My special guest author is Mike Nemeth and we’re chatting about his new mystery-suspense Parker’s Choice.
Bio:
Mike Nemeth, a Vietnam vet and former high-tech executive, is the author of the bestseller Defiled and the Beverly Hills Book Award-winning novel, The Undiscovered Country. Mike takes readers into a world of complex plots with reversals and intrigue and betrayals in every chapter. Creative Loafing Atlanta named Mike Best Local Author for 2018. After living in Wisconsin, Texas, Colorado, Florida, Tennessee and London, Mike has settled in suburban Atlanta with his wife, Angie, and their rescue dog, Scout.
Welcome, Mike. Please tell us about your current release.
Parker’s Choice is a love story tucked inside a murder mystery wrapped in a search for identity. It is also a story about moral decay in contemporary society. Hiding in Atlanta from his troubled past, Parker is blackmailed by his former business partner and coerced by his new boss to commit fraud. Parker and his clever colleague, Sabrina, uncover evidence that implicates a man who could be his elusive birth father and that Parker is being setup to take the fall for the fraud. When a dead body is pulled from the Chattahoochee River, Parker fears his wife has murdered his former business partner, but the cops make Parker their chief suspect. Evading cops and crooks, he and Sabrina go on the run to find the one clue that will solve the murder, unmask his birth father and send fraudsters to prison. Their search culminates in a violent showdown in a formidable cemetery in the New Orleans French Quarter. When Parker learns the truth, he has choices to make.
What inspired you to write this book?
I always begin with a theme, some point I feel should be made. In this case it was the decay of traditional morality, which I trace to the decline of organized religions as influences in modern life. I felt that religions were under fire in the media, and I wanted to explore that idea. But then I need a story to use as the vehicle for talking about the theme so I asked two questions: How far can a marital relationship be stretched before it breaks; and, how important is it to one’s identity, one’s sense of self, to know one’s heritage? So I wrote a story about a guy who never knew his birth father and was thrown into a series of moral dilemmas. But, it still reads as a murder mystery.
Excerpt from the prologue of Parker’s Choice:
Three Years Ago
Parker watched her on the doorbell camera on his phone. It shouldn’t have to end this way; his future shouldn’t depend on the risky odds that he was right about what would happen tonight. He weaved around over-sized furniture and peered through the small square window in his front door. She wore a red, V-neck sundress exposing two inches of cleavage, reminding Parker once again that this woman’s sexual magnetism radiated like heat waves off a blacktop road. Her body an eye-catching confluence of tanned, sweeping curves, her hair long and blonde, and her eyes sapphire blue, she was a woman in her prime who Parker knew enjoyed the attention of men of all ages. He wiped his sweaty palms on his shorts and opened the door. On-time and all smiles, Meredith walked into his arms as though she were his lover arriving for a romantic evening.
Awkwardly, Parker extricated himself from her embrace. He led her to the dining room in his cramped beach bungalow where the papers to dissolve their partnership in Advanced Fraud Analytics, LLC were laid out on the table.
“You surprised me by agreeing to this,” he said.
She shook her head, and her long hair flew off one shoulder and onto the other. “Time to get off the investor-schmoozing merry-go-round and kill our ‘baby.’”
“Sad it’s come to this, but it’s a good deal for you. You’re relieved of all company debts and obligations and indemnified against any lawsuits; in return, I retain full ownership of the fraud detection algorithms and computer programs. Okay?”
She tapped the stack of papers with her ruby nails but did not take a seat. “Let’s do this outside. It’s such a lovely evening.”
Outside, Parker knew he would lose a measure of control, but he had planned for this situation. He swept up the legal documents and carried them to the pebbled glass table in his lanai. Five feet beyond the wall of screens, a swimming pool filled the backyard that ended in a gentle slope to the Intracoastal Waterway. A wooden shed, in which his center-console boat sat in a lift sling, flanked his rickety dock and to the right of the pool a large, four-person hot tub squatted on a slab, shielded from his neighbor’s sight by thick hibiscus. The sun was a dying ember on the horizon, so Parker turned on the underwater pool lights. It wasn’t a romantic gesture; he wanted a little indirect lighting.
What exciting story are you working on next?
I’m writing a multiple timeframe story about a man who wonders if the right thing is sometimes the wrong thing to do. His experiences in Vietnam are the historical part of the story. There he did what his country asked of him and it had unintended, disastrous consequences for a minority segment of the Vietnamese population—the Montagnards. In the present timeframe he’s a retired DA’s investigator who’s been sent into a very upscale retirement facility on Tybee Island, Georgia to investigate reports of drug dealing by the staff. He finds instead an assisted suicide ring operating in the facility, which is illegal in Georgia, and once again he must decide whether the “right thing” is the right thing to do about it.
When did you first consider yourself a writer?
I had always loved writing and telling stories in my professional life, but I didn’t think of myself as a writer until my first novel was published. That was the proof that I could do it.
Do you write full-time? If so, what’s your workday like? If not, what do you do other than write and how do you find time to write?
I do write full time now that I’ve retired from making money. I write from 7:00 a.m. till noon seven days a week. Early afternoons are for reading and research and late afternoons and evenings are for activities with family.
What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?
Two of them maybe: all of the characters have famous dopplegangers for their physical attributes and I keep pictures of those real people handy as I write; and, I don’t know when to stop refining the manuscript so my editor and publisher have to rip the manuscript out of my hands to meet publishing deadlines.
As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
A sports coach, usually basketball coach. Still do.
Anything additional you want to share with the readers?
Every writer wants to be read. That’s the whole point, so we are forever grateful to each and every person who takes the time to read what we’ve written. Without readers, there are no writers.
Links:
Website | Twitter | Facebook | Amazon
Thanks for joining me today, Mike.