Virtual Blog Tour, Guest Post, Giveaway + 5* Review for Where Death Meets the Devil by L.J. Hayward

Hi all!! Welcome to my inaugural blog tour. I’m incredibly excited to be here, introducing you to my new book, Where Death Meets the Devil!! It’s full of action and suspense and two damaged men who shouldn’t be friends—or more—coming together to uncover a common enemy—and more. I’d love to have you join me on the tour where I’ll be dorking… ah hem, talking about the importance of titles, the dangers of research, theme songs and other stuff. And if watching while I potentially embarrass myself isn’t enticement enough, there’s a chance to win a $10 Riptide gift card!

About Where Death Meets the Devil

Jack Reardon, former SAS soldier and current Australian Meta-State asset, has seen some messy battles. But “messy” takes on a whole new meaning when he finds himself tied to a chair in a torture shack, his cover blown wide open, all thanks to notorious killer-for-hire Ethan Blade.

Blade is everything Jack doesn’t believe in: remorseless, detached, lawless. Yet, Jack’s only chance to survive is to strike a bargain with the devil and join forces with Blade. As they trek across a hostile desert, Jack learns that Blade is much more than a dead-eyed killer—and harder to resist than he should be.

A year later, Jack is home and finally getting his life on track. Then Ethan Blade reappears and throws it all into chaos once more. It’s impossible to trust the assassin, especially when his presence casts doubts on Jack’s loyalty to his country, but Jack cannot ignore what Blade’s return means: the mess that brought them together is far from over, and Ethan might just bring back the piece of Jack’s soul he thought he’d lost forever.

Available now from Riptide Publishing!

What goes where

If I suddenly disappear it’s probably because I ended up on a government watch list somewhere thanks to my Google-history. Research for a book like Where Death Meets the Devil can swing in some pretty odd directions. From You Tube videos about self-defence to message boards discussing pros and cons of various hand guns. From testing out salted caramel fudge recipes* to the Australian Defence Force. I read books about the Australian SAS and looked up personality disorders. In the space of a couple of hours I Googled domestic terrorism in India, US military bases in Colombia and socio-political connections between Russia and China. Fingers crossed the file of my digital explorations is flagged as ‘writer’. ;)

Of course, everything I read or even looked into didn’t make it into the book. I did a fair bit of reading on Saint Thomas Christians and all that made it into the book was their cross, tattooed on Jack’s back. Assassination verses targeted killing was a debate I never found the space for. I researched the start-up procedure for the Kamov Ka-52 helicopter and it was reduced to a few lines in the story. I looked up so many weapons specs I had to keep referring back to them just to remember which fact went with which gun, then only to cut most of them out. More pleasurable was deciding what supercar Ethan Blade was going to drive. I enjoyed that research so much, he ended up with six of the silly things. And I have endless thanks for all those folks posting videos of their Ferraris, Porsches and Aston Martins on You Tube, because I doubt me stalking said cars around town would have ended well.

* that was purely for me because once I wrote it into the story, I had to eat it! And bless all the folks at work who kept eating the fudge I forced on them because, who knew, I actually have some self-restraint. ;)

Review:

This is my first book by LJ Hayward and I do believe I'll be stalking the fook out of the rest of her books. This book is fast paced and so full of twists and turns, you're not sure if you're up or down. Who's the bad guy and who isn't? A moral assassin who loves cars and animals? whaaaaat? (Sheila the camel was of my favorite characters!) The book starts out present day, then the next chapter jumps a year. The following chapter goes back a year then the next back to present. I absolutely loved this. Things that were being said in the present didn't quite make sense until the next chapter in the past cleared it all up. The layers in this book are just unbelievable. I'm super impressed with the smart writing. Ethan was a charming sociopath (even though I don't believe that's what he was). "You're half right, Jack" If you've ever read DarkSoul by Aleksandr...picture Silvio, but witty and a bit charming and a touch of some weird innocence. This book is loads of excitement and I can't wait for it to release. I hope people love it as much as I did! Another fave for the year! Tags:2018-fave, action-adventure, boys-who-love-boys, contemporary, cops-military-badass, dark-twisty, enemies-to-lovers, horror-suspense-thriller, mental-illness-anxiety-etc, murder-mystery, read, squeezykillers-mafia-assassins

About L.J. Hayward

L.J. Hayward has been telling stories for most of her life. Granted, a good deal of them have been of the tall variety, but who’s counting? Parents and teachers notwithstanding, of course. These days, the vast majority of her story telling has been in an honest attempt to create fun and exciting ways of entertaining others (and making money).

As such, she is still a mad (always provoked!) scientist in a dungeon laboratory (it has no windows—seriously, the zombie apocalypse could be going on outside and she’d have nary a clue) who, on the rare occasions she emerges into the light, does so under extreme protest and with the potential hazard of bursting into flames under the Southeast Queensland sun.

Connect with L.J.:

• Webiste: http://www.ljhayward.com/
• Twitter: @lj_hayward

Giveaway

To celebrate the release of Where Death Meets the Devil, one lucky winner will receive a $10 Riptide credit! Leave a comment with your contact info to enter the contest. Entries close at midnight, Eastern time, on March 3, 2018. Contest is NOT restricted to U.S. entries. Thanks for following the tour, and don’t forget to leave your contact info!