Book Blast : Blood of the Dragonfly - Hawk MacKinney

Blood of the Dragonfly

by Hawk MacKinney

 

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GENRE: Fiction/Mystery/Suspense

 

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BLURB:

 

While dangling a fishing hook from his flat bottom skiff before dawn, former SEAL-turned-PI Craige Ingram spots grey-black smoke coiling above the treetops across the river in the direction of the Georgia bayous and Corpsewood Manor. Bayou or bogs, fire in the uncut cypress and pines bodes a sense that the river is no barrier to the fire that threatens his ancestral home, Moccasin Hollow. Neither are the bodies later found in the burned mansion of Corpsewood Manor. Craige wastes no time in helping his ex-SEAL buddy Lt. Graysen MacGerald who is now Head of Buckingham Homicide Investigations by unofficially investigating the bodies and an exquisite dragonfly brooch found in the mansion with a reputation for evil, hauntings, and mystery.

 

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EXCERPT: 

Excerpt Two:

 

Spinner and Craige dodged the potholes and bayou-puddled sorrowful drive that was already weeded-up with pieces of blackened 2x4s and tumbled rubble. Nestled among old cypress and giant hardwoods, the scorched ruins of a once-elegant time and place cast a brooding haunted ambiance. A lonesome tangle of police tape fluttered around one blackened trunk, while wads and scraps of yellow plastic flurried here and there among the blossom of mushrooms and cinders snagging on bushes and heat-brittle weeds among the char and ash clinging to seared limbs of dead shrubs. Except for half of one lonesome brick chimney, come next season, the surrounding marshes and scrubby undergrowth and vines would reclaim the scarred skeleton that once was Corpsewood and leave a burial mound of vines and voracious pitcher plants.

 

Spinner said, “I want to check that shallow ravine that follows along the north side of the drive. Looks like an overgrown gulley draining toward the river. Be an easy approach to the house without being seen.”

 

Craige said, “Dogs would've spotted them unless they’d been baited or poisoned.”

 

“Bogs won’t hold many tracks.” As the green underbrush swallowed Spinner, he called over his shoulder, “If they came in by river, I might get lucky in the mud along the riverbank for any trace of a boat being pulled up and beached.”

 

“Watch out for moccasins on those overhangs,” Craige called back to him. “If you come up on a weedy dry knoll of brush, sticks, and leaves above the water, leave it be. You don’t want to rile a mama gator guarding her nest. A twenty-footer may look cumbersome, but those big ones can move fast.” Craige stepped over chunks of tumbled cement and distorted rebar where a foundation had been an outside kitchen wall. One windowpane hung lopsided but intact in its section of wall that had collapsed outward into the soft dirt of what had been a flower garden. Sunshine peaked through to splash a glass pane angled among the ruins.

 

Beyond the foundation was a rose garden, trampled blossoms crinkled with burnt petals, broken stems buried amid tumbled bricks, crumbled mortar, and stinking charred timbers. Craige picked his way around the corner of the kitchen. He stopped at the front of the garage with its oily smudges, where the two autos had once parked. A few sooty cement blocks had tumbled from the corner of the garage. The wall had obviously been added as an afterthought. None of the square hollowed-out cement grabbed his attention until he noticed the broken end on one wasn’t smoked-seared or stained. The fire hadn’t touched it. The end had been broken off after the fire, but it wasn’t the inside hollow that grabbed him. It was the small wrapped yellowish-brown brick protruding from inside. CTU R&S ops had come across too many caches of potent hash oil and loose dry kief for him not to recognize it. He leaned down, touched nothing, saw the wrappings had been torn. The heady smell wrinkled his nose. Along one side of the package, he noticed a smattering of scattered pallid crystals. Neither the powder nor the brick with any ash or cinders; what he was seeing came after the fire. The brick looked as though it had been hurriedly pried open, an empty space inside where something had been removed. Someone had known where to look for whatever it was that was taken—someone not interested in the stash.

 

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 Guest Post :


Writing Pitfalls

Be it poetry, short story, journal, …writing is an art form. Getting published is a business. Engrossed with completing their “book”, writers often sidetrack themselves with the compliments of family and friends, anticipating the accolades, honors and book sales that will fatten up their bank account – which seldom quite plays that way. Friends and family are trying to be kind, knowing how long and hard the writer has worked. But they can be a pitfall for a writer who doesn’t keep a sense of objectivity and reality about the business of writing. Many writers get satisfied with the compliments when they say, “I am writing a book,” and, therefore the book never gets finished.

 The business of publishing requires more than just writing a good manuscript and escaping the publisher’s slush pile. In addition to a good manuscript, the writer needs a good agent, the first member of a marketing team, who can offer suggestions on how the manuscript can be improved and navigate the pitfalls of where to send your manuscript for the best chance of getting published. Honesty partnered with trust with your agent is essential – no exceptions. This is the key to success and no place for run-amok egos. Once you receive a publishing contract, your marketing team will expand to include the publisher, an editor, artists who will design your book’s cover, the printer, the distributor, and others who work behind the scene. All of these people have one goal in mind: to make your book as successful as possible. Most will listen to your suggestions and they will expect you to listen to theirs. In the end, it will be the publisher who makes any final decisions regarding the release of your book.

 

The publishing world is small. Those involved in the business know one another. If a trust is broken or dishonesty discovered, everyone in the publishing business will know. Break either business or personal trust or honesty, and reputations often cannot be salvaged. Neither can a publishing contract. Once a team comes together the two guidelines are diamond-hard gems that will handle any situation. Problematic situations can be avoided before they become problems. It’s an arrangement that can’t be bought, is often overlooked, but understood and held high by dedicated professionals.

 

Hawk MacKinney

www.hawkmackinneyauthor.com

 

AUTHOR Bio and Links:

 

Hawk MacKinney began writing mysteries for his school newspaper, served in the US Navy for over 20 years, earned two postgraduate degrees with studies in languages and history, taught postgraduate courses in the United States and Jerusalem, authored professional articles and chordate embryology texts on fetal and adult anatomy, and is well known for his works of fiction. Moccasin Trace, a historical novel, was nominated for the prestigious Michael Shaara Award for Excellence in Civil War Fiction and the Writers Notes Book Award. Both his CAIRNS OF SANCTUARIE science fiction series and the MOCCASIN HOLLOW MYSTERY series have received worldwide recognition.

 

 

www.hawkmackinney.net

 

https://www.amazon.com/Blood-Dragonfly-Hawk-MacKinney/dp/1732918260

 

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/698008.Hawk_MacKinney

 

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GIVEAWAY INFORMATION and RAFFLECOPTER CODE

 

Hawk MacKinney will be awarding a $20 Amazon/
BN GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.

 

 

RAFFLECOPTER:

 

<a href="http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/28e4345f3677">Enter to win a $20 Amazon/BN GC - a Rafflecopter giveaway</a>