Empty Promises Blog Tour (+ Name a Character in James' Next Book!)

Title: Empty Promises

Author: James M. Jackson

Series: Seamus McCree #5

Pages: 252

Date Published: 2018

Publisher:  Wolf's Echo Press

Format: Kindle

Genre: Mystery/Suspense

Source: Goddess Fish Blog Tours
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Synopsis:
If you love the suspense and plot twists of domestic thrillers, this page-turner will be for you. Seamus McCree’s first solo bodyguard assignment goes from bad to worse. His client disappears. His granddog finds a buried human bone. Police find a fresh human body.

His client is to testify in a Chicago money laundering trial. He’s paranoid that with a price on his head, if the police know where he’s staying, the information will leak. Seamus promised his business partner and lover, Abigail Hancock, that he’d keep the witness safe at the McCree family camp located deep in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan’s woods.

Abigail is furious at his incompetence and their relationship flounders. Even his often-helpful son, Paddy, must put family safety ahead of helping his father. Seamus risks his own safety and freedom to turn amateur sleuth in hopes he can solve the crimes, fulfill his promise of protection, and win back Abigail. Wit and grit are on his side, but the clock is ticking . . . and the hit man is on his way.

~Guest Post: A Sense of Place~

By: James M. Jackson

If you are going to be a successful liar, you need a great memory. Lies accumulate over the years, and it takes more and more effort to keep them straight. By the time I started writing the Seamus McCree novels, (Empty Promises is #5), my steel-trap mind was already suspect. I reasoned that if I wrote using settings I knew, it was one less thing I had to worry about remembering. Oh sure, I could have developed a detailed series bible with all the invented places and so forth, but that’s a lot of work—and for me, organization is more a wish than a reality. Since it’s easy to forget where the closets are, I housed characters in residences I used to inhabit.

For Ant Farm and Bad Policy, I gave Seamus my house in the Clifton neighborhood of Cincinnati (but moved it to another street). Uncle Mike, a continuing character, resides in the apartment complex in Waltham, MA where I lived in 1978.

Cabin Fever is set in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan where Seamus happens to have a camp located on the same lake where I have my home. For Empty Promises, I wanted to return to the U.P. and the story was willing. Our place—er Seamus’s place—is fifteen miles from the nearest place you can buy anything. Fourteen of those miles are gravel or dirt roads. Cabin Fever was set in the dead of winter and in that story weather and the gradual movement toward spring were their own character. Empty Promises occurs during summer, and although our place is not as isolated as in winter, it is still remote, which is an important ingredient in the story. And best of all, I don’t have to think about where the doors are or which side of the house has the screened porch.

I’ll be interested to hear in the comments how as readers y’all feel about using real locations for novels. Do you enjoy reading about real places, or would you prefer authors construct their own locations?

~Try an Excerpt!~

Dread joined us in the car. Even normally bubbly Megan grew silent.

Loggers had cut a narrow lane through the sixty-foot spruce I had watched come down at the beginning of the Grade, leaving most of the tree in place and towing the cut section to the side. They’d wasted no time on smaller branches littering the road and were opening up a one-lane path. I tiptoed the Outback over the debris and moved through the gap.

At first the downed trees were scattered, although limbs and branches dotted the entire road. But the further north we drove, the worse the damage became until the downed trees were a nearly continuous hazard. Paddy frequently left the car to remove branches with sharp breaks that might puncture a tire. I was regretting we hadn’t taken my old beater truck into town with its multi-ply tires. The Outback carried a donut spare, which wouldn’t last thirty seconds on the gravel roads. We had yet to see any other cars or people.

By the time we passed the five- and six-mile markers without any letup in the damage, tightened metal bands had taken up permanent residence around my chest. I feared for Elliot. I feared for my property. I worried whether I’d get a flat. Whether there would still be a hotel room if I had to send Paddy and Megan to Tall Pines. Megan, on the other hand, had given up her concerns and was in the back seat, singing along with a CD, a cheerful canary amidst the devastation.

~Meet James!~ 

James M. Jackson authors the Seamus McCree series consisting of five novels and one novella. Jim splits his time between the deep woods of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and Georgia’s Lowcountry. He claims the moves between locations are weather-related, but others suggest they may have more to do with not overstaying his welcome. He is the past president of the 700+ member Guppy Chapter of Sisters in Crime.

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 James will be awarding the chance to name a character in his next book to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.

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