LUCKY CATCH by DEBORAH COONTS

Literary Nymphs Interview

Title: LUCKY CATCH

Author: DEBORAH COONTS

Publisher:  COOL GUS PUBLISHING

Genre: HUMOROUS ROMANTIC MYSTERY

Release Date: AUGUST 26, 2014

Do you write in more than one genre?

Funny you should ask.  LUCKY CATCH, the upcoming release, is the fifth in the Lucky O’Toole Vegas Adventure Series.  This series is a first-person romantic mystery series with a bit of wry snark and sarcasm, tempered with a lot of heart.  And, while I love this series and am still having fun writing it, after five novels and four novellas, I felt I’d like to stretch a few more writing muscles.  So, I have embarked on a new series, this time women’s fiction with a strong romance and told in the third person from the point of view of both the female and male protagonists.  It’s been great fun!  Set in Napa with wine at its core, the first book in the series is titled CRUSHED.  Look for it soon.

What if any, is the hardest part of writing for you?

Writing is both a blessing and a curse.  There are two difficult parts for me:  The beginning is one.  The words come slowly and there are so many choices to be made.  Once the story is up and running and the choices narrowed to the point the story stretches in front of me like a long, lonesome highway, the second difficult part comes.  At this juncture, the words, the characters…the story…won’t leave me alone.  Often it gets me out of bed, out of he shower to jot a note, up from dinner with friends to madly tap a ‘note to self’ into my phone.  Fully formed characters can be bigger pests than a well-meaning mother.

What inspired the story?

Two things actually inspired the story.  First, if you’ve been to Vegas then you know that growing anything there is about as difficult as farming the surface of the moon, yet gourmet restaurants have sprouted like weeds on every corner, in every hotel lobby.  I became interested in how all those fancy foodstuffs made their trek from farm to table.  So, I started looking into it and became totally intrigued.  Then I was at dinner with some friends, one of whom is a chef, and I was making him miserable asking questions.  One of the questions involved some mozzarella we were eating.  It had a wonderful smoky flavor and I wondered aloud how that was possible.  My friend the chef announced, “Why with a smoking gun, of course.”  And I was off.  I mean, really, who could resist killing someone with a smoking gun?

EXCERPT:

Trouble always comes in threes.  At least that’s what Lucky O’Toole, the VP of Customer Relations for Las Vegas’ primo Strip casino/hotel, the Babylon, has heard for years from her mother.  So, tonight when Teddie, her former lover shows up at her office unannounced and very unexpected, her father offers Teddie a job at the Babylon, she is called to deal with a pig in residence at one of the hotels most exclusive and opulent suites, and Lucky’s current lover, Jean-Charles Bouclet stops answering his phone leaving Lucky to handle his five-year-old son, Lucky figures she has tonight’s compliment of chaos covered.

As usual, she is a tad optimistic.

With a cadre of celebrity chefs with the maturity of teenagers in Vegas for a televised cook-off, a prized Alba truffle in the Babylon’s care, and her mother’s pregnancy racing toward the inevitable, what could go wrong?

When the truffle is stolen from the walk-in in Jean-Charles’ gourmet burger joint at the Babylon and a young chef apparently killed with a smoking gun is found in Jean-Charles’ food truck on the back lot, trouble takes a sinister turn. 

And Jean-Charles still isn’t answering his phone.

Another body is discovered.  This one stuffed in an oven at Jean-Charles’ eponymous restaurant and set to broil. 

Desperate to put a lid on the body count and more than frantic over her AWOL lover, Lucky uses her Vegas contacts to search in places and in ways the police wouldn’t or couldn’t.  Teddie insists on riding shotgun.  Lucky hasn’t the time nor the resolve to say no.  She’s never been able to resist Teddie … not really.  With danger dogging their heels, Lucky finds herself falling once again under his spell as they traverse Vegas, being drawn deeper and deeper into the highly competitive world of high-end eateries and the battle for the very rare, most highly prized gourmet foodstuffs.

Would somebody really kill for a truffle?

In a heartbeat.

And when Lucky’s path crosses the killer’s… will her goose be cooked? 

Watch the trailer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJsrREAHLho&feature=youtu.be

What are some of your other favorite activities?

Other activities?

When I had a life and was unchained from the computer, I used to enjoy flying airplanes, driving fast cars, reading, travelling, finding hidden restaurant gems, imbibing fine wine and hanging with my son and daughter in law and my guy.  The last two things I still find time to do occasionally…..

Author Bio:

I am proof positive that sex sells…and persistence pays off. After fifteen years learning the craft of writing, I am now officially, an overnight success. And it’s been a long road to get here…

My mother tells me I was born in Texas a very long time ago, but I’m not so sure—my mother can’t be trusted. These things I do know: I was raised in Texas on barbeque, Mexican food and beer. I’ve lived in every time zone in the U.S.; the most memorable stint being the time spent in Las Vegas, where I currently reside and where family and friends tell me I can't get into too much trouble...silly people.

The only constant in my life (besides my family, who deserves hazardous duty pay for sticking with me) has been change (my mother is still waiting for me to grow up). Silly woman.

But all of this career ADD made me incredibly unemployable. Hence the whole writing thing.

Actually, I’ve known from a young age that somehow stories would be a large part of my life, but my path to telling lies for a living (okay, not lies per se, but variations of the truth, for sure) has been circuitous. If someone had just told me when I was a kid that I could actually be paid to daydream for a living, life would have been soooo much easier. But they didn’t. And I never saw a ‘daydreaming’ booth at all those Career Days I attended.

So, initially discouraged when unable to locate anyone willing to pay me to read books, go to the movies, or attend the theatre, and in need of providing for the best child in the world, my son Tyler, I spent years being someone else—an accountant (blech), a business owner (pretty fun), a lawyer (loved law school, hated practicing law), a pilot (giddy and terrifying at the same time). But through it all, I wrote. Along the way I wrote the world’s worst novel, a slightly more well-crafted but equally as poorly plotted novel, several non-fiction feature articles (my first sales!), multiple humor columns for a national magazine (more sales!), and, finally, the novel that sold, Wanna Get Lucky?, the first in a series to be published by Forge Books. The series is a Sex and the City meets Elmore Leonard in Vegas kind of thing, if you can imagine that. Okay, have several glasses of wine, then think about it…makes imagining easier. Anyway, the books are sexy, wry, romantic, and slightly naughty mixed with a little murder and mayhem—shaken, not stirred—then illuminated by the bright lights of Las Vegas—one of the truly magical cities in the world.

Many of my friends have asked me how in the world I came up with the Lucky series. The way they asked led me to believe they thought mind-altering substances might have been involved even though they knew the worst I do is a glass of fine Pinot-Noir. The answer to their question is actually very simple: let your fifteen-year-old male child pick where you live, follow his dream to Vegas, then keep your eyes open.

Hey, it worked for me!

Where can we find your website?

  http://deborahcoonts.com/ 

Giveaway

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 Lucky Catch