Guest post with Maren Kaye

THE DEVIL'S GAME

by S.L. Pierce & Maren Kaye

Published June 29th 2011 by Pierce-Kaye Books

ASIN: B0058UFEO4

Is a stranger who stalks your stalker a friend or your worst enemy?

Rachel Pendelton is determined to break from her small town past and stake out a new life for herself with a dream job in the big city. But hard work and determination are no match for whoever is working against her. When anonymous gifts show up, she’s flattered. When they appear in her locked apartment, she starts worrying. What can she do when everyone she turns to for help looks suspicious?
What she doesn’t know is that a game has begun. A game with rules as baffling as they are deadly. A game that will pit her against the criminally insane. And only one can finish alive.

Guest Post by Maren Kaye

Recently I had the opportunity to sit on a full-blown jury trial. I say ‘opportunity’ because as a general rule, I try to view annoying set-backs in the most positive light possible. By the way, to any of you out there that think getting out of jury duty is as easy as acting weird or complaining about all the other things you have to do, sorry to burst your bubble. Not a single person who was called up wanted to be there. I got to hear every kind of excuse imaginable.

The judge was patient, but his face couldn’t hide the obvious fact that he had heard it all before. When they say you can be excused for a ‘legitimate hardship,’ they are not referring to anything related to children, jobs, back pains, honeymoons or slightly impaired grandma’s who might accidentally take the wrong medicine (that was my favorite).

Aside from being pulled away from my life and often forced to wait in a cubicle sized room with twelve other people who were even less interested in being there than I was, we were not allowed to discus anything related to the trial, the one thing all thirteen of us actually had in common.

At first, we chatted about one thing and another. One hot topic was how pathetic it was that our congress couldn’t agree on anything. That wouldn’t happen to us. Here we were- college students, farmers, lawyers and insurance salesmen, fully intending to come up with the required unanimous vote.

When it was my turn to tell something about myself, I proudly announced that I had just completed my first psychological thriller, The Devil’s Game, with the help of my awesome writing partner, S.L. Pierce. I was poised to talk about the story. Rachel, a recent college graduate, has a deadly brush with a stalker. But there’s a twist. What if there was someone stalking your stalker? Would that person be your friend? Or your worst nightmare? Good stuff!

But I never got the chance because I was immediately inundated with questions like, “You wrote a book with someone else? How did that work?” and “Which one of you did the writing?”

It wasn’t until that moment that I realized how fun the experience had been. We were like two kids playing grown-up ‘pretend.’ Neither of us had the final word, or maybe we both did, but either way, we needed each other to make the magic happen. S.L.’s fast-paced edge-of-your-chair writing style mixed with my love for strange and unusual characters made for the perfect mix. Did we disagree? Sure, we’re not mindless wussies! But by disagreeing, we were able to come up with something even better! It wasn’t about compromise, it was about having the same goal; a really kick-ass good book.

Maybe if our politicians started building alliances that were about making something great instead of tearing each other down, they could attract better talent. Or maybe arguing is just human nature. The trial? Hung jury.

Follow the tour for THE DEVIL'S GAME!

8/14 giveaway @ Jagged Edge Reviews
8/14 author guest post @ Deena Remiel’s Place
8/15 excerpt @ Reader Girls
8/15 excerpt @ Lisa’s World of Books
8/15 giveaway @ Deena Remiel’s Place
8/16 excerpt @ Keeping Up With The Rheinlanders
8/19 author guest post @ Reader Girls
8/17 interview @ Lisa’s World of Books
8/17 excerpt @ Books Glorious Books
8/19 giveaway @ Books Glorious Books
8/23 author guest post @ Keeping Up With The Rheinlanders
8/24 author guest post & giveaway @ Workaday Reads
8/25 author guest post @ As The Pages Turn
8/26 author guest post @ Sugarbeat’s Books
8/27 excerpt @ Sugarbeat’s Books
8/27 author guest post @ Jagged Edge Reviews