Showing posts with label jean rabe. Show all posts
Showing posts with label jean rabe. Show all posts

Sunday, July 19, 2020

#Mystery Blog Tour: Dead of Jerusalem Ridge by Jean Rabe


Today I welcome author Jean Rabe with her new release, The Dead of Jerusalem Ridge, the fourth book in her Piper Maxwell mystery series.

About the book: Sheriff Piper Blackwell’s three-day vacation with old Army buddies ends in tragedy. At the same time, a vile hate crime along a county road enrages her department. Their forces divided, Piper and her deputies must solve both cases before tensions boil and threaten the rural fabric of Spencer County, Indiana. Only eight months on the job, the young sheriff must weave together clues to uncover both a killer and a secret that could scar her soul.

"Piper Blackwell is a smart and capable small-town sheriff, a thoroughly modern woman who leads a colorful cast of characters in this entertaining read. Well-crafted and suspenseful, THE DEAD OF JERUSALEM RIDGE adroitly threads the needle between Cozy, Procedural, and Action-Thriller. Jean Rabe's fans⸺both old and new⸺won't want to miss this one.

⸺ Baron R. Birtcher, multi-award winner, and LA Times Bestselling author

** Get the book here. - Get it at  Barnes & Noble 

* Want to check out the rest of the series? See book one, The Dead of Summer. - Visit her Amazon author page.  

** An excerpt from The Dead of Jerusalem Ridge: 

Hemi was derived from Daniel Hemisford, and it fit him well because he was large, loud, and indefatigable, like the engine. He and Piper had gone through basic together at Fort Campbell and were assigned to the same overseas unit, she with MP training, and Hemi concentrating on explosive ordnance disposal. Back then he had a buzz-cut, his black hair looking like a fuzzy shadow. Now his head was wholly shaved. She figured Hemi’d stay in to get his twenty, which was what she had originally planned to do.
Piper had enlisted right out of high school and put in four years—making sergeant in two-and-a-half, earning a Purple Heart when she was wounded saving her commanding officer and four others. She was in the process of re-upping when her father was diagnosed with cancer a second time—non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. She pulled her papers just as she was due for another promotion, and went home to Spencer County to help him. During the course of his treatment he managed to talk her into running for sheriff, a post he’d vacated when he became too ill to hold it. She ran to appease him and for something to do, was surprised she won, and had just started her ninth month in the office. More, she was surprised how much she liked it.
“So, what’s next for you, Hemi?”
“After the bluegrass festival Monday—you are joining us for that, right?”
She nodded.
“Me, Spaceman, and Renegade are going to Bardstown. An hour from here, I think, maybe a little more. There’s a bar on my bucket list called The Old Talbott Tavern. Been open since 1779, two-foot-thick stone walls. Not kidding. Oldest stagecoach stop west of the Allegheny Mountains. Abraham Lincoln, Jesse James, George Patton, Daniel Boone—those are just some of the long-dead souls who drank there. I’m gonna drink there too. There’s a sketchy motel nearby where we’re gonna get a couple of rooms and crash, drive back to Campbell sometime Wednesday. I gotta report back Thursday. I think Spaceman and Renegade’are free through the weekend … just in time for them to ship out again. You should join us at Old Talbott, only cost you two more days off.”
“Sounds … interesting,” Piper said. An evening of drinking in a more than two hundred-year-old tavern didn’t exactly sound like fun. “I have to be back to work Tuesday. Only have these three days.”
“Oh.”
“But that’s not what I meant, Hemi. Not what you’re doing right after this weekend. After that.”
“Oh. After after.”
He leaned back and the bench creaked ominously. “I made buck sergeant last week—E-Five.”
“Wow. Congrats.”
“And a new assignment. I’ve got two more weeks at Campbell before I ship out for Camp Arifjan in Kuwait. If I was getting posted overseas, I wanted Germany, but that didn’t happen.” He shrugged. “But I figure Germany will happen eventually, right? Can’t see me doing anything else except the Army.”
She returned his shrug.
“What about you?” he shot back. “What’s next for you? After after?”
“Get the number of DUIs down in the county, and make a narrow-minded farmer play nice with his Buddhist neighbors. I’ll probably have more luck with the DUI thing than with the farmer. Finish my term. Maybe run for a second.”
“Wow. Sheriff Christmas. You like it.”
She nodded. “I do indeed, Sergeant Hemi.”
“So, you’re not going to come back to us.” He didn’t phrase it as a question.

**************
** Join the Giveaway below! There is also an exclusive contest for one of Jean’s handmade fused glass pieces. (US residents only.) 



 About the Author: 

 My home is filled with dogs and books. Lots of dogs and books. I wear worn out sandals to work every day. I'm a mystery writer living in a tiny Midwestern town that has a gas station, a Dollar General, and a marvelous pizza place with exceedingly slow service. I am always working on a new project or three. I have forty-some books published in the fantasy, science fiction, urban fantasy and mystery genres. But I'm concentrating on mysteries now. In my spare time I dabble in roleplaying games and boardgames. And at every opportunity, I toss tennis balls to my cadre of dogs.
   ** Find Jean on Twitter.  - Get her newsletter here. 


Wednesday, August 23, 2017

Jean Rabe #Mystery Dead of Night Blog Tour!

Today, USA Bestselling Author Jean Rabe's blog tour stops HERE! Next: 8/25: Chill and Read blog; 8/27: Ken Schrader blog

Check out more about the upcoming release of her book, The Dead of Night, A Piper Blackwell Mystery Book 2, the sequel to The Dead of Winter. (Get it now on pre-order. Releases Sept. 15.)



 About The Dead of Night: 


In Spencer County’s history, mysteries are numerous—and lethal…

As Sheriff Piper Blackwell rushes to a clandestine meeting with an aging, paranoid veteran who believes spies are trailing his every move, she is caught in a fierce thunderstorm. Pounding rain drums against the bluff, washing away the earth and revealing a grisly secret someone tried to bury a long time ago.

Putting a name to the skeleton on the bluff, and searching for the thief who robbed the old veteran of his life’s earnings, sends Piper delving into the sleepy towns that dot her rural county. Now she’s digging into pasts perhaps best left alone. Uncovering fragments of Spencer County’s history could prove more dangerous—and deadlier—than she ever expected.



S.C.D.D.
Same Characters, a very Different Day - by Jean Rabe

Piper Blackwell, four months into her term as Spencer County Sheriff, is hot to solve a cold case. Rain, late at night, bones on the bluff…wonderfully eerie, and something to vex my favorite sheriff with. The book is The Dead of Night, the second in her series, and it is set for a September 15 release by Imajin. Her previous outing, The Dead of Winter, started with her first day on the job.

Piper is twenty-three, and won the sheriff’s race by campaigning on her last name. Her father, Paul Blackwell, had been with the department thirty years and had several turns at sheriff. Some in the county think folks didn’t realize they were voting for a different Blackwell. There’s still some friction in her department—over her age and lack of experience, but there’s also growing respect for the Army veteran. She has many of her supporting characters from the previous book—Chief Deputy Oren Rosenberg; Coroner Dr. Annie Neufeld; Teegan, a quirky Goth dispatcher; and Nang, Vietnamese caterer and quick stop owner…and potential love-interest. But there are some new ones thrown into the mix.

Series feel good because you can share the action with old friends. They’re like comfortable shoes that you’ve broken in just right. Though while there’s a sameness, Piper and Spencer County keep the story fresh. There are a lot of differences from the first book.

What makes this book dissimilar? Piper’s had a few months to grow into her role of sheriff, has become more familiar with her deputies and local politics, and has started to hear the county’s heartbeat. Oren’s had a few months to adjust to the young sheriff; he claims he still doesn’t like her, but he tolerates her…and that’s a big step from the first book. In this tale she’s involved with some of the little things that are a big deal to the rural residents, such as drunk drivers and an unbalanced octogenarian that is hell-bent on destroying mailboxes. She also nabs that cold case—and who doesn’t love a mysterious death from decades past?

There are few characters that readers should both love and hate…the drunk on a tractor that annoys the young sheriff. Drunk driving is the number one ticked offense in Spencer County; I figured I needed to address that in the book, putting a little spin on it. The Mailbox Mauler is another such soul. She was inspired by someone I know who has a vicious streak involving mis-delivered mail—downright NASTY; I had to vent by putting it in a Piper book. If the Mailbox Mauler feels real…it’s ‘cause she sort of is.

The Dead of Night was inspired by lots of things…among them three Navy veterans who live in a senior apartment complex; I rolled them into one character called Mark the Shark. He opens the book, and I hope the readers love him as much as I do. It was also inspired by the woman in my neighborhood who goes postal, by the drunk on the tractor who needed to be there so I could correctly write an airbag scene, and by an old skeleton because I’d read a forensic book about bones and wanted to put some of that knowledge to fictional use.


Is there someone to root for in Piper’s second outing? Absolutely…Piper, of course; she’s determined and feisty, and maybe she’s falling in love. Oren because he’s driven and proves that age in an asset, not a hindrance. Mark the Shark…because he’s Mark the Shark. There are also some folks to root against, but I don’t want to spoil the plot.

** Excerpt of The Dead of Night, A Piper Blackwell Mystery Book 2 


It was a big red Case tractor, double wheels on the back, hitch, with a raised disc harrow  attachment used for cultivating the ground prior to planting—all of it caked with dried mud and  in need of washing. Piper was stuck behind it on 66, on her way to Hatfield, an unincorporated  dinkburg where Mark the Shark lived. 

Piper figured this ten-mile endeavor would take her an hour away from her cold  case…fourteen minutes to Mark’s, fourteen minutes b ack, and a half hour at the bank or looking through his records to show him the bookkeeping error and ease his conspiracy fears.

But the tractor was fouling her time-frame.

It belched fumes; her windows rolled down, the stink wafted inside and made her eyes water.  It was noisy; overwhelming the oldies station she’d had on and just now clicked off. It was slow,  riding in the center of the road, impossible for her to pass on either side without risking the ditch.  And it wasn’t traveling straight, sometimes in the proper lane, sometimes veering into the left  lane. Usually it held to roughly the middle.

She honked.

The driver raised his left hand and flipped his middle finger.

“Really?” Piper stuck her head out the window and hollered: “Pick a lane!” Then thinking he might not be able to hear over the racket the tractor was making, she used the PA in her car. 
“Pull over. Spencer County Sheriff. Pull over.”

The tractor wobbled farther right, then left, shuddered, and went faster still. Thirty miles an  hour.

“What the hell?”

Then the driver tossed an empty whiskey bottle off to the side of the road.

“That’s it.”
Bonus Giveaway! 
** WINNERS -  Joan, ebook & bn100 for paper. Congrats! 
Winners have been notified.

GIVEAWAY 

There’s a tour-wide giveaway for Cracker Barrel and Starbucks gift cards or a little password book. In addition, two lucky bloggers will be chosen at random to win a Starbucks or Cracker Barrel Gift card. Open to US residents only. Also see direct link to giveaway.


Jean Rabe’s  The Dead of Night Blog Tour runs August 21st thru September 15th. Follow tour stops below to check out the reviews, excerpts, Q&As, and to enter the giveaway! Get all the blog stop links HERE.
 Next stops:


Next: 8/25: Chill and Read blog
8/27: Ken Schrader blog
Mysteristas                            8/28/2017
Imagination Captured            8/28/2017
Lori’s Reading Corner            8/29/2017
Brooke Blogs                          9/1/2017
The Million Words                  9/3/2017
Drey’s Library                         9/12/2017


Faith Hunter                           9/15/2017

Praise for The Dead of Night: 

Jean Rabe always manages to surprise and never fails to deliver the goods! The Dead of Night…Highly recommended!
Jonathan Maberry, New York Times bestselling author of Dogs of War and Mars One

 Jean Rabe writes the perfect mystery! I was kept guessing about everything to the very last word. The girl can write! New York Times bestselling author Faith Hunter, writing as Gwen Hunter

 In The Dead of Night …a thoroughly satisfying and complex novel with deeply realized characters and beautifully vivid writing. Jaden Terrell, Shamus Award nominee and internationally published author of the Jared McKean Mysteries

Monday, August 21, 2017

Jean Rabe #Mystery Dead of Night Book Blog Tour Begins!

There's nothing more fun than following along in the excitement of a new book coming out!



  Like mysteries? Then follow along this week with my writer pal and USA Bestselling Author Jean Rabe's blog tour for the upcoming release of her book, The Dead of Night, A Piper Blackwell Mystery Book 2(Get it now on pre-order. Releases Sept. 15.)

This is the sequel to The Dead of Winter.  - See today and this week's blog links below!

And if you think, oh, boring.... well... there are prizes and stuff, too, you know. And... this book is the furthest from boring you're gonna get!!

About The Dead of Night: 


In Spencer County’s history, mysteries are numerous—and lethal…

As Sheriff Piper Blackwell rushes to a clandestine meeting with an aging, paranoid veteran who believes spies are trailing his every move, she is caught in a fierce thunderstorm. Pounding rain drums against the bluff, washing away the earth and revealing a grisly secret someone tried to bury a long time ago.

Putting a name to the skeleton on the bluff, and searching for the thief who robbed the old veteran of his life’s earnings, sends Piper delving into the sleepy towns that dot her rural county. Now she’s digging into pasts perhaps best left alone. Uncovering fragments of Spencer County’s history could prove more dangerous—and deadlier—than she ever expected.

Here's this week's schedule. ** Come back to my blog here Wednesday and/or at my website blog for the 8/23 stop. All the blog stops are here.




Jean Rabe’s THE DEAD OF NIGHT Blog Tour and Giveaway! 


Jean Rabe’s  The Dead of Night Blog Tour runs August 21st thru September 15th. Follow tour stops below to check out the reviews, excerpts, Q&As, and to enter the giveaway!
  
Books,Dreams,Life              8/21/2017
C.A Verstraete                      8/23/2017 and here at GirlZombieAuthors
Lisa Ks Book Reviews           8/24/2017
Chill and Read                     8/25/2017
Ken Schrader                       8/27/2017

Tuesday, November 1, 2016

Get Set, Go, NaNoWriMo

  
Today's guest post is from fellow author Jean Rabe whose new book, The Dead of Winter, A Piper Blackwell Mystery, releases today!!! (Click the title to get your copy in print and Kindle, and Kindle Unlimited!!)

If you're interested in writing, today is also the start of NaNoWriMo. Me? Um, well, no. I signed up one year. I can use the push, but I'm a firm believer in putting in quality, not quantity. It's useless to fill up pages just to fill them and then have to do it over and heavily re-edit. If you're a tight and fast writer then it works. It's a way to get the words down.  I have a novella I'm working on and plan to push myself to get in the words but not in a contest-kind of way. I keep track. Daily word counts are good. Writing is not a race. Just. Keep. Writing.

That said, Jean's a fan - she's also a fast, and prolific, writer. Here's her take on it. She actually makes it sound fun. I went to the NaNo group with her one year. It was good to mingle. That can be fun, too. 


NaNo NaNo NaNo

By Jean Rabe

November is National Novel Writing Month - NaNoWriMo

You’ve probably seen it mentioned in writer-threads, Facebook, Twitter, bandied about as a topic in local writing groups. Only once through the years was I successful in talking a member of my writing group into NaNoing with me. And that person was a published author—short stories, newspaper articles, magazine features, and novels. She’s participated in multiple NaNos. The other writers in that group, some of whom have sold short stories, all of whom are working on novels but have never sold one, would not participate.

They said they didn’t have time.

They said the rigors of writing 50,000 words in one month were too demanding.

That’s probably why they don’t have finished novels.

Can’t find enough time to write that much, they said, too demanding to finish. Not up to the challenge of crossing the finish line and sticking -30- on the last page, I say.

Writing is never about finding the time.

Writing is about making the time. Taking the time. Stealing the time away from other things to write.

It’s about looking in the mirror and asking: How bad do I want it?

Supposedly NaNoWriMo was started to help newbie authors get that jump-start on their novel. But I know a lot of veteran oft-published authors who participate every year. Actually, I know far more veterans who sign on than aspiring novelists. I’m one of the veterans. I have 36 published novels, about 100 published short stories (maybe more, but I haven’t bothered to count), edited a couple dozen anthologies, and edited more than 100 issues of various magazines.

So, yeah, I’m a veteran. My friends tell me I don’t need NaNoWriMo.

Yeah, I do need NaNoWriMo.

Its things like NaNoWriMo that make me a veteran.

It serves as my I-want-to-write-this-book-but-don’t-have-a-contract-or-deadline-for-it churning blast. NaNo is my contract with myself, and my deadline for 50,000 words. It’s my nudge. It is my put-the-butt-in-the-chair, put-the-fingers-on-the-keyboard, until I finish 50,000 words. Or more. It is my whoooo-hooooo-let’s-do-this Fall event.

This November I will use NaNo to get a jump on The Dead of Night, the sequel to The Dead of Winter, releasing Nov. 1 by Imajin. I’m working on the outline for the book now. It’s fair game in NaNo to outline your novel ahead of time. You just can’t start writing chapter one until Nov. 1.

 It’s perfect for me, The Dead of Winter releasing on the day I start The Dead of Night. Something appropriately poetic about that, dontcha think? I used a previous NaNo to start The Dead of Winter—which was runner up in Killer Nashville’s prestigious Claymore Awards. Hmmm…guess I better come up with another “Dead” book for NaNo 2017, eh?

Need or Want?

So, yeah, I need NaNoWriMo. Or at least I think I do. And that’s basically the same thing.

I’m suggesting to any aspiring novelist reading this to give NaNo a try.

There are a bunch of great perks.

·         You can meet locally with other writers taking the plunge, usually in coffee shops and restaurants; nice chance to socialize and chat about writing and books. You might make some new friends or find (or create) a regular writing group.

·         Your email box will fill with inspiring essays by top-notch pros discussing writing. Many of the essays are by bestselling authors. And NaNo alone is worth it to get this inspiration and advice.

·         It serves as an opportunity to lock yourself away, ignoring family and friends for 30 days, telling them you’ve made a commitment to this contest. And it is a contest…can you write 50,000 words in one month (that’s less than 1,700 words a day)? Can you win? You still win if you don’t hit the word mark, ‘cause you’ve gotten something down on your manuscript.

·         It is a chance to kick the excuses of why you can’t do it to that proverbial curb.

·         It will turn you into a sorcerer…you will have ‘made’ time, ‘created’ time, rather than to have simply found it.

INFO:

Here's the NaNo page with lots of great articles to help with writing in general: http://nanowrimo.org/nano-prep#resources

And here is one of those articles, this one about handling the 30-day keyboard binge:

Now, I gotta close out this little blog because I need to finish my outline for The Dead of Night…because NaNoWriMo, like Winter, is coming.

If you’re interested in checking out a novel that I started on NaNoWriMo and sold during the summer, here you go….


You can find my blog at: http://jeanerlenerabe.blogspot.com/


I have a newsletter filled with tidbits about my upcoming books, reviews of things I’m reading, and writing advice. You can subscribe here: http://jeanrabe.us14.list-manage1.com/subscribe?u=89364515308e8b5e7ffdf6892&id=9404531a4b


   USA Today Bestselling author Jean Rabe has written 35 fantasy, urban fantasy, and science fiction novels. The Dead of Winter, her 36th, is her first mystery. She has roughly 100 short stories in print, has edited a couple dozen anthologies, and has edited more magazines than she cares to tally. When she isn’t writing or editing, she tosses tennis balls to her cadre of dogs, visits museums, and tries to find gamers who will play Axis & Allies with her. 



Tuesday, April 19, 2016

#AtoZ - P is for Pockets of Darkness #horror

Welcome to the 7th annual A to Z Blog Challenge in April!  
Come back daily for more exciting posts and even some giveaways!
Check out the 1000+ blogs on the list! 


Today is P for Pockets of Darkness

** CONGRATS to Jean for the book being named a Finalist for Best Paperback Original in the 2016 International Thriller Writers Awards ** 



Welcome to multi-published author Jean Rabe, who's talking horror and sharing an excerpt of her latest, Pockets of Darkness. Be afraid. Be very afraid... and be sure to comment for a chance to win a copy of one of her many books! 


Dark Days Ahead

I hadn’t started out to write a horror novel. It was supposed to be light, irreverent urban fantasy. But it kept getting darker.

And darker.

And so I’d inadvertently written a horror novel wrapped in the dress of an urban fantasy. And I’d like to do it again.

I’ve never considered myself a fan of horror fiction, though I read the occasional Stephen King. (Everyone should read the occasional Stephen King.) I’d attended the World Horror Convention once because it was less than a two-hour drive and the guests of honor were Neil Gaiman and Gene Wolfe, the latter of which became a good friend.

Here’s the beginning of Pockets of Darkness, available from WordFire Press.  (Contains some adult language.)

Yeah, I think I gotta write me another dark book. 

About the Book:


Bridget O’Shea is a mother, a successful business woman, an expert on antiques…and a thief, a damn good one. But when she steals an ancient relic from a Manhattan apartment, she acquires a curse in the form of a Sumerian demon. The demon wants something from Bridget, killing people she cares about to force her cooperation, and it will continue to kill unless she meets its demands. Next in the demon’s sights? Bridget’s teenage son. Bridget must learn to communicate with the demon, divine what it wants, and satisfy it to keep her son alive. But she soon discovers that mollifying a creature from the pits of hell could damn her soul and send the world into chaos. Bridget never wanted to be a hero. That’s for suckers. But now, she has no choice. She has to find a way to best the beast and keep its kin from reemerging, or . . . well, there really isn’t an “or.” She has to win.


Excerpt: Pockets of Darkness 

One

Elijah rocked back on the heels of his Brunello Cucinelli wingtips. He drew his collar up and fixed his gaze on the weathered sign hanging slightly askew above the door: Don’t Judge a Book . . .
By what? By its cover, the saying went.
His mind replaced the ellipsis with something more fitting: by the neighborhood it’s sold in. This was an abysmal borough, and the buildings—this one in particular—ought to be condemned. The structures were grimy shades of gray, separated here and there by darker charcoal smudges of alleys. Despite the cold wind that deadened his senses he smelled grease and dirt and the biting odor of piss.
Elijah couldn’t remember when, if ever, he’d been in a part of the city so beat down.
A siren’s wail sliced through the air. Always he could hear sirens in the city. It just seemed a little louder here, more desperate. There were other traffic sounds, too, but from beyond his line of sight—the constant shush of tires against pavement oddly snowless for the middle of January, the blat of horns. There’d been only a couple of cars trundling along in this block, more rust than paint, their occupants eyeing him, necks craning as they drifted past. Not a single cab. He’d taken one from Hudson Street, but it dropped him off five blocks to the south. He’d written the address of this bookseller wrong, transposing the first two numbers, and so he’d had to hoof it for a stretch.
Don’t judge a book by the absolute utter dump it sits in, he mused. After several minutes he had made no move to step inside.
Elijah shuddered when three teenagers swaggered past, one purposefully elbowing him to set him off balance.
“’Scuse me,” the youth laughed.
The trio stopped a few doors down and huddled in conversation; the one who’d bumped him had a flat, angry face and gave him a serious up and down. Elijah knew they were talking about him.
With any luck they’d mug him. His appearance practically screamed: Come and get me! Middle-aged white man in a sheepskin-lined overcoat, designer shoes, thick leather briefcase at his side that looked a few decades out of date, but by its bulk promising something interesting inside. He looked down at the briefcase and sneered.
Elijah wore a Rolex. He worked his arm so the coat sleeve came up to show the watch. It was 5:45. According to a placard nailed to the door, the bookseller closed in fifteen minutes.
Please come and get me! he silently begged. Dear, God, let them come and get me.
He’d been mugged a few times this month and emerged with only a handful of stitches and bruises that he’d hid beneath his expensive clothes and that had cleared up quickly. Just last week he tarried at a Brownsville subway stop in the early morning hours when some homeless looking man took the bait and beat him up. Didn’t take the watch, or the briefcase, only his wallet and the virgin wool Armani jacket he’d been wearing at the time.
He didn’t file a report with the police, not then or the times before. The hoods were only after his cash on all those occasions, and he never carried more than a few hundred. No serious damage done, no lingering wounds or scars. Didn’t muggers recognize a Rolex?
He’d tried the ploy again just two nights ago, this time braving one of the subway stops in Washington Heights. Two muscle-bound gang members with matching tats had been intent on taking him up on his unspoken offer: Come and get me. But a cop appeared on the steps, and they veered away. Tired, Elijah had called it a night.
This trio? They might prove his salvation and negate the need to enter the bookseller and shell out a considerable amount of cash. He could weather one more beating, couldn’t he?
“Come and get me you sons of bitches,” he whispered. “Come and fuckin’ get me. Come and take it all, assholes.”

** Comment to win a copy of one of Jean's books. What's your favorite horror character and why?  Be sure to leave an email to contact you.