What Are You Sure About? by C. Kevin Thompson

C. Kevin Thompson

As you get older, you spend more and more time thinking. I guess it’s because you realize you have more years behind you than what lies ahead.

Often, it’s about the things you could have done, but for some reason, never did. Like for me when I was in high school, I wish I would have known I could have stood on the sideline of a football field, held a clipboard, and wore a headset while I followed around a great college coach, to learn from him and eventually be ready to tackle that profession on my own. But I’m too old now.

Other times, we think about the things we did that we wish we could have or would have done differently. There are too many things for me to list here. Suffice it to say, hindsight is always 20/20, and even if I had it to do all over again, middle and high school would not be on that list. I do remember, though, my dad urging me at the age of eighteen to set aside twenty dollars a week and sock it away for retirement, come thick or thin, drought or plenty. More when you can. No less than that during the down times. Had I followed that advice, I’d have a minimum of $41,000 saved right now, and that doesn’t include the interest that would have accrued over all these years.

At other times, we think about the things you wish you would have started sooner. I wish I would have pursued my writing career sooner. I had the itch for years, but for whatever reason, I never pursued it until I was in my forties. Better late than never, I guess, but I often wonder how far along I’d be in my writing career if I had started sooner.

Do you do this? Take these little strolls down Memory Lane?

It’s in these times of contemplation when I’m reminded of the dinner scene in the movie, The Family Man, starring Nicolas Cage as Jack Campbell and Téa Leoni as Kate Reynolds. Jack and Kate are sitting in a high-end New York City restaurant, and Jack explains how he “feels like” he is living someone else’s life. How he used to be so sure of himself. And now, he’s unsure about everything.

Kate responds by saying that she too has wondered what kind of life she would have had if she hadn’t married Jack.

Jack replies, “And?”

Then Kate says this: “And then I realize I have just erased all the things in my life that I’m sure about. You…the kids…”

“Good things…” Jack says.

“Yeah,” Kate responds. Then she asks Jack, “What are you sure about?”

And his response? “I’m sure that right now, there is no other place I’d rather be than here with you.”

It’s easy to wish we could do it over. It’s easy to imagine what things would be like if we had chosen “the other path.” However, if we did, we’d give up everything we are sure about. The good things in our lives. And instead, we would fall prey to the lie that the grass is greener on the other side of the fence. What we forget to remember is that when we climb over that proverbial fence, we take our decision-making process with us. We take our sins with us. So, even if we had it to do all over again, we’d still have regrets. They would just be new ones. We’d still make poor choices and end up wishing twenty years later we could do it all over again, again.

So, when does it stop, this wishing for a “do-over”?

It stops when we realize how blessed we are in the moment. A moment that took years, even decades to create.

When you have a spouse who loves you for who you are, even if you’re overweight. When you have a job that may not get you that million-dollar resort home in the Poconos, but it keeps a roof over your head on rainy days. When your children drive you up a wall sometimes, but bring you laughter and joy and a never-ending mountain of laundry. Yes, even the laundry is a blessing, for there are many adults who would wash twice the amount of clothes you have to do if it meant having a child to hold in their arms.

You see, the blessings that lead to a thankful heart come from what has already happened in your life and mine. We can be joyous for the future, for promises made, for things to come that can be counted on, like Jesus’s return and a Heavenly home, for example. But to be thankful, it has to be for things that have already occurred. Things that have been done for you, given to you, even happened to you beyond your control. When we wish for do-overs, we erase everything for which we should be thankful. It’s a truly selfish act, if you think about it. What made us, that which shaped and molded us into the people we are today, we now wish to wipe out because we—let’s admit it—want a better life? As if the one God has given us is somehow faulty and defective?

So, my friend, in this season of Thanksgiving, be truly thankful. For this very moment. And the next. And the next. For it is all you are truly sure about.

And give Him praise.

It’s easy to wish we could do it over. It’s easy to imagine what things would be like if we had chosen “the other path.” #seriouslywrite #encouragementforwriters via @CKevinThompson

When does it stop, this wishing for a “do-over”? #seriouslywrite #encouragementforwriters via @CKevinThompson

The Tide of Times

The Tide of Times

(The Blake Meyer Thriller Series, Book 3)

A Perverse Tale. A Precarious Truth. A Personal Tribulation.

Supervisory Special Agent Blake Meyer is at an impasse. Bound and beaten in a dilapidated warehouse halfway around the world, Blake finds himself listening to an unbelievable story. Right and wrong warp into a despicable clash of ideologies. Life quickly becomes neither black nor white. Nor is it red, white, and blue any longer.

Every second brings the contagion's release closer, promising to drag the United States into the Dark Ages. Tens of millions could be dead within months.

Every moment adds miles and hours to the expanding gulf between him and his family. What is he to believe? Who is he to trust?



C. KEVIN THOMPSON is a husband, a father, a grandfather, and a kid at heart. Often referred to as “crazy” by his grandchildren, it’s only because he is. He’s a writer. Need he say more?

The second edition of his award-winning debut novel, The Serpent’s Grasp, is now available! The first four books of his Blake Meyer Thriller series are out as well. Book 1, 30 Days Hath Revenge, Book 2, Triple Time, Book 3, The Tide of Times, and Book 4, When the Clock Strikes Fourteen, are now available! Book 5, A Pulse of Time, is coming soon! And, his new standalone novel, The Letters, is due out January 7, 2020, in e-book, February 18, 2020, in paperback! It is a “Christmas Carol-esque” book that will haunt your family pleasantly for years to come!

Kevin is a huge fan of the TV series 24, The Blacklist, Blue Bloods, NCIS, Criminal Minds, BBC shows Broadchurch, Shetland, Hinterland, and Wallander, loves anything to do with Star Trek and is a Sherlock Holmes fanatic too. But you will never catch him wearing a deerstalker. Ever.

Website: www.ckevinthompson.com/
Kevin’s Writer’s Blog: www.ckevinthompson.blogspot.com/
Facebook: C. Kevin Thompson – Author Fan Page
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May This Blog Haunt You Pleasantly (Part 3) by C. Kevin Thompson

C. Kevin Thompson

We’ve arrived. Part 3 completes this blog trilogy revolving around my reading of Les Standiford’s The Man Who Invented Christmas: How Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol Rescued His Career and Revived Our Holiday Spirits (You can read Part 1 and Part 2 here). As I stated before, if you want to learn about the writing life and how other writers who have gone on before us have endured the trials and tribulations therein, reading about them is just as important as reading about the craft itself. For one thing I found when learning about Dickens’s life was how universal some things are. It truly is a small world.

So far, we have covered the first two “gleanings” I gathered from my reading of this work. Gleaning #1 (found in Part 1 above) was: Authors have always wished to get their works in as many readers’ hands as possible, sometimes at the chagrin of their publishers (if they are traditionally published) or themselves (if they are independently published). And if not handled properly, it can become an all-consuming fire.

As much as this writing life can become a soul-wrenching conflagration, this mindset can worm its way into the writer’s business relationships as well, which led us to Gleaning #2 (found in Part 2 above): The constant tension between authors and publishers will always be a constant.

If an author like Dickens, who made such an impact of the art of story in relationship to the downcast and poor among us, then who are we to think that everything we write should be loved and adored by every editor and publisher who reads it? It’s actually quite the tip of the hat to arrogance, if you ask me. And believe me, I’ve asked me a lot. We all think, if we’re honest with ourselves, that what we write should be adored and published with an air of delight. It should be venerated and lavished with contracts fit for a king or queen. So, when we are told by an editor or agent, “I’m not interested,” or “It’s not something our house can support,” our proud belief in our work explains the utter incredulous nature of the expression on our face. It’s definitely something we need to work on, for sure.¹

This brings us to my last gleaning from Les Standiford’s book.

Gleaning #3: Crooks abound in publishing, and sometimes in the unlikeliest of places.

Did you know Charles Dickens had to deal with pirates? Not the Jack Sparrow, “Where’s the Rum?” brand of pirate. He probably could have more easily accepted the “Yo-ho-ho,” parrot on the shoulder kind of buccaneer than the scallywags he faced.

Dickens had fought for years to have an International Copyright Law. He saw the practical and legal need and lobbied for it every chance he got, for the problems crossed the Atlantic—heading both east and west—and didn’t seem to play favorites. However, the pirates had their preferences, and popularity was always the key.

American authors popular in England watched as their works were literally stolen and reprinted in England. Edgar Allen Poe was a common victim. Such works as The Fall of the House of Usher (1839) and The Masque of the Red Death (1842) were both bootlegged from Poe’s pen by English publishers and sold to a British audience without Edgar receiving any compensation at all.

Dickens was Edgar Allen Poe’s contemporary, as well as his fellow quarry. His works traveled abroad, from England to America, were retooled, and sold for a pittance with no recompense heading into Dickens’s bank account. The one foray into plagiarism that caught my eye, though, was when A Christmas Carol landed in Boston, and was subsequently harvested by the publisher known then as Harper and Brothers.

Does the name of that company sound familiar? It should. Harper and Brothers later merged with Row, Peterson, and Company in 1962 to become Harper & Row. In 1987, Rupert Murdoch purchased the company for $300 million and merged it with his News Corporation. Then, three years later, he purchased William Collins, Sons & Co., a British company (ironically!), and HarperCollins was formed as a means of creating a worldwide English-speaking book market that has great potential, according to one analyst.²

The article I found went on to say, “Harper & Row evolved from a publisher of books on religion and ethics—its first title was Seneca’s “Morals”—to books by Mark Twain, James Thurber, E. B. White, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Moshe Dayan, Allen Dulles, Svetlana Alliluyeva, Erich Segal and Sylvia Plath” (emphasis added).³ Apparently, religion and ethics didn’t play a huge part in the company’s earlier days. There didn’t seem to be any feeling of remorse about the act of thievery. Even though copyright laws existed in both America (Copyright Act of 1790) and England (Statute of Queen Anne in 1710), they only applied to authors within their own borders.⁴

How convenient, right? There have always been legal loopholes…

Dickens, like others, knew there was little they could do about the literary poachers of their day who operated across the pond, much like we cannot do much about the ones that exist today.⁵ However, when a British publisher known as Lee & Haddock had planned to publish a “re-originated” version of A Christmas Carol—which turned out to be the book in its entirety with a few lines of introduction added and a few minor things changed—for two pennies a copy in their Parley’s Illuminated Library, in the January 6, 1844 edition, Dickens wrote his friend and legal counsel, Thomas Mitton, who filed a formal complaint with the courts.

That didn’t stop the pilferers, though. Because of Dicken’s enormous popularity, other works of his were lifted in a similar fashion, many of which being done so in a not-to-flattering manner. Such titles as The Posthumous Notes of the Pickwick Club, by “Bos,” Pickwick in America, Oliver Twiss, Nickelas Nicklebery, Barnaby Budge, and more were allegedly written by “Bos, Buz, Poz, and others.”⁶

Dickens, more than upset over Lee & Haddock’s actions, spent over a thousand pounds on legal fees in his court battle—a tough ride, considering Dickens was always on the verge of bankruptcy. He eventually won his fight against Lee & Haddock, and decided it was their fault he had accumulated these legal fees. So, he filed another lawsuit to recoup his funds. He won that case as well. That was when Lee & Haddock filed for bankruptcy, thus forcing Dickens to drop the case and absorb the legal fees when he was already in debt.⁷

So, what’s an author to do? Those, like Dickens, have gone on their crusades and fought for themselves and those writers who have come after. But there are two things that have come out of this Gleaning #3 for me.

1. There will always be pirates. Always have. Always will. And even the courts can’t eradicate them all. Sometimes, it seems, the laws of the land protect them with the loopholes that can be used as escape hatches. “There is no justice in the justice system,” one of my characters says all the time.

2. We are Christian writers. Most of us write Christian literature. Dickens didn’t (Neither did Poe, for that matter). And he was taken advantage of by unscrupulous publishers. In this ever-darkening world around us, I’ve often wondered how long it’s going to be before our works are rejected because of the emphasis on Jesus. I believe a form of censoring is coming that will be allowed (If Jesus doesn’t return before that happens!). The courts will declare the message of Christ anathema to all human beings and to be avoided at all costs.

So, what’s an author to do? I believe the answer is as simple and as complicated as this: write. In the admonition of Ephesians 5, “redeeming the time because the days are evil.” To use our talents to help as many people as possible see the light of Christ as it shines brighter and brighter in a dark world before our window as a writer closes. Take advantage of the avenues God supplies to get your word out about the Messiah.

And in the words of Tiny Tim, “God bless Us, Every One!”

¹  My wife ran across a book that deals with this very issue recently, titled Free of Me: Why Life Is Better When It’s Not about You, by Sharon Hodde Miller. This book should be on every Christian writer’s shelf.

² McDowell, Edwin. “Murdoch to Buy Harper & Row in Surprise Deal.” New York Times. 1987 March 31. 2019 March 18. https://www.nytimes.com/1987/03/31/business/murdoch-to-buy-harper-row-in-surprise-deal.html  

³ Ibid.

⁴ Standiford, Les. The Man Who Invented Christmas: How Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol Rescued His Career and Revived Our Holiday Spirits. Broadway Books; New York, NY, 2017. pp. 140-141.

⁵ Clark, Grant, and Shelly Hagan. “What’s Intellectual Property and Does China Steal It?” Bloomberg.com. 2018 March 22. 2019 March 18. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-22/what-s-intellectual-property-and-does-china-steal-it-quicktake

⁶ Standiford, Les. The Man Who Invented Christmas: How Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol Rescued His Career and Revived Our Holiday Spirits. Broadway Books; New York, NY, 2017. pp. 142-143.

⁷ Ibid., pp. 144-152.

The Tide of Times

The Tide of Times

(The Blake Meyer Thriller Series, Book 3)

A Perverse Tale. A Precarious Truth. A Personal Tribulation.

Supervisory Special Agent Blake Meyer is at an impasse. Bound and beaten in a dilapidated warehouse halfway around the world, Blake finds himself listening to an unbelievable story. Right and wrong warp into a despicable clash of ideologies. Life quickly becomes neither black nor white. Nor is it red, white, and blue any longer.

Every second brings the contagion's release closer, promising to drag the United States into the Dark Ages. Tens of millions could be dead within months.

Every moment adds miles and hours to the expanding gulf between him and his family. What is he to believe? Who is he to trust?

C. KEVIN THOMPSON is a husband, a father, a grandfather, and a kid at heart. Often referred to as “crazy” by his grandchildren, it’s only because he is. He’s a writer. Need he say more?

The first three books of his Blake Meyer Thriller series are out! Book 1, 30 Days Hath Revenge, Book 2, Triple Time, and Book 3, The Tide of Times, are now available! Book 4, When the Clock Strikes Fourteen, is coming March 2019!  Also, the second edition of his award-winning debut novel, The Serpent’s Grasp, is now available!

Kevin is a huge fan of the TV series 24, The Blacklist, Blue Bloods, and Criminal Minds, loves anything to do with Star Trek, and is a Sherlock Holmes fanatic, too. It’s quite elementary, actually.

Website: www.ckevinthompson.com/

Kevin’s Writer’s Blog: www.ckevinthompson.blogspot.com/

Facebook: C. Kevin Thompson – Author Fan Page

Instagram : ckevinthompson

Twitter: @CKevinThompson

Goodreads: C. Kevin Thompson

BookBub: C. Kevin Thompson

May This Blog Haunt You Pleasantly (Part 2) by C. Kevin Thompson

C. Kevin Thompson

In last month’s Part 1 of “May This Blog Haunt You Pleasantly,” I stated how important it is for writers to read about other writers. Whether they were trailblazers or path-wideners, each writer has his or her own story. Being as human as we are, those stories paint for us pictures of triumph and tragedy…two things from which we can learn. 

As I read Les Standiford’s The Man Who Invented Christmas: How Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol Rescued His Career and Revived Our Holiday Spirits over the holidays, there were some things that jumped off the page for me, and I thought I’d share them here at Seriously Write.

Last time, we looked at Gleaning #1, which was:

Authors have always wished to get their works in as many readers’ hands as possible, sometimes at the chagrin of their publishers (if they are traditionally published) or themselves (if they are independently published). And if not handled properly, it can become an all-consuming fire.

One little tidbit I didn’t mention at the end of last month’s post was how all-consuming that fire had become for Dickens. By the 1850s, his relationship with his wife Catherine had become so estranged, they divorced after twenty-two years of marriage and ten children. Rumors tossed about suggested Charles had been involved in “an illicit affair” (is there really any other type when married?) with a younger woman. Dickens took such offense that he used the front page of his then current magazine, Household Words, to argue to the contrary. ¹

As much as this writing life can become a soul-wrenching conflagration on a personal level, this passion we often champion at writers conferences can worm its way into the writer’s business relationships as well, which leads us our next point of interest:

Gleaning #2: The constant tension between authors and publishers will always be a constant. So, get used to it.

As many may or may not know, Charles Dickens lived a challenging life growing up. When Charles was a young lad of twelve, his father—who worked as a clerk for the navy and seemed to always struggle to pay the bills—was thrown in prison “alongside smugglers, mutineers, and pirates” for a debt of forty pounds, owed to a baker, which was a considerable sum in those days. (Aren’t you glad things have changed?) As a result, Charles was forced by necessity to take a job at six schillings a week, working in a boot-blacking factory, bottling the polish used to by military personnel and businessmen to make their shoes shiny. In this factory along the Thames, Charles would one day write of his experience:

Its wainscoted rooms and its rotten floors and staircase, and the old grey rats swarming down in the cellars, and the sound of their squeaking and scuffling coming up the stairs at all times, and the dirt and decay of the place, rise up visibly before me, as if I were there again. ²

This time of his life made an ineradicable impression, for it is found in various forms throughout his writings, and in none more famous than the sentiments of Ebenezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol (“Are there no workhouses? Are there no prisons? And the Union workhouses? The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigor then? Those who are badly off must go there. If they would rather die, then they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.”)

It was after works like Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickleby that Dickens would walk around “black streets of London,” formulating the story of his Carol. He was excited about the tale being pieced together in the recesses of his mind. It was a bit of leap on his part, for no Christmas “books” had ever been written before 1843. Some essays by American author Washington Irving, written in January of 1820 and contained in The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, had helped to revive the holiday’s traditions we know and love today. However, it is believed that Dickens’s work helped to launch the holiday into another stratosphere.

Celebrating Christmas like we do today, or even how Bob Cratchit and his family did in A Christmas Carol, was not a “thing” in 1843 England. The day itself was not very popular, unlike its Christian counterpart in the spring. Because the day was primarily of Roman Catholic origin with ties to the pagan celebration of Saturnalia, many protestants, both in England and especially in America, actually thought of the holiday as more of a devilish revelry than Godly celebration of Emmanuel, God with us.

These beliefs were amplified by the pagan traditions, such as wassailing, which looked very much like the trick-or-treating we witness today at Halloween. After a song was sung by a group of wassailers—who often came to the door a bit hammered—the home was to offer the singers goodies, like “figgy pudding,” for example. If the homeowners did not comply, they were met with behavior not befitting the holiday. The entire tradition had more of the look and feel of a bully taking the nerd’s lunch money in the middle school cafeteria than “a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time” of giving from “shut-up hearts.”

Nevertheless, Dickens felt the setting of Christmas to be the best for his newest endeavor. With excitement, he took his notes and idea to his publisher, Chapman and Hall. After hearing Dickens explain where his heart had brought him (Have you ever been there as a writer?), the publishers seemed less than enthusiastic (Have you ever been there as a writer?).

His friend and agent, John Forster, who was with him at this very moment, later wrote in his biography of Dickens, “Chuzzlewit had fallen short of all the expectations formed of it in regard to sale.” ³ Even though Forster believed Martin Chuzzlewit to be Dickens’ best work yet, the public felt otherwise as sales testified. Despite all this, Forster felt keeping the relationship with Chapman and Hall open and in good standing would be most beneficial for Dickens, allowing him to trust the process and focus on his part, the writing.

However, Dickens was already at odds with Chapman and Hall before he waltzed into their offices to sing his Carol. They had stated in earlier conversations they might have to draw an extra fifty pounds from his royalties stipulated in the contract for Martin Chuzzlewit. Dickens wrote to Forster after, “I am so irritated, so rubbed in the tenderest part of my eyelids with bay-salt, that I don’t think I can write.” ⁴

Have you ever felt like that? As if your publisher or agent was pulling your eyelids back and grinding the shards of bay-salt into them until they dissolved with your many tears? I’m sure all writers have felt that way at some point. Some more than others.

Chapman and Hall finally determined they were not interested in a Christmas book written in haste (remember, this is October of 1843, and Dickens had not even started writing it yet). The publishers also believed the story explained to them by Dickens to be a re-writing/re-telling of his former works, and it would have to be done in a cheap form under such time restraints. You could liken it today to having a large publishing house using CreateSpace-like print-on-demand in haste versus taking their time and producing a print run of several thousand hardcover copies.

Instead, Chapman and Hall gave their final ruling. If Dickens wanted to issue the story out to the public, it would have to be in a magazine owned by them and edited by him. This was the only way they would consider funding the project. Otherwise, they were not interested. Translation? Dickens would have to work off the publication of his newest story by writing it in installments, like he had done with his other works, while editing the new magazine for them. In other words, they would pay him—a contract would be written and signed, for sure—but they were going to get some collateral in the bank, namely his name on the cover of the magazine as not only the editor, but as one of the authors contained therein.

In his biography of Dickens, Forster wrote this of Chapman and Hall:

Publishers are bitter bad judges of an author, and are seldom safe persons to consult in regard to the fate or fortunes that may probably await him.” ⁵

I know every writer reading this believes Forster to be “right on the money” with his comment. Publishers tend to want to play it safe. They like riding the champion thoroughbreds again and again instead of taking a chance on a horse who has never run the big race. We all know this writing life is as much of a business as it is an art or a craft, and it seems it has always been that way.

I believe that if any of us (I’m talking about authors here) started our own publishing house, we may go into it with the war chant of “I’m going to do it differently.” However, we all know there are things within any business which dictate certain ends. There are reasons why things have been done certain ways for so many years. People typically do not continue to make deals that will ruin them financially while remaining in business for decades. Insolvency and longevity never ride the same train.

Yet, this roadblock did not stop Dickens. He instead decided to publish the book “on his own account.” He personally became responsible for all the production costs, as was pointed out in Part 1 of this series.

As a result, he got it done. And the world has been better for it. As we examined last month, he did not make near as much as he had hoped, but such is the life of what amounts to a self-published author. Chapman and Hall, in this instance, became somewhat of an Amazon KDP. They paid the costs up front and offered distribution channels, but Dickens—the author—ended up footing the lion’s share of the bill in the long run.

Do you have a story in you nobody else seems to see or understand with as much clarity? Do you have the wherewithal to power through the obstacles (this is with the understanding that God is in it)? It would seem that if the answer to both of those questions is yes, then you are in good writing company.

As the British say, “On you go!” We’ll see you next month with Part 3.

¹ Standiford, Les. The Man Who Invented Christmas: How Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol Rescued His Career and Revived Our Holiday Spirits. Broadway Books; New York, NY, 2017. pp. 210-211.

² Ibid., pp. 2-3.

³ Ibid., pp. 73-74.

⁴ Ibid., p. 75.

⁵ Ibid., pp. 76-77.

The Tide of Times

The Tide of Times

(The Blake Meyer Thriller Series, Book 3)

A Perverse Tale. A Precarious Truth. A Personal Tribulation.

Supervisory Special Agent Blake Meyer is at an impasse. Bound and beaten in a dilapidated warehouse halfway around the world, Blake finds himself listening to an unbelievable story. Right and wrong warp into a despicable clash of ideologies. Life quickly becomes neither black nor white. Nor is it red, white, and blue any longer.

Every second brings the contagion's release closer, promising to drag the United States into the Dark Ages. Tens of millions could be dead within months.

Every moment adds miles and hours to the expanding gulf between him and his family. What is he to believe? Who is he to trust?

C. KEVIN THOMPSON is a husband, a father, a grandfather, and a kid at heart. Often referred to as “crazy” by his grandchildren, it’s only because he is. He’s a writer. Need he say more?

The first three books of his Blake Meyer Thriller series are out! Book 1, 30 Days Hath Revenge, Book 2, Triple Time, and Book 3, The Tide of Times, are now available! Book 4, When the Clock Strikes Fourteen, is coming March 2019! Book 5, A Pulse of Time, is coming November 2019! Book 6, Devil of a Crime, is coming summer 2020! The second edition of his award-winning debut novel, The Serpent’s Grasp, is available wherever books are sold! Also, his standalone mystery, The Letters, is coming in e-book, January 2020! Paperback in February 2020!

Kevin is a huge fan of the TV series 24, The Blacklist, Blue Bloods, NCIS, Criminal Minds, Broadchurch, Shetland, and Hinterland, loves anything to do with Star Trek, and is a Sherlock Holmes fanatic, too. It’s quite elementary, actually.

Website: www.ckevinthompson.com/

Kevin’s Writer’s Blog: www.ckevinthompson.blogspot.com/

Facebook: C. Kevin Thompson – Author Fan Page

Twitter: @CKevinThompson

Goodreads: C. Kevin Thompson

BookBub: C. Kevin Thompson