Tag Archive | tropics

A Crime Wave, In A Writer’s Head, Of Course

Today my guest is Nike Chillemi. Nike N. Chillemi writes contemporary detective and/or suspense novels with a touch of wry humor, and there’s often a national security twist to them. She likes her bad guys really bad and her good guys smarter and better. Her newest endeavor is COURTING DANGER. She is the founding board member of the Grace Awards and its Chair, a reader’s choice awards for excellence in Christian fiction. For five years she has judged the Carol Awards in four categories. Her four novel Sanctuary Point series (out of print), set in the mid-1940s has finaled, won an award, and garnered critical acclaim. The first novel in the Veronica “Ronnie” Ingels/Dawson Hughes series HARMRUL INTENT won in the Grace Awards 2014 Mystery/Romantic Suspense/Thriller/Historical Suspense category. She has written book reviews for The Christian Pulse online magazine. She is a member of American Christian Fiction Writers (ACFW) and John 3:16 Marketing Network.

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A lot of things have to be considered when writing a detective or suspense novel, and it’s often hard to keep everything together.

Here’s what Nike thinks when she’s working on a book.

I have a picture in my head, now that I’m living in the Sunshine State, that I want to be a Florida mystery/suspense writer. I want to bring a crime wave to the state I love…in fiction, of courses.

COURTING DANGER is a detective novel set in northeast coastal Florida. I put a lot of effort into setting a semi-tropical locale for the novel. I paid attention to heat conditions in the story, making sure that characters were dressed for a beach town. And, of course, I threw in a hurricane.

My novels are a detective series, which is a cousin to a police procedural series. The tone tends to be a little more gritty than a murder mystery or a cozy. I’ve done quite a bit of research and pay attention to my police procedure so that it comes off as accurate. I like to give my readers somebody to root for. My main characters do have flaws, but they are definitely the good guys, on the side of right.

I do have plans for writing a few cozies in the near future that I hope will be as hilarious on paper as they are in my head. I think Florida is the perfect setting for cozies what with sun, the beach, water sports, and much more. I’d like to have a lot of fun with that. Of course, in a cozy, you have the sense that everything ends well, I go all out to make that happen in my detective novels as well. I like a happy ending.

COURTING DANGER in a nut shell…

Newly installed Pelican Beach, Florida detective Katerina “Kat” Andruko fears the prime suspect will get off in the murder of a teen with the help of the department’s forensics psychologist, a man she’s just started to trust.

This case has national security implications that gives former US Army Ranger, Dr. Dimitri Garmonin a chance to work with the FBI. The case could give him the chance to obtain the funds needed to expand his small Behavior Analysis Unit. He’s unmoved by the chic FBI agent sent to assist but is intrigued by Kat with whom he shares a Slavic heritage.

Kat and her partner detain two wrong suspects, giving the department negative press. The predator turns his anger on Kat, targeting her. Can Dimitri use his profiler skills to catch this killer before he hurts the woman he’s growing to love?

Now that’s a lot of details to make sure everything works out in the end! But yet, she makes them work.