My special guest today is thriller author PG Lengsfelder to chat with me about his new action-adventure, A Bounty of Bone, a novel inspired by real events.
Bio:
PG Lengsfelder wrote and edited his first newspaper at age seven, when he thought he was destined to be a fireman or a forest ranger. But sales of his paper reached a heady circulation of ten—at five cents a copy! He was hooked: he had readers. He’s been writing ever since.
He began as a copywriter in a major New York advertising agency and co-authored the best-selling nonfiction book Filthy Rich (Ten Speed Press). His first two psychological suspense thrillers Beautiful to the Bone and Our Song, Memento Mori (Woodsmoke Publishing) met with critical acclaim, including the BestThrillers.com 2021 Finalist Award for Best Romantic Suspense Thriller, and the Frontier Tales Reader’s Choice Short Story Award for the eerie 1879 crime story “Amidst the Effervescing Hemlock.”
His stories have been heard on National Public Radio and seen on CNN, Discovery Channel, and other national television. He’s been awarded a regional television Emmy and been nominated for four others. A member of Mystery Writers of America and Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers, he lives in Colorado. He believes that not everything that’s real can be seen. And still, after all these years, when he can get away from his keyboard, he’s happiest in nature. 𝘼 𝘽𝙊𝙐𝙉𝙏𝙔 𝙊𝙁 𝘽𝙊𝙉𝙀 is his latest and is being described as “A jaw-dropping suspense novel unlike anything you’ve ever read.” (BestThrillers.com)
Welcome, PG. Please tell us about your current release.
A Bounty of Bone is the second book in The Eunis Trilogy, although it stands alone.
In today’s America, in a society preoccupied with beauty and a world steeped in superstition, Eunis has everything working against her—including her uncanny intuition which breeds added innuendo and superstition.
But after years of abuse for her albinism and macabre face, Eunis believes she’s finally turned her life around and shed the superstitious beliefs that tormented her as a child. Now on the precipice of a successful television career, she’s offered a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to travel as part of a global TV crew investigating the surreal weather in South Africa’s isolated Land of the Silver Mist.
There’s just one problem: Eunis and her adopted New York family are abruptly informed of the abduction of their young niece, Kyra, who’s been taken for her albino body parts in remote Tanzania. The family pleads with Eunis to find her, their last and only hope of finding Kyra alive.
Eunis tries to temper the family’s expectations. But when she’s separated from her TV crew, she journeys thousands of miles and finds herself alone in the shadow of Tanzania’s untamed Ngorongoro Conservation Area, a massive 2.5-million-year-old volcanic cauldron, inhabited by the world’s highest density of wild dogs, lions, and hyena.
Closing in on the truth, can Eunis survive the chilling local superstitions and nightmarish forces hunting for body parts that look like her own?
What inspired you to write this book?
When Eunis was fully born in Beautiful to the Bone (The Eunis Trilogy – Book One), many of her challenges were apparent to me. But I found that in the real world, her trials were even more terrifying than I’d accounted for: Today, in Africa, children and adults with albinism are hunted and butchered for their body parts—for muti medicine that in folklore gives those who ingest it special powers. I could not turn away from these real-world atrocities without writing and focusing a spotlight on them.
Excerpt from A Bounty of Bone:
CHAPTER 1
Bemidji, Minnesota
New York City
Great Falls, Montana
Kingdom Lake had grown cool, cooler than even I could handle. The walleye and Green Heron didn’t seem to mind, but the afternoon wind on my shoulder reminded me, winter soon. Another season. Where you gonna swim now?
I’d slipped out of the lake and dried off, the Jack Pines beginning to sway. I’d been thinking about Momma and me and the farmhouse, how—even after I’d finished the rehab of the house—the three of us were incompatible. And how it was almost Halloween and I’d toughed out the masquerade for another year, as if it brought me safety. Safety in sour familiarity.
Loved the house, of course, and my wetlands. But Momma—holy crap—she stung at everything I did like a wasp; she called me ungrateful, useless, and a serpent. Every day alone gnawed on my heart, betraying something.
As the temperature dropped over the lake and woods, the moisture in me, around me—around everything—started firing my body frequencies. When it came in waves like this, as it had since I was a child, I expected rain or wind or something. But the blue sky still held enough saffron to light the lake in a false warm glow. So, I waited. Then, as if by decree, purple clouds gathered in the west, coming quickly and soon all around and over me. A Presence. The clouds twisted, overrun by fast moving roots.The orange fingers of the western sun spread across the sky, until I was alone, the sky sealed in exquisite flame. And I thought, how can I ever leave Minnesota?
A howl of air sucked at the cloud cover; flames parting, a theatre curtain or portal opening, introducing a perfect circle allowing the hidden blue sky an eye on me, while all else was a dome of Indian Paintbrush. A hole in the sky inviting me to leave.
At least I had one believer.
What exciting project are you working on next?
The third book in The Eunis Trilogy is already in the works, and once again she is confronted with another peril in our society, one that at first seems like the best of possibilities. One that we might all welcome. Until it turns dark.
When did you first consider yourself a writer?
I started writing at age seven and I’ve been under its spell ever since.
Do you write full-time? If so, what’s your work day like? If not, what do you do other than write and how do you find time to write?
I make time to write. I write almost every day. And because I do, I feel invigorated, whether it’s for five hours or just one. After I work out at the gym and take care of the practical chores that we all have, most of my writing takes place in the late morning or early afternoon into the evening. And, as I say, it is not a burden, but a joy.
What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?
When I start writing a novel, I always know how it starts and how it ends. But unlike some authors who like to outline every movement in the story before they begin, I relish seeing how my protagonist works out the puzzles as they confront them. I’m on the ride with the reader.
As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
A fireman or a forest ranger. They still seem like cool professions.
Anything additional you want to share with the readers?
Any of you out there who are thinking about being a writer, I say do it, as long as you’re doing it for the joy, not for the glory or the money. Like any career, it takes up too much time if you don’t love the journey for the journey’s sake.
Links:
Website | Amazon | Facebook | Best Thrillers review | BookLife review | Love Reading review | Bookishelf review