I'm creating the sixth historical legal thriller and mystery in my Portia of the Pacific series. In my third mystery, The Stockton Insane Asylum Murder, I recruited five readers to play patients. They each had a specific psychosis being used by the unscrupulous asylum director, and two foreign scientists, who perform inhuman experiments upon them.

Not since Dennis Lehane's Shutter Island has there been a thriller so gripping, so horrendously true to its historical roots.

Now, in my sixth Portia of the Pacific volume, I will again seek out three readers to become suspects in a legal thriller and mystery, this time set in 1888 San Diego. Entitled Stingaree, this mystery delves into the lives of the hearty folks buying up real estate and making a lot of money down south, where law and order is in short supply, but greed and murder are not. Readers and enter the contest here: http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/18ae07e95/? Readers can join my Google class to see the new book created here: https://classroom.google.com Enter class code: ziot653

My marketing allows me to get my readers involved in the plots. For example, in Stingaree, the reader will be able to participate in the novel in many ways they cannot using a conventional eReader.

My plot involves Wyatt Earp, who is arrested for the murder of an itinerant Rabbi Sonenschein, who has been doing some recruiting. The rabbi has a "cult following" in his role as a supposed Kabbalah expert. However, Earp, and his common law wife, Josephine Marcus, also have a money scheme of their own cooking. Attorney detective Clara Foltz, the series heroine, decides to defend Marshal Earp when he is charged with the murder of the rabbi in Tijuana.

This is where my readers come in. I will use three readers to supply me with three additional suspects in the plot. Stingaree will be extra special, as the eBook will be written using ePub3 technology. It will allow the reader, at a strategic moment in the mystery, to choose which suspect he or she believes is the guilty party.

And, with James Musgrave's patented "insert story" feature, the reader can follow the existential trail of that suspect to see if his/her choice is indeed a correct analysis.

If you enjoy mysteries by Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, Dennis Lehane, or Margaret Atwood, you will love this new way to experience and participate in a legal thriller and mystery. Find out how to enter the contest, and see how this eBook will also contain a music playlist, an accompanying audio book, and relevant, historically accurate videos about the tumultuous Stingaree gambling and red-light district of San Diego.

That’s quite an interesting question. We indie authors love those kinds of queries because we’re pretty much rogues by nature. Since I love to mirror the socio-political issues going on today in my so-called “historical mysteries,” I would like my books to be categorized as “Historical Mirror Mysteries,” or something to that effect. I want my readers to understand they’re getting a good dose of reality in the “fiction” that truly duplicates the same activities going on all around them. If they would simply, as the great philosophical dark fiction author, Thomas Ligotti, says “become awake” to them, instead of trying to escape all the time, perhaps they could change the reality by changing themselves.

God is a Bedlamite, a fantastic historical novel about the brother-sister act of Friedrich and Elisabeth Nietzsche, by the great indie author, Katie Salvo. She did a whooping good job at recreating that time period and those two miscreants.

I listen to classical instrumental as I write. Nothing with words. Too distracting. Jazz, I like, but with coffee? Nope.

I was screwed-over by my agent and Harcourt-Brace Publishing. Today, I've discovered, to my dismay, many of these big publishers and their agents work together to screw-over authors, especially so-called "Midlist" (publisher-speak for "not selling") authors.

Smashwords has always allowed indie authors to run things the way they wish to be seen by the reader.

Thomas Ligotti because he created “philosophical horror stories” better than anybody I’ve ever read, and I’d like to pick his brain (not literally). J. D. Salinger, because I’d like to ask him about carrying around the hand-written pages of Catcher in the Rye as he slogged all over Europe chasing Nazis. Finally, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., as he made me laugh out loud so many times that I wanted to reach into the book and hug him!

I love my fans! They inspire me to do my creative best.

I get it from guys like Hugh Howey, who was able to keep the digital rights to the Wool series and also sold for a big figure to one of the “Big Five” publishing giants who wanted the print rights. He has the best of both worlds, and that’s what I aspire to do as well whenever I spark electrons to create pixels on the screen.