Blog Tour: Mounting the Whale by Colleen McCarty (spotlight, guest post, excerpt)

Mounting the Whale
written by Colleen McCarty
published by Cloud Cover Press

find it here: (affiliate links) Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Book Depository, Goodreads

About the book: “Cartel got me, tell mom”

The siblings, drowning in their own problems, are forced to focus on the task at hand: a half-cocked rescue mission that involves a borrowed yacht, a favor from a notorious drug kingpin, and a shocking reunion none of them expected.

When the family decides to sneak into Mexico, mother Cybil is forced to deal with a rival CEO whom she’s developed feelings for in secret. Her only son, Tom, is willing to risk bodily harm to save Janine while his other sisters, Carlyle and Valerie, suspect that the kidnapping is less than legitimate.

The long sea voyage tests the limits of the family’s already frail bonds. Dark secrets of infertility, drugs, gambling and extreme taxidermy begin to float to the surface. But nothing compares to what they begin to learn about their missing sister.

If they’re going to make it out alive, they have to recognize they’re fighting the same battles and facing life’s greatest challenges: love, loneliness, and the struggle to find a place in the world.

Amidst all the chaos, the Pierce family is brought face-to-face with the ugliness of Janine’s addictions, the truth about their mother’s fortune and the most terrifying question of all: Can you really save someone who doesn’t want to be saved?

“Tommy, are you still there?” Carlyle said in her most kind, sisterly voice. “We’ll meet you at Mom’s house in a little bit, okay? We’re going to try to get a handle on this.” She hung up, even though he was still trying to form words. “What are we going to do?” She directed her attention towards her mother. Even though she made a thousand decisions per day, she left the really hard ones to the woman in charge, and this was no different.

“Simple. Find out if it’s real. If it’s real, pay them. If it’s not, then clearly Janine needs to go back to rehab.”

Carlyle fought the urge to laugh. How ridiculous it all sounded when her mother broke it down like that. The problem was that figuring out if it was real wouldn’t be all that easy.

“Well, I’ve had Marius playing detective. He was able to find one man who is connected to a cartel in Progreso. His name is El Toro—er, Diego Malecón.” Carlyle told Valerie and Cybil about Malecón and

with each word their eyes got bigger. She left out the part about the mystery blogger.

“So you mean this could really be… well… real?” Valerie questioned.

“It looks like it might be. We can’t get any information off the email address. They probably created it just to send this email. I have Marius looking for a connection between Janine and El Toro. If we find anything there, we can assume she works—or worked—for him. That either means it’s fake—they’re in collusion—or she worked for him until she pissed him off and now he’s keeping her against her will. It probably wouldn’t have been too hard to find out that her family has money.”

“Wow—looks like you’ve made some good headway.” Cybil was clearly impressed with her daughter’s P.I. alter ego.

 

Hey…tell me something.

The woman sitting alone eating her lunch, what do you notice about her? She has plain, straw-like hair—stiff and unforgiving. She’s probably around fifty-five. She doesn’t wear a wedding ring, and yet she looks up from her plate every few minutes bursting with something to say. She buttons back up when she remembers no one is there.

She seems, at first glance like someone who’s just lost her husband—struggling to acclimate to an oxygen-free world, when he was the air she breathed.

Look again: she’s drinking champagne. She’s just ordered the Lobster Rolls with Asian Pear sauce—the most expensive thing on the menu. Her neck is adorned with a chiseled porcelain ankh, the Egyptian symbol for everlasting life.

When her head bobs up again, in response to some imaginary conversation, she touches her ear. Her eyes shoot to the corner of the room. She adjusts her bejeweled clutch so that it’s perpendicular to the table edge, smoothing the tablecloth beneath it.

Is she celebrating—a black widow, satisfied at another successful web weaved?

Is she bereaved—toasting a lost soul and honoring him with his favorite delicacies?

Or is it neither? She’s a CIA Operative running an op. There’s a camera in that clutch and a voice in her ear. She’s doing surveillance that will secure the proof to put a dangerous man away.

Thanks for playing! You just got a peek at what it’s like inside a writer’s head during a nice lunch out!

 

About the author: Colleen McCarty is a graduate of the University of Tulsa and an entrepreneur. She and her husband own Tulsa restaurant Mod’s Coffee and Crepes. She’s been featured onEntrepreneur.com, and in the Wall Street Journal. This is her first novel. Though Colleen has ghostwritten books for CEOs and New York Times Bestsellers, this is her first foray into publishing her own work. Colleen lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma with her husband, daughter and two large dogs. Follow her writing at colleen-mccarty.com.

Find Ms. McCarty here: web, Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads