Cindy A invited me to participate in a “Meet Your Character” blog hop. Cindy is the author ofThe Milk Carton Murders due out next spring. Meet Cindy and view her blog, HERE.

FCEtier at Blue Ridge Books for a book signing in Waynesville, NC.

Now, Meet My Character:

1) What is the name of your character? Is he/she fictional or a historic person?

Claudia Barry – fictional

2) When and where is the story set?                                          

Current times, eastern seaboard USA

3) What should we know about him/her?

Readers meet Claudia in my first book, The Tourist Killer. She’s sixty-two years old and has successfully negotiated a career of over thirty years. Now she’s contemplating retirement and examining her life. What’s next for a professional assassin? Who do you retire? Her assigner convinces her to take a year sabbatical rather than retire outright. A Year Without Killing is the sequel and chronicles her time off.

4) What is the main conflict? What messes up his/her life?

Is retirement from this career any easier than retiring from the CIA or the mafia? How do you break away and stay alive? Claudia must now find a way to be at peace with herself so she can enjoy the rest of her life. AsThe Tourist Killer ends, she and her lover are in separate parts of the country and neither knows the fate of the other.

5) What is the personal goal of the character?

 Claudia wants to settle down with John Hixon and pursue life without the burden of being the harbinger of death to others.

6) Is there a working title for this novel, and can we read more about it?

A Year Without Killing, my current work in progress is the third book in the Barry-Hixon series and is the sequel to my first book, The Tourist Killer. I participate most weekends in a blog hop, titled, “Weekend Writing Warriors” and most of the excerpts I publish for the next few months will be from AYWK. Catch up with Claudia and her exploits HERE.

7) When can we expect the book to be published?

    E-book and trade paperback versions should be available in the spring of 2015. A Year Without Killing will debut in serialized form, with two chapters per week in either late fall of 2014 or winter of 2015 on the publisher’s site, Venture Galleries.

To keep the meetings going, I’ll tag:

Caleb Pirtle , Stephen Woodfin , and David Stokes.

“I’ll be with you in a moment,” the sales clerk said with a nod.

“When?” I replied.

“In just a moment.”

“Which moment?”

“The moment I finish with this customer.”

“‘The’ moment?”

“Zen.”                                        

“No, I’m Methodist.”

“I attend the Center for Thought Control.”

“What is that?”

“What is zen?”

A few years ago, I reviewed a book that deals with the connection of photography and zen.  Prior to reading Zen and the Magic of Photography by Wayne Rowe, I had no understanding of zen.

I’d heard of it.

I’m a baby boomer.

Because of the Beatles I’d heard of transcendental meditation.

Most references to “zen” had also included “Buddhism” or “Buddhist.”

The years of my youth did not include the initiative to seek out nor investigate other beliefs or thought systems. Such an attitude often breeds a lack of understanding.  It’s easy to see the tip of an iceberg, make up a story to explain it, and proceed as if that concoction was the truth.

Now, we’re at the personalized, customized reality part.

“Oh, that’s her reality.”

“For him, that’s the way life is — his world view.”

“Honey, did you take your lithium this morning?”

It was a very interesting and satisfying discovery to find out that zen isn’t what I thought it was.

A simple definition of zen is “meditation”. Wikipedia says this of meditation: ” a holistic discipline by which the practitioner attempts to get beyond the reflexive, ‘thinking’ mind into a deeper state of relaxation or awareness.” Being “in the moment” can apply to anything from motorcycle maintenance to religion to photography — to murder.

A character in my first novel practices zen.

She gets into the moment.

She becomes “one” with her weapon, the bullet, and the target.

It’s kinda like zen and archery, only with a gun and live ammunition.

Meet Claudia Barry, a sixty-two year old woman contemplating retirement.

A baby boomer.

She’s a knockout.

She’s an elite professional assassin who has mastered the art of disguise.

A cousin, a photographer, introduced her to Zen.

Her grandfather was a motorcycle repairman.

Now, she practices Zen — with every squeeze of the trigger.