Guest Post: Emilya Naymark – HIDE IN PLACE

Hello, book people and welcome to the almost end of the week! (Hey, we have to celebrate what we can, when we can.) I’m constantly searching for new-to-me authors and adding new-to-me titles to my TBR list then lamenting the fact that I never seem to find the time to get to read all of the books I want. (Yes, I know that if I actually stopped re-re-reading books I might actually have time to read all of these new-to-me books, but that’s a whole other discussion.) Since I began this blog, I’ve realized all of the hard work and research that goes into writing. Authors have to choose the setting for the books, the characters and their names, the action, when the characters will speak, etc. As readers, we presume it’s all done effortlessly, but if you read a book that’s set in a familiar location and the author makes a mistake in describing an area, you quickly realize that it isn’t as effortless as it appears. I’m pleased to welcome Emilya Naymark, author of Hide In Place to the blog today. Ms. Naymark will be discussing with us today the importance of setting or location for a story. Please join me in welcoming Ms. Naymark and I hope you’ll enjoy what she has to say. Thank you, Ms. Naymark for taking the time to join us today.

Location, Location, Location

A story’s setting is so important that it’s often thought of as yet another character. Location has moods and atmosphere, it can be benign or antagonistic, and it, more than any other aspect of a novel, offers escapism.

When deciding where to set my debut crime novel, I had no doubts—it would take place in the Hudson Valley of New York, my new home. I moved to the Hudson Valley in 2013, and I immediately became enamored of its mountains, rivers, lakes and endless hiking opportunities. The Appalachian Trail runs through forests mere miles from my house. There is a tremendous amount of history here too, with West Point a short drive north and a restaurant still in operation which had served, briefly, as Major John André’s prison before his execution.

The land is picturesque here year-round, but winter offers a particularly stark beauty, and when I began writing I knew right away my characters had to face their demons in the middle of a snowstorm.

However, writing is a way for an author to practice escapism as well, and when I thought of my NYPD detective character, Laney Bird, working, I imagined her at the opposite end of the spectrum—on a sun-blistered boardwalk in New York’s Brighton Beach. Not only did I enjoy transporting myself to the beach and “Little Odessa”, as Brighton Beach is known, but the setting made absolute sense for Laney’s job. As an undercover detective, she works a RICO (racketeering) case against the Russian mob. And where better to do this than at the bull’s eye epicenter of Russian mafia in New York (if not the entire USA)?

The novel swings back and forth between Laney’s past, working her case in sun-drenched Brighton and her horrifying present in an icebound Hudson Valley.

These settings have psychological connotations as well—the seemingly cloudless, warm past, tinged with a nostalgic glow over its boardwalks, sand, and ethnic foods, and the harsh, cold, isolated present. Memories for characters in books, as for real people leading real lives, are not the most accurate recorders of reality, and so the environment steps in as a metaphor. Maybe Laney’s time working the racketeering case seems hotter, sunnier, merrier, because back then she thought she had everything she ever wanted.

And maybe her life in February-frigid Sylvan seems colder and more nightmarish because of all the things she believes she’s lost.

 

Synopsis:

She left the NYPD in the firestorm of a high-profile case gone horribly wrong. Three years later, the ghosts of her past roar back to terrifying life.

When NYPD undercover cop Laney Bird’s cover is blown in a racketeering case against the Russian mob, she flees the city with her troubled son, Alfie. Now, three years later, she’s found the perfect haven in Sylvan, a charming town in upstate New York. But then the unthinkable happens: her boy vanishes.

Local law enforcement dismisses the thirteen-year-old as a runaway, but Laney knows better. Alfie would never abandon his special routines and the sanctuary of their home. Could he have been kidnapped–or worse? As a February snowstorm rips through the region, Laney is forced to launch her own investigation, using every trick she learned in her years undercover.

As she digs deeper into the disappearance, Laney learns that Alfie and a friend had been meeting with an older man who himself vanished, but not before leaving a corpse in his garage. With dawning horror, Laney discovers that the man was a confidential informant from a high-profile case she had handled in the past. Although he had never known her real identity, he knows it now. Which means several other enemies do, too. Time is running out, and as Laney’s search for her son grows more desperate, everything depends on how good a detective she really is–badge or no.

Book Details:

Genre: Thriller
Published by: Crooked Lane Books
Publication Date: February 9, 2020
Number of Pages: 278
ISBN: 1643856375 (ISBN13: 9781643856377)
Purchase Links: Amazon | Barnes and Noble | Goodreads

 

Author Bio:

Emilya Naymark’s short stories appear in Secrets in the Water, After Midnight: Tales from the Graveyard Shift, River River Journal, Snowbound: Best New England Crime Stories 2017, 1+30: THE BEST OF MY STORY, and in the upcoming Harper Collins anthology A Stranger Comes to Town.

She has a degree in fine art, and her artworks have been published in numerous magazines and books, earning her a reputation as a creator of dark, psychological pieces.

When not writing, Emilya works as a visual artist and reads massive quantities of thrillers and crime fiction. She lives in the Hudson Valley with her family.

Catch Up With Emilya Naymark:
www.EmilyaNaymark.com/author/
Goodreads
BookBub
Instagram
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Giveaway!:

This is a Rafflecopter giveaway hosted by Partners in Crime Virtual Book Tours for Emilya Naymark. There will be THREE winners. ONE winner will receive (1) physical copy of Hide In Place by Emilya Naymark (U.S. addresses only). The giveaway begins on March 1, 2021 and runs through April 2, 2021. Void where prohibited.

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