Author Interview: Ian K. Smith

I’m back with a little bit more for The Ancient Nine written by Dr. Ian K. Smith, specifically a conversation with him about why he decided to pivot from writing best-selling books about health and nutrition and enter the world of mystery fiction, his real-life secret society experiences and what’s next for him in the fiction world.

Check out my “Blog Tour” post here to get all the details on The Ancient Nine and read an excerpt from the novel!

And when you’re done, hop on over to my full review of The Ancient Nine here.

I know most people talk out of their asses about how much they loved a book even if they didn’t really because they’re too scared to be honest, but you will never get anything like that from me… even if I’ve been politely invited onto a blog tour by the publisher. I’ve got to do me, boo boo. Did I like this book? Is it worth your time? Come find out. (That was a cheap tease, but I regret nothing!)

And now over to Dr. Ian K. Smith…

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Blog Tour: The Ancient Nine by Ian K. Smith

Get in, losers! We’re going Blog Touring!

Welcome to my stop on the blog tour for Ian K. Smith’s new fiction novel, The Ancient Nine. Settle in, grab something to eat. Maybe have a glass of wine. Put your feet up and chill with me here for a bit. Or, you know, read this on the toilet, if you want. You do you.

We’re going to start today with a little bit about the book, a little bit about the author and, of course, I’ll do my due diligence and post all the ways you can buy this novel for your reading pleasure. I’ve also got an excerpt from the novel so you can get a taste of the style. And (that’s right, there’s more) I’ve got a Q&A with the author, so you’ll want to check back for that.

Released just this Tuesday, you’ll want to pick up The Ancient Nine if you’re into intensely descriptive writing, erudite mysteries and lots of research, as well as a little romance and a contemporary look at joining a brotherhood.

The Ancient Nine is basically if a young, mildly sexist Barack Obama joined a secret society at Harvard in the 80s (and whose to say he didn’t?!) and in the process, solved a fifty-year-old cold case and also discovered deep secrets that take a lot of clever research into religious texts to figure out. It’s some heavy shit!

I mean, did you see what Harlan Coben had to say about it the book? They put his words on a pretty graphic for us and everything.

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Review: The Ancient Nine by Ian K. Smith

“Money has an insidious way of making decent human beings behave in a most indecent way.”

★★½

St. Martin’s Press | 2018

Filed Under: The Skulls but boring and without Joshua Jackson so it’s like what’s the point?

Have you ever read a novel and can immediately tell it’s written by a first-time author because they don’t know how to chill the fuck out with descriptive passages and scenes that don’t further a plot?

Yeah. This book suffers from that in abundance.

The heart of the novel is that of Spenser Collins, a young Black man attending Harvard in 1988. After becoming an unlikely candidate to join one of the University’s secret societies, The Delphic, Spenser and his buddy Dalton, stumble upon a fifty-year-old mystery – the disappearance of another young student in the 1920s who was never heard from again after illegally entering the Delphic’s mansion in search of the answer to the question: Is there really a secret society within the secret society called the Ancient Nine who spend their whole lives guarding an invaluable secret?

I mean, part of me was thinking of the movie The Skulls circa 2000. You know, Joshua Jackson and Paul Walker getting into some deadly adventure after joining a secret society that will do anything to protect its secrets, protect its own, its power and its money? But sadly for me, this book hits a decidedly different tone, while maintaining that “boys club” feel and presenting the objectification of women as a good thing.

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Review: The 17th Suspect by James Patterson & Maxine Paetro

★★★

Little, Brown & Company | 2018

Filed Under: B for Beffort.

So, this is the first review I’m posting on my blog for this series, but here’s the ~~sordid~~ background on me and this series:

I have read every single one of the books in this series. EVERY. SINGLE. ONE. Even the novellas.

You can find all of my reviews on Goodreads if you’re so inclined to watch my descent into pure, unadulterated hatred.

Oh, yes, that’s right. Hatred. I am well-versed in the Women’s Murder Club. And I fucking hate-read this series with a fiery, binge-y passion. Truthfully, I hate mostly everything Patterson writes.

Gather around, children and listen to your elder millennial: James Patterson is a fucking mediocre writer.

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Review: Jane Doe by Victoria Helen Stone

“I’d heard it before, of course, usually from my mother. A nasty, cold-blooded, selfish, grasping, uppity, ungrateful goddamn little bitch. And I know that to be true. I could feel the coldness in my own veins.”

★★★★

Lake Union Publishing | 2018

Filed Under: Good for her

I really really liked this.

On the surface, it’s the story of a woman hellbent on revenge for the suicide of her best friend, Meg. Her target: Meg’s abusive ex-boyfriend, Steven.

Jane leaves her behind expensive high-powered lawyer life in Kuala Lumpur and moves to Minneapolis, giving herself a month or so to infiltrate Steven’s life and make him wish he’d never been born.

LIKE OMG SO FUN.

That’s the basic idea of the novel. And already I know you’re thinking, “I’ve always wanted to change my identity and ruin someone’s life. Revenge is the best. Sign me up.”

But when you look beneath the surface, you see that this is actually a novel of patriarchy-smashing awesomeness, as well as a giant middle finger to the hypocrisy of Evangelical Christians.

And that last part just feels so right it turned me on a little bit.

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Mystery and Thriller Releases for Fall 2018!

We are officially-unofficially into the beginning of my favourite season!

Hoodies and pumpkins and leaves changing colour and no more sweat under my boobs or mosquito bites covering my flesh like bubble wrap. It’s the most wonderful time of the year!

You know what else there is to love about autumn? New book releases!

Here is my list of the top crime fiction/mystery/thriller/blah blah blah releases coming our way this season. Get your TBR shelves ready for the added weight!

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Review: The Confession by Jo Spain

“That was us at the beginning of our fairytale. But here’s the thing about fairytales: sometimes they’re darker than you can ever imagine.”

★★

Quercus | 2018

Filed Under: I guess anything can be called a thriller these days.

I don’t think I’ve ever read a “thriller” this uneventful before. And by that I mean, it’s like the author wasn’t even trying. For real, this was slowwwwwwwww.

I’m in the minority with my opinion and that’s fine. But my opinion is the right one. HAHAHA just kidding (kind of.)

The Confession by Jo Spain is billed as a dark thriller, but it’s really more of a depressing autobiography of the main characters, whose switching POVs we ~~have to endure~~ get to experience; how they got to that moment in 2012 when a banker is getting his head bashed in by a stranger with a golf club. These POVs take us all the way back to childhood in some cases, and quite honestly it was tedious as hell and in most cases, completely fucking irrelevant.

This approach to the storytelling drained all the energy out of the plot, making it feel sluggish, washing out anything that could be considered a shock or a twist.

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Review: There’s Someone Inside Your House by Stephanie Perkins

“People live through such pain only once; pain comes again, but it finds a tougher surface.”

★★★

Dutton Books for Young Readers | 2017

Filed Under: Start your egg timers.

I’m going to try to be nice.

And I’m going to try to be nice because while I didn’t really love this like I wanted to, I also didn’t hate it on its face. It’s not a bad novel in terms of writing, in fact, I think Stephanie Perkins has a hell of a narrative voice… she just doesn’t know what she’s doing with a horror novel.

I read this as part of my search to find a YA thriller that I actually want to rave about after I finish the last page, and I had high hopes this would be that novel.

It’s supposed to be a horror/thriller. It’s supposed to be, as per the promotion, “Scream meets YA.” The title, the cover – it’s all saying READ ME SO I CAN SCARE YOU!

You compare something to Scream and I say GIMME NOW.

I love Scream. I love all teen slashers. I grew up on that shit. It’s an important part of my developmental stages from child to teen to adult… which probably explains a lot.

But this is only comparable to Scream in the most basic way.

Teens. Killer killing those teens. Small town scared. End of.

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Review: Fellside by M.R. Carey

“Rough edges were what you needed because they were what you sharpened yourself against. Nobody ever got sharp from lying in a feather bed.”

★★½

Orbit | 2016

Filed Under: Casper but in prison.

I was really interested in reading this, but once I cracked this baby open my interest quickly petered out, giving way to an overall feeling of not really giving a shit, mixed with annoyance and yawning.

Jess has been given heavy prison time for deliberately starting a house fire that not only destroyed her face and injured her asshole heroin addict boyfriend but also killed a 10-year-old boy named Alex.

Jess essentially martyrs herself, accepting her punishment with a heaping side of self-flagellation, deciding her time in prison will be short once she goes on a hunger strike/suicide mission. The only problem is that Jess can’t remember any of the sins she’s been told she committed, so she just takes everyone’s word for it (like you would.)

As she withers away in the prison infirmary, dead Alex comes to her with an afterlife request – find out who really killed him, because he’s sure it wasn’t Jess and he can’t find his ghosty peace without knowing the facts.

The blurb is essentially Orange Is the New Black but with ghosts and mystery.

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Review: It Takes One (Audrey Harte, #1) by Kate Kessler

“Doing a bad thing doesn’t make you a bad person. People do bad things for the right reasons all the time.”

★★★★½

Redhook | 2016

Filed Under: That wasn’t me, that was Patricia.

Audrey Hart left Edgeport years ago after being released from the local juvie, Stillwater, for killing her best friend’s father when they were teenagers. She doesn’t regret it for a second – Maggie’s father was a daughter-raping piece of shit, and killing him – and the consequences that followed – have made Audrey who she is today: a successful child psychologist and contributor to a true crime tv show, Kids Who Kill.

Talk about turning your life around – from murderer to famous psychologist. It’s kind of like from serial rapist and bankrupted conman to President of the United States. What a glow up!

When Audrey gets a call to return home to Edgeport, she’s dreading it. The whispers, the glances – all eyes are always on her whenever she’s in town. That is certainly true when Audrey walks into the local watering hole to pick up her drunk-ass father and Maggie spots her. They speak for the first time in years and it’s not friendly. Audrey gets mean, Maggie gets nasty, gets pushed onto her ass and Audrey storms off. The next morning, Maggie is dead and Audrey is a suspect.

So begins all the twisted, romantic, dramatic events that will lead to the disturbing discovery of what exactly happened to Maggie. And when I say twisted, I mean twisted. There is so much history to unravel, so many secrets and lies to uncover, that while there aren’t necessarily any “thrilling” or “dangerous” moments, you are totally engaged the whole time.

There are just so many elements of this novel that I loved.

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