Welcome to my tour stop! Check out an interview and the tour giveaway below...
The June BoysYA Mystery, Thriller
Hardcover & ebook, 368 Pages
March 3rd 2020 by Thomas Nelson
Summary
The Gemini Thief could be anyone. Your father, your mother, your best friend’s crazy uncle. Some country music star’s deranged sister. Anyone.
The Gemini Thief is a serial kidnapper, who takes three boys and holds them captive from June 1st to June 30th of the following year. The June Boys endure thirteen months of being stolen, hidden, observed, and fed before they are released, unharmed, by their masked captor. The Thief is a pro, having eluded authorities for nearly a decade and taken at least twelve boys.
Now Thea Delacroix has reason to believe the Gemini Thief took a thirteenth victim: her cousin, Aulus McClaghen.
But the game changes when one of the kidnapped boys turns up dead. Together with her boyfriend Nick and her best friends, Thea is determined to find the Gemini Thief and the remaining boys before it’s too late. Only she’s beginning to wonder something sinister, something repulsive, something unbelievable, and yet, not impossible:
What if her father is the Gemini Thief?
Interview
What inspired you to write THE JUNE BOYS?
Believe it or not, The June Boys premise began with a boy who believed he must build a castle. I’d visited Bishops Castle and there was a certain audacity and even Noah-ness to the structure that stoked my curiosity. (I loved it.) More than anything, I wondered about the sociological impact of building a castle. Do your neighbors think you’re certifiable? Is faith crazy? If I felt “called” to build a castle, would I follow through? And somewhere in the intersection of my questions I began to see how obsessions could get crazy and crazy could get dangerous and dangerous could get deadly. From there, obsession was a plot point and the ball was rolling. And so naturally serial kidnapping followed.
Would you tell us a little more about the main characters from the book?
The June Boys is a split narrative novel following the crimes and consequences of an elusive serial kidnapper, The Gemini Thief. Above ground, the voice of the novel is Thea Delacroix. She’s putting her life on hold to search for her missing cousin, Aulus and coming to terms with the fact The Gemini Thief may be her father.
Below ground, we pick up with the kidnapped Aulus and his fellow June Boys on the day they run out of water. He’s writing letters and drawing pictures for someone named, Elizabeth, as he details his struggle to survive and to perhaps even escape.
What one piece of advice would they each give about finding the Gemini Thief?
Thea: Everyone is capable of lying. If you figure out why they lie, you can determine how dangerous their lie is.
Aulus: Sometimes you have to accept that you have no idea who hurt you.
What part or aspect of this story do you love the most?
I love the character of Tank and his role in the story. Tank is in both the below and above ground narratives, which raises a number of questions. If you buy that he is physically in the bunker with Aulus, then you’re worried for his safety as the above ground narrative ticks closer to the timeline of those final three days in the below ground narrative. You’re asking, Will he be kidnapped too? If you don’t buy that Tank’s physically in the bunker, the implication on Aulus’s mental health creates its own set of fears. We’re already asking who is the Gemini Thief and will Aulus survive, but what if he’s also an unreliable narrator?
What did you find most challenging about writing THE JUNE BOYS?
The June Boys is my first toe dip into the suspense genre. The suspense writer needs to understand exactly what the audience knows (or suspects) at every part/turn of the story and to control the flow of that knowledge perfectly. I’ve never trafficked suspense breadcrumbs before and there’s a learning curve. I grew and stretched to write The June Boys and I’ll keep growing.
What’s one of your hobbies or something we might not know about you?
I asked my friend what she would want to hear if she were a reader and she immediately replied, “Four leaf clovers.” So, here you go...I have a life-long talent for spotting four leaf clovers. I’d bet you a fair amount of money I could find one (if there were one) in any field in a matter of minutes. When I played college softball, I found a four-leaf clover before every game for four years. My brain likes that pattern and sees without me looking--from a slow-moving car, horseback, on a walk, everywhere.
What are you working on next?
My next novel slated for publication has the working title The Ashes of Cruiser Island and is, in fact, another suspense. I won’t say too much other than it imagines a world with an accelerated death penalty, the first young woman destined to be executed, and her best friend’s struggle to prove her innocence.
About the Author
Tour Schedule
Tour-Wide Giveaway
1 copy of The June Boys by Court Stevens
a Rafflecopter giveaway
I'm looking forward to reading this one! Is it on your tbr? Any thoughts on the interview?
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