{"id":643,"date":"2009-11-01T11:52:31","date_gmt":"2009-11-01T16:52:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quackingalone.wordpress.com\/?p=643"},"modified":"2009-11-15T18:21:23","modified_gmt":"2009-11-15T23:21:23","slug":"enticing-interest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/2009\/11\/01\/enticing-interest\/","title":{"rendered":"Enticing Interest"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hubby The Magnificent blogged recently that E-Mail Enticement<\/em><\/a> would be available in paperback on Amazon<\/a> and Createspace<\/a> soon. Well, soon is now.<\/p>\n

E-Mail<\/em> was written much earlier and had been out and available on Kindle<\/a> and in e-book<\/a> form. But sales figures for the book didn't show much interest, so we didn't hurry to make it available in paperback. The lack of interest sort of echoed the reaction from literary agents when I queried the book initially, which was quite a few years ago. Of late, interest in and sales of E-mail<\/em> have risen dramatically. Perhaps E-mail's<\/em> time has come. I hope so.<\/p>\n

Unlike the other books I have published to date, E-mail<\/em> is a contemporary. I have written one other contemporary in the vein of E-mail<\/em>, but it hasn't gone through the editorial wringer yet.\u00a0\u00a0I'll slot the final edit of the new one (Griffin's Law<\/em>) for early next year, when my WIP - a new historical romance- is well along the road towards completion, if not actually complete.\u00a0 But, like I said above before I started rambling, E-mail<\/em> is different from the other work readers have seen to date.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I like to describe the style of E-mail<\/em> as being a book that\u00a0fellow attorney John Grisham might have written -- if only John wrote romance.\u00a0\u00a0The book is the first of (hopefully) a number of novels about what happens when love intersects with the law.\u00a0 E-mail<\/em> is based on a statute from my home state of South Carolina that makes it a felony for an adult to send e-mail to a minor if the e-mail is intended to entice the minor sexually.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Since the book centered around my home state, I decided to set it in my home town.\u00a0 Myrtle Beach<\/a> is an interesting blend of locals and folks who've moved from other states or countries.\u00a0 It's a tourist town that swells to big city size during the summer.\u00a0 Visitors tend to see the hustle and bustle of the summer or spring break crowds and think they know and understand the town.\u00a0 Actually, they don't.\u00a0 At its heart, Myrtle Beach is and will remain small town South Carolina, southern and rebellious to the core.\u00a0 My boss tells a story about how a would-be\u00a0politician who \"wasn't from around here\" \u00a0learned this\u00a0lesson the hard way.\u00a0 The politician\u00a0campaigned for County Council on the platform that he'd served on the Council in Ohio.\u00a0 He said, elect me and I'll show you how we ran things up North.\u00a0 That politician lost\u00a0by the biggest margin in our state's history.\u00a0 It's awfully easy to overlook the fact that Myrtle Beach has traditional southern values - unless that reality\u00a0smacks you where it hurts.<\/p>\n

In E-mail Enticement<\/em>\u00a0that reality\u00a0smacks the hero\u00a0precisely where it hurts the most.\u00a0\u00a0 The hero is Alix Angelis, a Greek billionaire who owns an empire headed by its flagship brand of luxury hotels.\u00a0 One day Alix sails his yacht into Charleston harbor.\u00a0 He rents a car and explores the coast.\u00a0 When he discovers Myrtle Beach, he decides to open a hotel in the tourist mecca, and he becomes friends with Chad, a local who is a restaurant mogul in his own right. \u00a0Alix begins to spend\u00a0part of the year on the Grand Strand.\u00a0<\/p>\n

When Chad opens a hotel in Vegas, Alix attends the ceremonies.\u00a0 They coincide with the anniversary of Alix's father's death.\u00a0 It's the time of each year when he faces his failure to live up to his father's dying wish.\u00a0\u00a0Alix had promised his father that he'd follow\u00a0the family tradition of marrying a lady he fell in love with at first sight.\u00a0 Except Alix had never fallen in love at first sight or otherwise and didn't much believe the emotion actually existed.\u00a0 So on the occasion of the Vegas gala, he drank far too much and let the alcohol foment a rebellion.\u00a0 He deliberately wed Sue, a Southern belle he didn't love, didn't want to love and felt sure he would never love.\u00a0 On Sue's part, she didn't much care about the emotion as long as she\u00a0had access to the nearly bottomless well of Alix's bank balance.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It didn't take Alix long to realize the belle was a real bitch and that being wed to a woman you actively hated wasn't an easy form of rebellion to\u00a0face over the breakfast table.\u00a0\u00a0He'd have likely ended the marriage earlier except that he got a call one day from SC's social services department renewing a plea that Sue take in her younger half-sister.\u00a0 Alix hadn't known Sue had any family and the thought of any relation being abandoned was intolerable to his deeply rooted Greek value system.\u00a0 So Alix elects to take in the half-sister, Rachel, even after Sue tells him if he takes her in, she's his problem.\u00a0 And quite a problem she turns out to be.\u00a0\u00a0He waits at the squalid foster home to pick her up to drive her\u00a0home.\u00a0 By the time Rachel reaches the bottom of the ramshackle staircase, Alix has fallen in love with her as men of his line always did - deeply, irrevocably, and at first sight.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But Rachel is his wife's half-sister and she's a teenager who is still in high school.\u00a0 Alix stays in his marriage to stay near Rachel, even if he can't let her or anyone have a clue\u00a0about his feelings.\u00a0 The day finally comes when Sue pushes Alix too far by taking a lover and bringing him to Alix's bed.\u00a0 The Greek can't take that, even to be near Rachel.\u00a0 The book begins with the divorce trial where Sue calls Rachel as her final witness.<\/p>\n

The story\u00a0follows the rest of the trial and the closing bombshell, which wins Alix freedom on his terms.\u00a0\u00a0Alix had intended to broaden his relationship with Rachel slowly, to give her time to mature.\u00a0 But part of the testimony yanks him out of logic and awakens his Greek temper, and sends him down a road that escalates things with Rachel much too quickly.\u00a0 Well, too quickly according to his plan.\u00a0 When she gives him an ultimatum that she'll walk if he doesn't consummate his alleged feelings, he realizes that the girl is much older than her years.\u00a0 He follows\u00a0nature's calendar instead of man's, but the rest of the world doesn't see the inner maturity and certainty.\u00a0 So he tries to hide their relationship and ends up losing her completely.<\/p>\n

To get her back, Alix has to show his peers how he feels about the very young girl.\u00a0 Even though it jeopardizes his business in a very real way, he does exactly that.\u00a0 But shortly afterwards, Rachel vanishes, leaving only a letter full of lies.\u00a0 Sue finds the e-mail exchanges between Alix and Rachel and shows them to police, who charge Alix with Rape and with Enticing\u00a0A Minor By E-mail.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Then Alix must go on trial before a jury of Myrtle Beach folk who turn out to be much more Bible belt Southern than he'd ever realized.\u00a0 The trial is televised due to intense national interest in the case.\u00a0\u00a0His only defense is showing the world his helpless adoration to prove that\u00a0regardless of her years, Rachel enticed him first and that she consented to a relationship that was very much mutual.\u00a0\u00a0The statute he was charged under provides that at 17 consent is an absolute defense.\u00a0 So Rachel's testimony could clear him, if only she hadn't vanished.\u00a0 Alix has to wonder whether\u00a0any of it had been real, or had it all been an elaborate con?\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n

The story\u00a0follows the\u00a0trial from opening to closing arguments\u00a0and lets readers in on a real surprise near the end.\u00a0 It closes\u00a0in high drama, in typical over-the-top \"Mary Anne\" style.\u00a0 Also typically of my style, by the end, the power has changed hands.\u00a0<\/p>\n

If you enjoy\u00a0legal suspense books or movies\u00a0you should\u00a0give E-mail Enticement<\/em> a read to see how passionate the law can be when it intersects with love.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hubby The Magnificent blogged recently that E-Mail Enticement would be available in paperback on Amazon and Createspace soon. Well, soon is now. E-Mail was written much earlier and had been out and available on Kindle and in e-book form. But sales figures for the book didn't show much interest, so we didn't hurry to make ...continue reading \"Enticing Interest\"<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=643"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":704,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643\/revisions\/704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}