Christmas is over, the New Year has begun and it's the weekend. You pull out your Kindle or Nook or whatever e-reader you got for the holidays and browse the e-books seeking something interesting. There's fantasy, sci-fi, romance, historical, and paranormal to name a few of the majors. Hmm…how to choose?All the big names are out there but you’re feeling adventurous so you start looking at independent authors including those who self-publish their novels. Hey, it's fairly cheap, the cover looks interesting and it's got a killer title. Why the heck not?
Congratulations, you just downloaded a crime thriller! No small accomplishment considering the incredible amount of them out there waiting for eager eyes like yours. Especially the crime thrillers; if you look hard enough you'll see they seem to be one of biggest genre' from self-published authors. Why is this so?
As a self published author as well as a crime thriller author, here are some of the reasons we are so entranced by the thrill of writing the thriller:
1. We get to let our imaginations run wild! We not only get to write the breakneck speed of the plot with all its twists and turns and surprises to thrill you and take you on an out of control freight train ride, but we get to be inventive as well.
2. We get to invent technology (new weapons, vehicles, etc.,) if we write futuristic crime thrillers and sometimes break that new ground in current time thrillers as well.
3. We get to create heroes, heroines, and our favorite and hopefully yours, bad guys or bad gals as we deem fit. What does that mean? It means that we can make our good guys a little bad and our bad guys a little bit good. Or we can make them both bad by making them both hell bent on revenge for either the same or completely different reasons. We can make our bad guys completely crazy or genius crazy or just genius. In fact we can make our criminal someone you love or someone you love to hate!
We can make you cry when the misunderstood bad guy gets popped by the hero or make you laugh with evil glee when he or she gets their just desserts. We can make them all gorgeous looking including Mr. or Ms. Bad, or we can make our baddies look like George Clooney or Denzel Washington and let them use it to commit their crimes! Think incredibly handsome serial killer women can't turn down because of those laser blues and killer smile! We can make our heroes and heroines pretties or just unusual looking enough to be oddly sexy or we can make them just blatantly hot!
4. We can give them problems. And not just dangerous "How the hell is he/she going to get out of this?" type problems either. No, they can come with emotional baggage including guilt, anger, revenge, addiction, or compulsive behavior and that's just the good guys! Imagine what we can do with our baddies! Well, you'll just have to read that book you just downloaded to find out!
5. The thrill of the chase! We love not only playing chase or cat and mouse not only with the goodies and baddies, but with YOU as well! Yeah, that's us, keeping you on the edge of your seat, trying to figure out what's coming next, who knows what and who doesn't and who the heck is who! And if we can keep you in the dark until the ending when (and if) we shock you, we are doing our job.
6. We can write out that movie that plays in our head for you. If we're really good at what we do, we can create excitement, fear, laughter and anger in you as you watch that movie too! And you should have the third row center seat—the best in the house.
7. And finally, the last and probably most important reason self published authors lean into writing crime thrillers—it's just so damned much fun!
So the next time you're in the mood for something a little adventurous or even a little dangerous, think of us, those crime thriller writers whose ultimate fantasy is to drag you out of your comfort zone, throw you on a runaway train, bus, car, air plane or helicopter and make you scream with the dizzying dips and drops and hair pin curves until you're begging for mercy or until you reach the end!
PI Barrington is the author of Isadora Daystar, a dark sci-fi adventure, which is available via the following retailers.
Amazon
Smashwords
Also be sure to visit her on her blog.
Curiosity Quills is a gaggle of literary marauders with a bone to grind and not enough time for revisions - a collective, creating together, supporting each other, and putting out the best darn tootin’ words this side of Google.
Curiosity Quills also runs Curiosity Quills Press, an independent publisher committed to bringing top-quality fiction to the wider world. They publish in ebook, print, as well as serialising select works of their published authors for free on the press's website.
