The LUCKY DEBORAH COONTS

Get Lost in a Story Readers, welcome back Bestselling Author Deborah Coonts as we learn about LUCKY CATCH!  Book Five in the Lucky O'Toole Vegas Adventure Series by National Bestselling Author DEBORAH COONTS!

TROUBLE ALWAYS COMES IN THREES.

At least that’s what Lucky O’Toole, the VP of Customer Relations for Las Vegas’ primo Strip casino/hotel, the Babylon, has heard for years from her mother. So, tonight, when Teddie, her former lover shows up at her office unannounced and very unexpected, her father offers Teddie a job at the Babylon, she is called to deal with a pig in residence at one of the hotels most exclusive and opulent suites, and Lucky’s current lover, Jean-Charles Bouclet stops answering his phone leaving Lucky to handle his five-year-old son, Lucky figures she has tonight’s compliment of chaos covered.

AS USUAL, SHE IS A TAD OPTIMISTIC.

With a cadre of celebrity chefs with the maturity of teenagers in Vegas for a televised cook-off, a prized Alba truffle in the Babylon’s care, and her mother’s pregnancy racing toward the inevitable, what could go wrong?

When the truffle is stolen from the walk-in in Jean-Charles’ gourmet burger joint at the Babylon and a young chef apparently killed with a smoking gun is found in Jean-Charles’ food truck on the back lot, trouble takes a sinister turn.

AND JEAN-CHARLES STILL ISN’T ANSWERING HIS PHONE.

Another body is discovered. This one stuffed in an oven at Jean-Charles’ eponymous restaurant and set to broil.

Desperate to put a lid on the body count and more than frantic over her AWOL lover, Lucky uses her Vegas contacts to search in places and in ways the police wouldn’t or couldn’t. Teddie insists on riding shotgun. Lucky hasn’t the time nor the resolve to say no. She’s never been able to resist Teddie…not really. With danger dogging their heels, Lucky finds herself falling once again under his spell as they traverse Vegas, being drawn deeper and deeper into the highly competitive world of high-end eateries and the battle for the very rare, most highly prized gourmet foodstuffs.

Would somebody really kill for a truffle?

In a heartbeat.

And when Lucky’s path crosses the killer’s…will her goose be cooked?

OTHER LUCKY ADVENTURES  (complete backlist)

Novels:
Wanna Get Lucky
Lucky Stiff
So Damn Lucky
Lucky Bastard
Lucky Now and Then

Novellas:

Lucky In Love

Lucky Bang

Lucky Now and Then

THE AMAZING Q&A

DONNELL:  Welcome back, Deborah. Good grief, I had to go lie down after I read this blurb. Poor Lucky, talk about exhausting. This is what, book six in the series. How much fun is it to write, or are you like Lucky, at her wits’ end?

DEBORAH: LUCKY CATCH is the fifth full-length novel in the series—there are a few novellas just for fun also.  Lucky does stay busy. It’s Vegas after all, a 24/7 town and there is always a lot going on.  I do have readers that worry that Lucky isn’t eating or sleeping enough and is drinking too much.  They do have a point.

Is Lucky fun to write?  Very much so! She’s sort of like my alter ego—she can say things I would never get away with, she can drive a Ferrari whenever she wants, she can always get the best table/ticket in town, she has fascinating men circling her like sharks eyeing a wounded seal.  As my aunt tells me, Lucky is the woman I always wanted to be.  I can’t quibble with that.

But perhaps the most fun to write are all the quirky characters and the relationships.  I’m fascinated with people and the choices we make.  And I like to make people laugh….so there is that.

I mean, it’s Vegas in all its bright-light silliness.  What’s not to like?

DONNELL:  I love stories about unrequited love. Throw a mystery into it, and I’m sold. Should I be worried about Jean-Charles. Worried about Teddie? Worried about Lucky? Good grief, I’m already worried and I haven’t read it yet!

DEBORAH:  Unrequited love, you romantic, you.  As I said, I love romance, relationships, whatever you want to call them—maybe because I’m so rotten at them.  I just don’t do stories without a strong central relationship.  What’s life without romance?

Should you be worried?  Well, somebody’s got to be the odd man out, right?  People ask me all the time who Lucky is going to pick and, to be honest, I don’t know—she hasn’t told me yet.  I know how things are going to go in the next book… after that?  Whew!  It’s a puzzlement.

DONNELL:  Tell us what is so great about Lucky, and then, as the author, you’re allowed to do this, tell us her worst character flaw.  What is the nicest thing a reader has ever said to you about Lucky? 

DEBORAH:  Lucky is non-judgmental—she takes everyone as she finds them and does her best with that.  And she has a pretty good idea of who she is, and she can make fun of herself, laugh at her foibles.  I like that.

Her worst character flaw?  Hmmm, she is very slow to trust.  She had a difficult upbringing, so it makes perfect sense. And she worries a bit too much about pleasing others and not enough about being true to her own dreams.   And she can be a bit impetuous…not sure that’s a flaw.  I guess it depends on the situation.

People tell me Lucky makes them laugh out loud.  I LOVE that!

DONNELL:  Las Vegas.  Perfect setting for mystery and corruption. Do you plan to branch out or will all of the stories surrounding Lucky take place in Vegas. I’m thinking Monte Carlo, after all ;)

DEBORAH:  The next book will have a Macau connection.  I don’t know at this point whether Lucky will go there or not, but I think she probably might.  I have been there but it’s been awhile.  Thinking perhaps I ought to go back….

DONNELL:  What is Deborah Coonts doing now that she’s completed Lucky Catch? 

DEBORAH: Ah, I am putting the finishing touches on the first book in a new series titled, CRUSHED.  It takes place in Napa and is about wine, the choices we make, and what they do to us.  It’s something different for me—more women’s fiction than anything else, although there is a strong romance in each of the five planned books in the series.  No dead bodies.  And it’s told in the third person, which is fun.  Two points of view, the female and the male protagonists’—so we get to crawl around in each of their heads.  I like that part, too.

After CRUSHED, it will be finishing a Lucky novella and then launching into the sixth Lucky book.  This one is set in the entertainment industry in Vegas—and is a Christmas storyJ And then the next in the Napa series… busy, busy.

DONNELL:   Any appearances you want us to know about?

DEBORAH: I will be signing at Murder By the Book in Houston on October 4^th, but other than that, I am chained to my computer.  Of course, I am taking my computer on vacation….  As I’ve often told the man in my life:  I can work on a plane to Paris.  He hasn’t gotten the hint….

LINKS

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DEBORAH WANTS TO KNOW:  It seems like dark, tortured stories have been all the rage for the last four years or so.  What about humor?  Do you like the light-hearted stuff?  Is it going to make a comeback…before I die?

DEBORAH IS GIVING AWAY two copies of any of her backlist, any format, winner's choice.

Please note: Deborah's interview will repost on Saturday, Sept 27th. Drawing will be held Sunday from both posts' comments.