Fabulous and Brunette: The Wrong Kind by Austin S. Camacho - Book Tour - Guest Post - Giveaway

Hello, lovelies! It gives me great pleasure today to host Austin S. Camacho and his new book, “The Wrong Kind”! For other stops on his Goddess Fish Promotions Book Tour, please click on the banner above or any of the images in this post.

Be sure to make it to the end of this post to enter to win a $25 Amazon or Barnes and Noble Gift Card!! Also, come back daily to interact with Austin and to increase your chances of winning!

Thanks for stopping by! Wishing you lots of luck in this fabulous giveaway!

The Wrong Kind

by Austin S. Camacho

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GENRE: Mystery

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BLURB:

A distraught woman hires private investigator Hannibal Jones to track down her daughter who has run away, trying to escape the homeless shelter life her mother has come to accept. When Hannibal finds Connie Blanco she is entwined in a gang war and somehow connected to a murder. The corpse is barely cold before a second murder follows and Hannibal finds himself entangled in a complex plot revolving around stolen drugs…but who is the mastermind of this twisted scheme?

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EXCERPT TWO:

“If you take my advice you’ll go back up to Charles County and look in on your mama. It might not matter to you but it will make her feel a lot better.” He stood, leaned forward and offered a hand to help her to her feet.

And then the lights went out.

Hannibal spun in the sudden darkness, one hand snatching his Oakleys off his face while the other darted under his suit jacket reaching for his weapon. Before his fingers could manage to grip the gun his head exploded with pain.

The impact staggered him. The left rear corner of his head. With luck that might be enough of a clue. He whipped his left fist around and back. He hit nothing but air. Then an arm wrapped around his neck. Another arm went under his right arm and he felt the hand at the back of his head. He knew the hold, not a choke in the classic sense, but what television wrestlers called a sleeper hold, cutting off the blood flow in both his carotid artery and jugular vein. He could breathe fine but with no blood going to his brain it didn’t matter. He felt a deeper darkness moving in and his balance deserted him. The arms suddenly came away. Something crashed into his knees. Most likely the floor. His arms were unresponsive, and it felt like he was falling forward. He took a deep breath because he knew the next part was really going to hurt.

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GUEST POST:

Mystery Book Fan to Mystery Book Writer: How a Passion Turned into a Career

It happens like any other addiction. Someone slips you a free sample and then, you’re hooked. In my case it was The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. I loved those stories and I knew I wanted more. Except… the writing seemed a bit out of touch with the late 20th Century.

Then I found Raymond Chandler. His prose was almost poetry and I could get lost in the stories. This was better writing than anything they made me read in school and I knew I wanted more… Except… I wished the plots were just a little more complex and twisted, with all the clues so I could try to figure it out.

The search continued. I found Ross MacDonald. Lew Archer handled dense, complex plots. Then came Rex Stout. Nero Wolfe solved legitimate puzzles with all the clues laid out in plain sight so I could slap my forehead at the end if I hadn’t figured it all out.

While all of this seeped into my brain I discovered Elmore Leonard. Here was crime fiction with characters so well drawn that I felt I knew them personally. Sometimes there wasn’t really a good guy, but there was always someone I could root for. And John D. McDonald contributed Travis McGee, a hero you could count on.

Of course not every book I picked up was a winner. In the 1980s and 90’s I encountered some really disappointing mystery novels. Maybe I was setting the bar too high but I had my heroes.

Then came that pivotal day. I was reading a mystery (I won’t name the author) and realized about a third of the way thru the book that I knew everything that was going to happen. It was watery, predictable, with a stock figure for a detective and weak writing on top of that. And I said this, out loud:

“Hell, I could do better than this!”

Which may not have mattered except that my wife heard me and responded with, “Yeah, SURE you could.”

That became a conversation, which became a challenge, which lead to me deciding to prove I could do it. I knew what I wanted to write. I wanted to write the book I wanted to read. A novel with Chandler prose, a hero on Travis McGee’s level with Elmore Leonard supporting characters and a mystery plot that Stout or MacDonald would be proud of.

Hmmm… that mystery thing. How did one DO that, exactly? Well again, I knew what I liked! So I got out a couple of my favorite novels by those two giants and reread them, outlining as I went, to figure out how they worked.

After the outlining process I had an idea how to approach the plot. At the time I was working for TRICARE, the military’s health care system as a broadcast journalist. I was assigned a story about the bone marrow program at Bethesda Naval Medical Center. I realized that here was a real-life mystery – finding a matching donor to save a life! That idea evolved into my novel BLOOD AND BONE.

So, that’s how I went from mystery fan to mystery author. Was that book everything I wanted it to be? No. But I believe if you aim for the stars you may just hit the moon. And I believe each of the seven Hannibal Jones novels is better than the one before, so I’m pretty proud of where my work is on THE WRONG KIND.

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AUTHOR BIO:

Austin S. Camacho is the author of seven novels about Washington DC-based private eye Hannibal Jones, five in the Stark and O’Brien international adventure-thriller series, and the detective novel, Beyond Blue. His short stories have been featured in several anthologies including Dying in a Winter Wonderland – an Independent Mystery Booksellers Association Top Ten Bestseller for 2008. He is featured in the Edgar nominated African American Mystery Writers: A Historical and Thematic Study by Frankie Y. Bailey. Camacho is also editorial director for Intrigue Publishing, a Maryland small press.

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CONNECT WITH AUSTIN:

Website:

https://ascamacho.com

Email:

ascamacho@hotmail.com

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/austin.camacho.author

Twitter:

https://twitter.com/ascamacho

BookBub Author Page:

https://www.bookbub.com/authors/austin-s-camacho

Goodreads Author Page:

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/733422.Austin_S_Camacho

Goodreads Book Page:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/47821235-the-wrong-kind

Amazon Author Page:

https://amzn.to/2YwdgAv

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BOOK BUY LINKS:

Amazon Kindle eBook:

https://amzn.to/353Nt4N

Amazon Paperback:

https://amzn.to/2RBUQwz

Barnes and Noble NOOK eBook:

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-wrong-kind-austin-s-camacho/1133096649?ean=9781940758985

Barnes and Noble Paperback:

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-wrong-kind-austin-s-camacho/1133096649?ean=9781940758978

Kobo eBook:

https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/the-wrong-kind

The Book Depository Paperback:

https://www.bookdepository.com/The-Wrong-Kind-Austin-S-Camacho/9781940758978

BAM! Books-A-Million Paperback:

https://www.booksamillion.com/p/Wrong-Kind/Austin-S-Camacho/9781940758978

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GIVEAWAY INFO:

Austin will be awarding a $25 Amazon or B/N GC to a randomly drawn winner via Rafflecopter during the tour.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

**This post contains affiliate links and if clicked and a purchase is made, I may receive a small commission to help support this blog. This does not cost you anything, it just helps pay for all those awesome giveaways on here.**

This contest is sponsored by a third party. Fabulous and Brunette is a registered host of Goddess Fish Promotions. Prizes are given away by the sponsors and not Fabulous and Brunette. The featured author and Goddess Fish Promotions are solely responsible for the giveaway prize.