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Call for ARC readers

Posted on by Tony McFadden

Hello, all you happy readers. I’m calling for ARC reviewers. You can sign up for either one or both of my two upcoming books by going to this form.

[EDIT: The original form was spammed, with over 24,000 “responses” in 12 hours. I’ve added Google verification to address this issue. If you’d prefer not to go through Google, please leave a comment below with the word ‘elephant’ in it if you’re interested in being an ARC reader, and I’ll reach out to you.

Both books stand alone, so don’t feel you’ll be short-changed by reading only one of them.

Just a reminder that I’ll be managing book distribution through Booksprout.co You can sign up for a free reader account at this link.

Fast Track is Mac Durridge’s latest case.

Mac has been scrounging for cases. Business hasn’t been good.

Thirteen-year-old Josh has hired him to find his coin collection for the princely sum of $25.

He’s in the middle of that nearly pro bono case when Sophie, his on-again, currently off-again girlfriend, comes to him with a problem. Her best friend, Central Coast Network News reporter Linda Carmody, hasn’t been heard from in over a week.

Completely out of character.

Mac’s investigation uncovers a financial conspiracy that threatens to topple the government and exposes him to a level of physical danger he hasn’t encountered in years.

Do Not Pass Go is Nick Harding’s latest case.

Nick Harding’s fifth case.

With the rotten smell of his last case still lingering, Nick is hired to find a missing person.

His girlfriend, Lucy, asks him to locate Alex Bainbridge, one of her close friends from university and a member of a group of six who have remained in touch since their time there. He is a financial journalist who often goes to the ground during investigations, but this time, he has missed a regular group gathering and has become electronically invisible.

Nick’s investigation uncovers a financial conspiracy that threatens to topple another government and exposes him to a level of physical danger he hasn’t encountered in years. ARCs will be available starting next week.

Pop over to this form (opens in a new window) and register. Since these books are both releasing on July 18, I’m looking for reviews by July 11 to help propel the launch.

Review copies will be made available (and ARC readers accepted) through Booksprout the first week of May until the end of June.

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fingers typing on a keyboard, much like mine are now.

Why I Write What I Write

Posted on by Tony McFadden

I’m sure that if I ever visit a therapist (and we all should at least once in our lives), they’d root out some childhood experience that drives me to write what I write.

It’s not the obsession with writing itself but rather the obsession with crafting crime fiction, where the good guys risk everything to take down the bad guys. I’ve penned a few science fiction stories, too; one was wrapped up in a police procedural, while the other featured good-guy aliens fighting their own planet to save Earth.

Good guys serving up justice.

‘Guys’, of course, is gender-neutral. In my books, you’ll find plenty of female protagonists and female whatever the henchfolk of protagonists are called. Fierce, fighting and undistressed damsels.

But back to it.

After the first half dozen books, I realised what I enjoyed writing were tales of bad people trying something bad and the good people bringing them to justice. Morals were mostly black and white. The baddies rarely had good traits, but the good guys could be morally grey when the situation called for it.

Then, it is just a matter of finding new crimes, new situations where the bad guys could be identifiable as horrible and the good guys appropriately outraged.

Inevitably, when plotting, I’d make the crime incredibly complex with twists, double-crosses and missing heirs. But by the time the first draft is finished, it’s a meat-and-potatoes crime. The complexity comes from how the baddies try to hide it.

You’d think I’d learn, but it happens this way every time.

So, again, back to it.

Good and evil aside, I write crime fiction because I enjoy the problem-solving involved with setting up a crime, deriving a path for the heroes to discover the crime (while at the same time keeping the readers at least half a step behind), and the ultimate squashing of the bounders who had the temerity to violate societies norms.

And these days, it’s a soothing salve when that happens.

Nick Harding’s 4th Case

Posted on by Tony McFadden

I’m halfway through the first draft of this story. Nick’s in a rough place and while he will inevitably prevail, I’m a bit stumped how he’s going to get out of it. But he has to before the next chapter, because that chapter started with him out of rough place.

Plotting versus Pantsing is a facile argument. I’ve got the first two Acts plotted out very well. But the plot isn’t by any means the final story. This is how I’ve described this chapter in Scrivener:

I’ll find my way to the end. I’ll use dialogue to exposition some stuff that needs expositing (are these even words? Who knows?), including what information I need to get out of the antagonist at this point of the story.

This is also a good opportunity to close out any minor inconsistencies that might have popped up so far. You’ll have to tie them up at some point.

This chapter is almost like a bottle episode in a long-running TV show. It’s in one location, has minimal characters and a very tightly constrained information flow.

And, as a plotter, I’m not ashamed to say it is almost 100% pantsed. Going in, I have no idea how I’m coming out.

I just know where I’ll be when I do.

Anyway. It’s still a work in progress. I have no idea what the title will be yet. Cover art is still a daydream. But I know it will be available June 1, 2024

#KindleUnlimited / KDP Select

Posted on by Tony McFadden

In an attempt to raise the visibility of the books which lead into “Dead Tomorrow” (coming to all good and shitty bookstores in May 2023), I‘ve placed “Broken” and “Unprotected Sax” in the KDP Select program on Amazon.

Broken

Broken is Nick Harding’s last case. Nick is a former member of the Australian Federal Police who specialised in financial crimes. He left the AFB almost a decade ago and set himself up as a PRivate Investigator.

Nick Harding has a new case. Actually, two of them.

A very rich old dude is about to kick off and is desperate to make amends with his estranged son. Nick is contacted by the old guy’s lawyer with a task: Find the son, convince him to get in contact with his father, and help mediate the relationship.

Nick hates mediating.

That same day a friend of a friend engages him to track down a serial deadbeat who has bilked a small financial services company out of millions of dollars. The fee is lower, but the job is more up Nick’s alley.

Then the heir’s life is threatened, the deadbeat has a compelling backstory and everything Nick thought he knew was wrong.

Amazon AU | Amazon US | Amazon CA | Amazon UK

Unprotected Sax

Unprotected Sax came out over a decade ago. The main antagonist in this story was a Rusiian mobster in South Florida named Vladimir Petrovski.

In “Dead Tomorrow (coming to all good, mediocre, and shitty bookstores everywhere in May 2023), Petrovski reappears, with good reasons (for him) and proves to be a worthy adversary.

Amazon US | Amazon AU | Amazon CA | Amazon UK

Scrivener Templates – Again

Posted on by Tony McFadden

I use a couple of different templates when I’m writing. One, a 4-part novel template for Scrivener, has been linked by several websites and unfortunately, that link now goes nowhere.

This is/will be the new landing post for templates. They generally follow the structure I talk about elsewhere on this site.

You need to right-click this link (don’t click it. It won’t do you any good) and save the file in a location you can’t forget (let’s go for desktop, for now).

When you start a new Scrivener project, you’re presented with a window that allows you to select a template. The bottom left of that window is an “Options” button that allows you to import a template:

Navigate to the Desktop (or wherever you’ve saved the download) and select the template. It’ll be an option (under Fiction) going forward.

I also use an 8-part “mini-movie” template when writing screenplays. It’s a bit more streamlined than the 4-part (counter-intuitively) because I’m not breaking it into chapters.

If you’re interested, right-click here and follow the directions above.

REMEMBER: Right-click and save. Don’t just click on the link.

If you’ve got any questions, please drop a comment below.

Ten Million

Posted on by Tony McFadden

November will be the tenth anniversary of the release of “Unprotected Sax“, one of the ‘Miami Mob’ books.

Playing sax in his friend’s jazz band was supposed to be relaxing.

Then his friend disappeared.

Johnny Delacourte (aka Johnny D The Sax Machine) left the Army Rangers and the battlefields of Afghanistan six months ago.

Then the friend disappears, the cops don’t seem to care, and the Russian mob is all over his ass.

One of the antagonists — the primary antagonist, is a Russian mobster named Vladimir Petrovski. The story doesn’t end well for him. No spoilers, but it was not good.

Early 2023 will see the release of my third Nick Harding case. Tentatively, it’s called “Dead Tomorrow”. (Don’t bank on that title staying. I have a bad habit of changing the title at the last minute.) Petrovski ends up being the big bad in this book, also.

In November, on or about the anniversary date of Unprotected Sax, I’m going to release a 10,000-word short called “Ten Million”. It started as an exercise to build a backstory for “Dead Tomorrow”, but it’s a pretty good yarn, bridging the decade between then and now.

It’ll be a free short story. It’s not a necessary read for “Dead Tomorrow”, but it might help. If you’ve already purchased “Unprotected Sax” as an e-book, this short will be included as an epilogue of sorts. Set your reading device up for automatic updates. It’ll show up sometime in late November. And if that doesn’t work, it’ll be available as a free download on this site, and on all popular and unpopular ebook sites.

Edit: Except for Amazon. Unless someone can tell me how to make a book free on Amazon.

24 Jan 2023: It should be available on Amazon for free once price matching goes into effect.

Apple/iBooks | Barnes & Noble | Kobo | Amazon

Broken. Coming June.

Posted on by Tony McFadden

There’s a new Nick Harding case. Actually, two of them for the price of one.

A very rich old dude is about to kick off and is desperate to make amends with his estranged son. Nick is contacted by the old guy’s lawyer with a task: Find the son, convince him to get in contact with his father, and help mediate the relationship. Nick hates mediating.

That same day a friend of a friend engages him to track down a serial deadbeat who has bilked a small financial services company out of millions of dollars. The fee is lower, but the job is more up Nick’s alley, what with his background in the Financial Crimes unit of the Australian Financial Police.

Then the heir’s life is threatened, the deadbeat has a compelling backstory and everything Nick thought he knew was wrong.

Paperback and eBook formats will be available on June 1.

ARCs will be available early May on Netgalley, so keep an eye out there if you want a *free early version.

(*financially free, but I’d love a pre-release review.)