Madelon Smid completes final book in Sisters in Peril trilogy
The final book in the Sisters in Peril trilogy by Saskatchewan author Madelon Smid will be launched worldwide on April 15.
The previous two books in this series were published last year and have received five-star reviews on Goodreads and Amazon.
Smid, who lives near Swift Current, said it was very satisfying to complete the final book. Readers can look forward to the same action, suspense and solid story line, which were trademarks of the previous works.
“I think I have a nice product to offer and I hope they really love my stories,” she said.
The third book, Sinister Skies, introduces Halley, a helicopter pilot with the U.S. Coast Guard, and Nik, a retired Navy SEAL who becomes her bodyguard and co-pilot after her helicopter is sabotaged.
The previous books in the Sisters in Peril trilogy are Fatal Flight and Lethal Landing. The common thread in each book is the desire of Gita O'Shaugnessey to find her three granddaughters. They are half sisters and do not know about each other, and in each book their grandmother sends a different man to find one of them.
Sky Stravinsky is an aerobatics competition flyer in the first book, Fatal Flight, and Arianna Choktaw is a hot air balloonist in the second book, Lethal Landing.
“I love a lot of action and they're all suspense,” Smid said. “I also love to put in some type of learning for my readers. That is why I chose the three careers of the women.”
She decided to use flying as a theme for this trilogy due to her own experiences with flying during her life.
“My husband was a professional pilot,” she explained. “He had his own company and we had our own plane. We did a lot of flying together in a smaller aircraft. So it always appealed to me.”
She did a lot of background research for each book in this trilogy series, which will provide readers with more insight into the life of a coast guard helicopter pilot, hot air balloonist or aerobatics pilot.
Smid got the idea for this trilogy series while she and her husband visited three different places during a trip to the United States.
“We went to Tahoe, which is the scene of book number one,” she said. “Then we went to Sedona, which is book number two, the high air ballooning, and then we went to just north of San Diego, which is where the coast guard station is. I wanted to use all three locations as the setting for a book, because I was really taken with them.”
She enjoys the trilogy format for her books, because it gives her an opportunity to explore characters in each book.
“When you put more secondary characters in there, I care about them enough that I want to make them the main protagonist in another book,” she said. “I really like to read books like that, where I'm re-acquainted in a book with somebody I read about in a previous book. So it's just something that really appeals to me, to my style of reading and writing.”
The books in this trilogy fit in the romantic suspense genre, and Smid believes her actionoriented, plot driven stories will appeal to a specific audience.
“I'm writing for very strong, independent, actionoriented women who like adventure and actually are out having their own adventures all the time, and that's the kind of book they like to read too,” she said.
She has already started working on a new book since the completion of Sinister Skies. The new book will be an experiment, because it will be shorter than her previous works. The books in the Sisters in Peril trilogy were each about 72,000 words, but the new book will be around 55,000 words.
“It's one type of book I like to read,” she said. “It's a little more character driven and a little less action and more interior monologue. You're getting way deeper into the two characters and I just thought I’ll like to experiment and look at a different type of market.”
She is also excited about another project with her husband, who is preparing a collection of stories about his experiences as a pilot.
“He just has fabulous stories about different things that happened while he was flying and I'm editing for him,” she said. “I hope in a year or two to have that ready to be send to a publisher, and I'm pretty sure it will sell, because people are just fascinated by flying stories.”
She has been asked by the Saskatchewan Writers’ Guild to present a workshop about writing romance. The workshop takes place at the George Bothwell Library in Regina on April 28, and she is looking forward to share her experiences with other writers.
“I've looked for ways to help other romance writers,” she said. “People seem to be writing in isolation all the time, because they do not get the support for writing romance. … It will be really great and to find out who is out there.”
Sinister Skies, the final book in the Sisters in Peril trilogy, is released on April 15 and will be available through Amazon.com or The Wild Rose Press.