A dead body in the parking lot of her family’s business, a killer on the loose, and a handsome detective asking a lot of questions➱ Homecoming Chaos by D.W. Brooks Book Tour & Giveaway

  

HOMECOMING CHAOS

by D.W. Brooks

 

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GENRE:  Romantic Suspense/Mystery/African American Fiction

 

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BLURB:

 

A dead body in the parking lot of her family’s business, a killer on the loose, and a handsome detective asking a lot of questions…

 

Jamie Scott’s life fell apart four years ago when she broke off her engagement, turned down a dream job, and went overseas to run away from her life. Now she’s back, but the reunion is not without problems. She arrives home just in time to attend the soiree her mother planned, but she’s not prepared for what she finds—a dead employee in the parking lot.

 

Detective Nick Marshall is assigned to the murder case at the forensics lab owned by Jamie’s family. He meets the headstrong Jamie, but he has a job to do. And his attraction to her… well, he’s a professional.

 

Jamie knows the stakes are high. She has to face the past and save her parents’ business while dealing with her family drama and an uncertain future. She also has to deal with Nick, who wants her out of the way of his investigation. But fate keeps throwing them in one another’s paths… and into chaos that they both want to avoid, but neither can seem to escape.

 

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EXCERPT

Revel in the chaos.

Revel in the chaos.

Revel in the chaos.

 

 

Jamie tried to live by this motto for most of her life because her life seemed to invite chaos. She learned to expect—and sometimes encourage—complications. As the plane taxied to a halt, she repeated her motto to herself. This phrase, tattooed on her right hip, particularly applied now.

 

The international terminal of Hartsfield-Jackson Airport had changed since she was last there. Her brother, Jonathan, would pick her up at the baggage claim—alone, she hoped, and not sporting a clingy girlfriend. Time to re- acclimate and re-establish family bonds. Dealing with an unknown woman in her face when she wanted to spend time quietly with her brother wasn’t at the top of her to-do list.

 

As she waited in line to get through passport control, she thought about how she got to this point—back in Atlanta after several years abroad. She had spent two of those years working with the non-profit organization Doctors Overseas. Jamie worked in several locations, including the Central African Republic. She had her reasons for joining the charitable organization; not all were altruistic, and she kept those to herself during her entrance interview. The horrors she witnessed overseas helped her put her personal chaos into perspective. She realized her issues were nothing compared to what people endured in other parts of the world. This realization allowed her to embrace her job and enjoy what she was doing, despite the frequent threats of bodily harm. To help maintain her sanity while overseas, she traveled a lot and spent six months in Italy working with a designer friend.

 

The agent summoning her snapped her out of her reverie. Handing over her passport, she said, “Nothing to declare. Coming back home for my mother’s birthday and Christmas.”

 

At the check-in counter, the inspector carefully examined her and her passport photo. Jamison understood the scrutiny. At the time of that picture, she had been at the height of her glamor phase with a history of modeling and a resulting, above-average concern about how she looked. In medical school, she often showed up at rounds with perfectly coiffed hair and more than a swipe of mascara and lip gloss. But in Africa, those concerns fell away. Right now,

 

Jamie was makeup-free, and a baseball cap covered her hair. She was still beautiful, but now it was a girl-next-door beauty. Jamie had high cheekbones, almond-shaped dark brown eyes, a straight nose, a square jawline, and her golden-brown skin was still smooth. She wasn’t stomping down runways anymore, as in her past life, because she had shifted her priorities.

 

Her mother would hate it.

 

“Welcome to Atlanta,” the inspector said as she stamped her passport. “Have a pleasant stay.”

 

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The Magic of Reading as a Child and My Childhood Writing Journey

 

I love to read.

If you had told me I would have less time to read as I got older, I would have called you a liar. Because as a kid, I read during all spare moments:

  *at the breakfast table—it's how I learned all the vitamins and minerals that fortified cereals contain

  *in the bathroom—even if I wasn't doing anything, I could hide for a few and get a few pages in before I had to tackle a chore (that works now as an adult!)

  *during homework time—my father would catch me with my textbook on the dining room table and my mystery book in my lap. It was just another way to get reading in when I was supposed to be doing something else.

  *in the car—as a kid, I could read when the car was moving. Even a 10-minute drive provided time enough to get a chapter or two in as long as it wasn't dark.

Don't get me wrong, I took part in other activities like dance, piano, track, and church choir. But reading was my main love.

And at age eight, I, along with my cousins, decided to take that love to the next level. After reading books with few if any characters that looked like us, we created our own book series full of African American children solving mysteries. We invented names, back stories, relationships (both friends and enemies), and neighborhood maps. One cousin is an artist; she drew pictures of each character so we could describe them appropriately. Another cousin was a budding architect, and he created the map and designed the houses for our characters. I was the main participant that was in charge of writing. We even created "books" by getting pages of that dot matrix computer paper—my parents both worked with computers, so we had scads of those pages—and stapled them into booklets that we would write and draw in. We had thought of everything…except…

Actual stories. Plotting. Themes. The writing. We had great introductions, delightful conversations between friends, and a few snappy conversations between the heroine and the rival children from a different neighborhood. But we had nothing after the first chapter or two. Everyone had a hand in creating the stories and scenes. However, plotting was a foreign concept for us. When we fizzled out while writing one story, we would start another in different booklet. Finally, we ended up with a lot of little half-finished booklets with no finished stories. However, we artfully decorated these booklets!

At some point, we moved on to other interests, and the booklets, all prep artwork, the story "bible", and everything we had created for this line of mystery stories was tucked into a cardboard box and placed into my parents' attic. After that, I focused on getting into medical school, and my cousins went on to different careers. I only thought about writing occasionally because I considered myself too busy, and I thought it was a childhood dream that I had left in the past. My family would mention our foray into writing briefly, but it was just a passing thought.

Once my health deteriorated in the 2010s because of a genetic kidney disorder, I started thinking about it again more seriously. I spent a lot of time in bed with my computer—why waste the time? I had an idea about my female lead character already. So, I started writing. At the end of 2017, I had a successful kidney transplant. When we went to my parents' home in 2018 during spring break, I finally decided to get our childhood project out of the attic. I didn't expect it to be completely in one piece, but I expected it to be THERE.

NOTHING. No box of paper nibbled on by creatures. No box that was breaking down because of age. Nothing.

I asked my mother where the box of our writings was. She looked up at the attic door, shrugged, and stated, "Maybe the squirrels got it."

So ends my childhood writing adventure. May my current writing adventure have a better ending.

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AUTHOR Bio and Links:

 

The author is a doctor and editor who lives in Texas with her husband and children. She enjoys trying to stay in shape, sporadically cooking, reading (still), writing, and working on her blog. She is eternally grateful to the woman who donated a kidney to her over 5 years ago and continues to advocate for organ donation as much as she can.

To learn more about D. W. Brooks and future publications and events, visit https://authordwbrooks.com.

 

Website: https://authordwbrooks.com

Facebook: https://facebook.com/authordwbrooks

Instagram: https://instagram.com/authordwbrooks.com

Twitter: https://twitter.com/lifethereboot

 

Sales

https://authordwbrooks.com for an autographed copy

or https://www.amazon.com/Homecoming-Chaos-D-W-Brooks-ebook/dp/B0CKS9P7PF

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/book/1144277742?ean=9798218150501

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https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/homecoming-chaos

 

 

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 D.W. Brooks will award a randomly drawn winner a $15 Amazon/BN GC.

 

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