Friday, June 01, 2012

A Little Hitchcock to Celebrate My Release Day


You don't know this about me, but I’m an Alfred Hitchcock fan. Rope, Dial M for Murder, Rear Window, To Catch a Thief, and I could go on. After all, he directed more than fifty feature films over six decades. There might be a very good reason I’m not overly found of birds. His use of camera to mirror a person’s gaze lent a sense of voyeurism to his films, Rear Window being the most obvious example and one of my personal favorites. He was a master at crafting suspense with plots ripe with violence, crime and murder.
“There’s two people having breakfast and there’s a bomb under the table. If it explodes, that’s a surprise. But if it doesn’t …” Alfred Hitchcock
Hitchcock calls this the ticking time bomb plot. There’s a bomb underneath the table that the characters are unaware of but the audience is and the audience also knows when the bomb is due to go off. Suspense is created by the gap of what the audience knows and the characters do not. Anyone watched Psycho lately? He was skilled at creating worst-case scenarios which he call frightmares, nightmares that happen in our waking lives.
I love using Alfred Hitchcock as an inspiration when writing. Creating those ‘frightmares’ for characters and sending their lives into chaos. That’s what suspense means to me. The unthinkable. The ultimate ‘what if’. I tried to bring some of that to my debut romantic suspense, Backlash.
It's also release day for Backlash! Yay! You can find Backlash at The Wild Rose Press and Amazon
What he's sworn to protect, she's willing to sacrifice to save those she loves...
 When dedicated teacher Lily Wheeler interrupts a vicious gang attack on one of her students, she vows it won't happen again. But her rash interference puts her in the path of a cold-blooded killer and the constable tracking him-a man she has little reason to trust, but can never forget.
Constable Chase Porter returned to Aspen Lake to see justice done, not renew old acquaintances. But when he rescues the woman he once loved from a volatile situation, he realizes his feelings for Lily haven't lessened over the years.
Now, the dangerous killer Chase has sworn to capture has Lily in his sights. Can Chase and Lilly learn to trust each other again before it's too late-or will old insecurities jeopardize their future?
Thanks for stopping by and checking out Backlash!
Karyn Good

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