A Note From Sandra

STING

One bullet. Two million. Three days.

The opening scene of STING was written almost a year before I started the book in earnest. I was at my keyboard working on another manuscript when it was as if I’d been pushed from behind a curtain out onto a stage where a live-action play was in progress.

The setting was a honky tonk, a dive with a disreputable clientele where misdeeds and mischief were kept in check by a bearded bartender and the two sawed-off shotguns he kept within reach under the bar. Jukebox. Pool tables. Neon. Wife cheaters. Parole violators. You know the kind of place.

There I was in the midst of it, an unnoticed voyeur. First to catch my eye was Mickey Bolden, noteworthy because of his porcine features and shifty eyes. He shoved a handful of popcorn into his mouth and said to his buddy seated on the barstool next to his, “A woman walks into a bar.”

I didn’t have a clue who Mickey was, who his buddy was, or what, if anything, the pair had to do with the referred-to woman who’d just come in. In fact, all I had was an impossible-to-ignore gut feeling that Mickey’s statement wasn’t simply a lead-in for a corny joke. There was a meaningful subtext to it that caused the hair on the back of my neck to stand on end. Something was about to happen. But what? And to whom? And why? Was finding out worth abandoning my current project for a few minutes to watch and listen in?

After some rationalization, I determined that it was. After all, Voyeurism is an integral part of my job. It’s listed between Viewpoint and Woolgathering. Having decided to stick around, I turned to take a gander at Mickey’s buddy.

Whoa! To say that he got my attention would be an understatement. The truth is, he took my breath. He was drinking tequila neat and had just as well have had “Don’t mess with me” tattooed on his forehead. Sharp cheekbones. Scarred chin. Glacial gaze. Wary and watchful. Hello, Shaw Kinnard. Funny, how I immediately knew his name. He said to Mickey, “She’s here?”

Here again, the words resonated with significance. Shaw knew better than to turn his head and look toward the woman, although I don’t know how I already knew that about him. But I could turn and look at her, and when I did, I was as surprised to see her there as Shaw and Mickey were. Because immediately obvious to me was that Jordie Bennett, the epitome of class, didn’t belong in a honky tonk “…built of rusty corrugated metal, unstably situated on the muddy banks of a sluggish bayou.” So what was Jordie doing there on that particular night? And why did her unexpected appearance rattle these two armed men? Wait! Mickey and Shaw are armed? Funny, how I also knew that.

In under a minute, a hundred questions had raced through my mind, and I was compelled to discover the answers to them. So I began typing, and, before coming up for air, I had a finished prologue. What happened in the last sentence of it blew my socks off. I didn’t have a story yet, but I had a heck of a beginning.

The plot for STING was conceived that afternoon. Because another book was in the works, I had to leave Mickey, Shaw, and Jordie in suspended animation for six months or so. Every once in a while, I would check in on them to make certain they were as interesting as I had originally thought. Each time I revisited that opening scene, I learned a little bit more about who these characters were and why they crossed paths in that Louisiana backwoods beer joint. Suffice to say, it turned out to be no ordinary Friday night at the local watering hole. Within minutes of Jordie’s walking into the bar, all hell broke loose. It took the next 400 plus pages to clean up the gumbo of trouble created that night. (Well, actually the gumbo had already been created. That night the cauldron boiled over.)

As a fiction writer of suspense, it’s my job to pull the rug out from under you now and then. But in STING truly nothing is as it appears, and I can’t take credit or assume blame for all the twists. Many times, as the story unfolded for me, characters both good and evil looked at me and, with a wink, said, “Gotcha!” I love when that happens.

STING is a tale of deceit, but, until the bitter end, it’s unclear as to who is the deceived and who is the deceiver. Lying serves as truth serum. Manipulation is de rigueur. Shaw’s deadly mission turns even more high-stakes when faced with his target – Jordie. She’s forced to choose between legality and loyalty – but first she must survive Shaw. And soon each of them realizes that passion should come with a warning: Can be hazardous to your health. Read the story, feel the STING.