Night Driver by Marcelle PerksMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
All heavily pregnant Francesca Snell had ever wanted was security,a partner and to have children,she hadn't wanted this stilled life,stuck in the suburbs of a foreign country where she struggles to understand and speak the language,has no friends and a husband who has changed from the loving,attentive personal he was before they married and moved to Germany into a cold,controlling bully. In an effort to get herself more mobile and also because she will need to be able to get provisions for their baby once it is born she starts taking driving lessons.It is during one of these lessons that she has her first terrifying encounter with lorry driving serial killer Lars Stigelegger,a huge man who thinks intimidating other drivers with his lorry is hilarious.After Frannie miraculously passes her test,she decides to try some night driving to gain experience on the eerie roads. But after a early morning encounter with a Polish motorcyclist who is searching for his missing sister,Frannie finds herself becoming sucked into the terrifying world of shady nightclubs,autobahn prostitutes,organ trafficking and into the sights of Lars and his twisted psychotic boss Hans Grans
This heart pounding thriller is voiced by a number of characters including Frannie,Lars,Hans and Dorcas,a prostitute with whom Frannie strikes up an uneasy alliance. Frannie was a feisty,stubborn,likable character who refused to let the fact that she was heavily pregnant stop her helping Tomek find his missing sister.You couldn't help admiring her guts and determination and I spent the whole book in a heightened sense of anxiety and fear for the lives of Frannie and her unborn baby. I had mixed feelings about Dorcas and wasn't always sure wether Frannie could really trust her. The villains in this book are evil,spine chilling,twisted individuals although I surprisingly found myself feeling a tiny bit of empathy for one of them by the time I finished the book.
I absolutely loved this adrenaline ride of a thriller.The authors descriptions of Frannie`s health issues due to her pregnancy and her nervousness when she was driving were realistic and believable. I love being in a car at night but I have never learned to drive myself,I'm nervous enough as a passenger.The characters were vivid and well rounded and the story told in chapters that vary in length held my attention throughout. In my opinion this book is worth far more than five stars and I look forward to reading more books by this author in the future.
IT TOOK SEVEN AND A HALF YEARS AND 170 REJECTIONS FROM OTHER PUBLISHERS BEFORE NIGHT DRIVER WAS ACCEPTED FOR PUBLICATION BY URBANE PUBLICATIONS.THE BOOK WAS CALLED TOO DARK AND PERVERSE,ONE PUBLISHER REJECTED THE STORY BECAUSE ONE OF THE KILLERS IS GAY.
IN THIS GUEST POST AUTHOR MARCELLE PERKS EXPLAINS THE ISSUES SHE FACED BOTH PRIVATELY AND WITH THE VARIOUS PUBLISHERS DURING HER BATTLE TO GET THIS NAIL BITING THRILLER PUBLISHED
I sold this novel five times to indie publishers but every time something went wrong until the last time. Publisher went bust, decided not worth doing ebook only, one publisher got tired of waiting for my agent. Last year I tried to crowdfund ND and that failed which was quite painful as I'd previously worked in publishing sales but they made a foreign title just too expensive (31 Euro) so it was near impossible. Last year I had a terrible time because I fractured my spine in April falling off the bars in gymnastics. Another UK publisher was interested in June, but wanted some changes and didn't specify what, so I hired a line editor who proofs Lee Child and sent the MS back to the publisher. I got the rejection on the day I had had this awful tooth operation to remove root tip of an old root canal that had failed and on a day when I might have liked chocolate, ciggies and gin and tonics I was reduced to drinking cold tomato soup from a straw! The reason for their rejection was because the serial killer was gay, a fact that I couldn't change as its intregal to the story. I was livid about that! In the September I tried to crowdfund ND with Unbound but their model for a foreign title was a whopping 31 Euro as they charged 11 Euro for postage, so that was also unsettling as I'd worked previously in publishing sales so I had hoped it might be something I would be good at. When the crowdfunding campaign was not working it was one of the worst times of my life as my London trip made my back problems worse (got carried away buying too many books). London is just so exhausting to travel around with luggage when you are injured. I managed to find Urbane and Matthew's request for thriller novels when I was waiting for my daughter to do keyboard lessons and managed to persaude Matthew to take it. So here's a powerpoint presentation I made when I was trying to do something for the crowdfunding campaign for Unbound which never went live because a colleague of my husband made a video for me in the police museum in Nienburg.
Since around 2015 I have been thinking about self publishing, that's why I designed the cover myself with Mark Cox, an old friend who is a designer and former art director of Dark Horse Comics but I didn't have a website at the time and all the books on self-publishing said you needed at least three to make it worthwhile. Nothing on this project has been easy. Even things that you imagine would be straightforward like hiring a line editor or a web designer didn't happen as they should have done. Elizabeth Haynes who championed the book from the very beginning recommended her line editor Linda McQueen and we made three appointments but some other high flying best selling writer always knocked me out of my slot. She finally managed to do the line editor when I got strong interest last year. She told me she couldn't understand why one of the big publishers hadn't picked it up and has been very supportive. I found the web designer Faith Tilleray after looking at lots of author websites and finding Anna Mazzola's amazing. So I contacted the designer (Faith) and initially she agreed to do it, but then felt what I wanted was too close to Anna's and said it was a conflict of interest as she'd done a custom design. I didn't take no for an answer and just suggested that if I put together a powerpoint presentation of words and images then she could see if it grabbed it. Later she said yes, but it was only finished a few weeks ago because my father in law had end stage cancer and died in May so things to do with ND were put on ice for a few months.
So in far too many words, I'm trying to explain why I've had a blind faith in this book that has sometimes seemed illogical given the amount of rejection, but as you know from reading it, it's not understandable to me or my agent or line editor Linda McQueen what all the fuss is about...
I did used to think that if this book ever came out then the world would end or something....
AUTHOR BIO
Marcelle is a British author and journalist and origianally comes from Stourbridge, West Midlands. At just sixteen she began doing interviews for the cult TV group Kaleidoscope and has been writing about horror films for magazines since 1992. She has a BA (Hons) in English and an MA in Media Studies. She has done lots of creative-type jobs working for a video company, the British Film Institute, a magazine publisher and as a photographic coordinator. It took ages to find her fictional voice. She spent years tinkering with short stories before she wrote the collection Bare Souls. She was encouraged to write Night Driver by Maxim Jakubowski who’d published some of her stories in the Mammoth Book of Best Erotica series. Since 2001 she has lived in Hannover, Germany, the setting for her debut novel Night Driver. She has a fascination for medical history and her next novel features a doctor in Victorian London.
SOCIAL MEDIA SITES
Website : https://marcelleperks.com
Twitter : https://twitter.com/Marcelleperks
Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/marcelleperks/
PUBLICATION DAY : 2nd August 2018
PUBLISHER : Urbane Publications
GENRE : Psychological Thriller / Horror
PURCHASE HERE....
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Night-Driver-Marcelle-Perks/dp/1911583964/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1533164466&sr=1-1&keywords=night+driver
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