We're welcomin
g my very good friend, Jo Davis, back to the Lair today, not to talk about firefighters, but SPIES! I've been looking forward to the debut of this book and bringing Jo here to give us the details. Be prepared dear readers, you'll need a fan and the air conditioning to help you get through reading this erotic suspense series!
Suz:With your latest foray into the world of Erotic Suspense you've delivered a new series for our readers to devour. Care to give us a look into the world of sexy spies?
Jo: The idea for the SHADO Agency series resulted from my love of spy thrillers. I'm a fan of James Bond and the BOURNE thrillers, and just about any spy story out there. When faced with creating a new series, I thought what fun it would be to write a spy series, and seriously turn up the sexual heat to scorching levels?and the SHADO Agency was born. My visit this previous summer to the Spy Museum in Washington, D.C. fueled my imagination even more. What an intriguing world of disguise, subterfuge, and danger! There was no way I could resist.
The mission: Seduce…and Eliminate.
Jude St. Laurent is a former assassin for SHADO, a covert homeland security agency. After a mysterious accident causes gaping holes in his memory, he embraces his career as an artist, pouring vibrant, colorful life into his erotic paintings, and he often seeks solace in the arms of his subjects. But when he’s haunted by visions of the past, he turns to his new personal assistant for help—and she knows just how to make him forget.
Lily Vale is not what she seems. An agent as deadly as
Suz: The book starts off with a bang:
Prologue
“Sweet Christ.”
Elbows on the ratty desk, John Sandborn dropped his face into his hands. In the wake of this terrible exercise of connect the dots, he’d be goddamned lucky if he didn’t wind up at the bottom of the
Because a traitorous, murdering bastard was coming for him. No doubt about it.
If he had a whisper of a prayer of avoiding a grisly fate, he had to work fast.
Clicking the X in the top right corner of the laptop’s screen, he closed the classified file and opened another. Fingers flying, he activated a program he’d hoped never to use, but was damned glad he’d put into place. Next, he composed a simple coded message a ten-year-old couldn’t decipher, yet not so difficult a trusted operative couldn’t, either.
“Okay . . . got it.” He blew out a deep breath. It wasn’t perfect, but would have to do.
Last, he opened his e-mail and hit Send. He waited, every muscle tense, while the new files, along with the classified one, shot to six different destinations and burrowed into six different hard drives. A high-tech worm that would make any hacker cream in his shorts—and just might save his ass.
Action complete.
Sandborn attacked the keyboard again, clicking rapidly. His instincts screamed Get out, but he didn’t dare leave the last two tasks undone.
Precious seconds were whittled away, scraping his nerves raw, as he accessed the script file he’d written to initiate the virus that would destroy his hard drive. The final box popped onto the screen, and he executed his CTRL+F+U command.
Sandborn gave a grim chuckle at the double entendre in his chosen three-finger salute and wiped the sweat from his brow. Time to make like a ghost.
The door to his motel room burst open, hitting the inside wall like a gunshot. Sandborn spun, the SIG from the desktop already in hand, arm leveling at the leader of the traitor’s cleanup crew.
Too late. A pop split the air, and pain blossomed in his chest. He stumbled backward, managing to get off a shot, the explosion deafening in the tiny space. The leader went down with a grunt as Sandborn trained his gun on the second man, tried to squeeze the trigger. And couldn’t. His arm fell limp and useless to his side.
The second man crossed the room, a smirk on his ugly, pockmarked face. Cold overtook the pain, spreading from Sandborn’s chest to his limbs. Numbing every muscle. Looking down, he stared in fascinated horror at the dart embedded in his left pectoral.
He swayed, speaking quickly. His life depended on it. “Tell your boss I know everything. I put safeguards in place, and he’ll never find them without me,” he rasped, the drug freezing his vocal cords, fast. “If I die . . . the whole world will know . . . what he’s done.”
Sandborn’s legs buckled and he slumped to the floor, completely nerveless. Aware, but paralyzed, along for the ride and at their mercy. A nightmare.
A pair of heavy-soled leather boots appeared in his line of vision as the second man paused, obviously peering at the laptop. “You smart-ass sonofabitch,” Crater Face hissed.
John Sandborn’s last image was a snapshot of the man’s right shitkicker rocketing toward his face.
Suz: WOW! Jude St. Laurent, the hero of I SPY A WICKED SIN, is a very damaged hero. What is it that makes wounded men so sexy and how did you come about giving him the flaws in this story?
Jo: I think there's something about a tortured or damaged hero that brings out the caring and nurturing side of a woman. At least that's true for me. I want to fix it, make it all better-but not before he's put through the wringer. With Jude, I knew from the beginning he was blind and had holes in his memory due to the villain having his mind swept. (Think Bourne Identity) I said to myself, "I blind former assassin/spy? Are you nuts? He'll be such a difficult hero to write!" But it didn't matter. Jude was what he was, period. As with all my heroes, once he introduced himself to me, that was it. And on top of memory loss, can you imagine having one of your most relied-upon senses denied you, while becoming increasingly aware that you're not what you believed and that your life is in terrible danger? The challenge was too much fun to resist.
Suz: In I SPY A WICKED SIN Lily Vale is a very beautiful operative of SHADO. What is her area of expertise?
Jo: Like Jude, Lily is an assassin, and she's posing as Jude's new personal assistant. Her job in this case is to locate computer files that Jude hid regarding the theft of a weapon of mass destruction, a theft he was supposedly instrumental in pulling off. Then she'll eliminate him. Lily uses her sex appeal to bring down her targets in a much more?hands on manner than most agents. In particular, she's very proficient in using poisons that don't leave a trace?
Suz: A Jo Davis erotica wouldn't be complete without a ménage. Liam O'Neil is the third member of this trio. Is he also a spy for SHADO?
Jo: No, our sweet Liam is Jude's in-house chef, companion, and sometime lover. He's a young man with a big, open heart and almost stole the story from my clutches before I quite knew what happened. I adore Liam, and completely balked at a suggestion while writing the book that I kill him off! SO not happening! I hope readers love him as much as I do.
Suz: Since I SPY A WICKED SIN is the first of this series, will we be seeing these characters in the other books?
Jo: The two characters that will carry over from the beginning of the three-book series are handsome SHADO leader Michael Ross and the villain, ex-SHADO right-hand man and traitor Robert Dietz. The first two books in the series will have a conclusion, but Michael and Dietz will have their final showdown in the last book. Also, book two will introduce someone very important to Michael's story.
Suz: And I can't have Jo Davis in the lair without asking? WHEN will we be seeing the next firefighter book?
Jo: I'm so glad you asked! Tommy Skyler's story, LINE OF FIRE, will be released on May 4, 2010! The team's youngest hottie will get his story, and it sets up an explosive plot for the final book, RIDE THE FIRE, Captain Sean Tanner's story coming in December! In Tommy's story, lives will be irrevocably changed. Think of these last two books in the series as dominos falling, setting off a chain reaction?
Suz: Jo, thanks for being here today. We love having you with us. Do you have a closing question for our readers?
Jo: Sure do, Which type of action hero is your favorite in books, TV, or movies (cop, firefighter, Navy SEAL/other military, spy, etc.) and who is your favorite action hero of all time?
