Meet my cast of characters from RETRIBUTION. This is how I pictured them when I was writing the book…
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.
RETRIBUTION releases in just 11 days, so, today I want to share with you five tropes in the book
The ANTAGONIST trope -in this book, the SERIAL KILLER is the antagonist. This person is the bane of the SPCD’s existence. I had such a good time writing the killer – their backstory, their road to what led them to kill.
The KINDNAPPED trope – 6 girls have been kidnapped in the Washington DC Area – one every 21 days for 6 months. This also leads to the RACE AGAINST THE CLOCK trope in order to save them.
The WOMAN IN PERIL trope. Not only the 6 girls, but the other two women in the story fall into this category as well. No spoilers here as to how, why, or even when, lol!
The ORPHAN trope – if I told you why this one is in the book you would know too much before you read it. So…read it!
The LOVE TRIANGLE trope. Again, this one will play itself out in the book, but if I told you about it now, it would spoil some of the discovery.
There are a few more I’ve added, such as the SCAR ( physical or emotion) trope, best friends, the protector trope, the red herring trope, and the hidden identity one as well.
It’ll be fun when you read the book to see if you can find any more!
You can order your copy from me, directly, here: RETRIBUTION
Today’s five are a few more things about RETRIBUTION that I hope enthrall you and make you want to read it. These are all little pieces of info about and concerning the book,
this was the first full-length book I’d ever written. I penned it 20 years ago, stuck it on a file on my desktop and then forgot about it. When VELLA became a thing I published it to that venue and had a great deal of positivity come back to me, so I decided to update it and publish it for real.
I was serial killer obsessed back in the day. I’m that girl NETFLIX documentaries about them was invented, (LOL) and still am, to this day.
there is no real-life team called the SPCD ( Sexual Predators of Children DIvision) at the FBI, but there should be. I know there are a few dedicated to child trafficking and plain ol’ serial killers, tho.
shouting a gun ambidextrously ( as Kella and Anna can) is more common than you’d think.
The psychology of studying the serial killer mind is relatively recent in history, starting in the past 1880’s. With the advancement of criminalists and forensics, it has become much easier to target a serial killer’s crimes, if not the actual killer.
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.
Well, it’s finally here. The very first Kindlevella book I’ve put into actual publishing print! DEATH BETWEEN THE PAGES is exclusively on Amazon and in KU, if you are a subscriber. The cost is #99cents in ecopy.
I wrote these stories many moons ago when I was obsessed with serial killers, murder, and death. That makes me sound cray-cray, but I came of range during the real Dahmer, Gacy, Bundy years and it’s practically all we ever watched on the nightly news.
These stories all involved death in some way, be it from cancer, murder, natural causes, or…something else.
Peggy Jaeger, Author 