By Evelyn De Morgan )1898) |
Jeff—Saturday
I’m in San Francisco at the moment, less than a week into my
book tour for The Mykonos Mob, and I
planned in this week’s post on sharing photos of my past weekend at Left Coast
Crime and The City by the Bay, but Thursday morning something so uncanny
occurred that I knew I just had to share the experience. Some might take it as
a continuation of last week’s BSP about my new book, but it honestly is not
meant as such. It’s more about passing along some serious goose bumps.
Here’s the background leading up to what happened on
Thursday morning.
The subject of my new book is rather self-evident from
the title, and it opens with the assassination of a mobster who controls the protection
rackets on Mykonos through his security businesses there tying him into the
island’s highly lucrative nightclub and drug trade. I refer to that seamy side of life in
paradise as the World of the Night. Without giving away any spoilers, the hit
occurs as the victim gets into his Mercedes, and the assassin turns out to be a
Bulgarian.
I wrote that over a year ago, and submitted the final
manuscript to my publisher last summer.
Two mornings ago I read an
article appearing in The National Herald,
America’s largest circulation Greek-American newspaper, in which it reports on
developments in an event that occurred in Greece on October 31, 2018—long after
I’d written and submitted the finished version of my book to my publisher.
Here’s that article, with the most goose bump raising
similarities to my work highlighted in bold,
and editorial comments in italics.
***
ATHENS – Greek police said a 30-year-old
Bulgarian was detained for
questioning in the Oct. 31, 2018 murder of 46-year-old Greek-Australian
businessman Yiannis Makris, gunned down outside his home in the suburb of
Voula.
Police also said they believe the
man, whose name was not released in line with Greek privacy laws that don’t
identify suspects unless they are politicians or celebrities, pulled the
trigger, said Katherimerini [a Greek
newspaper], which had published exclusive footage of the attack from CCTV
cameras outside the home of Makris, who
ran a security business but
didn’t have a bodyguard.
The shooting happened just
after Makris left his home and climbed into his Mercedes Smart car, the killer running up and firing through the
driver’s window….
Australian investigators had
been looking into Makris who was linked to a case in that country over the trafficking of $13 million worth of
drugs and the attempted murder of an underworld
crime boss in Sydney, media reports had said.
[NB. Up to this point the parallels between that event and my fictional
story are uncanny, but here comes the part that literally blew me away]
Makris is said to have owned a company offering security services
… and to have recently invested heavily
in nightclubs on the island of Mykonos where wealthy customers are routinely
gouged and charged hundreds or thousands of euros for champagne and other
luxury menu offerings, the restaurants often evading taxes but allowed to
operate.
It was the first major
outbreak of violence in three years in the country’s underworld, which the Greeks
call the World of the Night the
paper said, with criminal gangs able to use the country’s coastline to bring in
drugs without detection.
***
My editor, Barbara Peters, has long called me Cassandra, and
I’ve always laughed it off. Perhaps it’s
time to take a more serious look at how she ended up.
By Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein (1806) |
—Jeff
My Upcoming Book Tour Events
Saturday, April 6, 3:00 PM
San Francisco, CA
BOOK PASSAGE (Ferry Building-Embarcadero)
Author Speaking and Signing
Sunday, April 7, 3:00 PM
Orange, CA
BOOK CARNIVAL
Author Speaking and Signing
Wednesday, April 10, 7 PM
Pasadena, CA
VROMAN’S (East Colorado)
Author Speaking and Signing
Friday, April 12, 7 PM
Dallas, TX
Interabang (Preston Oaks)
Author Speaking and Signing
Monday, April 15, 2:00 PM
Fountain Hills, AZ
Fountain Hills
Community Center
Fountain Hills
Friends of the Library Author Event
Tuesday, April 16, 7:00 PM
Scottsdale, AZ
POISONED PEN BOOKSTORE
Author Speaking and Signing
Wednesday, April 24, 6:30 PM
Houston, TX
MURDER BY THE BOOK
Author Speaking and Signing
Friday, April 26, 7:00 PM
Denver, CO
TATTERED COVER (East Colfax)
Author Speaking and Signing
Monday, April 29, 7:00 PM
Pittsburgh, PA
MYSTERY LOVERS BOOKSHOP
Author Speaking and Signing
Wednesday, May 1, 6:30 PM
New York, NY
MYSTERIOUS BOOKSHOP
Author Speaking and Signing
Thursday, May 2, 7:00 PM
Naperville, IL
ANDERSON’S BOOKSHOP
Author Speaking and Signing
Friday, May 3, 7:00 PM
Chicago, IL (Forest Park)
CENTURIES & SLEUTHS BOOKSTORE
Author Speaking and Signing
Saturday, May 4, 2 PM
Milwaukee, WI
BOSWELL BOOK COMPANY
Author Speaking and Signing
Thursday May 9, 5:00 PM
BRISTOL, UK
CRIMEFEST—Mercure Bristol Grand Hotel
Panelist on “Nobody Would Believe it if You
Wrote it: Fake News, Post-Truth and Changing Words,” with Fiona Erskine,
William Shaw, Gilly Macmillan, moderated by Paul E. Hardisty
Friday, May 10, 5:10 PM
BRISTOL, UK
CRIMEFEST—Mercure Bristol Grand Hotel
Panelist on “Sunshine Noir,” with Paul Hardisty, Barbara
Nadel, Robert Wilson, moderated by Michael Stanley
October 31-November 3
DALLAS, TX
BOUCHERCON 2019---Hyatt Regency Dallas
Panel Schedule Yet to be Announced
So, I guess your next book will be credited as being written by Cass Siger.
ReplyDeleteSheesh. Goosebumps, indeed!
Luckily--or so I hope--you don't have the same gift of prophecy, EvKa.
DeleteYes, it's weird how often you think up an unlikely but still vaguely plausible plot line...only to have it all come true a little while later. To the point where I was begged to write a book about a lottery winner. Sadly, it didn't rub off in real life! Good luck with the book tour, Jeff. Hope it's all going well.
ReplyDeleteIt sure is weird when it happens. Thanks, all's going well (so far) Zoë, though I'm never quite sure where I am at any given moment. Currently it's Laguna Beach...or so I think.
DeleteWhat Zoe said! Goosebumps seem to come with the territory of fiction. It happens to historical novelists too. Not by reading the newspaper, but by finding in a newly discovered source that something you made up actually happened. So unexpected a coincidence. A somewhat scary pleasure,
ReplyDeleteFor historical novelists that must be a really weird moment, what with history being so often fixed in our minds as "resolved."
ReplyDelete