Auditing Jane Doe Chapter 1: Jane Doe

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Auditing Jane Doe Chapter 1: Jane Doe

*The following scene contains nudity, violence, and profanity. You’ve been warned!

“Take off your clothes.” The gun was barely a few inches from her face. She glared directly into his eyes as she slowly unbuttoned her blouse. She took her time, still trying to think of a way out of this. She looked over her shoulder at the street below. “Don’t get any ideas,” he warned. “There’s nowhere for you to go.”

As she stripped down to her bra and panties, she closed her eyes, trying to escape to another place. The hair on her arms was starting to rise as she felt the cool air of the spring night. The man in front of her stepped up to her, and she felt his hot breath in her face. She felt the cold metal of the gun touch her skin and she jolted her eyes open, pleading with her assaulter. He leaned in and tried to kiss her. She fought as hard as she could to turn away and she felt the barrel of the gun dig harder into the side of her neck. She gave in.

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12 Days of Planning a Novel: Hooks and Cliffhangers

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12 Days of Planning a Novel: Hooks and Cliffhangers

If you’ve read all the posts in my 12 Days of Planning a Novel series, I really appreciate you hanging in there with me. We are so close to being ready to start drafting a novel! There’s just one last thing I want to talk about: hooks and cliffhangers. Okay, maybe that is two things!

When I really started enjoying the thriller genre, it was because of author Greg Iles. He is a master at creating hooks and cliffhangers and if you feel like you struggle in this area, I highly recommend his books. I almost never stop reading at the end of a chapter because I have to know what happened.

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Would You Tell the Truth No Matter What Was at Risk?

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Would You Tell the Truth No Matter What Was at Risk?

This is the dilemma my protagonist, Cynthia Webber, faces in Murder Audit. Her piece-of-work boss, David Jerew, threatens her career and her life if she tells the truth about what she found during the routine audit of David’s top client, Prairie Pipeline Company.

When I started writing Murder Audit, besides wanting to show that accountants are more than short men with bow ties and glasses held together with tape, I knew I wanted to focus on the fiduciary duty a professional accountant has to their client. This is a professional ethical relationship built on the highest trust. Sadly, when I was a CPA, I met a number of people in the profession whose ethics I questioned. If you read Murder Audit, you will see that David, the antagonist, has no ethics.

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