I know the anticipation has been building and you’re about to burst to learn more about The Next Big Thing. Here it is: A Blog Hop is a way to help readers find new authors through social media, and, hopefully, help the authors sell more books.

I was tagged to be part of the Blog Hop team by Amy Shojai, author of the dog-centric thriller LOST AND FOUND, which NY Times bestselling author James Rollins called, “Riveting, heart-wrenching, brilliant, the debut of a stunning new talent.” You can learn more about Amy and her debut novel here. And I’ll tag five more authors at the end of this post who will write their own Blog Hop next Wednesday.

Now it’s time for me to answer 10 — count them — 10 questions about BRING DOWN THE FURIES.

1. What is the title of your book?

This one is hardly a surprise. BRING DOWN THE FURIES is the title of my newly released Quint Mitchell Mystery. My third in the series is tentatively titled HURRICANE ISLAND, and will take Quint to Cedar Key on the west coast of Florida. The third installment is only in outline form at this point, but I hope to start on it soon after I ring in the New Year.

2. Where did the idea for the book come from?

MATANZAS BAY was set in St. Augustine, Florida, but I wanted to find another setting that would mix a bit of history with major conflicts, and possibly a tie to archaeology as I’d done with the first Quint Mitchell Mystery. After doing some online research I discovered the Topper site, an ongoing archaeological project outside Allendale, SC where archaeologists had found artifacts dating back 16,000 years. The lead researcher claimed some of the artifacts might date back at least 50,000 years, which would mean humans inhabited North America long before the last Ice Age. Bells began ringing in my head when I read about the Topper site, and I asked myself what if a Creationist minister feuded with the archaeologist and it boiled over into a tension-packed media circus. Researching Allendale, I learned that General Sherman’s troops had burned down the original town on their way to Columbia. This historical morsel triggered more ideas and I decided fire should play a major role in the story. That led to the idea of a serial arsonist at work in Allendale.

3. What genre does your book fall under?

While classified as a hard-boiled mystery, FURIES has elements of the suspense thriller as well.

4. Which actors would you choose to play your characters in the movie version of BRING DOWN THE FURIES?

 Most authors dream of having one of their books made into a movie. Of course, most screenwriters have the same dreams of selling one of their screenplays. But since we’ve been asked to imagine (and if novelists can’t imagine they’re in the wrong line of work) let me pick a few who seem to fit my image for Quint Mitchell. A few actors came quickly to mind including Kyle Chandler and Mark Ruffalo. I also can picture Matthew Fox of Lost fame in the role of my sometime charming and quick-witted protagonist. Who wouldn’t want any of these fine actors to star in a movie of their book?

Sheriff Wilburn Peeks plays a major part in FURIES as the tough-talking adversary who gives Quint a hard time for much of the story. Of course, I’d love to see Tommy Lee Jones play the crusty sheriff after seeing his remarkable portrayal of Thaddeus Stephens in “Lincoln.” I can also envision Ed Harris in the role and maybe Bruce Greenwood, even though he’s not quite old enough, but might be by the time the film was made in ten years.

One more role I’d try to fill would be Nurse Allene Skinner-Jarrett. Allene plays Quint’s love interest, or perhaps lust interest would be more accurate. She’s a bit of a tease, but exudes sensuality and knows how to push Quint’s buttons. I can picture Charlize Theron or Jennifer Garner slipping into (and out of) her medical scrubs to treat Quint, but I doubt they’d take a secondary role so I searched the IMDB database to find a few faces that worked for me, and yes, this is purely a visceral reaction and not related to acting talent. One of the first who popped out was Lauren Cohan (left) who plays Maggie Greene in “The Walking Dead.” Another was Danielle Fishel (right) who has a fairly long filmography, very few of which I’d heard of, but I can see her in the role of Nurse Skinner-Jarrett.

5. What is the one sentence synopsis of your book?

A serial arsonist threatens a small South Carolina Town and PI Quint Mitchell is caught in the backdraft.

6. Is your book self-published or traditionally published?

I prefer to call it independently published.

7. How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

The first draft took about 8 months, and I worked on it another three months revising and rewriting the manuscript before turning it over to my editor.

8. What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

This is a tough one. I don’t like to compare myself to other writers since each is unique. I’ll leave that to others, and was flattered when one reader said the book reminded her of John Sandford’s Virgil Flowers stories. Quint Mitchell is a stand-up guy who tries to do the right thing. He’s not an unstoppable force like Lee Child’s Jack Reacher. And while he has some baggage, it doesn’t overpower him. He can and does crack wise to lighten a tense situation.

9. Who or what inspired you to write this book?

This was mostly answered in question #2, but as the author of a series I’m always looking for the next big idea, a premise with what Steve Berry calls the “ooh factor.” And while FURIES is set in a small South Carolina town, the clash of faith and science combined with the pervasive 24/7 media culture we live in provides the story with universal themes.

10. What else about your book might pique a reader’s interest?

Readers of mysteries expect more than crime and punishment. They want to learn something new while living vicariously through a protagonist they care about. FURIES is imbued with a sense of history, and Civil War buffs will enjoy reading about how the residents of Allendale have long memories when it comes to General William Tecumseh Sherman. They’ll also learn what makes a serial arsonist tick, and about the archaeological survey being conducted on the banks of the Savannah River. But mostly, readers will enjoy the book as an entertaining read. As Marilou George wrote for The Kindle Book Review, “This mix of civil war history and suspense will keep you fully engaged and is jammed full or twists and turns that lend to the tension of the story. The writing flows and builds to a fever pitch as the story takes on a life of its own.”

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Now I’m passing the baton on to five outstanding authors who will post their Next Best Thing Blog Hop on Wednesday, December 19. Their goal is to each assemble their own team of five writers and answer the same ten questions. Be sure to bookmark their sites and read their Blog Hop posts next week. Here are the five members of my team:

• Chuck Barrett is a retired air traffic controller and the author of three thrillers featuring Jake Pendleton, a former NTSB investigator. You can read his Blog Hop post right here.
• Sharon Cobb is a professional screenwriter and author of a hilarious spoof of Hollywood at its most zany.
• I met Charles Cornell at the FWA’s Royal Palm Literary Awards banquet after he had won for the Best Thriller of 2012.
• My friend J. W. “Jim” Thompson has not only published five thrillers, but he’s on the Board of the Florida Writers Association and  chair of the RPLA’s.
• Ron Whittington keeps his businessman and sometime espionage agent protagonist hopping in his two thrillers. But Ron seldom sits still himself.

Check them out next week, and keep reading!

You’ve heard of Hip Hop, the Bunny Hop, the movie HOP and maybe you older folks have even heard of Hopalong Cassidy. Now comes a totally new Hop — the Blog Hop. I’ve been tagged to participate in this new form of network marketing for authors by Amy Shojai who recently published her first thriller. Each author must line up five other authors who will in turn answer the same ten questions about their book or work in progress. My turn to do the Blog Hop is this Wednesday, December 12, so please return here on Wednesday to see how I’ve answered the questions, including what movie star I picture as playing Quint Mitchell in the movie (oh, if that were only true).

I’ve tapped the following five authors who will post their Blog Hop next Wednesday: Chuck Barrett, Sharon Cobb, Charles Cornell, J. W. Thompson and Ron Whittington. I’ll tell you a bit more about each of them in my next blog post.

Stay tuned because things will be hopping soon.

Writers dream of making it big, hitting the bestseller lists, having our books made into movies. Who can blame us since living inside our head all day where we create imaginary worlds and characters can fuel extravagant fantasies. Thanks to today’s e-publishing revolution, more and more people are following their dreams. They’re taking the plunge and becoming published authors.

I did the same thing. After publishing three adventure/fantasy novels with a traditional publisher, I jumped aboard the digital bandwagon by establishing my own independent publishing company, Windrusher Hall Press. I published MATANZAS BAY, the first Quint Mitchell Mystery, in May of 2011. This year, I released a short story, BLUE CRABS AT MIDNIGHT, and recently the second Quint Mitchell Mystery, BRING DOWN THE FURIES. There will be more to follow, and, perhaps, books by other authors as well.

Since Amazon.com created the Kindle Digital Program extending 70% royalties to authors, many thousands of writers have rushed to take advantage of what they perceive to be a never-ending gravy train. We hear success stories from the likes of John Locke, Amanda Hocking and J. A. Konrath, who, in a recent blog post stated he’d made well over $200,000 on two books he released on Amazon.com in 2010.

I recall a 2006 Publisher’s Weekly report concluding that most books sell only 100 copies. Better selling titles may sell 2,000 per year. Fewer still sell 5,000 in the lifetime of the book. And only a fraction of 1% of published books ever sell a million copies.

Of course, this report preceded the surge in e-publishing and the explosion of e-reading devices. But the explosion has come with tens of thousands of new writers entering the market each year, ratcheting up the competition, making it more difficult to create buzz for our books. Which is why it’s nearly impossible for a new writer to make a living solely on their book sales. That’s probably always been the case, which is why the first advice I heard when I decided to venture into writing fiction was, “Don’t give up your day job.”

When I retired from my day job, I decided to become a fulltime writer. I didn’t expect to strike it rich, and I had the advantage of a working wife to help if necessary. Still, the lament I often hear is how so many writers are frustrated by lagging sales, by the amount of money they poured into their business with little return on the investment. Writers who give up their day jobs, if they’re not careful, can find themselves in the same position as our federal government: living on the edge of the fiscal cliff.

What can be done about it? For one thing we have to face the facts that most of us won’t join James Patterson and Stephen King on the bestseller lists. There are a lot of excellent reasons to write, but maybe making money shouldn’t be at the top of the list. My number one reason for writing and publishing is to tell my own stories and share them with other people. If I broke even, I told myself, then I’d be happy. I’ve achieved that goal and more, but I still look at writing as a form of self-expression and personal fulfillment.

In his wonderful book, Telling Lies for Fun and Profit, Lawrence Block writes about the thousands, maybe millions of people content to dab paint onto canvases, and some of them very good painters indeed, with no real intention of ever selling their work. Or the people who snap photographs as a hobby. Or the craftsmen who knit and make quilts and throw pots. Do they expect to profit by their interests? Probably not.

Most do it because they enjoy the process of creating a watercolor, capturing a family image on their new digital Nikon, or sewing colorful scraps of cloth together. Unlike those acts of creativity, writing, according to Block, implies an act of communication. “If a story is not to be read, why write it down in the first place? An unpublished piece of fiction is an incompleted act, like a play staged in an empty theater.”

To complete the process of communication writers will continue to search for new ways to reach more readers. One of these is a fairly new promotional technique called the Blog Hop, a form of network marketing. I’ve been invited to participate on December 12 so check back then for an update about my new book. I’ll also take part in a blog tour in the near future, and look for other avenues to gain a marketing edge. But mostly, I’ll continue to write since that’s what is important to me.

When I first began attending writers’ conferences, I remember an established author with more than a dozen published books saying it takes at least five books before a writer can build a market for their books. BRING DOWN THE FURIES marks my fifth book, so we’ll see if this holds true. In the meantime, I’d like to hear how other writers are managing to avoid their own fiscal cliff.

Writers are often accused of living inside our heads where we carouse with imaginative characters. Some of us also invent frightful scenarios to cause great bodily harm to these characters.

I must plead guilty to all of the above.

When asked where I get my wild ideas, I sometimes inform the inquirer that they’re the result of the special medication I was taking back in the 60s. Anything’s possible. But the truth is we get our ideas from anywhere and everywhere. Possibly a dream or something we read in the paper or saw on TV. An idea for a plot may be sparked by a story a friend tells us, or an overheard conversation.

Some of my ideas have come out of the blue in a flash of clashing neurons depositing a graphic image in my head. That happened when I was writing my second Windrusher novel, Windrusher and the Cave of Tho-hoth. In that one my protagonist had been catnapped and flown to Southern California where he was imprisoned with three other filched felines. The family hires private investigator Quint Mitchell to track him down. Yep, Quint’s first appearance was in one of my Windrusher books.

I’d already given Quint an interest in archaeology when I was creating his resume, but archaeology played no part in that book. Yet, as I wrote a scene with Quint as the major player, an image popped into my head of our trusty PI digging up a corpse. I tried to push it aside, but the image dug in its heels and refused to go away. Finally, I scribbled a few notes and tucked it into my idea file. When I completed the Windrusher book I went back to Quint and the buried corpse and started asking some “What If” questions. Before long I had the premise for Matanzas Bay, the first Quint Mitchell Mystery.

Other ideas are the result of our own experiences. That was the case in my new Quint Mitchell short story, Blue Crabs at Midnight. Visit the link to the excerpt if you haven’t and you’ll see these lines:

Speeding along the dark highway, a dank tidal marsh to his left, the Atlantic Ocean behind them, he felt the crunch, heard the cracking of their shells.

Blue crabs and cars. Not a fair fight, he thought.

 I knew I wanted to send Quint back in time and present him as a young teen in this story. He ended up in Dania Beach, Florida as a 13-year-old reluctantly accompanying his family on a brief vacation. The premise for Blue Crabs grew from my own childhood  experiences. My family had moved to South Florida when I was seven, and lived in Dania for about a year. I remembered the horrible crunching noises as we rode back from the beach at night, and often wondered why those crabs were walking the blacktop two-laner in the dark. Other scenes in the story were also derived from my childhood, like playing “war” in a weed-strewn field, and huddling in a foxhole-like clubhouse.

I put all of these experiences to work in the story—greatly embellished, of course. I’ve been told it’s an excellent read, and a good lead-in to the upcoming full-length novel, Bring Down the Furies, which should be available in a few weeks.

Another story I’ve had lying about for at least ten years just won first place in the Florida Writers Association’s Royal Palm Literary Awards in the short fiction (unpublished) category. The idea for A Flutter of Wings came to me after a visit my dear wife and I took to BEAKS, a NE Florida bird sanctuary. She had rescued a chicken in our neighborhood—it was probably an Easter chick at one time—and decided it needed a home rather than a place on someone’s dinner plate. The kind lady who runs BEAKS takes in all kinds of stray and crippled birds, and I was impressed with the work she was doing. Of course, my story took on an entirely different tone, but it was fun to write. Although it’s unpublished now, I intend to include it in a collection of short stories coming to Amazon.com next year. If you’d like to read an excerpt, the first two pages are on my Windrusher website, and can be found here.

I’ve heard Stephen King once said there’s a special area in eBay that sells ideas. I’ve looked, but can’t find it. I’m curious to hear where you find your ideas. Let me hear from you.

Welcome to Blog Post #1 on Parker Francis’ new cyber home. This is where we can jump off cliffs together—if you’re so inclined—and where you can keep up with all things Parker Francis. This includes the next Quint Mitchell Mystery, Bring Down the Furies, and other projects.

As the title of this post implies, I’d like to get to know my readers as much as possible. I have met some of you, and have heard from quite a few others via email, but there’s always room for more. So don’t be afraid to respond to any of my blog posts, to tell me what you think of my books, and offer any suggestions that might make jumping off cliffs a little less dangerous. And if you’d like to receive my quarterly enewsletter, just click on the Subscribe button below this post.

I’ve heard from a number of readers wondering what the heck is happening with Quint. One reader told me his finger was poised above the BUY button on Amazon’s Kindle page. I hope he’s not getting cramps, but there’s good news to report. Furies has made it past my trusty editor. Last minute tweaks have been made. If all goes well, you will be able to click on that BUY button by the end of September. For now, the book will be exclusive to Amazon.com which means that anyone with a Kindle or Kindle app can purchase Bring Down the Furies and read it on their e-reading device, smart phone or tablet. Those of you who have yet to embrace the digital world will have to wait for the paperback version. Look for it about a month after the digital version.

If you read Matanzas Bay, and read the preview of Furies at the end of the book, you probably guessed that Quint will find himself in major danger as he tracks the Heartthrob Bandit to Allendale, South Carolina. While in this sleepy little town, Quint is embroiled in a deadly search for a serial arsonist and thrust in the midst of a cultural war that pits neighbor against neighbor.

The action comes fast. The tension remains high. People will die. And Quint … well, I won’t spoil it for you, but I think you’ll enjoy Quint’s next adventure as much as the last one. Soon you’ll be able to pre-order the book, and I’ll announce a contest and new promotions.

On the News & Events page you can read about Blue Crabs at Midnight, my first Quint Mitchell short story. He’s only thirteen in this story, but knowing Quint, he’s going to find a way to get into trouble. And he does, along with a rag tag group of boys who learn some hard lessons about life. I hope to have Blue Crabs available as a Kindle short prior to the launch of Bring Down the Furies. Here’s a sneak peek at the first page.

Let me hear from you, and check back often for new updates. In the meantime, check out the cover art for Bring Down the Furies. I hope you like it.