Author Alicia Dean

Please help me welcome Robb T. White with an interesting and amusing interview, plus a collection of stories that sound right up my alley!

Please tell us a little about yourself, where are you from? Where do you live now? Family? Pets?

I’m in my late sixties, look every day of it, and live five houses down from where I grew up along with my wife Judy. We’re celebrating our 48^th anniversary in September. We’d eloped and were married in Monroe, MI when she was still a teenager. We share a big, creaky house overlooking Lake Erie in Northeastern Ohio. We have grandkids in town and Austin, TX.  A pair of cats, Sid Vicious and Athena, manage the house and keep the staff busy.

Was there anything unusual, any anecdote about Dangerous Women:  Stories of Crime, Mystery, and Mayhem the characters, title, process, you’d like to share?

We live in a time of irksome political correctness with accusations of “cultural appropriation” and other such nonsense. I admit that, the first time I attempted to write a story—a novel, actually—from the viewpoint of a female, I hesitated. I was fresh out of an academic environment where, at my university, feminists are outraged at everything male or masculine. This is an era before the MeToo movement, so I suspect it’s much worse there nowadays.  But I’ve always believed in equality between men and women, I was raised along with five sisters, and I never bought into notions of masculine superiority. I’m not immune to all prejudice, of course, but my female characters in this collection were a natural offshoot of my two female protagonists, one of whom I’ve continued. Please don’t assume I’m starry-eyed about women. As I said, I was raised with five girls so I know women can be as vicious as men.

What do you dislike that most people wouldn’t understand?

I dislike the modern tendency to blurt out everything inside. It’s ironic because I write to discover that very thing in my characters—but it has to be controlled in fiction even more than in life. People don’t just wear their hearts on their sleeves; they advertise their whining and puling unhappiness all over social media. It’s downright sickening. Say what you will about the old-fashioned “strong but silent” stereotype of Hollywood westerns of my youth, but I wish to god more men and women would adopt this trait in public.

What’s your favorite book of all time and why? What’s your favorite childhood book?

I didn’t read as a child. I remember hiding away in bathroom closet upstairs as a boy around age 13 perusing encyclopedias. My favorite book, narrowly eclipsing Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude,  is Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, which I’d read around age 15.  I read the Constance Garnett translation with all those ludicrous “By Jove!” Victorian exclamations. I’ve read better translations in the years afterward, but the book never fails to enthrall—Raskolnikov, his buddy Razumikhin, the cop Porfiry, and that delectable villain Svidrigaelov are imprinted into my neocortex.

Would you rather have a bad review or no review?

Bad reviews are better because no writer writes to be ignored.  I’ve had many bad reviews and some harsh criticism on both Amazon and Goodreads over the years. Most recently, a reviewer of my latest, Perfect Killer, in Manhattan Review hated the novel, everything in it, found my main character—a woman, no less—“unfriendly” and standoffish. She seemed to be asking herself all the way through why she chose to review when she clearly despised violent, dark crime fiction like mine. Puzzling yet amusing. I enjoyed her discomfiture, to me shame.

What is your favorite quote?

Without apology because he’s right: “Words build bridges into unexplored regions” by Adolph Hitler.

What do you want your tombstone to say?

Full name, birth and death dates. (I’ll haunt my family if anyone adds a sappy inscription.)

Are your characters based off real people or did they all come entirely from your imagination?

A good question, a hard one to answer.  I want to say my “imagination” creates all of them but I’m no Shakespeare. I know some must come from my childhood experiences, where most of the hurt resides in us. It’s a handy pool to dip into for creating people who don’t exist.

What do your friends and family think of your writing?

My wife doesn’t read me (Thank you, Jesus), my three kids get my books but have never said a word about them to me, and when I send my older daughter in Texas copies, I write instructions inside that my two grandkids are not to be allowed near them. My older sister is my unofficial and unpaid literary agent, who promotes me to her friends and our relatives via Facebook. I’m not your PG-13 kind of mystery fiction writer.

Is there a message in your short stories that you want readers to grasp? 

God forbid, no.

Who is your favorite author and what is it that really strikes you about their work? 

Martin Cruz Smith, hands down. Thomas Harris possesses a knife-like wit, David Lindsey is the best descriptive writer I’ve ever read, but MCS puts everything together in a beautiful package for the reader: plot, characters, scenic detail.  Arkady Renko, his Moscow detective, is the most “human” human being I know.

Your favorite Movie

Body Heat (1981) with William Hurt and Kathleen Turner—a gem of a noir film. I’m embarrassed to say how many times I’ve watched it. I could shut the sound off and recite the dialogue verbatim. Ned Racine (Hurt’s character) is the quintessential man overwhelmed by a woman.

GIVEAWAY: Check Amazon’s Giveaway to win one of 5 copies of Dangerous Women.

Thank you, Robb. I enjoyed your interview immensely. Love the “God forbid, no.” – That’s pretty much my response to the question. I write for entertainment. 🙂

Blurb:

Violence, they often say, is a male prerogative. But someone forgot to tell women like “Baby” Frontanetta in the first story of the collection, or Francie, for whom robbing an armored car isn’t that big a deal, if only her lover will “man up” to assist her. Even parricide isn’t beyond the pale for her. There are the twins Bella and Donna, aptly named, as the narrator of “The Birthmark” will discover. There’s semi-literate Bobbie from West Virginia, a gorgeous lap dancer in a sleazy club in Cleveland, who knows what price men will put on owning beauty like hers. Come meet them all—the hustlers, con artists, thieves, and all-around trouble-makers; you’ll see what the women in these pages are capable of—but beware: they are not your mother’s “ladies.”

Excerpt:

Be careful what you wish for, Regina.

Her mother’s words. Sometimes she could hear her mother’s voice in the house.

The Vindicator piece on Bodycomb’s death was two paragraphs.

He was found floating in Lake Milton, a popular summer resort area for fisherman seventeen miles east of Austintown just off the Interstate 80 overpass. Shot by a small-caliber weapon in the back of the head. The important information was in the second paragraph: Bodycomb, it noted, was running a dog-fighting network among three states: Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia for a loose-knit West Virginia crime family connected to the Pittsburgh LaRizzo family.

Damn you, Leo.

She was blowing through caution lights, ignoring the honking of cars, as she beelined for the office on Market.

Like a script from a cheap thriller, he was there, wearing the same clothes and unshaven, big jowls dark with stubble, pong of body odor in the overheated single room.

“You promised me full disclosure, total honesty,” she said.

She threw the paper across his desk.

“Here it is in case you missed it.”

Be calm, Regina, she told herself. She wasn’t going to lose her temper and a new job in that order.

“I did and I meant it, Baby,” Leo said.

He glanced at the paper sideways and pushed it back to her. He’d obviously read it.

“You asked me—no, you demanded I call somebody. I did,” he said.

He disgusted her with those wagging jowls and big stomach. She noticed his belt was undone and a patch of curly belly hair exposed.

Probably jerking off in here, the freak.

“I suppose you’ll tell me when the mood strikes.”

“I meant the second case—your next case,” Leo said. “Full disclosure, just like you want.”

Her indignation petered out at the prospect. “So tell me about it,” she said.

Bodycomb was moving in on Donnie Bracca’s territory with his dog-fighting, Leo said.

“He can kill all the dogs he wants in West Virginia,” Leo said. “But Donnie B. controls gambling around here.”

“Donnie Bracca was your real client all the time,” Baby said.

“It’s like this, kid. They don’t blow each other up in cars no more. Gentlemen’s agreements, all nice and polite. But rules have to be followed. Bodycomb went rogue.”

She bit back a retort: You mean, like your own father?

Leo went on, waxing large, a hopeless Mafioso lover, although a real mafia man, a made man, could see Leo couldn’t be trusted. But even the Aryan Brotherhood used outside associates to get things done. Leo could be useful if you couldn’t buy a cop or scare off an investigative reporter snooping in shady politics or business deals.

She didn’t feel bad about Bodycomb’s death. After all, she’d wanted to kill the guy herself.

“Damn it, Leo,” she said. “You should have told me this in the beginning.”Baby moved in the direction Bodycomb’s vehicle had taken. After A couple of hundred yards through meadow grass up to her knees, she stopped and listened. Moving on, she dodged stunted bushes that popped up out of nowhere to snag her clothing. The foliage grew less dense. She found the parallel ruts of the Road Runner’s tracks and kept moving, straining her eyes to see light ahead. If Bodycomb was hiding assets from his soon-to-be ex-wife, he was taking a lot of trouble over it.

After five minutes of faster walking in the grooves, she heard barking coming from the right. She saw the first glimmer of light in the distance. The terrain was sparse but small slopes refracted the light source so it appeared and disappeared with every rise of the ground. A single dog barking became two, then three and finally a pack. Beneath their howls, men’s voices.

When she got close enough to make out words, she lay flat on her belly and put the binoculars on a cluster of men beside a ramshackle barn surrounded by cages of dogs in the beds of trucks beside a squared string of light bulbs a dozen feet from the ground. It looked like a crude boxing ring for backyard brawlers.

Its purpose became clear in the next few minutes. It was a dog-fighting pit.

Buy Link:

Paperback exclusively from the publisher’s website: http://www.classactbooks.com/component/virtuemart/cat-murder-mystery-suspense/dangerous-women-8472017-10-14-23-36-05-detail?Itemid=0

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B076GCNMQ5/

About the Author:

Besides Dangerous Women, Robb T. White is the author of numerous short stories, three hardboiled Thomas Haftmann mysteries, a pair of noir/crime novels, and a recent serial-killer novel featuring a female FBI agent not named Clarice Starling.

A lifelong reader of crime fiction, he published his first story in Gary Lovisi’s Hardboiled magazine. An ebook crime novel, “Special Collections,” won the New Rivers Electronic Book Competition in 2014.  One of his short stories, was named one of 6 Best Of for 2009 by a Chicago website.

A forthcoming hardboiled novel is in the press.

Find out more about Robb at:

http://tomhaftmann.wixsite.com/robbtwhite

https://www.amazon.com/Robert-White/e/B001JP338Q

Please help me welcome fellow AHA member, Toni Sweeney…

Please tell us a little about yourself, where are you from? Where do you live now? Family? Pets?

I’ve just your average, friendly neighborhood little old lady writer.  I celebrated my 75th birthday this past December.

No pets now, but I used to own (or they owned me) 4 poodles and a mutt, AND a cat.  All at the same time.  They were the basis for my novel Spacedog’sBbest Friend.

Where did you get the idea for Serpent’s Tooth?

Believe it or not, it was from a dream.  I had a dream about an actor who was popular in the 50’s, in SF/horror movies and when I woke, all I could remember was his name and the name “Hildebrand.”  A few days later, I saw one of his movies on TV and one of the characters was named “Hildebrand.”  I took that to mean something, and wrote Serpent’s Tooth around that name.

Why did you choose this genre (is it something you’ve written in before)?

It was one of the first books Class Act Books published of mine. I’ve always liked ghost stories and tales along that line.

What is the most difficult thing about writing a book?

Making time to sit down and write it. Thee’s always something else needing to be done.

What was the most difficult thing about this one in particular?

See above.  I had it all plotted out, even written, in my mind.  It was sitting down in front of the keyboard and actually writing it that was the difficult part.

Are there any tricks, habits or superstitions you have when creating a story?

There was a time when I couldn’t talk about a book until after it was finished.  Now, I’ll tell about it if someone asks.

What book have you read that you wish you had written?

Gone with the Wind. Even those people who don’t like to read have heard of it.

What do you love that most people don’t like and wouldn’t understand why you do?

Boiled peanuts.  You’re either born loving them or not. Being a Southern, I was born this way. I also like them oven-roasted.

Do you collect anything?

I used to collect horse figurines but that stopped when a good many of them got broken during a move.  I suppose you could say I collect books since I have 12 bookcases fjull.

What was your first job?

After graduation, I was secretary to the chairman of the English Department of the college where I studied.  That was a great job for an English major!

What do you want readers to come away with after they read Exile?

I’d like theme to say, “Wow, I can’t wait to read the next one!”

What genre have you never written that you’d like to write?

Mystery. I don’t think I’m sneaky enough to write a really good mystery.

What is the toughest criticism given to you as an author?

I once had a publisher reject a manuscript and tell me no one would believe in a hero who was part feline.  Later, when Class Act Books published the entire Adventures of Sinbad series and it won several award, including Best series of that specific year, I wanted to write them and let them know. I managed not to.

Are your characters based off real people or did they all come entirely from your imagination?

I’ve based a few characters on real people, mostly ones I didn’t like.  I once made a very obnoxious co-worker into a mud-rooting pig in one of my books!

What do your friends and family think of your writing?

They wish me “Good luck,” but they don’t rush out to buy them.  Maybe the “Good luck” is hypothetical?

Who is the most famous person you have ever met?

Gene Roddenberry. For about 3 seconds.

How did you come up with the title? 

It tells the entire story and I hoped it would make the reader want to know exactly why the main character was exiled and what happened during his banishment.

Is there a message in your novel that you want readers to grasp? 

Not in this series. It’s just for the adventure of it.  Some of the others had a message, however.

How much of the book is realistic? 

Losing someone you love and never expecting to ever find anyone else is pretty realistic. I imagine almost everyone has experienced that feeling. I doubt if any one person has gone through everything my main character has, however. That would be too much!

Your favorite…

Movie – Rocky Horror Picture Show

Music – the finale to Swan Lake

Place you’ve visited – Jekyll Island, GA

TV show from childhood – Rinky Dink and You

TV show from adulthood – Gotham

Food – fruit cake

Blurb:

Aric kan Ingan is a Non-Person, an Exile stripped of title and citizenship for treason against the Arcanian Empire, crimes of which he is innocent.  Sentenced to banishment, he wanders the Emeraunt Galaxy a lonely decade while his uncle withholds clemency.

Money depleted and addictions demanding to be fed, Aric enlists as a guard at a Terran mining colony. Adjusting to life among hated Terrans is difficult, until Aric meets two people who will become an indelible part of his life: Susan Moran, the company doctor, and Miles Sheffield, his former mistress’ younger brother.

With Miles and Susan, Aric suffers the joy of friendship, the passion of love, and the grief of  sudden death, and eventually makes a decision that will change the destiny of the Arcanian Empire forever.

Excerpt:

As he rounded a corner and dodged a brightly-robed Scyllan, he nearly collided with a short weasel of a man running out of a nearby doorway. The little man brushed against him and sped on, only to be pulled off his feet as Aric’s hand wrapped itself in the collar of his jacket.

“Hold it!”  He hauled the little man backward to stand before him, and held out his hand.  “Give it back.”

“Give what back?”  A face of total innocence, if a trifle ferret-like, looked up at him.

In answer, Aric snapped his fingers and thrust the hand at the little man again, palm up.  Something about the gesture told the little thief not to argue.  It frightened him and he didn’t know why.  It wasn’t the stranger’s size. He’d seen bigger men. Nor was it the tiny jewel, set like a droplet of blood in his left earlobe, announcing that here was a warrior Blooded in True Battle, just as the Sign of Ildred, marking his forehead in indelible mourning-black, likewise proclaimed him an Exile.

The little man shivered and the stranger smiled, and at that moment, Fredi the Pick knew exactly what caused his fear.  Those eyes.  Less than human.  Like a bird of prey.

Digging into his pocket, he extracted a small leather pouch, and placed it in the Arcanian’s hand, smiling a little weakly.  “Well!  Now that that’s done, I’ll just be on my—”

“Not so fast.”  He was pinned against the wall, lifted by the force of the hand against his chest, struggling to keep both feet on the cobbles as he looked up into his captor’s face.

“I suppose you’re going to peach me?” What did he expect, picking someone like this as a mark?  Stupid move, truly stupid!

“Hardly.”  The Arcanian laughed but it was a grim, cold sound.  “You know the Keepers don’t come to the Quad.”

“I’d prefer the Lawkeepers.”  The little man looked even glummer.  “We’ve our own rules here, y’know, and the Primary One’s that one inhabitant of the Quad never steals from another.”

Relief and confusion showed on the rat-like face.  “Well, then, I’ll just be go—”

The large hand detained him again.  Fredi looked up.  “Was there something else?”

“Yes, I need some…things.”

“Oh?”  The little man frowned. “What kind of things?”

In spite of where they were, Aric hesitated.  He wasn’t certain he could trust this little rodent.  “Are you a-a Procurer?”

“Why didn’t you say so?”  The frown disappeared.  “I thought—you being an Exile and all…  Did you break your Vows?  You want girls?  How many?”
“No.  Not girls.”

“Oh.  Well, I don’t usually deal the other way but—  Boys?  I suppose I could find one or two—”

“No!”  Aric’s denial was quick.  “I want—”  He lowered his voice, struggling to keep the desperation out of it.  “I need some drugs.”

“No problem.”  The little man showed no surprise.  “Name your poison.”

“I need nicotine and caffeine.  Can you get me some cigarettes and coffee?”

“Cigarettes—”  The little man looked around quickly before continuing in a whisper that was almost a hiss.  “You want cigarettes and coffee?  Those two are at the top of the Unlawful Substances List!”

“Can you get them?”

The thief looked away.  He couldn’t meet that unblinking amber stare, not just the steadiness of the gaze but the bleakness in it, as if something inside the man had died.

“Possibly, but it’ll cost you.  There aren’t many, even in Thieves’ Quad who dare deal in both.”

“I can pay.”

“I’ll need something for my time, too.  Do you know the penalty for possession of tobacco?”

“I don’t want to know.” Aric was tiring of the conversation and desperately wanted to lie down.  Drel’s tushes, I need a tox!  “Just find it, at any cost.”

“Right.”  The little man eyed him as if inspecting him for some sign of nicotine-spasm.

“And I’ll need a place to stay.”

“Elmia’s.  Around the corner and two blocks down.”  He gestured behind him.  “Tell ’em Fredi sent you.”

Aric released him.

“I’ll be back in an hour, maybe two.”  Fredi sped away without looking back.

Aric wondered if he’d keep his word.

Buy Links:

Paperback from the publisher’s website: http://www.classactbooks.com/component/virtuemart/science-fiction/exile-8782018-03-14-02-58-23-detail?Itemid=0

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Exile-Arcanian-Chronicles-Part-2-ebook/dp/B07BGW7DQK/

About the Author:

Toni V. Sweeney has lived 30 years in the South, a score in the Middle West, and a decade on the Pacific Coast and now she’s trying for her second 30 on the Great Plains.

Since the publication of her first novel in 1989, Toni divides her time between writing SF/Fantasy under her own name and romances under her pseudonym Icy Snow Blackstone.  In March, 2013, she became publicity manager for Class Act Books (US). She is also on the review staff of the New York Journal of Books and the Paranormal Romance Guild. In 2016, she was named a Professional Reader by netgalley.com.

She is an Amazon reviewer, is in the 1% of reviewers for Goodreads, and in 2015 and 2016 was voted one of the Top 10 authors of those years by Preditors & Editors Readers Poll. In 2013, the Paranormal Romance Guild’s Reviewer’s Choice voted The kan Ingan Archives (Part Two of the Arcanian Chronicles) a Special Mention, and the following year, named the individual novels The Man from Cymene, and Space Studs, from the same series two of the Top 8 SF/fantasy novels of 2014.

As of 2018, Toni currently has 55 novels in print, including 3 series, and 3 trilogies.

Find out more about Toni:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tvsweeney

Amazon Author’s Page: https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B002BLQBB8

Twitter:  @ToniVSweeney