When I first started hosting this interview series for Bookouture, I presumed I would only be finding new British Women’s Fiction & Historical authors to host and feature; imagine my happy joy in finding a bloke who was writing cutting edge Thrillers full of the kind of Suspense I find exciting to read as well as the fact they tend to keep me up at night if I’m reading them quite late into the evening hours! You know the kinds – where you feel the skin standing on frayed edges as you can barely sit because you want to know how it’s going to resolve – if it’s going to resolve even! – and the pacing of the story is set to such a lovely high octane level, you get properly caught up inside it’s chapters with such wicked enjoyment?

I fancy a well-conceived Crime Fiction on television all the time – the most beloved serials I love from four countries (i.e. America, Britain, Canada & Australia) are crime dramas – as I love needling out how the investigators and/or detectives put the pieces together in order to catch the people behind the crimes. I also love the psychological and sociological aspects of the dramas, which is why in my Story Vault you’ll notice I’m selectively reading Crime Dramas, novels of Suspense and certain authors of Thrillers who are whetting my thirst for these kinds of stories! Having said that – ooh my! – I have the tendency to being quite particular because I do have a sensitive heart in many regards, so I’m carefully finding authors who know how to give their readers a bit of a thrilling plot but can pull back a bit not to scare us right up and out of our skulls completely! Laughs.

I was so happy I could interview Mr Bale – as May is the month I picked two Rom Suspense novels by ChocLit (You Think You Know Me by Clare Chase and Some Veil Did Fall by Kirsty Ferry) whilst becoming acquainted with the Marjorie Trumaine mysteries by Larry D. Sweazy by Seventh Street Books; an imprint specifically for those who love a wicked good novel of suspense & mystery from Prometheus! I was smitten by the traditional Suspense stylings of David Morrell in his Thomas DeQuincey series as much as I love the techno-thriller style of Adrienne Quintana which I met inside ‘Eruption‘. I even loved the suspenseful catch-in-my-throat ambiance of ‘Up Close‘ by Henriette Gyland (also by ChocLit) as it was packing such an emotional punch of awareness! Even Swedish Thriller author Joakim Zander gave me a story (The Swimmer) to chew on which took me to height of human focused drama within a high paced suspenseful story!

I know one day I shall be happily reading Mr Bale’s story, but for now, having shared this conversation with him, I’ve appreciated getting to know a bit more ‘behind-the-book’ and of his personal approach to writing the suspenseful thrillers I am seeking to read!

To gain a bit of a back-story on how I came to host Bookouture authors,

please visit my first conversation I featured with this publisher with Teresa Driscoll!

How far would you go to save your family?

In the dead of night, new parents Alice and Harry French are plunged into their worst nightmare when they wake to find masked men in their bedroom. Men ruthless enough to threaten their baby daughter, Evie. 

This is no burglary gone wrong. 
The intruders know who they’re looking for – a man called Edward Renshaw. 
And they are prepared to kill to get to him. 

When the men leave empty handed, little do Alice and Harry realise that their nightmare is just beginning. Is it a case of mistaken identity? Who is Renshaw? And what is he hiding? 

One thing is clear – they already know too much. 

As Alice and Harry are separated in the run for their lives, there is no time for breathe in their fight to be reunited. And with their attackers closing in, there is only a choice: 

STAY ALIVE. OR DON’T. 

Terrifying, unputdownable and full of twists and turns, this debut thriller will have you on the edge of your seat right to the very last page.

As your writerly career took its routes through various genres and distinctive writing outlets of influence, do you feel Crime is the niche you’ve sought to find all along or is it simply the gateway towards discovering all the stories you’ve yet to create?

Bale responds: It’s true that after meandering through a number of genres including science fiction and horror, crime is where I seem to have set up camp: certainly the vast majority of what I’ve written over the past twenty years has fallen into that category. But there’s never been any deliberate agenda – I simply go with the ideas that pop into my head, and most of those relate to crime fiction. But there are exceptions: I have an unpublished YA novel that has elements of fantasy and science fiction, and I intend to write at least one sequel to that; I’ve also been very keen to write a horror novel for several years, and there’s an idea for one, fully sketched out, that’s nagging away at me at the moment. Read More