This is a book in which two women, one forensic specialist (retired to consulting) and one police artist/bartender dyke (who has a certain psychic power--she can feel the deaths of victims) end up pretending to be a lesbian couple to get onto an island off the coast of Cancun where they are filming a reality show called CHICKEN OUT.
Maggie, the "squint" is more interested in solving past murders and using psychic energy equipment than in winning the million in cash, while Vivian (the artist) just wants the hell out of this madhouse because everywhere she steps, she encounters deaths both old and new.
The contestants are a quirky crew of New Age witches, Pornographers, body-builders and bimbos, and somewhere among them is a murderer who apparently wants to repeat the island's bloody history of killing everyone else and then committing suicide...
Yeah, we had fun writing this one. BAD LANDS will probably be making its hardcover debut in late 2006 or early 2007.
Meanwhile, my own fantasy novel DRAGON'S TONGUE is hurling towards its publication in March or April of 2006, while my novel THE HOUNDS OF ARDAGH is scheduled to appear in October 2006.
Currently, my vampires in Atlanta story "Like the Night" is available in the September 2005 print edition of Aoife's Kiss (available from Sam's Dot Publishing (http://www.genremall.com/anthologies.htm), and I just sold a humorous fantasy story of kitchen wenches, wizards and potatoes titled "The Eyes Have It" to FARTHING magazine for a future issue.
And I am in the process of completing a couple of novellas as I have been asked to provide several for various small press chapbook and ebook publishers.
Finally, my novel CHRONICLES OF THE LAST WAR finished tied for 12th in the PREDATORS & EDITORS reader poll. This is a novel that is slowly gaining steam because as one reviewer put it,
"Even though 2005 is still young, I can guarantee that this book will be on my Top Five Books List at the end of the year. It also got me thinking: what made this book so memorable?
Fantasy World Building 101.
Most often, you won't find the class in your local college (not even the community college), but Laura must've picked up the credits somewhere."
I can live with those kinds of compliments.
Laura J. Underwood