One-Eyed Royals by Cordelia Kingsbridge - Blog Tour with Author Guest Post and Giveaway

Thanks for checking out the blog tour for One-Eyed Royals, the fourth book in the Seven of Spades series!

We left Levi and Dominic broken up and broken-hearted. But there are new threats facing Las Vegas, and crossing paths on a case again is just their luck…

About One-Eyed Royals

Spoiler Alert! The following blurb contains spoilers for Cash Plays, book three of Seven of Spades.

Shattered by their devastating breakup, Detective Levi Abrams and PI Dominic Russo find themselves at war right when they need each other most. While Dominic is trapped in a vicious cycle of addiction, Levi despairs of ever catching the Seven of Spades. The ruthless vigilante’s body count continues to climb, and it’s all Levi can do to keep up with the carnage.

When Levi’s and Dominic’s paths keep crossing in the investigation of a kidnapping ring with a taste for mutilation, it feels like history repeating itself. Thrown together by fate once again, they reluctantly join forces in their hunt for the mastermind behind the abductions.

But the Seven of Spades hates sharing the spotlight, and they have an ace in the hole: a new batch of victims with a special connection to Levi. Their murders send shockwaves through Las Vegas and change the rules of the game forever.

The Seven of Spades has upped the ante. If Levi and Dominic don’t play their cards right, they’ll end up losing everything.

About the Seven of Spades Series

Las Vegas has never seen a serial killer like the Seven of Spades.

The self-styled vigilante is on a mission to cut down the wicked and treacherous, and Sin City has no shortage of targets for their bloody wrath. What happens in Vegas . . . ends with the Seven of Spades’s calling card on a grisly corpse.

Standing against the killer are Levi Abrams, a dedicated homicide detective locked in a constant struggle to restrain his own dark side, and bounty hunter Dominic Russo, a charming rogue with a heavy secret weighing on his shoulders.

The hunt for the Seven of Spades sends Levi and Dominic on a collision course, igniting a passionate relationship forged in conflict and sealed with blood. Together they’re stronger than the sum of their parts, but a wily, elusive serial killer isn’t the only threat that will strain their bond to the breaking point.

Ante up, because the Seven of Spades is all in. Are you?

Staging Action Scenes

Anyone familiar with my work knows I love action scenes – chases, fights, gun battles, you name it. I love choreographing such scenes, and I’ve always found them easy to envision.

What I don’t find easy to envision? Physical environments. (My imagination is far more movement-based than image-based.) That’s a big problem, because of course it’s pretty much impossible to map out an action scene in any detail without a strong conceptualization of the surrounding environment.

Every action scene in the entire Seven of Spades series was written with the aid of real-life photographs, floor plans, and the invaluable, indispensible Google Earth. Without those reference materials, I could never have gotten those scenes off the ground.

My process usually goes like this: I start with an exciting but unformed idea for an action scene crucial to the plot. For example, in Cash Plays, I knew I wanted Levi to confront and throw down with Nick Bryce in a public, no-holds-barred fight; I just didn’t know exactly where or how that would happen.

My next step is to search for real-world references to narrow down my options. For the Levi/Bryce fight, I thought it might be interesting to have it around a pool, so I searched for the coolest pool complexes in Las Vegas. In the end, the Hard Rock won – not just because it was such a large and unique setting, but because there was a 360-degree virtual tour of the pool complex online that I could work with.

Once I had that concrete visual reference to set the stage in my mind, the entire chase and ensuing fight scene flowed naturally, inspired by details in the environment that I wouldn’t have come up with on my own. This a reliable method I’ve used many times – in Trick Roller, I knew I needed Levi to chase Adriana down, but it was a combination of Google Earth and Google Street View that specifically decided me on the Fremont Street Experience and which nearby hotel would be a good starting point. And no spoilers, but there’s a fight scene in One-Eyed Royals that completely stymied me until I found the perfect floor plan that made everything click into place. (I’ve since had a similar experience while writing book five!)

For any author who, like me, struggles with imagining spatial details, I recommend using real-world references for inspiration the same way a visual artist would. You may have never thought to have a character infiltrate an armed compound by jumping onto a gazebo until you spotted said gazebo on Google Earth!

About Cordelia Kingsbridge

Cordelia Kingsbridge has a master’s degree in social work from the University of Pittsburgh, but quickly discovered that direct practice in the field was not for her. Having written novels as a hobby throughout graduate school, she decided to turn her focus to writing as a full-time career. Now she explores her fascination with human behavior, motivation, and psychopathology through fiction. Her weaknesses include opposites-attract pairings and snarky banter.

Away from her desk, Cordelia is a fitness fanatic, and can be found strength training, cycling, and practicing Krav Maga. She lives in South Florida but spends most of her time indoors with the air conditioning on full blast!

Connect with Cordelia:

• Email:  cordeliakingsbridge@gmail.com
• Tumblr: http://ckingsbridge.tumblr.com
• Twitter:  @c_kingsbridge
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Cordelia.Kingsbridge/
  

Giveaway

To celebrate the release of One-Eyed Royals, Cordelia is giving away a $10 Riptide gift card! Leave a comment with your contact info to enter the contest. Entries close at midnight, Eastern time, on September 15, 2018. Contest is NOT restricted to U.S. entries. Thanks for following along, and don’t forget to leave your contact info!