I’m very excited to be on the blog tour for the intriguing 29 seconds by TM Logan today. This is a book I have been hearing lots of amazing things about and I can’t wait to get a chance to read it.
29 Seconds is available to buy now in kindle and paperback here. . The Kindle version is currently only 98p!
Book Description
When Sarah rescues a young girl in trouble, she expects nothing in return. But her act of bravery puts a powerful and dangerous man in her debt. He lives by his own brutal code, and all debts must be repaid – in the only way he knows how.
He offers Sarah a way to solve a desperate situation with her intolerable boss. A once-in-a-lifetime deal that will make all her problems disappear.
No consequences. No comeback. No chance of being found out.
All it takes is a 29 second phone call.
BECAUSE EVERYONE HAS A NAME TO GIVE. DON’T THEY?
Q&A with TM Logan:
1. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?
I’m 47, married with two teenage children and live in Nottingham. I was born in Reading, Berkshire – the youngest of three boys – went to university in London and Cardiff, then trained as a journalist and worked on local and national newspapers before moving into a communications role at a large university. 29 Seconds is my second psychological thriller; my first was Lies which came out in 2017 and has sold more than 300,000 copies.
2. What do you do when you are not writing?
I love ice hockey – we’re fortunate in Nottingham to have the National Ice Centre in town, and my family are all season ticket holders with the Nottingham Panthers, so we go to a lot of matches during the season. I read a lot, and also like TV series like Mindhunter, Godless, The Affair, Black Mirror, Game of Thrones and lots of others. Because writing all day is a fairly sedentary job I also try to keep fit by cycling and going to the gym a few times a week.
3. Do you have a day job as well?
I did have, until summer 2017 – but my day job was made redundant during a restructure and I had the option of applying for a new role, or taking redundancy. I opted for the latter and have been writing full-time ever since (and loving it!).
4. When did you first start writing and when did you finish your first book?
I first started taking fiction writing seriously about ten years ago, and spent several years writing, editing and re-writing my first book. I finished it in early 2013 but unfortunately it didn’t get picked up by any publishers. That was the point at which I started working on Lies, my debut novel, which came out in January 2017.
5. How did you choose the genre you write in?
It chose me, I think – I just write the kind of thing that I like to read. I read mainly thrillers, crime, adventure and mystery stories, so I gravitated to them when I started writing fiction.
6. Where do you get your ideas?
Most of my ideas come from everyday life – a conversation, a story on the news, a thought that turns into a ‘what if?’ question that might form part of a plot. With 29 Seconds, one element of the plot came from a news story in The Guardian about the scale of sexual harassment in higher education, which got me thinking. I thought it might make a strong setting for a novel – if the victim was so desperate for a solution that she would resort to desperate measures.
7. Do you ever experience writer’s block?
Not yet! There always seems to be something going on in my head that needs to be put down on the page.
8. Do you work with an outline, or just write?
I always plan and outline so I have an idea of where I’m headed. There are always deviations and detours along the way, but I like to know roughly what my destination is going to be so I can stay on track. I’m immensely jealous of authors who can just write from the seat of their pants!
9. Is there any particular author or book that influenced you in any way either growing up or as an adult?
As an adult, I remember reading A Simple Plan by Scott Smith and becoming so hooked that I had to take it into work so I could carry on reading, holding it under my desk. I got into a bit of trouble doing that, but I remember it was the first time that I thought maybe one day I’d be able to write books that had the same effect on people.
10. Can you tell us about your challenges in getting your first book published?
It was quite a long road to publication for me – about ten years in all. I spent a good few years working on a novel that never got published and is still sitting in my bottom drawer. I had invested a lot of hope in it at the time, so for it to be rejected by a series of publishers (in 2013) was a fairly crushing experience. To spend all that time, and come so close, felt like falling at the very last hurdle. The biggest challenge after that was keeping the faith, keeping the belief that one day, sooner or later, I would be able to write a book that would make it all the way to publication. I know it’s a cliché but getting to that point last year was honestly a dream come true for me.
11. Is anything in your book based on real life experiences or purely all imagination?
A few of my characters have been based on real people – Sarah Haywood’s children in 29 Seconds, Grace and Harry, have elements of my own children when they were that age (fortunately they get on much better now they’re a little older!). And elements here and there are based on my personal experience, whether it’s an anecdote, or a person’s way of speaking, a hobby, a place that I know or somewhere I’ve lived in the past. So there are bits and pieces here and there – but mostly it’s fictional.
12. What was your hardest scene to write?
The scenes with Sarah and her boss in 29 Seconds were tough to write. Without giving too much away, they needed to be realistic but not exploitative. They were necessary but needed to be written in a way that wasn’t gratuitous, so there was quite a fine line to tread.
13. How did you come up with the title?
29 Seconds actually had the working title of Every Good Deed, but that never felt quite right. As I was working on the story, it occurred to me that the pivotal moment in the story is very brief – it only takes 29 seconds – but it changes her life, it changes her future, it changes everything. So that seemed like a good choice for a title.
14. What project are you working on now?
I’m currently writing book 3 for Bonnier Zaffre, which will come out in 2019. It’s a standalone thriller set in the south of France, where four best friends are holidaying together with their families. As the week goes on, their friendship starts to unravel amid secrets, betrayal and lies, until it becomes clear that someone in the group is prepared to kill to keep a long-buried truth from coming out…
15. What has been the toughest criticism given to you as an author? What has been the best compliment?
A few of my reviews on Amazon have been pretty brutal! That’s just part and parcel of being an author, I guess – but they’re still tough to read. The biggest ‘Wow!’ compliment was getting a quote from Lee Child, which is on the cover of 29 Seconds. I was totally bowled over!
16. Is there anything that you would like to say to your readers and fans?
First and foremost: thank you! Thanks for reading and reviewing my books, for sharing with your friends, family, colleagues and book groups. It means so much to an author to have the support of readers, and I’m genuinely grateful to have had such positive feedback.
Thank you so much for answering all my questions, I wish you lot of luck with the book and hope it is a huge success!
About The Author:
TM Logan was born in Berkshire to an English father and a German mother. He studied at Queen Mary and Cardiff universities before becoming a national newspaper journalist. He currently works in communications and lives in Nottinghamshire with his wife and two children. LIES is his first novel – published by Bonnier Zaffre in January 2017. His next thriller, 29 SECONDS, comes out in January 2018 and is currently available to pre-order.
For exclusive writing, new releases and a FREE deleted scene from TM Logan, sign up to the Readers’ Club: http://www.bit.ly/TMLogan. You can also follow him on Twitter @TMLoganAuthor and find him on Facebook at /TMLoganAuthor
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