EVERY HIDDEN FEAR Cover Reveal, Synopsis, and More

At the end of last week, I turned in the manuscript for my third Skeet Bannion mystery novel, Every Hidden Fear, which will be published May 6, 2014. My mind is still awhirl with the characters and events of that book. Yesterday, I received the cover for Every Hidden Fear, and I’m delighted with it, as I have been with each of the covers my publisher has given me for this series. So I wanted to share it with you.

Every Hidden Fear takes place in autumn just a few months after the events of the previous book, Every Broken Trust. Skeet Bannion tries to adjust to having her tough old grandmother living with her and her son, Brian, while Brian goes through the first pangs of unrequited love for his best friend, Angie Melvin, and Skeet’s aging delinquent father has also fallen disastrously in love.

Meanwhile, Ash Mowbray, a bad boy from the wrong side of the tracks, comes back to Brewster as a wealthy developer to polarize the town where he was once scorned, pushing plans to build a shopping mall on the outskirts of town that will destroy the courthouse-square businesses of Brewster.  The town council’s split on his proposal, and feelings run high.

Mowbray makes things worse by threatening to reveal dirty secrets about prominent citizens and announcing he’s the real father of Angie’s quarterback boyfriend. It’s not long before Mowbray turns up murdered with his son as prime suspect. Angie and Brian turn to Skeet to find the murderer and save their friend.

From Brian’s classmate and his family to Skeet’s friends among the shop owners of the town square, too many people wanted Mowbray dead, and too many of them are people Skeet cares about. She must catch the murderer to spare her friends, even if the killer’s one of them.

In this book, the plots and subplots are driven by people’s hidden fears, hidden from others and often from themselves, and these hidden fears often lead them to take ruinous actions. Skeet’s own hidden fear is activated and intensified by the disasters of others in the story, leading her to impulsive acts that will continue to affect her life for some time to come.

My beta readers and I think this is the most emotional and personal Skeet Bannion book, so far. Fear of love and fear of loss lead Skeet to places and actions she’s sworn she’d never go or do. I’m still excited about it, and I hope you will be, too, when it’s published and you have the chance to read it.

As soon as my publisher gives the okay, I’ll post a sample chapter or two. Stay tuned!

Coming to the End

I’m finally coming to the end of my current WIP, Every Hidden Fear, Skeet Bannion #3. I’ve done that final work of figuring the details to make the final plot complications and twists and set up the outline of the final scenes of the book. This entailed the hard work of looking at what was missing and what I didn’t know, listing all those questions, and then writing and writing and writing and pacing around and talking out loud and tearing hair and writing and writing some more. Until it finally all came together. Now, I’m ready—really, enthusiastic—to write those last few scenes.

Yesterday, I wouldn’t have been able to say the same thing. Yesterday, I was losing that fight against doubt that we all fight when we write novels. I wasn’t clear that I could finish it in any good way in the time I had to do it in or that what I’d written to get to that point was really any good. That’s the way this novel was written. Handed a deadline much earlier than expected. Frantically trying to catch up to where I should have been if I’d known I would need to start it much earlier. Feeling my way a footstep at a time through the pitch dark, never sure I wouldn’t walk myself right off a cliff. Telling myself I could do it again and again when I wasn’t sure I really could.

And yet, isn’t that always the way we write novels? Even when we have no deadlines—or very reasonable ones? Even when we think we know for sure just exactly how we’re going to write it? Don’t we usually hit a point where we suddenly wonder if all the work we’ve been doing isn’t just so much crap? Don’t we usually hit a point at least once where we’re just not sure if we can finish the damn thing? 

Writers are funny creatures. We have to believe that we have talent and something worth saying. We have to believe that we can create worlds and people and stories that others will want to read. But at the same time, if we’re actually going to be any good, we have to question everything we do, every idea, every character, every plot development—every word, when you get right down to it. We have to constantly believe that it isn’t good enough, or that we can make it better and must—or we’re likely to send self-indulgent, lazy work out into the world. So somehow we juggle that supreme self-belief and that pathological self-doubt (or at least stern self-questioning) in a way that allows us to bring forth new work that has never existed before. As with sausage-making, it really isn’t wise to look at this process very closely or for very long.

So, tonight, ebullient, I’m sure that I’ll finish these last few scenes and that, with some judicious editing, this will be a good book. I will probably rescind that decision when I sit down to begin revisions, once more under the gun in ridiculous fashion. I will probably tear hair and cry and doubt that I can actually make this sow’s ear into a silk purse of a book. But that’s the schizoid process of writing. I know that. Most writers do. We fool ourselves into thinking we can do it, only to find that, by Jove!, we actually did do it! It’s no

wonder so many have had drinking and drug problems and that suicide is an occupational hazard. What is surprising is how many times over the years so many of us manage to survive this screwy process and bring forth yet again another book—not the work of genius we’d like to have produced, but a solid, sound, readable book.

Here we go again, the brave and neurotic writers of books. We who are about to do the impossible salute you!

Every Broken Trust, the next Skeet Bannion novel

The next Skeet Bannion novel, Every Broken Trust, is available for pre-order now and will launch May 7, 2013.
Pre-order here.

I'm excited about this latest in Skeet's adventures and about the gorgeous cover my publisher has given me again. And I'm absolutely thrilled about the blurbs Every Broken Trust has received from two super writers for whom I have so much admiration!

"Linda Rodriguez gives readers a truly modern heroine in tough, independent, and complex police chief Skeet Bannion.  Add powerful writing, edge-of-your-seat suspense, and a cast of characters you won't want to leave behind and Rodriguez delivers another terrific read."— Deborah Crombie, New York Times bestselling author of No Mark Upon Her

“Linda Rodriguez is a richly talented writer. Her aim is true, and she strikes deep. This new work will reward you as it weaves its generous spell. Good stuff. Get it now.”— Luis Alberto Urrea, bestselling author of The Hummingbird’s Daughter and Queen of America

Am I a truly fortunate writer, or what? 

Life has settled into routine for half-Cherokee Marquitta “Skeet” Bannion now that she’s gained custody of fifteen-year-old Brian Jameson and shares care for her stroke-impaired father with her ex-husband—until the past reaches out to destroy everything she holds dear.

A party to celebrate the arrival in Brewster, Missouri, of George Melvin, a Kansas City politician accompanied by his troubled teenage daughter, wealthy wife, even wealthier backer, and mysterious employee, rapidly turns into disaster when Skeet’s best friend, Karen Wise, stumbles on a body in Chouteau University’s storage caves and is attacked herself. Skeet works to ensure Karen safety, even as Karen becomes obsessed with the dead man’s drunken claim that her husband’s accidental death years earlier was murder.

Brian’s emotional entanglement with the rebellious daughter and Karen’s fixation on the politician as her husband’s murderer frustrate Skeet’s efforts to keep them both safe and out of trouble while she tracks down the killer, who’s targeting Karen to remove a potential witness. Even Skeet’s friends and neighbors in Brewster keep secrets from her, and Skeet wonders if any of them are what they seem.

Not knowing who she can trust any longer, Skeet struggles against the clock to solve a series of linked murders stretching into the past before she loses Brian forever and her best friend winds up in jail—or dead. 

I've been very tough on Skeet in this book. As I’ve said before, I really envision the series of “Every” books as one giant meta-novel about Skeet’s growth and development (and, occasionally, failures) as she works through the issues surrounding her personal development book by book. Each mystery story, complete in itself, will be one more chapter in the story of Skeet as she becomes the really remarkable person her grandmother has always known she would be.

Skeet has built a new family to take the place of the mother and father who had (in her eyes) failed her. I wanted to put her in a situation where Karen and four-years-dead Jake, who had been her parental surrogates, as well as Brian, her new son, and Joe, whom she considered a possible mate, would all betray her trust in some way or another. I wanted to see how she would cope with these various large and small betrayals that would also threaten her with the actual loss of Brian and Karen.

I hope to get permission soon to post the first chapter or some other excerpt from the book here for you to read and get a taste of it.We're into the countdown now until Every Broken Trust is released into the world. So a little celebration's in order here. Chocolate for everyone!