The HBS Author's Spotlight SHOWCASES Pamela F. Hutchins's New Book: Stunner.
Author Pamela Fagan Hutchins is an award-winning and best-selling romantic mystery/suspense and hilarious nonfiction writer.
Stunner
A What Doesn't Kill You World Romantic Mystery
Ava Book 2
Author: Pamela Fagan Hutchins
AVAILABLE
Amazon
Barnes and Noble
KOBO Store
iTunes Store
A nationwide tour. A popstar in the crosshairs. Touring with the band just got deadly.
After battling breast cancer, island pop singer and single mom Ava thought she could handle anything her concert tour threw her way. But when tragedy strikes her album launch party, she realizes she may have underestimated the price she’ll have to pay for fame. And the cost skyrockets when someone attempts to murder her headlining act.
Still shaken by the alarming attack, Ava has little time to process the traumatic event before she’s caught up in a scandal worthy of the tabloids. Someone in her staff is leaking secrets to the paparazzi, and the fallout is wreaking havoc on her love life. When a second pop singer is targeted, Ava doubles down on her search for clues. But with music careers and multi-million-dollar contracts on the line, she could pack a stadium with potential suspects.
Knowing her future hinges on staying in the spotlight, Ava must track down the murderous stalker before the final curtain drops.
Stunner is the second book in Ava’s trilogy within the What Doesn’t Kill You series of romantic mysteries. If you like sexy pop stars, backstage scandals, and edge-of-your-seat mysteries, then you’ll love Pamela Fagan Hutchins’ award-winning series.
Excerpt from Stunner
Chapter One
They say be careful what you wish for, but they don’t know beef from bull foot. I jump out of the helicopter, which I rode over from Virgin Gorda for the sole purpose of making an entrance. Collin, my man, hustles forward. I clutch my floppy hat with one hand and take Collin’s fingers with the other as I concentrate on how to look graceful in a forty-mile- per-hour wind that creates a pelletized sand spout. On one side of us is crystal blue Caribbean Sea. On the other coconut palms bend nearly double behind a tiki hut with twinkling red and green Christmas lights. My eyes continue down the beach across the roofline of an enormous house and land on a thatched-roof pavilion with what looks like heavily loaded buffet tables.
All of this for the wrap party for my first album. Bombshell—that’s the name of the album—is memorialized on a giant banner across the top of the tiki hut: AVA
BUTLER’S EXPLOSIVE DEBUT ALBUM, BOMBSHELL, FROM VENUS RECORDS. DECEMBER 15, EVERYWHERE. There’s a picture from the album artwork incorporated into the banner. In it, I’m a road-weary skank with eye makeup streaked down my cheeks and a ripped green lace top, but I’d do me.
I escape the rotor wash across the little landing pad that looks like a golf green, without falling face-first, and join the waiting crowd. Hugs from Drake Henson, the owner of Venus Records and the helicopter, his staff, and my family and friends, whom Drake chartered early to Virgin Gorda and ferried to Dekker Cay, his private island.
There needs to be an audience to cheer my arrival, he says.
A Venus underling presses a hollowed coconut into my palm. I sip from the straw. Orange juice, Coco Lopez, pineapple juice, rum, and nutmeg. Painkiller, my favorite.
“I’m Greg, and I’ll be taking care of you,” the very young man says. His accent is British, and his nose is slathered in zinc oxide. A long-sleeved sun shirt protects his upper body, his swimming trunks end at his knobby knees, and above his sweaty hairline a Santa cap perches askew. It’s barely past Thanksgiving, but it’s all about the People.com optics at this soiree.
“Thank you, meh son,” I say. “No ice, please.” Normally, I speak in a calypso accent and dialect naturally around other locals, and I “Yank” in a continental accent with nonlocals. But Venus is banking heavily on the fact that I’m from the US Virgin Island of St. Marcos. I’m under strict instructions from Venus to emphasize a C-word, my Caribbean roots—instead of my years in the States to attend NYU, where I studied theater and the classics and later pursued a musical theater career—and downplay another C-word, my Caucasian father. So calypso it is, even though in my head I’m always the girl my Bahamian mother and Canadian father raised me to be: primed for success spouting the Queen’s English, so to speak.
“Over here, Ava,” a photographer calls out.
I take a step in the direction she points. Collin starts to follow, but she waves him off.
“Just Ava,” she says.
Collin pulls out his new phone and snaps a picture of the photographer, then disappears into the crowd before I can protest. I’m also under strict instructions to downplay the C-word boyfriend in favor of my Goddess of the Morning After image, which Collin, who’s a native of Texas, refers to sweetly as “rode hard and put up wet.” I can’t argue with his description. I suck in my gut and hold up my best assets, straining out of the green string-bikini top with gold metallic threads that my stylist, Chen, picked out for me this morning. I fight an urge to cover my left breast with my hand, as if the camera can see what the eye cannot: an afterimage from the radiation treatments that ended only a few months ago and that have me in remission from breast cancer. Oh, and that’s the fourth C-word in my instructions. I’m supposed to keep the cancer treatment under wraps.
Flashes shock my eyes, and I’m glad for my oversized sunglasses. The onslaught is intense but over quickly, and I escape back to my awaiting entourage of island friends and family and New York music industry colleagues. Farther up the beach toward Drake’s mansion, his other guests congregate. Venus recording artists and studio musicians. Artists Drake is recruiting. Drake’s famous industry buddies. Journalists and reviewers. Financiers. Publicists, promotors, and executives.
“Girl, you a rock star, for real.” McKenna slurps her cranberry juice and lime noisily through a tiny cocktail straw, leaving only ice behind. The noise stops. Thanks be to Jah, I think, hoping my devoutly Catholic mommy can’t read my mind.
“Please.” I slide my sunglasses down just enough to give her the slant-eye. Then I down my drink. Another appears in my hand, sans ice, as if by magic, so fast I can’t say thank you to the deliverer, who I assume is Greg, but he’s nowhere to be seen.
A large strong hand squeezes my bana. I hope it’s Collin and not Kenny, my lecherous producer who doesn’t let long odds or Collin’s biceps keep him from copping a feel. But as I inhale, I know the hand belongs to Collin. His scent is unmistakable to me, and I imagine for the rest of my life I’ll smell sun, sex, and musk when I climax, whether Collin’s there or not.
I look around me at my family and friends mixing with the Who’s Who of the New York music scene. My tunes jam out of giant speakers on either end of the white sand beach, outdoor surround sound competing with the wind and water. It’s idyllic out here, notwithstanding the ten-foot security chain-link fences topped with a cyclone of barbed wire separating paradise from the rest of the island.
The breeze lifts my silk sarong, and I swat it down. The hand on my bana catches mine, and I lace my fingers through Collin’s. He’s in tropical board shorts circa 2000 that ride below his six-pack, and I swivel into him, savoring my Painkiller buzz, his warm skin, and giddy, heady success. I splay the dark chocolate fingers of my other hand on his toasted-coconut pec, and the result is delicious. The industry’s beautiful people with their pasty skin and toss-after- wearing designer swimwear are almost comical next to him, a police officer with an annual paycheck less than their monthly burns. I glance to my right and catch a perky ponytailed pop princess eyeing him. I let go of Collin’s chest long enough to slide a finger across my throat. She puts both hands up in front of her and takes a step back. Damn straight. I return my hand to its happy place. My hip bumps something enticingly hard, but I realize it’s only his fancy new phone.
The sound of a man clearing his throat pulls me back from the brink of violence.
In his cultured voice, Drake says, “How about a tour of the property, Ava?”
I turn to the Brit with the scraggly grayish-blond hair. I’m not going to lie. I may be Drake’s protégé, but it’s gone further than that. He hit on me at first, which was the cause of Shari—the soon-to- be fourth ex-Mrs. Henson—leaving him, notwithstanding that I rejected his advances. Word is she is furious that she hadn’t been pregnant yet and wants to renew her attempts before they formalize a divorce. I guess she thinks she needs child support on top of what will be a sizeable alimony. Drake famously has no children despite the parade of women through his life. Makes one think there’s little chance Shari will succeed. But to me, Drake is just a friend, although I know he doesn’t do launch parties on Dekker Cay for just anyone. It’s caused some tension between Collin and me.
Between the other Venus artists and employees and me. “Obsessed” is a word I hear tossed about, but he combats that by telling people I’m like a daughter to him. Which reminds me of the scene in Vacation where Clark Griswold’s niece Vicki brags that her daddy says she French-kisses best. Urp.
“We love one. Give us a minute?” I’m not one hundred percent sure he intends for me to bring Collin, but I don’t care, and I don’t let go of my boyfriend’s hand. I turn to my friends and family and say, “You okay without us?”
“We irie,” Rashidi assures me, using the island word for “all good,” and flashing his toothpaste-commercial smile. He’s my ex-lover and a woman magnet with his ebony skin, lean body, and long dreadlocks, who’s soon to move to Texas. I’ll miss him...
Author Genre: Mystery, Romance, Humor And Comedy, Non-fiction
Website: Pamela Fagan Hutchins - Holding Nothing Back
Author's Blog: Pamela Fagan Hutchins
SkipJack Publishing Authors
Twitter: @PamelotH
E-Mail: pamela@pamelafaganhutchins.com
Goodreads: Check Out Goodreads
Google+: Check Out Google+
Facebook: Check Out Facebook
Post with Profile + Interview: HBS Author's Spotlight
Amazon Author Profile
Author Description: Pamela writes overly long e-mails and the What Doesn't Kill You romantic mysteries from deep in the heart of Nowheresville, TX and way up in the frozen north of Snowheresville, WY. Pamela is passionate about hiking with her hunky husband and pack of rescue dogs (and an occasional goat and donkey), riding her gigantic horses, experimenting with her Keurig, and traveling in the Bookmobile.
Pamela's mysteries have won a lot of awards, from the 2017 Silver Falchion for Best Adult Mystery WINNER (Fighting for Anna) to the 2016 and 2015 WINNERS for USA Best Books Fiction: Cross Genre (Hell to Pay, Heaven to Betsy). With downloads of nearly 2,000,000 for the What Doesn't Kill You series, readers seem to enjoy her smart, sassy female sleuths.
Author's Book List
Bombshell
- What Doesn't Kill You, #9If you like your mysteries exotic and fast-paced, then Ava’s your girl, and Bombshell’s the novel for you!
Temp worker by day, lounge singer by night, single mom Ava is having a hard time breaking up with her long-distance boyfriend and making it without the support of her parents on the island of St. Marcos. Things improve dramatically when she lands a too-good-to-be-true job at a virtual currency exchange, where she meets a seriously sexy man, and goes to work for a boss so incredible he sponsors her on a trip to New York to record a demo. But when Ava stumbles across the raped and murdered body of a young woman, she recognizes her from a shared trauma back in their school days. Ava is devastated and throws herself into avenging the girl's death. From that moment on, it’s one bombshell after another, going off closer and closer to Ava and the people she cares about most.
Order the Book From:
Amazon
Barnes and Noble
KOBO Store
iTunes Store
Fighting For Anna
- What Doesn't Kill You, #8 - A Michele Romantic MysteryTightly plotted and fast-paced, this romantic head-scratcher dives into 80s pop culture, a reclusive religious community, and high stakes politics.
Michele retreats to the country while her teens are away for the summer, to write the memoirs of her elderly neighbor Gidget—a reclusive former Houston art gallery owner—and learn how to be alone in the wake of her husband’s death. But when Gidget dies unexpectedly, she leaves everything to Michele except a bequest to a daughter no one knew existed. Suddenly, Michele's country quiet is shattered, and half of Texas shows up: some to help, some to contest the will, and others to make sure the mystery daughter is never found alive.
Order the Book From:
Amazon
Barnes and Noble
KOBO Store
iTunes Store
Hell to Pay
- What Doesn't Kill You, #7 - An Emily Romantic MysteryA pulse-pounder full of humor and heart, the latest in the What Doesn't Kill You romantic mystery series.
Big-haired paralegal and former rodeo queen Emily has her life back on track. Her adoption of Betsy seems like a done deal, her parents have reunited, and she’s engaged to her sexy boss Jack. Then client Phil Escalante’s childhood buddy Dennis drops dead, face first into a penis cake at the adult novelty store Phil owns with his fiancée Nadine, one of Emily’s best friends. The cops charge Phil with murder right on the heels of his acquittal in a trial for burglarizing the Mighty is His Word church offices.
Emily’s nemesis ADA Melinda Stafford claims a witness overheard Phil fighting with Dennis over a woman. Before he can mount a defense, Phil falls into a diabetic coma, leaving Nadine shaken and terrified. Meanwhile Betsy’s ultra-religious foster parents apply to adopt her, and Jack starts acting weird and evasive. Emily feels like a calf out of a chute, pulled between the ropes of the header and the heeler, as she fights to help Phil and Nadine without losing Betsy and Jack.
Order the Book From:
Amazon
Barnes and Noble
KOBO Store
iTunes Store
Earth to Emily
- What Doesn't Kill You, #6 - An Emily Romantic MysteryParalegal and former rodeo queen Emily only wants two little things. The first is to adopt Betsy—the girl who has stolen her heart but could be deported to Mexico at any time. The other is a second chance with her boss, Jack, a smolderingly hot and mysterious criminal defense attorney in Amarillo who runs his family’s horse ranch in New Mexico on the side.
But before Emily can dare to hope for either (or both), the obstacles between them and her mount: two runaway teenagers, an aging exotic dancer, and a dead trucker torpedo a dinner with Jack. She and Jack catch their client—who’s charged with assaulting an officer—selling stolen goods. And to top it all off, Betsy’s zealously religious and overly protective foster parents sic some questionable cops on Emily to destroy her reputation.
Emily just wants to silence all the noise and focus on her priorities: Betsy and Jack. But then the phone rings. It’s the two runaways, with an enormous secret and a desperate plea for help. They convince Emily that she’s the only one they can trust, forcing her into a horrible choice: risking the lives of these two teens, or jeopardizing her own chance at a life with the two people she cares about most.
Order the Book From:
Amazon
Barnes and Noble
KOBO Store
iTunes Store
Audible
Heaven to Betsy
- Emily #1When a dead body swan-dives from a balcony into the pool at a wedding, gossip comes to a halt about disgraced paralegal and former rodeo queen Emily—whose husband left her for a woman who turns out to be a man. Enter Jack, a secretive attorney and sexy mix of cowboy and Indian. She refuses to work for him, until she learns about the disappearance of the six-year old daughter of his notorious client Sofia, the wedding shooter, who is also an illegal immigrant. Emily feels a strange affinity with the girl and launches a desperate search for her. Bodies pile up in her wake across Texas and New Mexico as the walls around her own secrets begin to crumble, and the authorities question whether the child is anything but a figment of her imagination.
Order the Book From:
Amazon
Barnes and Noble
KOBO Store
iTunes Store
Audible
Going for Kona
When her husband is killed in a hit-and-run bicycling accident, it takes all of Michele Lopez Hanson’s strength not to burrow into their bed for the rest of her life. But their kids need her, and she promised herself she’d do the Kona Ironman Triathlon in Adrian’s honor, and someone seems to be stalking her family, so she slogs through the pain to keep herself on track. Her dangerously delirious training sessions become a link between her and Adrian, and she discovers that if she keeps moving fast enough to fly, she can hold onto her husband—even as she loses her grip on herself and faces her biggest danger yet.
Order the Book From:
Amazon
Barnes and Noble
KOBO Store
iTunes Store
Finding Harmony
- Book #3 in Katie & Annalise SeriesFinding Harmony takes you on a high stakes dash through the islands, with laughs and voodoo balancing out the mix.
Katie’s already on edge when a dead guy shows up at Annalise and shady locals claim there are slave remains in the foundation, but when Nick doesn’t come home to her and the kids, she’s ready to lose it. A frantic Katie launches a Caribbean-wide manhunt, calling on Kurt, her stoic, steady father-in-law, and Collin, her badass big brother, to help her search air, land, and sea for her husband, who may be in very big trouble indeed.
Order the Book From:
Amazon
Barnes and Noble
KOBO Store
iTunes Store
Audible
What Kind of Loser Indie Publishes, and How Can I Be One, Too?
- Writing & PublishingWho knew indie publishing could be this much fun? Whether you have published before or are contemplating your first book, Pamela Fagan Hutchins makes an overwhelming field manageable by presenting tried and true how-tos and a myriad of resources, including the marketing plan that got her debut novel national distribution - all with her tongue firmly planted in her cheek.
Order the Book From:
Amazon
Barnes and Noble
KOBO Store
iTunes Store
Leaving Annalise
- Katie & AnnaliseOne unexpected and hotly fought-over little boy, two dead bodies, and a series of home vandalisms throw Texas attorney turned island chanteuse Katie Connell into a tizzy. Juggling all of this, Bloody Mary cravings, baggage, and the bad guys too, she waffles between the jumbie house that brought her back from the brink and the man she believes is the love of her life.
Book Trailer: Leaving Annalise
Order the Book From:
Amazon
Barnes and Noble
KOBO Store
iTunes Store
Audible
Saving Grace
- Katie & Annalise SeriesKatie Connell is a high-strung attorney whose sloppy drinking habits and stunted love life collide hilariously during a doomed celebrity case in Dallas. She flees Texas for the Caribbean and escapes professional humiliation, a broken heart, and a wicked Bloody Mary habit, but ends up trading one set of problems for another when she begins to investigate the suspicious deaths of her parents on the island of St. Marcos. She’s bewitched by the voodoo spirit of an abandoned house in the rainforest and discovers that she’s as much a danger to herself as the island’s bad guys are.
Most people prefer my personal Saving Grace “trailer” which was just me being silly.
Book Trailer: Saving Grace
Order the Book From:
Amazon
Barnes and Noble
KOBO Store
iTunes Store
Audible
Hot Flashes And Half Ironmans
- Women's Health and TriathlonMiddle-aged Endurance Athletics Meets The Hormonally Challenged
Women get older, dammit, and sometimes it sucks, especially for women who pride themselves on athleticism and an adventurous spirit. Hot flashes. Weight gain. Sleepless nights. Yes, it can be hard, but middle age doesn’t have to be a flashing red stop light. It’s perfectly acceptable for women of a certain age, a certain level of hormonal imbalance, and a certain amount of cellulite to don spandex and even enter the rarefied sport of endurance triathlon.
In fact, there’s a huge advantage to aging: much of the potential competition drops out in favor of the couch and a remote control. And the endurance high? The elation of dietary purity and discovering you can have arms like Madonna? The Zen of goal attainment? Better than a good Shiraz buzz. Once you get past the ugly mood swings, chafing on your girly parts, and a “kill your own mother” craving for sleep and a hot Cinnabon, that is.
Pamela Fagan Hutchins has been there and done that, with lessons learned and sense of humor (usually) intact. She completed her first triathlon at 39 and her first Half Ironman at 40. She has her eye on an M-dot tattoo in 2014.
Order the Book From:
Amazon
Barnes and Noble
KOBO Store
iTunes Store
The Clark Kent Chronicles
- ADHD & AspergersA Mother's Tale Of Life With Her ADHD And Asperger's Son
They’re the parents who other people secretly believe must be doing a crappy job, the ones whose children don lacrosse gloves to weed the flowerbed, won’t turn in their homework, and throw age-inappropriate tantrums in public. They’re the parents one frayed nerve short of a breakdown as they scrub off the giant perceived “L” for Loser from their foreheads, turning for help to every source they can think of, because their kids just don’t respond like other kids, because their kids aren’t like other kids. The very brains of their children are wired differently, and the disciplines, motivators, and strategies that are supposed to work on them, according to conventional wisdom, don’t.
These are the parents of children on the ADHD Spectrum, and most of them have used up their Phone a Friend Lifeline and just want a little understanding and the hope of shared knowledge from someone else who has survived a life like theirs. They are parents like Pamela Fagan Hutchins, whose son, dubbed “Clark Kent the WonderKid,” has ADHD and Asperger’s Syndrome.
Pamela takes readers on a heart-wrenching and hilarious road trip from toddler to adulthood with Clark Kent and his family, sharing their collective wisdom and empathy along the way.
Order the Book From:
Amazon
Barnes and Noble
KOBO Store
iTunes Store
How To Screw Up Your Kids
- Divorce and StepparentingBlended Families, Blendered Style
Married couples with children divorce 40% of the time. In less than three years after that divorce, chances are both mom and dad are remarried, and probably each to someone who has kids of their own. The single most explosive and divisive issue in those marriages? Stepparenting.
Wouldn't it be nice if we all lived in a bubble gum and sugar plum world where, without a ripple on Lake Placid, kids embraced stepparents and appreciated their contributions? Where stepsiblings didn't compete for attention and argue over favorites and fairness? Well, we don't.
So what we need when stepparenting is a good plan. A plan for blending, or blendering if you will, the disparate stepchildren and their parents into a chunky smoothie of stepfamily goodness. How To Screw Up Your Kids helps the parents everyone predicts will fail prove all the naysayers wrong. Through the use of practical human relations principles and the author's achingly honest and often hilarious stories, readers will learn to envision and instill a unique set of family values and culture into their new household, and by God, have fun doing it
Order the Book From:
Amazon
Barnes and Noble
KOBO Store
iTunes Store
Author Recommended by: HBSystems Publications
Publisher of ebooks, writing industry blogger and the sponsor of the following blogs:
Indie Author’s Corner
Mystery Reader’s Circle
Check out the index of other Spotlight authors. Spotlight Index.
Thanks for spotlighting Stunner!
ReplyDelete