RRBC Back-To-School Blog & Blog Party!

Welcome to my stop on the party lineup! I'm Joe Stephens. I write soft-boiled detective fiction and that's what you'll receive if you're selected to win the prize for my page. One perseon will receive copies of all three of my Shalan Adventures novels: Harsh Prey, Kisses and Lies, and In the Shadow. I'm sorry to make you wait, but the last book doesn't actually hit the public until October 1, so you'll receive your prize about then. Hope that's not too long a wait. But mostly I hope you enjoy my writing. 

I'm no expert in creating videos, but I've seen a few book and author trailers and felt like the ones that people were paying for were pretty limited and pretty similar, so I thought I'd give it a try for myself. The biggest challenge was finding royalty-free music that I liked (still didn't, but it's the best I found in the time I could give to searching), but I found once again that Windows Live Movie Maker is pretty user friendly. Give it a look and see what you think.  As always, comments are welcome. 

If you want to learn more about my books or me, check out the tabs at the top of the page. You'll find links to my books, my full author website, and my Amazon author page, as well as RRBC and a writers' blog group I'm a member of entitled Writing Wranglers and Warriors. 

But in case that's just too many clicks, here's a little background on me and my books. My disguise is mild-mannered teacher, but my secret identity is intrepid spinner of tales starring Harry and Dee Shalan. Harry is the narrator and he's not Superman, but he's just a little better than the average guy. He's tougher, smarter, a better shot, and (at least he thinks) funnier than the man on the street. And he sees himself as a modern-day knight in shining armor whose job is to defend the defenseless and right wrongs. All while maintaining a sarcastic running dialogue with his best friend, police detective Otis Campbell. Yes, he's named after the drunk on The Andy Griffith Show--his parents' favorite show. 

Harry's partner, in both the professional and marital sense, is Deanna Shalan, known to the world as Dee. She's the whole package--beautiful with flaming red hair, smart, mentally and physically tough, talented (Harry fell in love with her the first time he heard her sing), and a scary good shot with a handgun. 

They are terrific partners in the detective business, but they are better partners romantically. They are madly in love with each other and their love story is part of what I think makes my books a little different from the standard first-person detective story. Harry and Dee have been compared by some readers to Nick and Nora Charles. If you're too young to know who they are, Google them. They are the protagonists in The Thin Man and subsequent movie from the thirties. The movies are based on a novel by Dashiell Hammett, probably best known for a much grittier detective story, The Maltese Falcon. 

You can read the books in any order since they are stand-alone stories, but it's probably most logical to read them in the order I've listed them, as they are in chronological order and you'll understand the overarching development of the main characters and their relationships. 

Please note before you go: if you join my mailing list (look on the right side of the screen), you'll receive an electronic version of Harsh Prey, the first book, as well as the first four chapters of In The Shadow, the soon-to-be-released third book. 

Questions? Comments? Snide remarks? Feel free to get in touch.