Hello, lovelies!! It gives me great pleasure today to host Bill Mesce, Jr., and his new book, “Median Gray,” here on FAB!! 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 Bill and to increase your chances of winning!!
This eBook is on SALE for ONLY $0.99 during the book tour!! See below for more details.
Thanks for stopping by!! Wishing you all lots of luck in this fabulous giveaway!!
Median Gray
by Bill Mesce, Jr.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
GENRE: Police Drama / Suspense / Thriller
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
BLURB:
New York City, Summer 1963
Rookie beat cop Jack Meara is bleeding out on the dirty floor of a tenement hallway - next to the body of another cop. The eyes of the shooter burned into his memory. Meara watches and waits to see the shooter brought to justice, but, instead, "Tony Boy" Maiella climbs up the Mob ranks, slipping off indictments as easily as his designer overcoat. But on the eve of his retirement, Meara decides on one last kamikaze-like try to even the scales of justice.
New York City, 1983
Rookie detective Ronnie Valerio finds himself unknowingly pulled into the wake of Meara's quest. A go-go palace bartender is being stalked, a body turns up in a neighborhood dumpster, machine guns blaze in the night, a New York bookie turns up dead in the Jersey Pinelands and the only thing they all have in common is, in one way or another, they all tie back to Jack Meara.
How far does a cop go to even a score? How far does a brother cop go to shield him? Is justice worth any price when the line between right and wrong blurs?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
EXCERPT TWO:
Then another explosion of metal on metal, a spray of red taillight glass as the El Dorado buried its tail in the New Yorker blocking the foot of the driveway.
Meara, on the ground against the stairs, getting his pistol up, pointed at the broad-shouldered silhouette behind the wheel, sending off a shot. The soft-nosed bullet grazed the heavy, raked windshield and winged off. Shattering glass somewhere. A fresh scream.
Meara pulled himself to his feet. The pain in his side kept him from straightening, from drawing a full breath. He felt sweat on his face, wiped at it with the back of his hand, came away with blood, not sweat, all those flying shards from the Caddy bursting through the garage door…
The El Dorado had shoved the New Yorker out into the street where both cars sat log-jammed. Joey Rocks – even through the smoked glass of the Caddy’s windshield, Meara could see where that big, no-necked pile of fat and muscle had gotten its name – was still trying to shake off the shock of the collision.
Meara held his breath so as not to provoke the pain in his side, raised his pistol again, took careful aim, and put two bullets through the dark glass.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
GUEST POST:
When you hear the phrase “world-building,” I think most people associate that with science fiction and fantasy, but I don’t think many people appreciate how much world-building goes into writing real-world and contemporary pieces. One of my favorite writers is Richard Russo whose novels make you feel the New England settings for most of his work. I take a lot of cues from how Russo does this.
Median Gray began as my response as a young Jersey suburban kid working in New York City for the first time in the early 1980s. New York, at that time, was a wild, often frightening place: porn palaces, hookers openly on the prowl, Three Card Monte players on every block in the midtown area, and the 42nd Street area at night, with all its flickering grindhouse marquees, was like a giant, lurid pinball machine. I wanted to capture that and get the reader to feel what it was like to walk those streets; to use a cliché, I wanted the setting to be as much a character as the characters. That was also the reason why, as the years went by, I made a decision not to try to update the story; it was the New York of a certain time and that was integral to the story.
How do you do that? It’s always in the details, but not the big ones. Anybody can drop a scene at some famous place – the Empire State Building, say, or the Statue of Liberty – but those kinds of familiar touristy icons don’t convey the feel of New York. It’s the little things – how the food cart vendors put together a kebab, say – that the reader, even one who has never been to the city, feels in his/her gut, Only in New York. Many of the sights and sounds in Median Gray were things I saw during my early years.
In letters exchanged with Mr. Russo, he talked about the way characters and environment relate; that characters – like real people – are often shaped by their environment. I won’t say my main character – young policeman Ronnie Valerio – is autobiographical, but I did pour into him a lot of how I responded to and felt about New York in those days.
Median Gray is my eighth novel, they’ve all fallen within the broad category of thriller, or suspense story, or mystery…well, more or less. But without trying to be cute, I can honestly say I never wrote a hero or a villain. I’ve written characters who, impacted by circumstances have done bad things but felt they had good reasons to do so, and I’ve written characters striving to find the right thing to do but finding their circumstances only provided them with options of bad and less bad choices. Again, it’s not to be cute but because that generally tends to be how life works, and I try to present that same moral messiness in my work even if the plots involve the kind of high drama most of us (thankfully!) never experience.
Most of my characters are built around existing models or composites of them: people I’ve personally known, people in the news, sometimes even a character in a movie or TV show. The main character of my early WW II novels was modeled after “Lou Grant” as played by Ed Asner on The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Having that kind of model as a reference point tells me how a character will act and what they’ll say in any given situation, and that keeps the characters real, gives them a soul.
I’m not a plot-driven writer; I keep my plots fairly direct which allows me a lot of running room to play with setting and character. For me, that’s where the fun is.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
AUTHOR BIO:
Bill Mesce, Jr. Is an award-winning author and playwright as well as a screenwriter. He is an adjunct instructor at several colleges in his native New Jersey.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
CONNECT WITH BILL:
Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/bill.mesce.7
Twitter:
LinkedIn:
http://www.linkedin.com/in/b-mesce-jr-750a6015
Goodreads Author Page:
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/854966.Bill_Mesce_Jr_
Goodreads Book Page:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54815513-median-gray
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
BOOK BUY LINKS & BOOK SALE INFO:
**The Median Gray eBook is on SALE for ONLY $0.99 during the book tour!!!**
Amazon Kindle eBook:
Amazon Paperback:
Barnes and Noble NOOK eBook:
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/median-gray-bill-mesce-jr/1139337565
Barnes and Noble Paperback:
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/median-gray-bill-mesce/1137429915
The Book Depository Paperback:
https://www.bookdepository.com/Median-Gray-Bill-Mesce/9781950502271
Kobo eBook:
https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/median-gray
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
GIVEAWAY INFO:
Bill will be awarding a $25 Amazon or Barnes and Noble 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**
Bill ~ Good morning! Welcome to FAB! It is so great to have you here! Congrats on your new book and good luck on the book tour! :)
ReplyDeleteThe pleasure is mine, Ally, thanks for having me and for the support your site gives all us writers trying to capture a few eyeballs!
DeleteSounds like a good book.
ReplyDeleteBetter be! It took long enough to get right! :)
DeleteGreat guest post
ReplyDeleteWhy thank you! That stuff is harder to do than the book!
DeleteGreat excerpt and giveaway. :)
ReplyDeleteGood luck on the raffle!
DeleteMy brother would like this book.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the contest.
Share; you might like it, too!
Delete