Redemption - Now available!!

After solving one of Denver's most disturbing homicides, Detective Jane Perry decides it is time to strike out on her own and establish a name for herself away from spotlight of Police Headquarters.
Against the advice of others, Jane opens a private investigative firm in Denver. Working alone, she is determined to prove her might and beat Headquarters to the punch on high profile cases. But her best- laid plans fail miserably after only five months. "Redemption" begins at this critical juncture, just months after the bittersweet conclusion of "Protector."

Click here to read more!

 

"(Redemption) is possibly the best book I have read in a couple years."
--TCM Reviews

 

"Jane remains a kick butt heroine ...fans will enjoy this powerful suspense thriller..."
--Genre Go Around Reviews

 

Buy the Book: Amazon.com | Barnes & Noble
                          Borders | Books A Million
                          Tattered Cover Bookstore

 

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Are you a fan of Laurel Dewey & Detective Jane Perry?

If so, show your support and join her author page on Facebook!

 

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Free Reads

If you ask any writer what makes a great story, I think many would answer: “A great main character.” Developing that main character, especially in a continuing series, isn’t always easy. But in the case of Detective Jane Perry, she came to me and basically demanded that I learn about her.

Sound strange? A little out there? Kinda “woo-woo?” Maybe so, but it’s true. Her life and personality filtered down to me over a period of years as I drove cross-country on business. I never intended to build a novel around her but after several years of discovering about Jane’s traumatic past, her life as a homicide detective, her family and her daily struggles, again, she convinced me that I should get her out of my head and start writing about her life. Since I’d never written a novel before, the process was new to me. But Jane’s compelling presence drove the story forward and, while it wasn’t always easy, I got to learn even more about Jane Perry. When I finished the last line of Protector, my debut novel featuring Jane, I realized that I’d partnered with quite a headstrong woman. She wasn’t always likeable but she was dependable. She had massive integrity and her word was her bond. And she was as real as any flesh and blood human being.

What I wasn’t prepared for was the massive connection Jane Perry would have with readers who ranged in age from fourteen to ninety. While her impatient, gritty, and often foul-mouthed behavior irritated some people, they also admitted that they couldn’t stop reading. The majority were drawn to Jane’s intelligence, compassion, intuition and brutal honesty, as well as the indelible impression she makes as a survivor.

I started getting emails from hundreds of readers who told me of their close kinship with Jane—how she was “so real” and flawed but how her stories drew them in and kept them up late into the night reading. One reader wrote me and said that she was sure I based Jane on a real cop who worked in Denver Homicide and even telephoned Denver PD asking if there was a Jane Perry working there. What was intriguing was that readers didn’t so much want to be like Jane; rather, they wanted to hang out with her.

So when I was given the opportunity by the website, Daily Lit, to explore her life in a series of serialized, original short stories as well as a blog written by Jane, I jumped at the opportunity. Instead of waiting one year between book releases, I could tap Jane on the shoulder and have her share gripping vignettes from her life and her work. What has been great about writing these pieces is that it’s given me the chance to understand this complicated woman even more. Because of that, I’ve found that as I launch into the fourth book in her series (I’ve just finished the third book, titled Revelations), her words and thoughts easily pour onto the page. Jane Perry and I have become pretty entangled now. In fact, just the other night I had a dream in which the phone rang and my husband answered before handing it to me and saying, “It’s Jane Perry. She wants to talk to you about that last chapter. And she doesn’t sound happy.”

As you delve into Jane Perry’s life over the next five months, I hope you’ll feel the same deep connection that others have felt and that Jane will become as real for you as she has for me.

Click HERE to read the Free Jane Perry short stories.

Direct link to the Jane Perry short stories on Daily Lit:

• “An Unfinished Death”
• “Anonymous”

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Mailbag

Curious about the books? So were many others! Check out the fan letter Mail bag and find out if your questions have been answered!

 

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Cop Talk

Ever wonder what all those codes and numbers mean when you hear cops talk to each other? Well, here's a little insight.

This is not meant to be a thorough or exhaustive list, mind you, as that would fill up an entire book. Consider this list just something to whet your appetite.

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Jane Perry Short Stories:

Click here to find out the details.

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Ten Questions with Laurel Dewey on Redemption

Check out the Q & A session here

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Other interviews and Articles

• Writing Method: Charting Your Novel
• Getting to Know Your Character
• Writing Method: The Power of Dialogue
• Writing Method: Painting a Damaged Characte
• The Fine Art of Ending It All

Read Laurel's article on "Feeling the Fear and Writing the Sequel Anyway"
on Fresh Fiction!

 

Articles:

• The Day Jane Perry Killed Kate Lincoln
• Naming Your Villain—The Writer’s Passive/Aggressive Glee Fest
• Embedding Code in A Story—The Writer’s Wily “Wink-Wink.”
• Happy Birthday to Detective Jane Perry!
• Advice to a 15-year-old Aspiring Writer: You’ve Gotta Have Passion
• SEVEN VALUABLE LESSONS TO LEARN IF YOU’RE A STRUGGLING WRITER
• LEARNING THE C.U.R.V.E. FOR CREATING “DAMAGED” PROTAGONISTS
• Think You Can Write A Novel? You Better Have Drive, Good Coffee and Some Vitamins.

 

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Favorite Quotes:

Readers have asked me about the quotes I use in the front part of the books as well as the quotes that often appear throughout the stories. Many of them I search out for specific story purposes. However, I also keep a collection on hand of eloquent, insightful and sometimes humorous quotations that I love. Here is just a sampling.

“We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow man; and among those fibers, as sympathetic threads, our actions run as causes, and they come back to us as effects.” - Herman Melville

“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom” - Anaïs Nin

"Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage." - Lao Tzu

“Only from the heart can you touch the sky.” - Rumi

“Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the time he will pick himself up and continue on.” - Sir Winston Churchill

“It takes a lot of courage to show your dreams to someone else.” - Erma Bombeck

“Never accept a drink from a urologist.” - Erma Bombeck

“Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died.” - Erma Bombeck

"True love cannot be found where it truly does not exist, Nor can it be hidden where it truly does." - Anonymous

“What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?” - Gandhi

“Our brightest blazes of happiness are commonly kindled by unexpected sparks.”
- Samuel Johnson

“There are only three things which make life worth living: to be writing a tolerably good book, to be in a dinner party of six, and to be traveling south with someone whom your conscience permits you to love.” - Cyril Connolly

“It is only with the heart that one can see rightly, what is essential is invisible to the eye.” - Antoine de Saint-Exubery

“The only difference between a rut and a grave is the depth.” - Unknown

“I told the doctor my brother is crazy. He thinks he's a chicken.' The doctor says, 'Well, why don't you turn him in?' And I said, 'I would, but I need the eggs.’” - Woody Allen

"To love another person is to see the face of God." - Victor Hugo

“Open your hidden eyes and return to the root of the root of yourself.” - Rumi

“When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.” - John Muir

“Life is ten percent what happens to you and ninety percent how you respond to it.”
- Lou Holtz

“A cat will look down to a man. A dog will look up to a man. But a pig will look you straight in the eye and see his equal.” - Winston Churchill

"The most wonderful of all things in life is the discovery of another human being with whom one's relationship has a growing depth, beauty and joy as the years increase. This inner progressiveness of love between two human beings is a most marvelous thing; it cannot be found by looking for it or by passionately wishing for it. It is a sort of divine accident, and the most wonderful of all things in life." - Sir Hugh Walpole

“The sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light of meaning in the darkness of mere being." - Carl Jung

"Always read stuff that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it."
- P. J. O'Rourke

"Let silence take you to the core of life." – Rumi

“Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it." - Andre Gide

“Losing an illusion makes you wiser than finding a truth.” - Ludwig Börne

“Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.” - Henry David Thoreau

“It requires a great deal of faith for a man to be cured by his own placebos.”
- John L. McClenahan

“If you come to a fork in the road, take it.” - Yogi Berra

“If at first you don't succeed then skydiving isn't for you.” - Unknown

“Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.”
- George Bernard Shaw

"The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible." Bertrand Russell

"The universe is full of magical things, patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper."
- Eden Philpotts

“Energy and persistence conquer all things.” - Benjamin Franklin

"Believe nothing,
no matter where you read it
or who has said it,
not even if I have said it,
unless it agrees with
your own reason
and your own common sense." - Buddha

“God and nature do nothing in vain.” - Auctoritates Aristotelis

“The brick walls are not there to keep us out, the brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something,” he said. "Because the brick walls are there to stop the people who don't want it badly enough. They're there to stop the OTHER people."- Randy Pausch

“I read recipes the same way I read science fiction. I get to the end and think, ‘Well, that's not going to happen.’” - Rita Rudner

“A writer needs three things, experience, observation, and imagination, any two of which, at times any one of which, can supply the lack of the others.” - William Faulkner

“Real writers are those who want to write, need to write, have to write.”
- Robert Penn Warren

“Never write about a place until you're away from it, because that gives you perspective.” - Ernest Hemingway

“Experience is a good teacher. But she runs up big bills.” - Minna Antrim

“Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm.” - Unknown

“Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.” - Ambrose Redmoon

“That which is not a necessity is an encumbrance.” - Nomad saying

“Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon and the truth” - Buddha

“If you’re going to tell the truth, have one foot in the stirrup.” - Arabic proverb.

“There has to be evil so that good can prove its purity above it.” - Buddha

“And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.” - T.S. Eliot