***suspense from the kitchen***
mbooker at
lookatusgo.com
|
Matt
Booker ***suspense from the kitchen*** |
email the author at: mbooker at lookatusgo.com |
| Swap Out! Julia Child meets Remington Steele Emeril meets Mr. and Mrs. Smith U.S. Special Forces are killing off the nation’s television chefs. Only one chef knows what’s cooking, and he’s the next target. Swap Out! is a tongue-in-cheek, foodie suspense.The main ingredients of this novel are blended together by America’s number one television chef, Jeff Davis, by the woman in charge of a covert international team of scientists who is also his sweetheart of days gone by, and by her estranged daughter who flew her first helicopter at thirteen and never looked back. This diverse team sifts through the evidence and leaves false trails of breadcrumbs to decoy the various military forces and other agencies with a vested interest in their abrupt demise. The recipe for truth leads them to unexpected heights of power brokering where science meets government. In fact, it leads them right to the Oval Office of the White House. |
 Cover Concept
This book started with a title. Food Network's competition to be the Next Food Network Star. They mentioned "Swap Out." The pre-preparation of a more advanced version of a dish to be substituted during the show in interest of time, the raw pie into the oven, the finished one back out. That and a decommisioned missile silo and I was off and running. The challenge for me in this book was "voice." If you ever want to scare the daylights out of an author, ask them what their "voice" is. You stare at a blank page, knowing that editor's define voice at conferences as: "well, I, uh, I know it when I see it. And it's mandatory." Ahhhhhh! I scream all the way to the blank page. Then I plunk down a few words here, a paragraph there. A cool image, an interesting character, and I am once again wrapped up in the joys and angsts of writing. Then, with a finished 1st draft sitting on my desk, I'm asked once again by the metphorical demon in my head, it's not a muse, it's a demon. If it were a muse, I'd be happily ensconced on a sailboat puttering about the islands like my friend Steve instead of staring at this pile of words I wrote. Voice is sneaky, incidious. it creeps in when you aren't watching. It creeps in as you hear your first reader laughing in the right places and putting little thumbs-ups by the chapter endings. It comes when a reader rearranges her work schedule so she can finish the draft and put the thing down. What's my voice? I have a few ideas, but I don't really know. Hopefully the words will speak for themselves. |
Manuscript complete Read First Chapter |
| Out
of the Frying Pan When politics and corporations go to war for control of the country, we're all headed for the fire. |
In
her second week as President, Lindsay Grant calls a world leader
conference in Florence
about the problems of global warming. She takes her high school
sweetheart, the commander of
U.S. Special Forces and her two closest advisors: Amanda Peterson, the
director of the super-secret Enclave of Mad Scientists and Amanda's
daughter, a specialist in non-standard combat techniques. Jeff "the Chef" Davis, America's #1 TV cooking host, has come to be with Amanda and to study the cuisine of the Italian monks for a new series of his show. This time the stakes are even higher. It isn't the presidency of the United States that is at risk, rather Out of the Frying Pan is the first foray between the governments that run the countries and the corporations that wish to rule them. Jeff "the Chef" will need reach deep into his spice drawer to cook up a way out of this one. |
Concept Only |