Interview & Giveaway: Cover of Darkness by Gregory Delaurentis

Cover of Darkness

Cover of Darkness
Gregory Delaurentis

Genre: Crime Thriller

Date of Publication: March 29, 2013

Number of pages: 200

Available at the following retailers:
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A high profile murder of a Wall Street executive in Westchester pits three people against the criminal underbelly of Manhattan nightlife. The key players are two ex-cops turned private investigators—Kevin Whitehouse, whose sharpest tool is his keen analytical mind, and David Allerton, a former Special Forces operative—and Margaret Alexander, Kevin’s lover. In their search for a killer, they are forced to travel to the edge of sanity and morality, while stumbling onto their own confusing secrets as well. The Cover of Darkness is a gritty noir saga that untangles a web of deceit in the course of tracking down a brutal murderer.

Excerpt: 

David first opened the door to a closet on the left, searching it with the gun muzzle, before approaching the door at the end of the hall and kicking it open. An angry, naked man stood on the other side, his anger changing to fear in seconds once he beheld the gun pointing in his direction.

“Get back into bed,” David ordered.

The pale-bodied man responded as he staggered backward. The foot of the bed struck the back of his knees, sending him seated on the mattress. The woman on the bed had by this time covered herself with the sheets, and curled her legs up.

While Kevin stood nervously in the doorway, David searched the room and the closets, the muzzle of the shotgun again serving as a probe, but found no one.

“What the…?” Chase asked David.

After searching through the room, David tossed the shotgun to Kevin.

Suddenly, Chase went white-hot heat, crawling backward into the arms of his woman in sheer panic screaming, “What do you want?!”

“I want information,” David demanded, going to the foot of the bed, standing before them with Kevin directly behind him. “I want to know who whacked Osterman.”

“How am I to know?!” Chase shouted back. His hair was a wild tangle, his eyes wide as saucers with fright.

“Don’t yell at me,” David said calmly. “I want answers. I’m not interested in killing you.”

“You bust into my crib and start throwing guns around. You’re crazy, man, what do you think I’m thinking?”

“You were moving dope for Osterman,” David persisted, ignoring Chase’s remarks.

“Osterman! He jerked me.”

“With the Colombians.”

“Damn right.”

“And you didn’t like that.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“So, you had one of your soul brothers do him in.”

“Oh hell, no. My people don’t kill. We don’t mess with weapons like you do.”

“And the reason for that?”

“More jail time . . . What are you? A cop?”

“Don’t worry about what I am,” David growled back. “You are moving weight. I want to know what happened after Osterman jerked you.”

“He jerked me. That’s all.”

“That’s all? You didn’t go to the Colombians? Liar!”

“Yes, yes, I did that!” Chase corrected. “I went to the Colombians as soon as I knew he jerked me. I begged them to give me another chance. They said they would, if I replaced their one hundred kilos. One hundred kilos! How do I do that?”

“Put bullets into Osterman for revenge.”

“How is that going to get me my one hundred kilos?”

“Let me explain it to you, genius. The Colombians trust Osterman enough to give him a heavy shipment. You find it, whack him, and take his shipment back to the Colombians. Paid in full.” Chase thought that over for a second or two. “But that’s not what happened.”

“Convince me otherwise.”

The word “Freeze!” were suddenly heard from the doorway. David frowned as he glanced over his shoulder to see a scruffy looking black male, armed with his own shotgun.

Trailer: 

Interview: 
1. Do you ever wish you were someone else? Who?

At one time, after reading Jaws I wished I was Sheriff Brody in the book, living in a paradisiac portion of Amityville Long Island, near a beautiful beach, with a lovely wife and children. If I was him I would go to work and greet everyone in the streets by name and have a comfortable rapport with all of my not so bright deputies. I wondered what it would be like to live in a town like that. I finished the book, my heart beating rapidly, eyes darting from page to page, and at that moment I knew who I really wanted to be: Peter Benchley, the writer of the tome. It was then that I wanted to become a writer.

2. What did you do on your last birthday?

I’m a very private person because I suffer from an illness called Social Anxiety. I like to be out of the social scheme of things so I seldom go out to clubs or restaurants, even though I desire to do so greatly. My best friend in the world finally pried me out of my shell, or better yet, my apartment and took me to play pool and to a nice restaurant. Even though I was on a number of anxiety pills I did enjoy myself, drinking in my surroundings just like a man lost in a desert would drink water. Its times like these that I draw fodder for my stories, watching individuals in restaurants and clubs and writing backstories about them.

3. Do you have any tattoos? Where? When did you get it/them? Where are they on your body?

Actually, I do not have any tattoos on my body. I just could never decide where to put one and what type it would be. That was until I bought a Playstation 2 years ago. At the time I purchased a game called ‘Hitman’. What an incredible game. You became a hitman with no name. He was known as a number, Number 42. It was a POV shooter game, so you spent the entire experience behind the hitman who was completely bald and tattooed behind his head. Where the back of his neck met his skull was a bar code. I was immediately captivated by this tattoo and asked around for my more geeky friends to generate the code that was my first name so that I could have it tattooed behind my neck, but I and we never got around to it.

4. What are you working on right now?

The sixth book in the Darkness saga called ERRORS OF DARKNESS. I am so captivated by the characters in these books that I can’t seem to stop delving into their twisted lives. I’m also building a complete world around the NYPD and the NYC justice system, even though they are largely constructs and have no connection to the real NYPD at all.

5. What do you think you’re really good at?

Writing. I’ve been writing since I was a child. I wrote my first book in grade school. I learned how to tell stories by being completely absorbed by comic books as soon as I could learn how to read. I gobbled down books and magazines all of my life, drew up backstories on strangers that I would meet, acted like characters that I was writing about, I did it all. But I love how words work in sentences, flow to make images, color a room, or emit an odor. Words are very powerful, and I respect them, and because of this respect I’ve become quite adept at manipulating them. It’s this manipulation that makes me feel that I’m pretty good at writing. It’s either that or become a network technician.

Giveaway: 

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Author Bio:

Gregory Delaurentis spent his adult life roaming from job to job, working for Lockheed in California, various law firms in New York, and financial firms on Wall Street. Throughout this period of time, he was writing—unceasingly—finally producing a large body of work, albeit unrecognized and unpublished . . . until now. Cover of Darkness is the first in a series of upcoming books that include Edge of Darkness, Pale of Darkness and Cries of Darkness. These novels follow the lives of three individuals who do battle bringing criminals to justice, while they struggle to understand the complex relationships that exist among themselves. This intriguing trio has absorbed the attention of Mr. Delaurentis for the past year and a half, so much so he decided to self-publish their stories to bring them to a wider audience. [AUTHOR’S DISCLAIMER: These are works of fiction. Name, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.]

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