End of the Road by LS Hawker

on Tour January 30th - February 28, 2017

Synopsis:

Great minds can change the world

or leave it in ruins . . .

When tech prodigy Jade Veverka creates a program to communicate with her autistic sister, she’s tapped by a startup to explore the potential applications of her technology. But Jade quickly begins to notice some strange things about the small Kansas town just beyond the company’s campus—why are there no children anywhere to be seen, and for that matter, anyone over the age of forty? Why do all of the people living here act uncomfortable and jumpy?
On the way home one night, Jade and her co-worker are run off the road, and their lab and living spaces are suddenly overrun with armed guards, purportedly for their safety. Confined to the compound and questioning what her employers might be hiding from her, Jade fears she’s losing control not only of her invention, but of her very life. It soon becomes clear that the threat reaches far beyond Jade and her family, and the real danger is much closer than she’d ever imagined.

Book Details:

Genre: Thriller
Published by: Witness Impulse
Publication Date: January 31st 2017
Number of Pages: 384
ISBN: 006243523X (ISBN13: 9780062435231)
Purchase Links: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads

Interview:

When did you decide to become a writer?
I was eight years old, and I wrote a story about a pet snake named Horace P. Sweet. Then I wrote my first novel at 14. It was awful, but I was hooked for good.

What are your ambitions for your writing career?
Literary world domination, of course. Actually, I've already had more success than I ever dreamed possible, which makes me want to help other writers realize their dreams.
I also want to keep writing, publishing, speaking, and volunteering with writers' organizations until I drop dead. Then I want a Viking funeral, or to be buried in the front seat of the first car I ever owned—a beater 1965 Mercedes Benz 220SE.

Give us an insight into your main character. What does he/she do that is so special?
Jade is a Kansas farm girl, a six-foot-tall all-state football punter/kicker, and a computer science prodigy. She designed a computer program to communicate with her severely autistic sister, Clementine, through music. A PhD candidate, she's been tapped by a mysterious, well-funded startup to further develop her program.

Do you have a special time to write or how is your day structured?
I'm both a night-owl and a morning person, and I'm a binge writer, so I write whenever I have the time. I still have a kid at home, so that can be at any hour of the day.

Where do the ideas come from?
I listen to a lot of true-story podcasts and radio shows, and I ask people a lot of questions, coax them to tell me their stories. The idea for my debut novel came from an acquaintance's story I heard eleven years before I began to write it. I put together her story with one I heard on the radio, and THE DROWNING GAME was born. I also use a lot of material from my own life—I've been blessed with incredibly bizarre and harrowing experiences.

Do you work to an outline or plot or do you prefer just see where an idea takes you?
I do both. I typically have an idea for plot and character and sketch it out, then I start writing. For good or ill, my characters have minds of their own, and I often have to follow them around for long stretches before they'll settle down and get to work. Many scenes I write never make it to the final cut, and rarely do I know how a book is going to turn out when I begin.

Any tips on how to get through the dreaded writer’s block?
This is where true discipline comes in, and it helps to have a deadline. Gone for me are the days when I could write when I "felt like it." It's work, and I have to force myself to sit down and do it. I find that when I'm blocked and my inner brat is rebelling, I write scenes out of order. My brat doesn't want to do the hard stuff—she just wants to have fun, so I try to accommodate her as much as possible so I won't have to deal with an all-out mutiny.

What can we expect from you down the line?
I'm rewriting an old manuscript right now, one that includes a secondary character from THE DROWNING GAME as a young man in the 1980s. If this doesn't work out, I've got plenty more ideas in the hopper. I'm like that party guest who hangs around the drink table and is the last to leave—I'm sticking around until they ask me to go home.

Read an excerpt:

September 7

Jade Veverka unwrapped the frozen bomb pop she'd bought from the gas station on the corner of Main and 3rd and took a bite. She sat gazing at the pile of magazines on the barbershop coffee table while a rhythmic alarm-clock buzz went off in her head. Not an urgent warning, just buzz buzz buzz.
Her friend and coworker Elias Palomo sat in the barber chair, getting his customary fade crew cut, the same one he'd presumably sported since his plebe days at the Naval Academy. So the background to her mental alarm clock was an actual buzzing from the electric razor punctuated now by a sharp yip of pain from Elias.
"Sorry about that," the barber said.
Elias rubbed his ear, and Jade attempted to keep her face neutral, looking at his scowl in the mirror.
Buzz buzz buzz.
She leaned forward and fanned the magazines—Popular Mechanics, Sports Illustrated, ESPN—all this month's issues. Jade took another bite of bomb pop and grinned.
"What are you smiling at?" Elias grumbled, rubbing his nicked ear.
"I don't know how to tell you this," Jade said, "but you are not the center of my universe. I do occasionally react to things outside of you. I know it comes as a shock."
"Shut up," he said, his dark eyes flashing.
Jade stared now in fascination as the razor tracked upwards on Elias's skull, his glossy black hair—or what was left of it—uneven, his scalp an angry pink. This guy was the worst hair dresser Jade had ever seen. And the least talkative. In her experience, growing up in rural Ephesus, Kansas, barbers had always fit the stereotype—gregarious and gossipy.
Elias was the shop's lone customer, and only a few folks walked by outside the window, through which Jade could see the hardware store and the occasional slow passing car.
Buzz buzz buzz.
It struck Jade now that this was less a barbershop than what amounted to a barbershop museum, complete with an actor playing the part of the barber. She wanted to point this out to Elias, but it would mean nothing to him. He'd grown up in Reno, Nevada, a vast metropolis compared to Jade's 1200-population hometown an hour southeast of this one, which was called Miranda, Kansas.
Not only was this man not a barber, he wasn't a Kansan either, Jade would have bet money.
"Hey," she said to him. "What's your name?"
The man went on butchering as if she hadn't spoken. Elias's eyes met Jade's in the mirror, and his dark thick brows met on either side of a vertical crease, his WTF? wrinkle. He leaned his head away from the razor, finally making the barber pay attention.
"The lady asked you a question," Elias said.
Jade had to hold in a guffaw. This never failed to tickle her, him referring to her as a lady. No one other than him had ever done that before. Plus she loved the authoritative rumble of his voice, a trait he'd probably developed at Annapolis.
The barber froze, his eyes locked with Elias's. Weird.
"Need a prompt?" Elias said. "Your name."
The man cleared his throat.
"Is it classified?"
Jade did guffaw this time, and she watched the barber's jaw muscles compress as she clapped a hand over her mouth.
"My name's Richard."
"Hello, Richard, I'm Elias. This is Jade. We work out at SiPraTech."
Jade could see from Richard's face he knew very well where they worked. He nodded and got back to destroying the remains of Elias's hair.
"Whereabouts you from, Richard?" Jade said.
He pulled the razor away from Elias's head and blinked at her.
What in the world was this guy's problem?
Buzz buzz buzz.
Elias emitted a loud sigh, clearly exasperated by the guy's reticence, and waved a hand as if to say, "Carry on, barber-not-barber."
Jade laughed again.
"Here," Richard mumbled. "I'm from here."
Like hell. What was he, in the witness protection program or something?
And then it hit her. The magazines, every last one of them, was a current issue. In a barbershop. The place where back issues of magazines go to die.
She'd worked for SiPraTech just over three months now, and Miranda, the closest town, had always given her an itch. Something about it was slightly off, but she couldn't say what. She'd brought it up to her team members—Elias, Berko Deloatch, and Olivia Harman, and each of them had looked at her like she was schitzy. They all came from big cities, so Miranda struck them as weird in general.
Buzz buzz buzz buzz buzz buzz.
As if drawn by static electricity, her eyes tracked to the window where a man in mirrored shades peered into the barbershop. The man had a dark mustache and wore a blue baseball cap pulled low over the sunglasses.
What was he staring at? She glanced behind her, but there was nothing to see but a white wall. When she turned back, the man mouthed something at her, his exaggerated soundless enunciation wringing a sharp intake of breath from her.
"What?" Elias said in response to her gasp.
Was it her imagination, or did this man she'd never seen before say her name?
Jade Veverka.
She looked at Elias, and said, "There's a man out there—"

Author Bio:

LS HAWKER grew up in suburban Denver, indulging her worrisome obsession with true-crime books, and writing stories about anthropomorphic fruit and juvenile delinquents. She wrote her first novel at 14.
Armed with a B.S. in journalism from the University of Kansas, she had a radio show called "People Are So Stupid," edited a trade magazine and worked as a traveling Kmart portrait photographer, but never lost her passion for fiction writing.
She's got a hilarious, supportive husband, two brilliant daughters, and a massive music collection. She lives in Colorado but considers Kansas her spiritual homeland. She is the author of The Drowning Game, a USA Today Bestseller, and Body and Bone.

Visit Ms. Hawker's Website, her Twitter Feed, & her Facebook Page.

 

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