Guest Post: Sage Webb – Author of THE VENTURI EFFECT

Welcome to November, book people! I don’t know about you, but it seems as if it has been about a decade since the last November. Fortunately, we have books to take us away from reality, even if it is just for a little while. Do you enjoy being an armchair adventurer with your reading? If so, you’re going to love today’s guest. Please help me welcome the acclaimed Sage Webb as she discusses her bucket list and armchair bookish adventures. I hope you’ll add The Venturi Effect to your TBR list and follow along with the tour. Thank you, Ms. Webb, for taking time away from your writing and traveling to visit with us today. I’ll now turn the blog over to you.

When I write, I hope to give my readers a dash of adventure, too. In my new legal thriller The Venturi Effect, that adventure takes the form of a stormy sailing passage to St. Kitts as a burned-out criminal-defense attorney tries to find evidence to support her client/old flame, who has found himself caught up in criminal charges and a courtroom battle. 

But what about “real” adventures? For me, I try not to leave things on my “bucket list” too long. If there’s an experience I want to have, I try to make it happen. I don’t always succeed, and my interest in an endeavor may fade before I get there. But generally, I try to keep moving through the items that make it onto the list. One trip, however, has lingered on my bucket list for a while. It involves more time and financial resources and logistical planning than many other things I’ve done, so it may remain in bucket-list status a little longer yet, but in the near future I want very much to complete what is called the Great Loop, a 6,000-mile waterway journey from Galveston, along the Gulf Coast, around Florida, up the East Coast, through the Erie Canal, into and through the Great Lakes, to Chicago, and ultimately down the Mississippi and proximate river systems to New Orleans and back to Galveston. Oh, and I want to do it alone . . . on a jetski. It’ll take a few months, a lot of sun protection, and some time away from paying gigs, but I have to make it happen. It has just worked its way too deep into my heart and demands to be done. 

On the book front, I’ve read numerous Great Loop guides and accounts, and I’ve collected and reviewed a number of works on long-distance jetskiing. I’ve got much of the gear already, since I live on a sailboat and spend a lot of time on the water, and I’m familiar with boating on the Gulf Coast, in Florida, and on the Great Lakes. My husband says he’ll support me, though he wants no part of spending close to three months on a jetski. 

Will I write about it if I do it? Definitely. Writing helps me distill things, so no matter what, if I do it, this adventure will end up in my journal, on my blog, and in long notes back to my friends and family. Beyond that, well, I think it would end up in a book somewhere along the way, too.

After fleeing the crush of a partnership at a large Chicago criminal-defense firm and the humiliation of a professional breakdown, Devlin Winters just wants to be left alone with a couple sundowners on the deck of her dilapidated mahogany trawler on Galveston Bay. But when an old flame shows up on the boardwalk with a mysterious little boy in tow and an indictment on his heels, fate has other plans, and Devlin finds herself thrust onto a sailboat bound for St. Kitts and staring down her demons in the courtroom, as she squares off against an obsessed prosecutor with a secret of his own.

Sage Webb practiced criminal defense for over a decade before turning to fiction. She is the author of two novels and the recipient of numerous literary awards in the U.S. and the U.K., including second place in the Hackney Literary Awards. Her short stories have appeared in Texas anthologies and literary reviews. In 2020, Michigan’s Mackinac State Historic Parks named her an artist in residence. She belongs to International Thriller Writers and PEN America, and lives with her husband, a ship’s cat, and a boat dog on a sailboat in Galveston Bay.