Author Guest Post - Gordon Osmond

  Romantic Suspense: Author Guest Post - Gordon Osmond

About the Author:

A graduate of Columbia College and Columbia Law School, Gordon Osmond is a retired Wall Street lawyer, a produced playwright, a published author, an online play and book critic, and a lecturer.

Osmond's plays have been professionally produced throughout the United States, where they have received rave reviews and many awards including First Prize in the John Gassner Memorial Playwriting Competition sponsored by the New England Theatre Conference.

Osmond’s published non-fiction works include So You Think You Know English—A Guide to English for Those Who Think They Don’t Need One and his “unauthorized autobiography, Wet Firecrackers.

Slipping on Stardust is Osmond's debut novel. He is currently loving life and language in Brazil.

Author Contact Links:
The book's website: http://i-m.co/GordonOsmond/SlippingonStardust
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/gordon.osmond
Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3058134.Gordon_Osmond/blog
 

Book Blurb:

The ultimate guilt-free escapist adventure, Slipping on Stardust is a riveting tale of small-time life, adolescent rebellion, community theatre intrigues, and legal scandals, with a kidnapping demanding suicide as ransom thrown in for extra spice. The book is an ideal gift, suitable for stuffing in beach bags, holiday stockings—in fact, everything but the Thanksgiving turkey.

It all starts when Adrian Conway, an aging Hollywood movie icon, arrives in Johnson, Ohio to star in a community theatre production opposite the local reigning drama queen, who is the wife of the town's leading lawyer and the mother of a handsome, but sexually undecided son, who suffers from every adolescent plague except acne. To say that all hell breaks loose thereafter is not to do justice to hell. The conflicts that follow fling family members to New York City and to Hollywood in a trail of betrayal, scandal, and crime.

The exposure of small-town foibles and secrets plus the depiction of the tragic and sometimes comic consequences of sacrificing real values for false ones have caused Slipping on Stardust to be viewed as a cross between Peyton Place and Madame Bovary.


Buy links:
Amazon 
Sweet Cravings Publishing


Excerpt: 

Eileen regained her composure to the extent necessary to stride, somewhat grandly, to the front door, which she opened after one final restorative inhalation.

"I'm Adrian Conway." As the man standing on the threshold was shorter and somewhat shakier than his most recent screen image, the self-identification was not as unnecessary as it might and should have been.

"Of course you are. Here at last. Do come in." Eileen played the valet with Adrian's originally expensive but currently well-depreciated suitcase.

Kyle leapt forward, grabbing the suitcase as his ticket into the first moments of Adrian's arrival.

"Here, let me take this."

Eileen introduced Kyle, giving him the entrée to express what a great honor it was for him to meet "Mr. Conway."

With an approximately three-hundred-degree sweep of his recently freed right hand, Adrian played the noblesse oblige card. "Please call me Adrian. All of you."

Danton was the first to exercise the license. "Hi, Adrian, I'm Dan Brockway. I own the joint." Before Adrian could react, Dan added, "And may I present Erin O'Malley."

Adrian's appetite for sweets, long ago lost in lakes of vodka, was somewhat revived. "How do you do, my dear?" At this point, Dan felt obliged to add that Erin was Kyle's date.

While Adrian was humming a bit about that, Eileen broke in. "I can't tell you how much I've been looking forward to working with you on Sheba. Duncan has all of us razor sharp, but with just enough held back so that by the time we start real rehearsals, it'll all be at fever pitch."

"Oh good, good." Adrian responded without the slightest diversion from his initial and continuing focus on Erin.

"And you, young lady, are you playing the ingénue?"

Eileen had had enough. "Oh, heavens no, she's a scientist or something."

More humming from Adrian. "Pity."

Believing that the atmosphere was getting a bit dense, Danton asked his son to escort Adrian upstairs to see his room, a chore which Kyle relished a bit more than Danton would have expected had he noticed.

Eileen chirped after the new boarder, "Adrian, dear, can we have a drink waiting for you?" It was a paradigm of the rhetorical question.

"Yes, please. A Stoly on the rocks with a double twist."

While Danton was trying to figure out whether a "double twist" meant two peels or one twisted twice, Eileen was entering the deeper depths of despondency because she'd ordered Danton to buy Smirnoff, not Stolys. And Danton always did what he was told.

Erin to the rescue as she explained to her hosts that all vodkas were chemically identical and that with melting ice and twice-twisted rind acids, it was highly unlikely that Adrian, who had apparently had a couple already, would know the difference. With that, Erin offered to concoct the bogus brew and exited to the kitchen to do so.

"Pushy little bitch, isn't she?" Eileen hissed.

 * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

What a brilliant story! I personally truly enjoyed reading it. It is a true page turned that has kept me hooked on its characters from beginning till the end. The plot was always one step ahead of me, which is what I most appreciate in a book. A perfect combination of seduction, scandal and crime, it is a book that I warmly recommend to anyone looking for a good romantic suspense.

What an honor to have you on my blog, Gordon. Thank you!