Adrian Magson takes time to share his journey on finding Midnight Ink and the idea for the Cruxys Solutions Investigation series.
I blame my parents. Well, if you have to
blame them for something, it’s better if it’s something positive – and in my
case it was for setting me on a life of writing.
They encouraged me from an early age to
read, and by the age of eight I was into Zane Grey, Louis L’Amour and Leslie
(The Saint) Charteris, among many others. I stumbled a bit over Hank Janson and
Mickey Spillane, but only because a lot of it went over my head. At first. But
along the way it struck me that writing books must be a great way to make a
living.
That was a tad naive, but you live and
learn.
For many years while holding down a variety
of day jobs, I wrote romantic fiction for women’s magazines. Lots of it. It
paid, and was a great apprenticeship, but it was a long time before I sold my
first crime/mystery novel. It was even longer before I could make the leap into
full-time writing. But persistence paid off.
That first mystery novel, featuring a
female reporter, Riley Gavin, was followed by 4 more in the series, followed by
a spy series (feat. Harry Tate - also 5), then a French police series (feat.
Insp Lucas Rocco – 4). It was after writing the first in a new spy series
(feat. Marc Portman – 4 so far), that I went for a change of tack. I decided to
go back to writing about a female lead character.
But what to write about?
While mulling over a number of possible
storylines, I opened a gym locker one day and found a card inside with Adrian scribbled
on it. It wasn’t for me, but it started a chain of thought: what if the card
was addressed to a specific person… a woman… and …? That was it, I was off.
And this is where Midnight Ink came in.
The story, titled ‘The Locker’ - Jan 2016 –
(and the word locker has more than one meaning in this story) starts out as a
kidnap novel, when a little girl, Beth Hardman, goes missing from her London
home along with her Polish nanny. But it soon turns into something far deeper
and puzzling. Unusually, there’s no ransom demand; no predator horror facing
her mother, Nancy; simply an instruction that Beth’s father, Michael, must be
told, and to keep the police out of it.
Nancy remembers that her husband once told
her that if anything bad were to happen, she was to call a special number. This
leads to a private security company called Cruxys
Solutions, which specialises in insuring
people in dangerous occupations. She calls them and before long two
investigators arrive: Ruth Gonzales, a former soldier and British
cop, and Andy Vaslik, a former NY
cop and Dept of Homeland Security agent. The first problem they face is that
Nancy has no way of contacting Michael, an aid worker, and has no precise idea
where he is other than somewhere in Africa or the Middle East. The second
problem is that the investigators can find no trace of a Michael Hardman
anywhere; no documentation, no footprint, nothing. Yet Nancy insists he exists,
and is out there somewhere.
So who is this mystery man and why has his
daughter been kidnapped?
To tell would be giving away too much. But
it’s very clear that whoever or whatever Michael Hardman is, snatching his
daughter has been carefully planned, and that if he does come back, he’ll be walking into a trap.
‘The Bid’ (Jan 2017) –
the second in the Gonzales & Vaslik series, involves another disappearance,
this time of Richard Chadwick, an American drone expert. Also missing is a
shipment of small drones high-jacked from the cargo hub at Memphis
International Airport. But these drones are not weekend playthings; used by
film studios and wildlife rangers among others, they are the latest in
high-tech machines capable of carrying small loads… with terrifying
possibilities.
Ruth and Andy follow a trail from London to
New York, and across the central United States, slowly tracking the missing
expert and the men who have kidnapped him, from vague clues left behind. All
the while their progress is being monitored by the FBI and DHS, who suspect
Chadwick, a former USAF intelligence officer, has become involved in a terror
plot.
As they soon discover, time is not on their
side.
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Adrian has had 21 books published, including
a beginners guide for writers, writes regular book reviews and a monthly column
for beginners in Writing Magazine (UK). For more information about him, see his
website at: http://www.adrianmagson.com
And his blogsite:
http://www.adrianmagson.blogspot.co.uk
And on Twitter: https://www.facebook.com/adrian.magson.3
and https://www.facebook.com/Adrian-Magson-Books (for his books page).
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Adrian lives in the Forest of Dean, in the
west of England, with his wife, Ann.
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