HIDDEN

Hi

I haven't posted for some time. I've been busy writing and editing my latest thriller HIDDEN.

I had hoped to finish it months ago but COVID 19 came along and everything rapidly changed. We are all dealing with unexpected events, and writers are no different. I sit at my laptop writing or thinking about my latest scene but when these world wide events happen it's harder to focus. 

HIDDEN is an Amanda Blake thriller and the third book in the series.

Amanda has grown and become stronger with each book in the series. She will never forget Scott but she knows she has to move on, though it's hard. Will Nat. help her forget her past love? You will need to read the book to find out.

Will Amanda survive these latest challenges? She's been through a lot and I get upset when she is involved in some dangerous situations. But Amanda dictates what she wants to do and I can only tell her story. 
Sometimes, Amanda thinks she will never be whole again after being a victim at the hands of a predator who had her naked and lying tied up on a table. Will she get her hands on the video from this event and destroy it?

What's Hidden about? 

Amanda’s uncle believes the voice of God speaks through him. 

He is one of the Chosen as are his devotees who live on a compound in the wilds of Montana.

When a child of the Holy Tribe of God goes missing, Amanda’s desperate to search for the boy, but her uncle isn’t concerned and refuses. Soon the child’s mother goes missing too. Amanda must use all her resources to find and rescue the boy and his mother from sinister forces while putting her own life in mortal danger.

This is just the tip of the iceberg and there is so much more to this story.

Look out for HIDDEN in August at your favorite retailer.

AN AMANDA BLAKE THRILLER BOOK 3

Hidden

An Amanda Blake Thriller 

Book 3

I'm nearing the end of my journey writing this thriller. I had hoped to have it finished by now but I went overseas for 6 weeks to Europe earlier this year, and it took longer than I planned to get back into the story. 

I have a soft spot for Amanda. I've been inside her head for three books now and she's a little impulsive, strong-willed and easily taken in by a kind word as she grew up with parents that were cold and unfeeling.

I read a lot and some of it sticks. I'd been reading an article in a newspaper about a cult and what awful things were done to the members. I've incorporated this in the story.

Hidden is going to launch early next year if all goes to plan.

Featured Author

Hi

I'm excited. 

I've just been notified that Sleep then my Princess is a featured book on Book Hippo. Thanks Book Hippo for this. It's $0.99 for a short time only.

http://bookhippo.uk/?asin=B016G5T7AG

The Deadly Caress is free this month.

Hi

I've made the Deadly Caress free for this month as a thank you to all of my fans who have purchased Sleep then my Princess or want to have a taste of one of my thrillers before they purchase Sleep then.

Happy reading. Please let me know what you think?

I always take note of my readers comments.

https://www.instafreebie.com/free/SfOdw


O.

😀

Guns and Roses or The Father

Hi

I've been working slower than normal on my latest thriller. But it's going to worth it. I think it will be the best thriller I've written so far. 

In the mornings I go for a long walk and think about what I'm going to write that day. But I don't get to it till I've dealt with emails, any phone calls and anything else that crops up.

My latest thriller, which I had been plotting for a while, was inspired by a recent article in a newspaper about Michael Franzese's life. An interesting man. What do you think?

New youtube video for Sleep then my Princess

I've been a bit slow notifying my followers of my new video on youtube. So here it is.

Sleep then My Princess video


Also, Sleep then my Princess has been in the top 20 on Amazon Kindle eBooks > Mystery, Thriller & Suspense > Thrillers > Medical from October 30 to December 19. Thank you for your support everyone.

O.N. Stefan.

Sleep then My Princess - Prologue

Hi Folks

I hope you enjoy the Prologue for Sleep then My Princess. I'll be posting the first chapter shortly.

PROLOGUE 

This was his night. He wouldn’t allow anything to mar what he was about to set in motion.

He killed the engine and waited inside his van as darkness fell. He saw a light come on in an upstairs window of the contemporary clapboard house across the road. Reaching for the bottle on the seat beside him, he gulped a mouthful of water while continuing to watch the house.

When the light went off, he gloved up and climbed out of the van onto the quiet residential Santa Barbara Street where the sultry sea breeze caressed his face and set the palm fronds rustling. Their menacing shadows swooped and retreated on the lamp-lit sidewalk. It was what he would call an ideal night for the perfect crime if ever there were one. He paused to wipe the beads of sweat from his forehead with a tissue and stuffed it in his pocket. Cautiously, he skirted the large oak tree beside the driveway.

The soft, flickering glow from a television seeped from under the curtains at the window as he crept across the lawn heading to the garage. Small stones scattered when he stumbled on the uneven pathway. Jesus, he cursed silently as he hesitated.

Thankfully, no dog barked. He pulled out a penlight, shone its beam low, until he reached the back entrance of the garage.

Once inside, hands trembling with adrenaline, he dropped the penlight. It clattered to the floor and went off. Cursing to himself, he scrambled around in the dark until his fingers closed around it.

Opening the Ford, he leaned under the steering wheel, felt for the hood release and pulled it. Holding the penlight in his mouth, he lifted the hood and found the hydraulic brake fluid line. He pulled his wrench from his pocket, undid the nut holding line and eased it off with urgent fingers. Finally, he gently closed the hood.

Back in his van, he tried to still his trembling hands and ignore the nervous sweat soaking his shirt. He itched to rip it off. 

 

About an hour later, the external house lights went on, and a tall, slim man and a boy carrying a stuffed animal appeared. The child could only have been his son.

The man opened the garage door and secured the child into the Ford, went around and climbed in. The man backed the vehicle onto the street and drove away.

He tailed the man and the child, keeping several car lengths away so as not to arouse suspicion, his heart thumping with anticipation.

The Ford picked up speed down the hill, took the first curve too fast and the next one even faster. It careened on two wheels at the next curve and flew over the embankment, tumbling end over end, tearing bushes and bouncing off boulders. Over and over the Ford tumbled with bits of vehicle tearing away until it halted in the valley, wheels spinning. Breathing hard with pent up pleasure, he stopped to see if the man or his son climbed from the battered vehicle.

 

When the Ford erupted into flames, he punched the air as the feeling of absolute power surged through him.

Free with KU. Sleep then My Princess is available for pre-order @ 99cents till launch on 30 October.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B016G5T7AG
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B016G5T7AG
http://www.amazon.com.au/gp/product/B016G5T7AG
http://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B016G5T7AG

 

 

A journey of 10000 steps is over.

I can breathe again. 

I can sleep again.

I hope you enjoy my latest thriller. Authors rely on reviews. Please leave a review if you can. Thanks.

Sleep then My Princess is available on PRE-RELEASE @ $0.99


Link: Sleep then My Princess AMAZON KINDLE.

Sleep then My Princess

Journal Entry from Amanda Blake second installment. (The Deadly Caress)

The Deadly Caress O. N. Stefan.

I found my mother dead today. I still can't believe it. I don't want to believe it. 

Jean, my mother, was lying so still with her eyes staring at nothing. It was awful.

A toothbrush lay beside her. I stared hard at her outstretched fingers, wanting them to curl around the handle, to show some small sign of life.

Finally, I stared at the marble vanity cluttered with the mundane necessities of the living—a half-drunk glass of water, an open bottle of mouthwash, toothpaste, an open bottle of pills, perfume, lipstick and a compact.

I must have fainted because the next thing I remember was Brian, Dorian and Estella standing round me with worried looks on their faces. 

I had hoped to spend time getting to know my mother, but she's been taken from me. And it's tearing me apart. 

www.getBook.at/B00I0DI0MY

Prescription for murder

In the current thriller (Sleep then my Princess) which I'm editing, I had to find a way to murder someone without doctor's and pathologists becoming suspicious. My background is pharmacy and I love to research. I looked in to a combination of medications for a way that would work for this scenario. I came up with something that I knew could happen in real life. Please don't do it to your relatives.

Sleep then my Princess will be out in mid 2015.

Subscribe to my blog or my website www.onstefan.weebly.com to find out how my villain did this.

I'll be posting exerts here when Sleep then my Princess is almost ready to be published.

Have an interesting and eventful day.

O.

Fruit chain cholla cactus from the Arizona Desert.

Some of these hook spikes anchor themselves in the villains boot after he covers the body of the child he's just murdered with branches. He goes crazy trying to dislodge them.

Sleep then my Princess. Release date will be July 2015

It's been along journey. I didn't expect that this book would take so much time. I'd written it a few years ago. So it should have been easy to bring it up to speed. Wrong.

I'd had this story assessed and the assessor suggested I take out a secondary plot as it was overshadowing the main plot. So I listened to her and removed a third of the story. Now I had gaping holes and I edited the first third pretty well but the rest of the manuscript was very raw. I had left it like that as I'd lost interest in fixing it up by then. This story gathered "dust" until I pulled it up on my screen mid last year.

Fast forward to today. I'm now ready to send the manuscript off to an editor. I have a cover in mind, finally, and will use the cover designer I previously used on the Deadly Caress to make the cover as eye catching as it can be and to convey what the reader can expect from the story inside.

What's next. I'm planning to change pace and go back to the fantasy trilogy, of which I've written two books and need to at the very least outline the third before I can go back and start polishing the first in the series.

Sleep then my Princess - due for release mid 2015

Hi All
I'm happy to say that The Deadly Caress is selling reasonably well. I'm pleased so many people are finding my book entertaining. Thank you to those that have left great reviews.

My next thriller 'Sleep then my Princess' is due for release in about two months. I'm nearly finished the last round of edits. My writing buddy Victoria Chie was kind enough to go through the story with a red pen and outlined many flaws which I have now corrected. Hopefully, it's a coherent story now. If not, then it's all my fault.

I'll shortly send the manuscript off to an editor. Then it's back to me for another round of edits till I feel happy with it. I'm waiting for my cover designer to get back from holidays so he can create a great cover. This book has taken a lot longer to complete than I anticipated. Nevertheless, I've enjoyed the process. I ask myself what else would I be doing with my time? Shopping, enjoying the garden and more. Let's not go there.

All the best.
O.

I've decided to post chapters of The Deadly Caress on Wattpad. Please read, enjoy and share with friends.

http://www.wattpad.com/library/OlgaOlha

Thanks for dropping by.

O.

2014 in Review

2014 went too fast for me. I published the Deadly Caress early in 2014. Being a first time author was a steep learning curve for me. Marketing is only one aspect of writing I'm learning as I go. 

There are so many people I want to thank that helped me put that book onto Kindle. The first one is Victoria Chie, Max, Chris and Nicole and all my friends who helped with marketing.

I have to thank my readers for their reviews and encouragement. 

The Deadly Caress wasn't an easy book to write and to hear that it was an easy read was heartening for me. It took many revisions to get it that way. Writing a book isn't a singular task. It takes a team of support people to assist along the way from editors, proofreaders and cover designers.

I plan to release my next thriller early 2015. I've been bogged down with scientific research on this one but loving it all the same.

On the reading front, I've manage to churn through many books this year. Some were amazing tomes and others, not so.

One of note is: Bloodgifted 
Bloodgifted


Another is: 

Agency Rules - Never an Easy Day at the Office

Agency Rules

I hope you have a happy and prosperous 2015.

A new review with four stars...yipee.

This made my day. Posted on Amazon Kindle by a top 500 reviewer. Wow.

The Deadly Caress is the first novel by Australian author, O.N.Stefan. When celebrated Australian nature photographer, Amanda Blake travels to California to meet Jean Campbell, the birth mother she has only just learned of, she is apprehensive but hopeful. She wants to find out why Jean, widow of Campbell- Beare Pharmaceuticals founder, Murray Campbell, gave her up for adoption, and she hopes she will finally form a real mother-daughter relationship. What she is certainly not expecting is a twin brother and a step-brother. Her twin, Brian, seems a stereotypical Aussie male: friendly, laconic and rather casual. Her step-brother, Dorian, is prickly and antagonistic. But before she has more than a few hours to connect with the real mother, Jean is found dead in her ensuite bathroom. The police suspect murder and the Campbell family lawyer, Lionel Cohen reveals that Jean was preparing a new will that left the bulk of the estate to her daughter. Amanda finds herself in a houseful of strangers, all of whom seem to have their own agenda, and is unsure who she can trust. A clue that the police seem uninterested in following up sends Amanda back to Australia to see if she can find her mother’s killer. But this is a move that puts her in more danger than she ever imagined. Stefan has crafted a murder mystery that is fast-paced, full of suspense and action-packed. The plot has quite a few twists and turns and none of the characters is what they first seem to be. Amanda starts off a bit precious, but eventually finds her metal. Everyone, it seems, even the staff and the lawyer, might have a motive for murder. Stefan manages to include plenty of excitement: assaults and murders, as well as kidnapping, shootings, car chases, a suicide and a bomb scare, with organised crime bosses, a stolen drug formula, adultery and quite a lot of money in the background. The dialogue is sharp and realistic and readers familiar with the Australian location will appreciate the chase down the mountain. It will be interesting to see what Stefan produces next. A gripping read.

The Deadly Caress is #free in Amazon Kindle Unlimited.
http://getBook.at/B00I0DI0MY

Seventh five star review on Amazon Kindle

Hi

My thriller is again on sale. It's only $0.99 in the US, UK and Australia. A coffee costs more.Get it on sale while you can.

My seventh five review is a short one but I'm happy nonetheless.

"Quick paced novel. Very interesting, exciting and a page turner. Some very surprising twists and turns. If I could have I would have read it in one go."

I was asked why all my reviews are five stars? I said I was surprised but thrilled that my readers liked my book so much.

ON SALE

Hi

Grab a bargain!

My book is on sale for $0.99 in the US from 5th March until 9th March. UK 6th April until 12th April. Please grab a bargain and enjoy the book. Happy reading.

Here's the link:
The Deadly Caress

The Deadly Caress is now published on kindle

The Deadly Caress is now published on kindle. Yipee.

It was quite a journey. One of the editors had a family emergency and was delayed with getting the manuscript back to me.

I'm pleased with the result after days of staying up half the night to get the formatting for kindle done. I didn't get the story uploaded until 23rd January.

Someone asked me why I wrote this story. I think it's what captured my attention at one time from a newspaper article and I started to get the what if's going. What if a person was to discover that the woman she though was her mother wasn't. How would she feel? What if this mother was murdered? What would this person do?

Then there's a scary scene with Amanda driving down a mountainside and that comes from my memory banks. I grew up across the road from a very bad corner and every weekend there would be at least one horrific accident. Some of these were youths speeding and chasing each other. Drunks and careless or not drivers who had miscalculated the sharp corner and careered into an oncoming car or the nearby light post. My dad would run over to see if an ambulance needed to be called as we were the only family in the street to have a phone. He'd take blankets over if the person/people was badly injured and I would help him. My sister and my mother would be too upset to be of help and didn't go.

Once a car overtook another and miscalculated. He caught the side of the vehicle and the mud guard was peeled away like a giant orange peel.

I still remember the time when at dusk a drunk stumbled onto the street and a car, unable to stop in time, slammed into him. He flew up onto the bonnet like a rag doll and fell. He lay unmoving and we though him dead. The driver was understandably distressed. The ambulance men came and began to remove something from his mouth. I though it might be teeth but it was only chips that he'd been eating when hit and the blood was because he'd bitten his lips. Then he mumbled something and saw that the police had now arrived and got up to go home. Amazingly, he only had minor injuries.

Here's the link to my book:


http://a-fwd.com/s=TheDeadlyCaress&asin-com=B00I0DI0MY

Happy reading. O