Romance Author Trades Sexy Banter For Serial Killers
Released
on: May 5, 2009, 4:27 am
Author: Leslie Kelly-Parrish
Industry: Entertainment
After
writing more than two-dozen best-selling romance novels for Harlequin
Enterprises, the world’s largest publisher of women’s
fiction, award-winning author Leslie Kelly found herself wanting
to try something completely different. Though a long-time reader
of romance, Kelly’s favorite genres are dark suspense and
horror. So, chucking the flirtation, banter, outrageous humor
and steamy sex scenes for which she’d become famous, she
took the pseudonym Leslie Parrish and immersed herself in the
world of FBI agents, serial killers and danger.
Preparing
a proposal for a series of books about an FBI Cyber Action Team
tasked to solve Internet-related murders, Parrish crossed her
fingers and had her agent submit it to all the major New York
publishers. Within just ten days, she had an offer of publication
from NAL-Signet (a division of Penguin Books.) Says Parrish, “I
was thrilled, of course, but also a little overwhelmed at how
fast everything came together.”
Having
written only fifty pages of one book for the proposal, she found
herself having to write three full 100,000 word novels based on
just a few ideas. Because Parrish and her new publisher made the
decision to release the books in quick, back-to-back succession
during the summer of 2009, she had about fifteen months in which
to do it.
The
result was a trilogy of dark romantic-thrillers populated by FBI
agents and serial murderers. The first, Fade To Black, deals with
a race to find a brutal serial killer called The Reaper, who is
auctioning-off means-of-death at a deviant cyber playground.
Parrish
says her roots in romance fiction enabled her to instill the books
with emotion and strong lead characters. “I have always
enjoyed writing romance,” Parrish says, “but when
I combined my two favorite types of books, romance and thrillers,
I absolutely found my niche.”
Contact Details:
Leslie Kelly
PO Box 575
Emmitsburg, MD 21727
author@authorleslieparrish.com
