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Dear Reader,
First time novelist Jeremy Finley, is today's guest author, and also the chief investigative reporter for WSMV-TV/Nashville. His work has resulted in criminal convictions, hearings before the U.S. Congress, the payout of more than one million dollars to scam victims, and the discovery of missing girls. The Darkest Time of Night is Jeremy's first novel.
Authors really do love to hear from readers. Email Jeremy Finley at: [email protected]
When you say "Hello," you'll also be entered to win one of two copies of Jeremy's novel, The Darkest Time of Night.
Welcome to the book club, Jeremy Finley...
Grandma killed it with her high heel.
I have a vague memory of it happening, my little feet dangling off the disc swing in her backyard. The snake must have been near to me, or perhaps my cousins or brother.
Grandma didn't hesitate, impaling the thing with her shoe, lifting it from the grass and discarding it as if she'd pulled a bindweed off a hydrangea.
I don't remember Grandma saying anything, but I imagine, beneath her thoroughly hairsprayed helmet of hair, her brilliant mind flashing to the slithering creature: 'Do not approach my grandchildren.'
Then there was my Mimi, a gentile, small woman, who used to give me vitamins as I, her anxiety-prone grandson, prepared to start a new school. My brother and I had moved into her home temporarily, after my father lost his job.
"Take your worry pills," I recall her saying. "One pill, and your worries are gone."
The examples kept coming as I aged: my wife's grandmother doing a cartwheel in her late eighties. My late father using the last of his waning energy to push my youngest daughter in a swing in his final days of hospice care. My mother blanketing her granddaughter's beds with hand-made quilts for every single holiday. My father-in-law boogie boarding in the surf with his grandchildren.
It's obvious why writers make parents the heroes of our work. Where would Scout be without Atticus Finch?
But then there is the ancient Mrs. Hempstock from Neil Gaiman's The Ocean at the End of the Lane, fighting monstrous creatures. And Johnny Dixon's grandparents, and his eccentric friend Professor Childermass, who led the boy through the frightening and thrilling adventures in John Bellairs' The Curse of the Blue Figurine.
There's something especially story worthy about the relationships between grandparents and grandchildren. While they are not bound to raise them (although that is certainly happening more and more), the fierce attention they provide to children, and the lessons they teach, is ripe for re-telling.
It would have been an easy choice to make the hero of my upcoming thriller, where a seven-year-old boy suddenly disappears, one of his parents. Maybe a dogged detective or a relentless reporter.
Instead, it is the boy's grandmother who at first watches as the FBI and the media struggle to solve the disappearance. Even when she is relegated to the role of simply keeping her unraveling family together, she realizes she alone holds the key to finding him.
Quietly, without fanfare or attention, she risks everything.
--Jeremy Finley
Authors love to hear from readers. Email Jeremy Finley at: [email protected]
Say "Hello," you'll also be entered in a drawing for a copy of The Darkest Time of Night.
Thanks for reading with me. It's so good to read with friends.
Suzanne Beecher
[email protected]
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