The Dale Hunter Thriller Series

What’s next?

I HAVE NEWS!

I’m making progress on my publishing plans for 2024 with BAD BOYS IN BOSTON in the final stages of design for the covers and interiors for print and E-book editions. Here’s a sneak peak at the current cover in process just for loyal readers and followers, but first the back story.

Where did the Dale Hunter Series come from?

I’ve been a storyteller all my life. I just didn’t realize it until I discovered that it was important to my building connections and credibility as a business leader and management consultant. The stories helped to establish common ground around shared experiences and the lessons learned that were worth sharing with business associates, employees, and clients. The best entrepreneurial real-life stories were incorporated into my two business books first published in 2014, The Complete Do-It-Yourself Guide to Business Plans and DON’T DO IT THE HARD WAY.

Then, sitting in a departure lounge in San Diego in November of 2015, I decided that the stories would be more interesting and could be shared with a wider audience of non-business readers, if I added some crime, mystery, and suspense! What a revelation.

So I started to sketch out some stories from my experience in the international computer business of the 1980s with the addition of some fictional characters and a lot more crime and corruption than I had actually experienced myself. I quickly came up with the idea of a thriller series about Dale Hunter, the alias I used as a fake customer doing research into the products and prices of my competitors. Then I arrived at five titles to get me started (which I’ve since learned is also the necessary starting point for other writers like R.L. Stein, the Stephen King of children’s horror stories).

My original five tiles were: NO EASY MONEY – You never win playing by the rules, SIMPLY THE BEST – It may be simple, it’s never easy, MERGER MANIAC – Some offers have to be refused, BAD BOYS IN BOSTON It’s just business, never personal, and CRASH LANDING – Public pressure, private pain.

The first three were published in 2018 and 2019. BAD BOYS IN BOSTON is in production for a spring launch. April 1st has particular appeal to this old fool, but I’ll explain more of it’s significance if finally choose that date. CRASH LANDING, fifth of the original titles is going through final edits and is planned for release in the fall of this year. The sixth novel in the series to be published next year is currently titled, WHATEVER IT TAKES – Trust nobody and will be completed this summer.

BAD BOYS IN BOSTON is a departure from the first three novels in that it jumps forward thirty years from the 1980s to 2019 and Dale Hunter’s crime-fighting buddy, Frank the Fixer is the primary character instead of Dale. I’m told readers love the concept. Frank has always been a more interesting hero than Dale Hunter and we learn more of his tragic family history in Somalia. It’s a different story than I originally had in mind, but the title and sub-title still worked!

This story involves Dale and Frank in the rescue of a niece abducted off the streets of Boston. Dale and Frank follow a treacherous trail into the dangerous and violent international sex trade and illegal online pornography. Along the way, they’re also pulled into responding to violent threats of abuse against women closer to home in Montreal.

And here’s a sneak peak at the cover design I’m considering. I hope you agree it fits into the continuing series with the same look and feel.