Bad Girl by Blake Crouch Read Free Book Online

said, it was a great joy to delve into the life and work of Jack Ketchum. I had great editors on that project. (HW:   Full disclosure time: the editors for that worthy project are the esteemed David Morrell and yours truly.   End of plug.)
     
    HW: Tell us a little about future projects.   You have a short story slated to appear in the ITW anthology, Thrillers 2 ?
     
    BC: Yep, it’s called “Remaking” and also happens to be set in a beautiful Colorado town called Ouray.  It’s premised on a question: What would you do if you were in a coffee shop, saw a man sitting with a young boy, and suspected the boy wasn’t supposed to be with him, that maybe he’d been kidnapped.  I’m over the moon and humbled to be included in such a stellar collection of writers. Joe Konrath and I have just released a free short story as an eBook with the help of our publishers. It’s kind of groundbreaking, both in how Joe and I collaborated, and how our publishers came together to make it available everywhere. It’s called “Serial”, and is probably the most twisted thing either of us have ever written. The Abandon audiobook will have a short story that I read called “On the Good, Red Road,” and finally Jen Jordan’s new anthology, Uncage Me , publishes in July, and I have a story in that one called “*69.”
     
    HW: Are you working on a new novel at the moment? 
     
    BC: I am.
     
    HW: Where are you in that process?
     
    BC: About a hundred pages in.
     
    HW: Can you talk a little about the new book, or would that jinx things?
    BC: I’m pretty sure I would deeply regret talking about it at this point. I find if I talk too much about works-in-progress, it takes the wind out of my sails.
     
    HW: Any book recommendations?
     
    BC: Joe Konrath just published a novel under the name Jack Kilborn. It’s called Afraid , and I think it’s one of the best pieces of horror fiction to come out in recent memory.
     
    HW: Work uniform?
     
    BC: A white tee-shirt and pajama bottoms with snowflakes on them. I know, it’s awful.
     
    HW: Misconceptions about people who graduated from UNC?
     
    BC: That if by some rip in the space-time continuum, Al-Qaeda managed to get a Division I college basketball team together, and if that team somehow made it to the NCAA tournament, and then survived March Madness, and, now here’s a real stretch, were facing Duke in the championship game on Monday night, that UNC fans would put aside their petty rivalry and root for Duke over the terrorists.

DESERT PLACES
    Published in January 2004 by Thomas Dunne Books
     
    DESCRIPTION: Andrew Z. Thomas is a successful writer of suspense thrillers, living the dream at his lake house in the piedmont of
North Carolina
. One afternoon in late spring, he receives a bizarre letter that eventually threatens his career, his sanity, and the lives of everyone he loves. A murderer is designing his future, and for the life of him, Andrew can’t get away.
     
    Harrowing...terrific...a whacked out combination of Stephen King and Cormac McCarthy.
PAT CONROY
     
    [C]arried by rich, image-filled prose. Crouch will handcuff you, blindfold you, throw you in the trunk of a car, and drag you kicking and screaming through a story so intense, so emotionally packed, that you will walk away stunned.
WINSTON-SALEM JOURNAL
    Excerpt from Desert Places…
     
    On a lovely May evening, I sat on my deck, watching the sun descend upon
Lake
Norman
. So far, it had been a perfect day. I’d risen at
5:00 a.m.
as I always do, put on a pot of French roast, and prepared my usual breakfast of scrambled eggs and a bowl of fresh pineapple. By six o’clock, I was writing, and I didn’t stop until
noon
. I fried two white crappies I’d caught the night before, and the moment I sat down for lunch, my agent called. Cynthia fields my messages when I’m close to finishing a book, and she had several for me, the only one of real importance being that the movie deal for my latest novel, Blue Murder,