsome. It was a damning gift, one he bent to his advantage anytime he wanted someone else to cover his backside.

The slippery red-clay ruts mired in a once-upon-a-time gravel road curved up toward the house. The extended eaves of the porches of the great age-worn house that was Redcliffe shadowed its tall windows. Gaunt un-curtained windows gaped like empty eye sockets in a sun-bleached skull. Johnny couldn’t keep his bone-deep trepidations at bay. The old lady had been dead for a number of years, but her cantankerous overseer was very much alive. Crockett half expected the wrinkled, toothless old man to burst out one of the doors, carrying the same long-barrel shotgun as last time. The man had threatened to gut-shoot him if Johnny trespassed again. Johnny hadn’t forgotten. He kept Redcliffe and the peeling stucco hunting lodge located behind it at a distance.

           

The hunting lodge was the first Redcliffe built nearly a hundred years ago. Eventually the mixed-up facts of the new Redcliffe and the old yard became known to the locals as Ardochy, named after a long forgotten Scottish grandmother whose maiden name was McArdy.

Folks there’bouts still talked about the McArdy family. “Whole McArdy clan was tetched in the head. Comes from bedding down with too many cousins. Kids’re funny looking, pinch-nosed and squat necked with wrinkly, whitish, chicken-skin bodies.”

           

Folks talked. “Was a god-sent blessin’ most’a them died ‘fore they hardly could walk.” Chugged a big swaller of a cold beer, “Never could’a growed into nuthin’ what could take care of itself.”

During afternoon teas church ladies abuzz amid dainty sips of Methodist cough medicine or homebrew brandy, their talk had nothing to do with facts. They just liked to ogle while they tittle-tattled.

Johnny didn't trust barely nobody, and except for a few, most didn’t trust Johnny Crockett. He should've stuck to what he knew best—bein’ lazy and sneaking beers from the cases on the delivery truck making its daily runs to local joints, including Mother’s Bar.

   

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AUTHOR Bio and Links:

Internationally acclaimed author and public speaker, Hawk MacKinney began writing mysteries for his school newspapers. He served in the US Navy Reserve for over 20 years, and was a tenured faculty member at several state medical facilities, teaching postgraduate courses in both the United States and Jerusalem, Israel. Since retiring Hawk has authored several novels that have received national and international recognition. Moccasin Trace, a historical novel, was nominated for the prestigious Michael Shaara Award for Excellence in Civil War Fiction and the Writers Notes Book Award. The Cairns of Sainctuarie, his science fiction series, includes The Bleikovat Event and The Missing Planets, with a third book in the works. Hawk’s latest project focuses on The Moccasin Hollow Mystery Series. Book 1 in the series, Hidden Chamber of Death, was released early 2016.

http://www.hawkmackinney.net/

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100011826991252

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/698008.Hawk_MacKinney

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GIVEAWAY INFORMATION and RAFFLECOPTER CODE

Hawk MacKinney 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/28e4345f2065