Hi,
lovelies! It gives me great pleasure
today to host Lanny Larcinese and his new book, “Death in the Family”! 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 Lanny and to increase your chances of winning!
Thanks
for stopping by! Wishing you lots of
luck in this fabulous giveaway!
Death in the Family
by Lanny Larcinese
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GENRE: Crime Thriller
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BLURB:
Donny
Lentini is a talented young man hungry for his mother's love. To please her, he
becomes guardian angel to his mob-wannabe father. When the father is murdered
and found with his hands hacked off, Donny is dealt a set of cards in a game
called vengeance. The pot is stacked high with chips; the ante, his soul and
the lives of loved-ones. With the help of friends—ex-con, defrocked Jesuit Bill
Conlon along with former high-school nemesis, Antwyne Claxton—he digs for
whether the murder had anything to do with the mob's lust for a real estate
parcel owned by the family of Donny's lover. He's new at this game. He doesn't
cheat, but plays his cards well. And he gets what he wants.
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EXCERPT TWO:
I
slid my foot over to touch Dad’s. I had promised Mother I’d look after him.
“Is
this about the money you lost at the table?” I said. “Should we play a few more
hands?”
German
pounded his fist on the desk. “Don’t try to second-guess me, you punk! You’ll
talk when I say, got it?”
I
kept my eyes fixed on German’s. Six…seven…eight…
Dad
reached over and put his hand on mine. “I didn’t lose the cleaners,” he said. A
bead of sweat meandered toward his jaw. “The union was working on ’em going
back three years now. It was already a done deal by the time I got there.”
“Whatever,”
German said. “Just don’t let it happen anymore. And tell Donny here to mind his
manners or you’ll be back driving a truck.”
The
baseball bat leaning in a corner near German’s desk was an exclamation point
that punctuated his directives. If it ever came down to that, I’d slash his
throat with a rusty knife. Yet I still had to walk a tightrope. Dad would have
preferred the bat to the demotion. Dad was a climber and German his future.
German
picked up a couple of coded folders and put them into a filing cabinet,
slamming the drawer down its rails like a runaway train.
“Oh,
and Joojy wants to see you. I don’t know about what.”
“What
about?” Dad said.
“You
don’t hear? I said I don’t know! Maybe that thing. Now get outta here, both
yiz. I got to take my daughter to ballet.”
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GUEST POST:
The Story of My Story Called Death in the Family
Death
in the Family is the first novel I wrote but the third book published after
success at winning prizes for short stories. Actually, I wrote it five times,
or, considering I’m a pantser and do not outline, more like one hundred five
times.
Why
so much work? It helps to be an arrogant novice and believe you can just grind
out a novel. Where the arrogance came in was to conflate my facility with
language, even occasional eloquence, with storytelling. Folks, they ain’t the
same! Fortunately, I learned through networking with writers that a
developmental edit would be valuable.
Indeed
it was. Twenty pages of single-spaced critique eviscerating the manuscript, but
also encouragement that I was on the right track and the book had good bones.
I put
it in the drawer, wrote another novel, I Detest All My Sins, wrote more short
work, studied craft, re-drafted Death in the Family two or three times, decided
to change the entire story from third person to first, changed the theme, and
BANG! Things came together! Suddenly I could create likable good guys (albeit
in need of maturing --- sound familiar?)
and realistic bad guys.
The
obstacles I faced on the path to publication of Death in the Family were mostly
technical: issues of coherence; leaner sentences; bringing main characters’
needs into higher relief, etc. But also coping with the frustration of knowing
it could be a good book if only I found a few keys critical to the story.
One
was, as I said, changing from third person to first person. In doing so, I
discovered that while it limited the main character’s point of view and what he
could know and therefore express, it also allowed for more intimacy; I could
get deeper inside this character. From there I could explore deep needs and
once I knew those, saw how to make them collide with others in his world. It
opened so many more story doors than “this happened then that happened then
this happened,” etc.
After
final edits, after many false starts and traipsing the learning curve, I
finally fell in love with my characters. I’m so proud that I stuck with it,
undeterred but open minded.
I love this book.
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AUTHOR BIO:
Lanny Larcinese’s short
work has appeared in magazines and has won a handful of local prizes. He lives
in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He’s a native mid-westerner transplanted to the
City of Brotherly Love where he has been writing fiction for seven years. When
not writing, he lets his daughter, Amanda, charm him out of his socks, and
works at impressing Jackie, his long-time companion who keeps him honest and
laughing—in addition to being his first-line writing critic. He also spends
more time than he should on Facebook but feels suitably guilty for it.
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CONNECT WITH LANNY:
Facebook:
Goodreads Author Page:
Goodreads Book Page:
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BOOK BUY LINKS:
Amazon Kindle eBook:
Amazon Paperback:
Barnes and Noble NOOK eBook:
Barnes and Noble Paperback:
The Book Depository Paperback:
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GIVEAWAY INFO:
Lanny will be awarding a $25 Amazon or B/N GC to
a randomly drawn winner via Rafflecopter during the tour.
**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.
Thanks for hosting!
ReplyDeleteLanny ~ Good morning! Happy New Year and welcome to FAB! It is so great to have you here! Congrats on your new book and good luck on the book tour! :)
ReplyDeleteAlly, thank you so much for sharing your followers with me, and best to you for the new year.
DeleteThanks for sharing your book with us. I think we all enjoy hearing about new books we previously didn't know about. Also, thank you for the giveaway.
ReplyDeleteYou're welcome, James. Death in the Family is a many-layered story, complex -- not hard to follow -- but a lot goes on with the superficial plot as well as the inner landscape of the characters.
DeleteHow did you spend New Year's Eve?
ReplyDeleteThank you for asking, Bernie. Short answer: working...but enjoyable working--communicating with readers, developing Crime Writers Caravan, a speakers bureau connecting crime writers with libraries an other venues, and relaxing. And you?
DeleteSounds like my kind of book!
ReplyDeleteI hope you give it a chance, Victoria. My crime stories aren't just shoot-em-up sagas (okay, maybe a few homicides), but also the inner landscape of the characters and their struggles with themselves and others.
DeleteSounds like a great book.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Rita. That's always music to an author's ears!
DeleteLanny, how many books do you write each year?
ReplyDeleteThat should be a simple question, Caryl, but in my case it's not. Death in the Family was written over a 3 year period and the final iteration of the story was nothing like the original draft. Not only did the story change, but I changed the entire manuscript from 3d person to 1st person. In between the various drafts, I wrote a memoir and another novel -- taking a year per. Finally, "writing" the book, then going through edits, redrafts, more rounds of edits, etc. are two different time frames. In between are short stories submitted for publication, non-fiction writing, etc. For all practical purposes, I have written every day over the past 8 years.
DeleteThis sounds like a great read.
ReplyDeleteWhat's a writing day like for you?
ReplyDelete