Release, or launch days, never get old. That is the absolute truth I’ve experienced as a published author, and today is another one of those fabulous day.
RETRIBUTION holds a very special place in my heart since it was the first complete, full-length adult book I ever wrote. It sat on my desk top for thirty years until I finally decided it was time…
The early pre-launch reviews have been heart-stopping for me – the best reviews of anything I’ve ever written. I am humbled and a little awestruck by that, to be truthful.
If you’d like to read it, if you haven’t preordered it yet to show up on your Kindle today, there are a few ways to do so. You can either get a print, autographed copy from me, here: PRINT or you can order a Kindle copy on Amazon, here: Kindle. The book will also be in KU for a while.
Other ways you can show your support if you like the book is to add it to your Goodreads want to read list, write a book review, and recommend the book to your family and friends. Word of mouth is a great way for an author to garner new readers.
Thank you – and now, I get to celebrate another book launch- hopefully, a successful one!
Book launches either sneak up on me or they drag out forever, just waiting for release day.
With Retribution, it felt like it was going to take forever, and now, tomorrow is book release day and I can’t believe i haven’t done more to promote the launch.
Some day, I will have a PR team to help with all this.
Some day, I will have the time to do an effective launch, one that truly sells more than 5 or ten books.
Some day, the 1000 book preorder goal I keep setting myself up for ( and failing, horribly!! lol) will actually manifest.
Doesn’t look like tomorrow is any of those above days, but it is release day, and that just never gets old in my book!
Today, I’m going to share 5 reasons I think you will love my newest release, RETRIBUTION. (I’m not too conceited, lol)
Two kick-ass heroines. Kella O’Brien Calloway and FBI Agent Anna Langdon are two very dissimilar women, but they both are strong, smart, and articulate. And both shoot ambidextrously. ( A fact you need to know when you read the book!)
A really good backstory about the serial killer. No spoilers here, but there’s a lot of depth to the killer’s character arc.
Two Swoon-worthy heroes – Sean Calloway and Ticker Petrie. Two men who couldn’t be more unalike, but they both love Kella in their own way and would die for her.
A fast-paced story ala Criminal Minds. The SPCD ( Sexual Predators of Children) Division of the FBI are a group of dedicated G-men who fight for kids every day of their lives.
It’s like nothing else I’ve ever written. If you aren’t a fan of romance ( shame on you!) but like gritty, psychological crime dramas, this book has your name on it!
YOu can preorder an autographed print copy from me, here PRINT
Today’s little sumthin’ sumthin’ comes from RETRIBUTION, which is releasing on 4.23.24 YOu can order is on Amazon or from me, directly at the above link. You’ll get your print copy autographed that way, hee hee.
After Kella is outed by the Assistant FBI Director to the press, the team worries she’s now compromised and will leave. This scene is the aftermath of that.
Kella was disconnecting a cell phone call when they came into the room.
Frowning, she looked up at Tucker from her chair.
“Don’t tell me, I already know,” he said, putting up a restraining hand. “Sean’s furious and wants me dead. You can tell him I feel pretty much the same way.”
Kella leaned forward, grabbed his hand, and said, “Yes, he’s furious, but no, he didn’t say anything about killing you.”
“That’s because he’s smart and doesn’t want you tagged as an accessory.”
Good humor restored, she grinned and squeezed Tucker’s hand. Hard. “You’re an idiot, but I love you anyway. The one saving grace, in Sean’s opinion, is that the Assistant Director didn’t give the media my name.”
“That’s a very small comfort, Kel, because those people are human bloodhounds. Especially people like Donovan Rule who make their living off people’s secrets. My guess is that by the end of today, one of the major networks will find out who you are and broadcast it all over the airwaves, official confirmation or not.”
“He’s right, you know,” Anna said, pouring two mugs of coffee. She handed one to Tucker and kept the other for herself.
Kella watched as he absentmindedly took a sip of the brew, closed his eyes, and sighed.
“I figured you needed that,” Anna said. “That press conference was anything but pleasant.”
“I don’t know what I’d do without you,” Tucker told her. Kella knew that he never noticed the hint of a pleased blush that spread across the younger woman’s cheeks. “Well, so much for keeping you out of the limelight.”
“It couldn’t be helped, Tuck. Myrna Rowlands is big news,” Kella said.
He nodded, sipping his coffee. “I’m sorry. I did my best.”
She squeezed his hand again and said, “I know.”
“Does your husband want you to come home?” Anna asked, sitting down across from her.
“If you can believe it, no.”
“I’m safe for another few days, then?” Tucker asked, his face and expression deadpan as always.
“Actually, no,” she told him. “He’s flying up as soon as he makes sure everything’s okay at home and at the restaurant.”
Tucker took a moment to register her words. “Is he going to stay?”
“That’s the plan. He says he knows I want to see this through to the endbut he says there’s no way I’m staying here without him. He thinks the same way you do, that the media hounds will find out who I am. He wants to be there if they do and keep me protected.”
Anna couldn’t help herself. She sighed, loudly, and dropped her chin into her fist on the table. “He really loves you.”
Tucker turned to her.
Kella’s smile was wide and open. “Yeah, he does. So it looks like you’re going to have to find us a hotel. Both of us can’t stay with Anna. And the FBI’s paying,” she added, a stern warning look in her eyes. “That is if you think you still need me. I’d like nothing better than to go home and let you and the Posse finish this up.”
“No. You’re staying,” Tucker said. “Not another word.”
So, I’ve been hinting ( or hitting you over the head, you decide which, lol!) with notices about my upcoming 4.23.2024 release of RETRIBUTION. Today, I decided to do a little background story about how this project came to be.
If you’ve read anything by me before you should know this book is a huge departure from the lighthearted, small-town, romance books I usually write.
And you may be upset by that. I get it. This book is so not a lighthearted rom-com.
But before I ever wrote a word in the romance genre, I wrote short stories and books about death, dying, and serial killers.
I’m the girl Netflix invented the serial killer binge-watch for, lol.
Serial killers, and people who murder in general, have always fascinated me ever since I was in nursing school. I attended Hunter College, Bellevue School of Nursing and one of the years I was a student, a group of foreign nationals held a failed terror attack on New York. Several of the injured would-be-terrorists were treated in Bellevue’s ER and then sent to the prison wing of the psych lockdown unit. Having narrowly missed becoming a statistic, I found myself fascinated about what would compel someone to kill like this. The pseudo-vigilante group, the Guardian Angels, took up residence outside my dorms during this time as a protection blanket for the students.
In my junior year of nursing school, Mark David Chapman shot and killed John Lennon. That day will live in my mind forever as the day I decided that psychiatric nursing was calling my name. Unfortunately, I already had a job in a medical/surgical unit waiting for me when I graduated. But while working, I learned everything I could about the criminal mind, and centered on killers and serial killers, what made them tick, why they needed to kill, and how their minds worked.
I know: Not exactly the kind of thing you’d expect from someone who writes Happily Ever Afters.
RETRIBUTION was written almost 20 years ago on my very first home computer. At the time, I wrote it simply for me, and it was called VINDICATION. Once done, I left it in a file on my desktop and never thought about it again while I continued writing more grisly short stories. Many of them were published in short story magazines of the day and last year I compiled a collection of them in the book Death Between the Pages the same time, Kindle Vella was launched and I thought, why not put up the first real book I’d ever written?
So I did.
The response was wild. Good reviews- and some really nasty ones – later, I decided to update the story and publish it to print.
I won’t be abandoning my sweet-to-sexy romance stories any time soon, so don’t worry. But I really needed to get this one out into the reading world, so…
When I have preorder or order links, I’ll post. For now, here’s the cover and blurb:
6 teenage girls have been kidnapped, brutalized, and murdered in the Washington DC area and the FBI’s SPCD Unit – the Sexual Predators of Children Profilers – are nowhere close to finding the monster responsible. How are the victims chosen? How does the killer find them, contact them, lure them into his sick web? Questions the team has no answers for.
When a high-ranking US Senator’s daughter is the next victim, SPCD team leader, Tucker Petrie, is forced to call upon retired profiler — and his last partner — Kella O’Brien for help. Kella’s been out of the game for 10 years, but her expertise and insights into a serial killer’s mind are unparalleled. If anyone can discover who this madman is, it’s Kella.
But as the team rushes to prevent another young girl’s death, clues the killer leaves behind have Kella wondering if his endgame is all about…her.
Peggy Jaeger, Author 