NBTM: New York Night by Stephen Leather

New York Night

by Stephen Leather

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GENRE: Horror/Supernatural

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BLURB:

Teenagers are being possessed and turning into sadistic murderers. Priests can’t help, nor can psychiatrists. So who is behind the demonic possessions? Jack Nightingale is called in to investigate, and finds his own soul is on the line. New York Night is the seventh novel in the Jack Nightingale supernatural detective series.

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Excerpt Three:

Cheryl Perez pulled the cork from the bottle of Chianti and sloshed it into a glass. She drank some and went through to her sitting room. She pulled open the drawer of a side table and took out the framed photograph of herself and Eric. It had been in the drawer for over a month – a new record. The photograph had been taken on New Years Eve three years earlier. They’d flown to Vegas for the weekend and seen in the New Year at a show in the MGM Grand. The casino’s logo was in the bottom right hand corner of the photograph. They were both a little drunk and they were holding hands either side of a champagne bucket that Perez was fairly sure contained their second bottle. Maybe their third. They had got so drunk that they had collapsed on the bed in their clothes and woken up the following morning still clothed and wrapped in each other’s arms. ‘You bastard, Eric,’ she whispered. ‘How could you leave me?’

She took the photograph over to the dining table and stood it in the middle. She sat down, drank some wine and then picked up one of the two pencils there. She drew a cross on the page, dividing it into quarters. She wrote YES in the top right and bottom left quarters, then wrote NO in the top left and bottom right. She took another drink of wine, then smiled lop- sidedly at the photograph. ‘I know, I know, it’s stupid and my soul will burn in Hell, but I have to try, don’t I?’

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AUTHOR Bio and Links: 

Stephen Leather is one of the UK's most successful thriller writers, an eBook and Sunday Times bestseller and author of the critically acclaimed Dan "Spider' Shepherd series and the Jack Nightingale supernatural detective novels.

Before becoming a novelist he was a journalist for more than ten years on newspapers such as The Times, the Daily Mirror, the Glasgow Herald, the Daily Mail and the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong. He is one of the country's most successful eBook authors and his eBooks have topped the Amazon Kindle charts in the UK and the US. In 2011 alone he sold more than 500,000 eBooks and was voted by The Bookseller magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the UK publishing world.

Born in Manchester, he began writing full time in 1992. His bestsellers have been translated into fifteen languages. He has also written for television shows such as London's Burning, The Knock and the BBC's Murder in Mind series and two of his books, The Stretch and The Bombmaker, were filmed for TV. You can find out more from his website www.stephenleather.com and you can follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/stephenleather

Jack Nightingale has his own website at www.jacknightingale.com

You can buy New York Night on Amazon at http://www.amazon.com/New-York-Night-Nightingale-Supernatural-ebook/dp/B017T03500/

You can buy New York Night on Kobo at https://store.kobobooks.com/en-ca/ebook/new-york-night-the-7th-jack-nightingale-novel

You can buy New York Night on iBooks at https://itunes.apple.com/gb/book/new-york-night-7th-jack-nightingale/id1057762247

You can buy New York Night at Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/591862

Interview with Stephen Leather

As a kid did you write or make up stories?

All the time. I remember writing plays at primary school (age 9-10) and setting up my own newspapers. I tried my hand at writing fiction while I was at university (studying biochemistry) but it was only after I had been a journalist for ten years or so that I was capable of producing quality work.

Where does most of your Character inspiration come from?

From people I have met, or seen on TV! I might take the physical appearance of one person, mix it with the dress sense of another, the accent of another and the views of another to create my own character, but pretty much everything I use is based on someone I have seen or spoken to.

Do some qualities of your characters come from real people?

Absolutely. Most of my books are thrillers so very much set in the real world, so the characters I write about are also based on real people. My thriller plots, too, are almost always based on something that has happened or could happen! Though as the Nightingale books are about devil worship and summoning demons, there is quite a bit of imagination involved, too!

What was the inspiration for your book?

I think the original inspiration came from the books of Dennis Wheatley that I used to read when I was kid, coupled with a love of horror movies, especially the films that were showing when I was growing up, like The Exorcist and The Omen.  The inspiration for the character Jack Nightingale was partly the Harry Angel character in the 1987 movie Angel Heart, played by Mickey Rourke. New York Night is the seventh book in the Jack Nightingale supernatural detective series. The first five were published by my UK publisher Hodder and Stoughton and were set in the UK. I am now self-publishing the books and have moved the character to the United States. The first self-published book was San Francisco Night and the next one will be Miami Night. Part of the inspiration for the books now comes from the city where they are set!

What is your favorite spot to write?

I sit in front of the TV with my Mac on a coffee table. I watch TV as I write and always have done.  I did most of my homework at school and university with the TV on, and most of my working life was spent in busy newspaper offices so I need a buzz around me as I work. Working with the TV on It helps when I need to describe a character’s clothing and the credits are always a good source of names! I drink a cup of coffee pretty much every half hour and my cat (one of three) Peanut Butter sits on the sofa next to me to keep me company. My second favourite place to write is in airports – all the comings and goings provide the buzz that I need!

What advice would you give budding writers?

Write every day and don’t be in a rush. It takes time to produce a good novel. A first novel could – perhaps should – take a few years.  And a first novel probably isn’t publishable. Writing is a craft that has to be learned. In the old days of publishing you needed an agent and a publisher before you were published, so there were experts who would decide whether or not your book was worth publishing. These days with self-publishing platforms such as Kindle Digital Publishing and Smashwords  anyone can publish anything. But just because you CAN publish something doesn’t mean you SHOULD. It’s worth taking the time to make sure that the first book you publish is the best it can be.

When you are published – or when you go ahead and publish yourself – the next challenge is to go out and publicise your work. I would advise against too much self-promotion – though I think blog tours are a terrific idea. I wouldn’t bother with Twitter – everyone seems to be shouting and no one is listening - but have an informative and interesting web page and a Facebook page. And have an email list that fans can sign up for – that way you are sending information to readers who are genuinely interested in hearing from you! And always respond personally. If a fan has made the effort to contact you, the least you can do is reply!

My advice would be to concentrate on your writing and the readers will seek you out. There’s nothing worse than a writer clamouring for attention, especially on social media. Best to concentrate on producing the best books you can and let word of mouth do the rest. In the long run, good books will always be noticed and they will sell.

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GIVEAWAY INFORMATION and RAFFLECOPTER CODE

Stephen Leather will be awarding a $50 Amazon/BN GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour, and a $25 Amazon/BN GC to a randomly drawn host.

a Rafflecopter giveaway