I am very pleased to welcome an old friend to Fiction Favorites. She has a new detective novel and I invited her to come and tell you about it. So Susan Nicholls the post is yours.
Thanks, John.
The people at the Parliament House, a gay resort complex in Orlando, Florida, highly influenced the writing in Naked Alliances. The complex has seven bars with different themes, a full service restaurant, hotel suites, a pool, and the Footlight Theater. My husband and I attend the comedy shows and performances at the theater. My characters, both the private investigator and his sidekick, an exotic dancer, were developed based on personalities we had met at the complex. The community service by the Parliament House after the Pulse Shooting was highly commendable.
I had been writing deep, philosophical, dark novels with bittersweet endings and was falling into a funk. My husband, who reads two or three crime novels weekly, and had turned me onto some amusing Florida regional crime fiction authors, challenged me to write something lighter. Naked Alliances is a crime thriller with a humorous edge that falls on the spectrum somewhere between the work of Carl Hiaasen and Elmore Leonard. If you enjoy Tim Dorsey, Tim Baker, and Randy Wayne White, and other Regional FL authors, you may enjoy this book. If you like mysteries/thrillers and/or P.I. stories, you may enjoy Naked Alliances
My family owns and operates one of the oldest and largest nudist resorts in the country, Cypress Cove, so it was a given that a fictional nudist resort would need to be worked into the settings of the Naked Eye Series, a collection of private investigator stories. No chance of having someone carry a concealed weapon there! Having lived at the resort for six years, I developed a deep understanding of the lifestyle choice and how it is extremely different from the sex industry, yet harbors clandestine elements of intrigue and fascination.
Social issues are at the forefront of all of my writing. A former sexual assault nurse examiner (S.A.N.E.), I have a special interest in the subject matter of sex-trafficking, and have seen, up close and personal, the horrendous nature of the crime and its effects on the lives of the victims and their families.
Sex-trafficking is a heinous crime that occurs in all areas of the world, but frequently gets swept under the rug. There is somewhat of a misconception that it does not occur in our own communities, rural and urban, but it is a serious problem. I wanted to bring this crime to light in my story and interviewed many victims to obtain a realistic view of the nature of the crime. Yet, it was my desire to soften the harshness of the reality with a humorous approach.
The cold case in this dual plot thriller, actually came about as curiosity on how evidence collected at the scene of a crime can, after many years, point in an entirely different direction from that previously expected. A medical examiner in my area, Dr. Jan Garavaglia (Dr. G.) and forensics specialists I have come to know through social media, contributed to the resolution of the case.
My husband, Greg, a rocket scientist/mechanical engineer, has been super supportive throughout the process of writing Naked Alliances, as have many blogger and author friends, and my community at large.
Naked Alliances
A riveting romp through Central Florida, Naked Alliances air-drops you into the seedier side of Orlando that the amusement park industry tries to keep under wraps.
When a young immigrant woman and an exotic dancer are fleeing men with guns and have no place to hide, Richard Noggin, P.I., can’t turn his back on them, even if helping them makes him a target.
Richard plans to impress an aspiring politician by taking on a big white-collar case with the potential of getting him off the streets and into air-conditioned offices. Instead, he’s handed a cold case and quickly finds himself sucked into a shadowy world of sex, secrets and…murder.
Marked for a bullet and stretched thin by his investigations, he reluctantly teams up with the unlikely, brassy custodian of the young woman on the run. With bodies piling up, they go undercover in a nudist resort, determined to catch the killer and bring down the mastermind of the Alliance before someone else dies.
From the dark corners of Orlando’s Little Saigon, to the sunny exposure of Leisure Lagoon, the Naked Eye juggles to keep his balls in the air.
S.K. Nicholls Author/The Naked Eye Series & Publisher/Brave Blue Heron Books
S.K. Nicholls’ family owns and operates one of the oldest and largest nudist resorts in the nation located in Central Florida, Cypress Cove. Her experience gives her a deep understanding of the lifestyle choice and how it is extremely different from the sex industry, yet harbors clandestine elements of intrigue and fascination. Social issues are at the forefront of her writing. A former sexual assault nurse examiner, she has a special interest in the subject matter of sex-trafficking. A native of Georgia, she lives in Orlando, Florida with her husband, Greg. When she’s not writing, she can be found tracking down Snorlaxes, wandering city parks with the homeless, or sipping margaritas on the bow of a boat. She is a member of Sisters in Crime, Florida Writer’s Association and Writers of Central Florida…or Thereabouts.
Links:
email: sknicholls(at)sknicholls.com
Twitter Handle: @sknicholls1
