Wednesday, December 12, 2018

Gail Sattler's Interview & Spotlight of Mercury Rising


I'm happy to have Gail Sattler with me today with a spotlight of her book Mercury Rising. Click on the cover image for more info. To learn more about Gail and her book, read on!


Gail, please tell us five random things we might not know about you.
My first published book contracted on my 40th birthday
I have owned many pets but I have never had a cat
My car is a manual transmission
My favorite color is green
I've always wanted to play the violin

Why did you choose to write this book?
This book is based on a true story, with my husband as one of the affected victims. I thought it was intriguing, and so I built a story around it.

What one thing about writing do you wish non-writers would understand? 
The easier a book is to read, the harder it was to write.

What is the toughest test you've faced as a writer?
Short deadlines

What do you hope readers to take away from your novel?
Hope, because life is full of happy endings.

What accomplishment(s) are you most proud of, writing-related or not?
That I'm self-taught on the bass guitar, because I don't play guitar, my first instrument is piano.


Please give us the first page of the book. 
CHAPTER 1
When he first joined the FBI, Steve Gableman had anticipated a life of action and intrigue. International espionage. Secret missions. Dangerous liaisons. But this wasn’t one of them. After the fallout from his last assignment, he’d been downgraded. Just surveillance.
Although, he couldn’t complain. It wasn’t often an agent got running water with indoor plumbing on a stakeout, much less a whole house with comfortable furniture, a full fridge, and not a rodent in sight.
An elderly lady had called the FBI’s tip line after a bomb threat at her grandson’s school, saying the teen tried his luck on the Internet to see how difficult, or easy, it would be to build a bomb. While researching, the boy read a post from Jeff Schuster, the owner of a hydroponics store, also asking questions on building a bomb and then planting one. Except, unlike the boy, Schuster’s enquiries were serious. The FBI sent a mole into Schuster’s store, confirming that Jeff Schuster was indeed collecting the components to construct a bomb.
However, so far they hadn’t uncovered his target or his timeline.
When the FBI began their surveillance of Schuster’s home, they’d observed a group of four men who visited him at least three times a week, using different cars on rotation. They came and went quietly, returned a few days later in a different car, and the cycle repeated.
Schuster’s cohorts were quite an eclectic group. A couple of them had prison records, and only one had a real job. Steve’s team had a number of good leads, and they were following them.
Then there was Schuster’s neighbor, Cheryl Richardson, in the other half of Schuster’s duplex. Every second day, Schuster quietly knocked on her door and gave her a bag of unknown contents from his store. She always accepted it then quickly went back inside.
It had taken a month, but Steve finally managed to discover the contents of the bags.
Tomatoes. Grown in his hydroponics store to demonstrate his equipment.
She wasn’t helping Schuster make a bomb. She was making salad. His surveillance of her showed that other than accepting the unknown bags from Schuster, she led a clean and relatively boring life. She was a florist. She went to church faithfully. The highlight of her week was taking her small, fluffy dog to the library.
Tonight, here he sat, alone in a dark house, documenting the cleanest suspect he’d ever had the misfortune to be assigned. His report concluded that Cheryl Anne Richardson had no part in the operation. He could now re-join his team to research the real suspect.
He checked the monitors one more time. He'd planted two surveillance cameras to watch her, both planted in his own yard, so he had visual, but not audio. The camera in the front caught both Cheryl and Schuster's front doors in front of the duplex, allowing both Steve and his team, depending on who was on duty to watch, to capture images of who came and went. The second was mounted on a tree in his back yard, for now aimed both rear patio doors which exited to the shared porch. Cheryl Richardson had gone back in the house, and the pattern of lights turning off showed that she’d gone to bed.
He would complete his report in the morning.
His head had barely touched the pillow when his monitor beeped. Steve grumbled and trudged to his display to see what she was doing. The panel indicated movement, so he flipped on the view screen. The sliding door to the back yard was open. Cheryl stood in the gap, bundled in her housecoat. He turned the camera remotely, to watch the same thing that he did every night at this same time. Her fuzzy little dog made his way to a tree in the middle of the back yard,  did his business, and hobbled back into the house.
Steve nearly groaned. The most exciting thing the woman had done in twenty-four hours was let the dog out.
When the door closed, he reached to aim the camera back at the house, and then he'd turn off the monitor. His finger had begun its downward path to press the button when the light on the motion detector flashed again. He froze. He couldn’t see what, but something in the yard had moved, and it wasn’t her dog.

 What do you do for fun when not writing?
I play bass in a local jazz band as well as an Elton John tribute band, and I play piano for a community jazz band.

What are you working on now? 
A five book series featuring five members of the Kozlowski family, starting when four of Zac Kozlowski's relatives move in to his house for different reasons, all at once, and his neighbor tries her best to help. Or does she?

Where else can readers find you online?   
Visit Gail Sattler's website at www.gailsattler.com - and click on her blog to see what goes on in the mind of a writer
Facebook  - https://www.facebook.com/gail.sattler.3
Gail Sattler's author page at https://www.facebook.com/Gail-Sattler-author-568988573496833/?modal=admin_todo_tour

Bio
Gail Sattler lives in Vancouver BC Canada, where you don't have to shovel rain. When she's not feverently writing (Gail Sattler has over 40 published novels and novellas, plus a few works of non-fiction) she plays bass in an Elton John tribute band and a community jazz band, as well as  piano in a smaller private jazz band. When she's not writing or making music (or at her day job) Gail likes to sit back and read a book written by someone else, along with a good cup of hot coffee.

Back cover blurb
Mercury Rising - by Gail Sattler

Michael wants to save his daughter, but first he’s got to save the world.

Michael and Charlotte meet when Michael is trying to find Ashley, his missing daughter who has fallen into drug abuse, and Charlotte is searching for her son Jon, a brilliant and aspiring young scientist who has also gone missing.
Ashley and Jon should have nothing in common, but after the murder of Jon’s favorite professor, they become ensnared in a tangled web that becomes worse with every new discovery.
When Michael and Charlotte join together to figure what their children have become involved with, they, too, are sucked into a sinkhole for which there are no answers, only more questions. 
When all seems lost, will they all recognize the source of strength offered to them, and… will they take it?



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