The Story Behind the Story with Teresa LaBella of Nova Scotia, Canada.

 

I met Teresa at the GMRD Book Fair in April of this year and she has kindly accepted my invitation to be this week's guest.

She shares the SBTS and an excerpt from her newest novel. Read on, my friends.

  

 

Teresa LaBella grew up in Davenport, Iowa where the Mississippi River runs east to west. The people she interviewed as a journalist and met in her work in the arts and with nonprofits coloured her future fiction writing canvas and sharpened her love for telling a good story.  Teresa published her first contemporary romance novel in 2013 and jumped genres with the publication of Danger Noted, her first novel in The UnMatchables romantic suspense series. The author’s latest release, Danger Revealed, published by Purple Porcupine Publishing of Halifax, is the second case for private investigator partners Eddie Emerson and Kelly Gillespie. Capital Strings, the author’s uniquely Canadian political thriller set in Ottawa, published in April 2021.  Teresa chose Canada in August 2019 and resides in Nova Scotia with her rescue fur baby family Rosie and Ellis.

 

 

Working Title: Danger Revealed

 

 

Synopsis: Displaced by force. Haunted by their past. Fear for the future. 

Tori Deane gets no answers from the Canadian consulate when her diplomat lover Lucas Dominguez goes missing. Chicago police won’t help her. The UnMatchables private investigators Eddie Emerson and Kelly Gillespie are Tori’s last hope. 

Eddie and Kelly uncover evidence that Lucas has returned to the country of his childhood that was ripped apart by the Dirty War. An undeliverable money order sent to Buenos Aires from a bodega in a neighbourhood Kelly dreads may be the lead they need to heat up a cold case. 

The danger revealed points to the sordid underworld of human trafficking ruled by a ruthless crime boss who hides his past behind an alias. Argentine refugee Rayen Vasquez is desperately seeking a way out and away from Octavio Hernandez, aka Otto Hermann, that only Lucas can give her.  

Time isn’t on The UnMatchables side. 

Canada has deployed an elite law enforcement team with orders to recover their diplomat. Chicago PD has spread a wide net to snare smugglers and cripple illegal transport of guns, drugs and people.

Hermann is on the run. His reason for keeping Rayen alive is about to expire.

 

 

The Story Behind the Story: The tragedy of human trafficking was brought home to my Iowa hometown while I was working as a freelance journalist covering county government. The busiest truck stop along Interstate 80, which moves traffic across the U.S. from Boston to San Francisco, is located in Walcott, Iowa. The series of articles I wrote from interviews with local police, politicians, business owners and victim advocates, as well as a documentary produced on the victims trafficked from Iowa to Chicago, inspired the story of Rayen. Reading My Father’s Ghost is Climbing in the Rain, a novel by Patricio Pron, prompted my interest and research into the Dirty War in Argentina. The horrors and atrocities of human rights abuse, past and present, became linked in the layers of plot and people struggling to connect and make sense of it all in Danger Revealed.

 

 

 

 

A couple questions before you go, Teresa:

 

Scribbler: Can you tell us about the perfect setting you have, or desire, for your writing? Music or quiet? Coffee or tequila?  Neat or notes everywhere?

 

Teresa: My home office is my haven. I’ve surrounded myself with photos and personal memento reminders of my life and the loves in it. The piles are neat and the notes are many but I pride myself on being organized as it bothers me to waste valuable time searching for what I want or need to find. Quiet usually works best but if I do choose music, it’s instrumental smooth jazz or easy listening, like Enya. To drink: coffee in the morning, herbal tea in the afternoon and a glass of wine in the evening.

 

Scribbler: What’s next for Teresa LaBella, the Author?

 

Teresa: While I strive to write all of my books to be read as a stand alone novel, each is created as an intentional part of a series. My romance novels are the McKenna family saga that begin with the older woman/younger man romance of Alison Clarke and Darien McKenna in New York City, continue in the fictional small town of Harmony, Iowa and complete the trilogy with the tale of Darien’s daughter Marisa in Scotland. The UnMatchables romantic suspense series set in Chicago and the Canadian-based political thriller series are connected through the character of diplomat Lucas Dominguez. I’m currently writing the second novel in the political thriller series. Plot ideas and working titles for books 3 and 4 in The UnMatchables series are in development. I enjoy building a body of work so that I can reveal more of the characters’ backstories and facets of their personalities and give readers more reasons to care about the situations and relationships that I create.

 

 

An Excerpt from Danger Revealed

 

 

The Camaro skidded sideways and jumped the curb. A front tire blew. The side of Cecily's car missed an unforgiving impact with a fire hydrant by inches. 

The black sedan copied the spin and circled back on a parallel course. "Get down!" Cecily grabbed Eddie's shoulders. The Camaro quivered with the shot buried in metal above the rust in the rear wheel well. The car rocked with the whoosh of squads speeding past in pursuit of the sedan. 

Cecily peeked cautiously over the dashboard and turned the key in the ignition. The engine shut down with a shudder. 

Eddie didn't move. "Is the coast clear?" 

Cecily looked out and around into the eerie calm. Anyone who may have been out on the street or sidewalks had apparently taken cover. She holstered her sidearm and sat up. "Appears so." She jumped at the tap on the glass next to her right ear. A colored strobe flashed in the darkness. The face in the window belonged to an EMT. "Everybody OK in there?" the medic asked. 

"I am." She poked Eddie. "You OK?" 

"Yeah. I think so." He straightened and frowned. "But I really need to change my boxers.”

  

 

 

Thanks for being our guest this week, Teresa. The excerpt certainly caught my attention. Wishing you continued success with your writing.

 

 

And a Humongous thank you to all our visitors and readers.