TBR: Welcome to TBR, Zee Monodee. Will
you share a little bit about yourself?
Zee: Hi! Pleasure to be here today. :)
A
little about me – I think neurotic undomestic goddess would cover it. I’m a
spiel of contradictions, like, I hate to cook but I’m addicted to cooking shows
and cookbooks. I’m lazy, yet I cannot remain idle for more than a couple of
minutes. My husband drives me bonkers half the time yet I cannot conceive of
life without him. So, lol, I would qualify, I think, as an over-the-top
character, which suits me fine as long as I never get labeled
Too-stupid-to-live.
TBR: Tell us about Before The
Morning (Corpus Brides: Book Two) and where it's available.
Zee: Before The Morning is Book 2 in my Corpus Brides series. The Corpus is a fictional clandestine agency
that I came up with for the purposes of this romantic suspense/espionage
series. Set as #2 in this 3-book lineup, it also happens to be prequel to Book
1, going deeper into the workings of this agency made up of spies and assassins
who work as a stealthy left hand to bring about world peace and conflict
resolution.
Each
book in this series, on the backdrop of a mutinous plot inside the Corpus, focuses on one female agent, her
journey inside the agency, the part she plays in this uprising, and ultimately,
the love story that touches her life when she meets the man who will, more
often than not, represent an impossible wish – face it, spies and assassins
aren’t exactly cut-out to settle down and have a blissful domestic future.
The
agent whose story is told in Before The
Morning is Rayne Cheltham. Rayne works inside the Corpus as Kali, the most lethal of all their assassins, a master
manipulator and a woman sent on the direst of missions to get the job – usually
a kill – done. Rayne, however, hides a secret side of her. She’s always loved
her childhood best friend and neighbor, Ash Gilfoy, and only became an assassin
when he vowed he would never marry. Seventeen years later, their paths cross
again... except that Rayne aka Kali is undercover, and Ash believes her to be
someone else. Faced with the man she never stopped loving, Rayne knows she can
never go back to being a remorseless killer, so she bows out of the agency and
even marries Ash. But she leaves a lot untold, like the fact that she worked as
an assassin, that she is the one Ash helped that fateful day when they met
again. Forced to make her marriage work amid all the secrets she is hiding,
Rayne faces a new danger when a faction inside the Corpus target her and do everything in their power to make her come
back and work for their nefarious purposes.
TBR: Please tantalize us with a
story blurb or excerpt.
Zee: Here’s an excerpt, showing you Rayne as Kali,
her agency deadly persona, on that mission when she meets Ash again.
From the front-facing window on the
second floor of the Shepherd's Close freehold, Corpus secret agent Rayne Cheltham watched the ambulance pull away
from the curb.
Shivers crept up her arms, and she
hugged herself tight to ward them off.
Get a grip!
She was a professional on an assignment,
an elite, trained operative from a clandestine agency that handled operations
for governments and international forces as a stealthy left hand. Her agency
entrusted her with the most important missions—nothing should faze her.
Before today, she would've said that
nothing could affect her when she had her eyes on a goal.
But she wasn't sure anymore. She'd never
had her past collide with her present like a few moments ago, in the form of
her childhood best friend.
Ashford Gilfoy, better known as Ash. The
boy who had been there to catch her when, at six, she had slipped while
climbing the chestnut tree that sat right on the border between their two
houses in Hastings, two days after her family moved there from Salisbury. The boy
who had taught her how to ride a bicycle without the training wheels on the
long and winding, gravel-covered lane leading to her parents' mansion. The
teenager who had smashed the nose of the first lad who had broken her heart, at
thirteen, during recess in the schoolyard. The young man she had left seventeen
years ago on a platform at London Waterloo, on the day she bid her old life
goodbye.
For the first time since that day, she
was back on British soil, and kismet decided Ash should cross her path.
Why then, of all times? She was a hair's
breadth away from closing the contract on this mission. Seven months of
intensive infiltration work and she was ready to achieve her aim—neutralize
Nikolai Grigorievskiy's criminal operations before she took out the man. The Corpus always sent her for the kill, but
the trick was that she had to make her target's death appear self-inflicted, at
the bare minimum, or an accident, in the direst of cases. Measles, as such
operations were known in their clandestine world—a planned assassination that didn't
leave any indication of the cause of death. She would then have to sanitize
everything—leave no evidence, no witness, nothing that could lead back to her.
Unlike her other agency counterparts, she wasn't an out-and-out black ops
assassin, but a different level of highly implicated agent provocateur.
In other words, a consummate actress who
got to her ends by manipulating people and circumstances. All those years of
drama school, at her mother’s insistence when, obviously, she'd be too tall to
become a ballerina, came in handy. In fact, her portrayal of Lady Macbeth in
the drama school's end of year play had caught the eye of the people who had
recruited her into the Corpus.
Seventeen years into the agency, fifteen of them as Kali, her operative name, a
sociopath with no apparent conscience who followed her orders with diligence.
Never had any one of her targets come close to figuring she was an undercover
agent. Her track record was flawless—each assignment undertaken with one hundred
percent success rate and a marginal body count.
Until today, when she'd almost gotten
burned.
Ash had recognized her down there. For a
second, she'd thought her cover was blown. Then, she'd taken a deep breath and
forced herself to remain in character. Never panic, always stay in control,
breathe and gather your wits—the first lesson drilled inside the mind of any
secret agent. Pulling on a blank face was one of her fortes, and Ash had bought
the act. He thought she was Irina, clueless twenty-year-old from the dirt-poor
suburbs of Moscow who didn't speak any other language but Russian.
She'd had a few close encounters in the
past, but never like that. Rayne and Kali had two separate, compartmentalized
lives that ran parallel. The two should never have touched, because that would
end up making a mess of her. She could keep each persona separate, as long as
she could push Rayne to some dark corner of her mind. Her job taxed her, and
she walked the tight line of paranoia every single second while undercover.
But if Rayne came to the front during a
mission . . . .
Damn it, she wasn't a rookie agent on
her first mission. Cherries, as the CIA called them. Hell, even during her
first undercover operation, she'd had no qualms and no trouble achieving her
aim.
Why today, when everything was smooth
sailing toward a much-desired goal?
She closed her eyes and rested her
forehead against the windowpane. The glass was warm against her clammy skin.
She was sweating?
That will not do. I
have to take control again.
She had to forget about Ash, about
Rayne, and focus on being Irina, the one who would bring down a notorious
criminal. Her agency and the whole world counted on her to take out the piece
of scum. She was their last hope, sent in as the trump card after good cops got
killed when trying to bring Nikolai to justice.
Someone knocked on the door, and she
pulled away from the window. Damn it, she still had a job to do.
Willing confidence to steel her spine on
a deep breath, she turned around. She blinked a few times, called forth tears.
She was supposed to be a young wife who'd just been hit by her husband, a man
she'd left downstairs at the party with a leggy blonde draped all over his
side.
The moisture trickled onto her cheek,
and she swiped her eyes to smear the kohl and mascara.
There—she should present the desired
picture of despair.
"Da?" she answered as she stepped toward the door.
The panel opened quietly. "Zdrastuyte, Gaspazha Grigorievskaya."
Hello, Mrs. Grigorievskaya. Such formality.
Only one man addressed her with such deference and respect—Boris Petrov,
Nikolai's right-hand man.
"Zdrastuyte, Boris Ivanovich." She replied him with the same
formal greeting, using his patronymic name to further show her respect, as was
customary in the Russian culture.
Boris was the least disposable target in
the whole operation—the keystone. She had to bring him down, or at least create
a rift between the two men. Everything would crumble afterward. Nikolai
wouldn't have his main pillar of support, and would thus crash down through the
pyramidal structure of his operations.
"Are you okay?" he asked as he
stepped into the room and closed the door behind him.
She shrugged, forced a small, tremulous
smile. Russian wives, she'd learned, tolerated a lot of their husbands'
outbursts. "It's nothing."
"You shouldn't listen to what
Mikhail said. He is just jealous that Kolya's attention is not wholly directed
onto him any longer."
"It does not bother me," she
said in a small voice.
Make a move, she silently
urged him. For her plan to work, Boris had to capitalize on the simmering
embers of passion that flared between him and his boss' wife, and that he
denied all the time. She'd already lost too much time, and had to start the
measles process.
I have to take
matters in my hands. There's no other way.
She trained her eyes on him. Boris was a
big, burly man in his mid-forties. Anyone could imagine him knocking out a
person with just a flick of his thick wrist. Toying with him was like playing
with fire—she could get burnt. But she had no other choice. The time had come.
Five months to gain Nikolai's trust and compliance; two months to insidiously
plant the seeds of discord within the criminal's entourage. She didn't have
much leeway to work at influencing outcomes anymore. No—she had to provoke.
Rayne inhaled, felt the oxygen fill her
lungs and clear her brain. She forced herself into her character. What would
Irina do?
She gasped, and brought her hands to
cover her mouth. With rapid steps, she rushed to Boris' side. She reached out
with one hand and trailed the tips of her fingers along one of his eyes,
swollen nearly shut from a blow.
"You shouldn't have," she said
in a soft whisper, letting tears streak down her cheeks. "Not for
me."
Boris' swift intake of air was the only
sound that hissed between them. He closed his eyes under her touch.
Do it, she urged.
"I am so"—she paused and
sobbed—"so sorry." Her voice was small and breathless, heavy with
sadness.
Boris settled a heavy, meaty palm on her
hand, to keep her fingers unfurled on his cheek. "Forgive me, Irina. I
couldn't let him say those ugly lies about you."
He is caving.
"Boris, please." She pleaded
with him.
"I will do anything for you."
"I am a married woman."
"Why don't you leave him?"
She gasped. "I cannot. I pledged
myself to him."
"But look how he treats you!"
"Borya," she said, using the
nickname for Boris, "back in Russia, for every one like me, there are ten
other girls, more beautiful, waiting to take my place."
"There isn't any woman more
beautiful than you in all of Russia."
She smiled, making sure she displayed
sadness and resolution on her features.
"You are such a sweet man."
When he wasn't forcing underage girls into the cargo holds of boats docking out
of most major European ports, plying them with drugs before supplying them like
meat to brothels and sex perverts.
"Leave him," Boris said, the
words a subtle urge.
"I can't. Where would I go?"
She gently tugged her hand from under his and took a step closer to him.
"I can't go back to that life, Borya."
"Irina, please—"
The sound of the door opening startled
them. Nikolai stood on the threshold, his tall, dark form an intimidating
silhouette in the dim doorway.
Kali threw one look at Boris, shook her
head softly, and took a few steps away. The back of her knees hit the edge of
the window seat. She stumbled backward into a sitting position on the
upholstered ledge.
Nikolai's narrowed gaze went from Boris
to her, and back to his right-hand man.
"Leave us," he said softly,
the words obviously an order.
Boris nodded and exited the room.
Good—she’d sown the seeds of doubt. Her
"husband" would wonder what went on between her and Boris, and Boris
would try to get closer to her. She would play on this nearness between them,
subtly make people wonder if something was happening behind Nikolai's back.
At that point, she would move her final
chess piece—Nikolai would die at the same time as Boris. For the world, things
would look like an altercation gone wrong between a spurned husband and a
forbidden lover, with her caught in the crossfire. That's how she'd ensure her
exit from the operation.
Yes, all the pieces of the game were
falling into place. She just had to play along.
Nikolai closed the door behind Boris,
the click of the latch falling into place sounding louder than it should have.
He turned toward her, pressed his
shoulder against the doorframe, and pushed his hands into the pockets of his
Gieves and Hawkes champagne-coloured, tailor-made linen trousers.
Her "husband" focused his steely
grey eyes on her.
The stare burned into her skull. Still,
she refused to look up. Not yet.
TBR: What inspired you to write
about the theme?
Zee: To tell you the truth, I never set out to
write heroine-centric espionage fare. I started Book 1 in the Corpus Brides series, Walking The Edge,
with an amnesiac heroine who, during bouts of lucidity between two doses of
forced drugging, starts to question the life she is told is hers. Something
feels off to her, and brazen and reckless, she sets out to find what exactly is
not fitting the picture. This quest takes her from London to Marseille, where
she meets a man she saw in a dream that she is sure is a buried memory coming
to the fore. Though he doesn’t recognize her, together, they set out to find
out who she really is... and in the process, I discovered that they unearthed
the existence of the Corpus agency.
I’ve
always loved espionage fare like La Femme Nikita, the Bourne trilogy, Burn
Notice, and Salt. Unconsciously, I sketched my heroine along those lines, too.
Then, as I delved deeper into the agency and the people inside it, I came
across the character of Rayne aka Kali, and then of Anastasiya, the Corpus’ medical doctor who hides even
more secrets than the two other women combined (she gets her story in Book 3,
Let Mercy Come, currently in writing stage).
I
guess I love a heroine who isn’t afraid, who meets every challenge head on, who
can be even more dangerous than all those dangerous heroes we see out there in
romantic suspense and espionage stories. I also love a good intrigue, and these
were the perfect storylines to whet my appetite; these women I discovered
inside the Corpus too fascinating to
let go.
TBR: Are you a plotter or pantser?
Zee: Definitely a plotter! I’m less anal than I
used to be in the past, when every book and chapter and scene was outlined to
within an inch of its life. Now I just go with the general idea, the gist, of
what I want to convey, and write accordingly. But I cannot write by the seat of
my pants – I need to know where I’m going, and how to get there. I tend to
doubt myself terribly when I’m writing, and that uncertainty goes up double or
triple-fold when I try to let the story guide me, instead of placing parameters
around it and then letting the characters take over.
TBR: How do you develop your
characters?
Zee: To the point of sounding terribly annoying
and make the writers reading this wish to send a shoe flying my way, my characters
usually come to me fully formed. They have a name, a face (as I work a lot with
pictures of famous people for my characters), a goal, motivation, and conflict,
a backstory, a ‘role’ in the story, from the minute they drop into my
consciousness. It’s almost like meeting a person who really exists, if that
makes any sense.
From
this first ‘sketch’ of how they appear to me, I then delve beyond the apparent
and find out who they are deep inside, and how they fit inside the story.
For
example, Rayne appeared to me as this killer with secrets, yet I also knew
right off the bat that she comes from a big, noisy family of mixed origins,
which gives her the flexibility to take on different mantles during her
missions. I worked with the image of Russian singer Yulia Volkova to portray
her – so I knew my Rayne could pass for Russian. Add this to the fact that the Corpus works primarily in Europe,
especially in the crime-infested world of Eastern Europe post-Communism, it
made sense to me that Rayne would have Russian origins so she can blend in that
criminal world effortlessly. How, then, to have an explosive mix to get her
that noisy, riotous family? Idea – what if the other half of her is Irish? So
Rayne thus ended up with a Russian father and an Irish mother.
Little
by little, detail by detail, I build the characters with what I uncover about
them.
TBR: Any tips or tricks for world
building you’d care to share?
Zee: Lots of research! Know your world in deep
because that’s when you’ll be able to bend it to suit your story/plot’s
purposes.
The
Corpus Brides series is a
contemporary tale that takes place in post-2010 Europe, mainly. I haven’t been
to half the places I feature in these books – like Prague, Arles, Marseille
(and in Book 3, Portofino, Lake Como, and Amsterdam). However, I knew I had key
scenes take place in those places. My clandestine agency is one that thrives in
most European capitals yet is so concealed and well-merged into the landscape,
not even the authorities know it exists and is present in all those locations.
For this, I needed to ‘bend’ the locations to fold in the agency’s presence.
The perfect example for this is the north-western parts of Prague that has lots
of trees and can conceal a sprawling palace that exists as the training grounds
for the Corpus agents. The Roman
necropolis in Arles, France, became a meeting spot for clandestine agents in Before The Morning. The Vieux Port area in Marseille hid a
library inside a heritage-site Roman building that Corpus agents use as a secret location for information gathering
and switching identities.
I
thus used existing cities and painted in my fictional world using the
established layout – something I wouldn’t have been able to do had I not known
about the area and how to exploit it to my advantage.
TBR: While creating your books, what
was one of the most surprising things you learned?
Zee: That I’m quite ‘dark’ in persona! I always
describe myself as a merry, talkative, fluffy girl just one breath short of
appearing like a total airhead – I love pink, all things girly and sparkly, am
totally gaga over shoes, and will shriek when I spot a cockroach or a spider
within five yards of me. J
Yet,
when I write, I find that, no matter how light I try to make a story, the
characters will always have a dark edge to them, an inner suffering that shapes
them into who they’ve become. I couldn’t write fluff and light and funny to
save my life – there’s always a tragedy somewhere in a character’s life, in the
backstory, in the plot, that will delve into the darker sides of the human mind
and heart.
Amelia
from Walking The Edge, and Rayne from
Before The Morning (and ultimately,
Anastasiya from Let Mercy Come) are
all women who have known suffering in their lives, women with an abysmal dark
side to them that they don’t hesitate to use when the need arise. They fight
without pulling any punch; they kill without remorse when they have to; they
brush people and feelings aside when the job demands it, viewing losses as
unfortunate collateral damage. There’s nothing bright or girly or fluffy about
them – and I was stunned to find that not only could I write such women, I
could also empathize with them, understand where they come from, feel their
pain before I transmitted it all to the page.
I
guess there’s a part of darkness to all of us – maybe even, the lighter and
fluffier you appear, the darker is the other half of your psyche...
TBR: Tease us with one little thing
about your fictional world that makes it different from others.
Zee: Most fictional espionage agencies exist ‘in
the open’ – covert, as in, seen to the naked eye even though you don’t know
exactly what goes in inside. That’d be agencies like the CIA and MI6. The
clandestine agencies in fiction, and even the spies, are more often than not
men.
The
best agents – and the biggest brains – inside the Corpus are women. And they’re ‘real’ women too, that is, they chose
their job and are great at it, but that doesn’t mean they don’t yearn for love
and family, for that man who will love them with everything he has and who will
put his life on the line for them. These women are killers and super-agents,
but every regular woman will find an echo of them inside her, because they are,
I believe, realistic characters and not simply war machines with no scruples
and no aspirations.
Then,
too, the world of Corpus is blended
right along into the world as we know it – such an agency could already exist,
in reality, for all I know! I think there’s a good dose of originality in that
world when you combine all those factors.
TBR: What’s
the most interesting comment you have received about your books?
Zee: That they read ‘real’, as in ‘realistic’ to
how spies and assassins would live and be, and also as in how everyone can find
themselves in the writing. My fans for this series stretch from romance-loving
housewives who love a good thrill of romantic fiction, to seventy-year-old men
who enjoy the danger and thriller aspects of the books.
Then I am on the
platforms of Facebook, Twitter, and Goodreads as Zee Monodee, and regularly,
I’m posting and commenting on my blog, http://zeemonodee.blogspot.com/
TBR: Is there anything you’d like to
ask our readers?
Zee: Yes – that when you enjoy a book, please let
the author know. You don’t know how much it brightens our world when we receive
a word from a reader who has enjoyed reading our work. And please be vocal
about what you enjoy – if our publishers see the demand for a storyline or for
an author, that’s when we the authors will be in the better position to write
such stories and provide them for your own reading enjoyment!
Special Treat!
WALKING THE EDGE (Corpus Brides: Book 1)
Currently FREE - A romantic
suspense novel, wherein an amnesiac woman is on the quest for her forgotten
memory... Escape from London all the way to Marseille, France, and discover the
secrets, deceit, danger, & the powerful love, she uncovers during her
search!
Thanks for visiting TBR, Zee! And thanks for sharing the free download with readers!
