Deadly Eyes

Blogging with us today is Michael Meyer.  Welcome, Michael.

I am a recently retired college professor. I taught for over forty years at universities in Thailand, Saudi Arabia, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and I spent the last twenty-four years at a California community college. I live in Southern California wine country with my wife, Kitty, and our two other cats. As a recent retiree, I now have all the time I need to devote to three of my lifetime passions: writing, reading, and traveling.

 My wife and I travel extensively throughout the United States, and we travel internationally at least once a year. Last year we were in Italy. The year before that we toured Ireland. This coming September, we will be in France. The travel bug has bitten both of us, and we are hooked. We intend to travel as along as we are healthy enough to do so. Having traveled the world extensively, and having lived in a variety of cultures abroad, has greatly helped my writing. I am a keen observer of others. I have learned so much from having lived in and traveled in other cultures. I love being a part of different cultures, learning things that I would never have known if I had stayed only in my native California.

I have traveled extensively throughout the world, having lived in a wide variety of places: Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and the Caribbean. Every place I have visited has had some impact on me and on what ends up in my books. DEADLY EYES, for example, is set in the Caribbean, where I spent four glorious years on the idyllic island of St. Croix, where the mystery takes place. COVERT DREAMS, my first international thriller, is set in both Munich, where I have traveled to on many occasions, having lived and studied in Germany, and in Saudi Arabia, where I was a professor at the University of Petroleum and Minerals and traveled widely throughout the Middle East.

            World travel, I find, opens people’s eyes to new things. It gives them different perspectives about life and how to live that would not have been realized without the exposure to other cultures. World travel provides a better understanding of others. It teaches one a new respect for things that are done differently than at home. It makes one more understanding of others.

            I will continue to travel as long as I am able to do so. I will also continue writing as long as I live. The two go together for me. I wholeheartedly recommend world travel. It is one of the greatest educational experiences possible. The sugar-white sands of St. Croix and the burning sands of Saudi Arabia, as divergent as night and day, have both had an impact on me as a person, and both have found permanent homes in my writing. Yes, I have learned much from my international travels, and yet there is still so much more to learn, and I fully intend to do so, starting this September in France.

Blurb:

A HAUNTING CARIBBEAN MYSTERY

James Cuffy, better known as Cuff, is living in paradise with his girlfriend, on the small Caribbean island of St. Croix, where the sky is as blue as Cuff's eyes, the ocean as pretty as Rosie's cheeks, where the gentle lapping of the waves is a lullaby, and the swaying of the palm trees is a dance. The sandy beaches are as white as sugar, and the horizon is a world away. St. Croix indeed is paradise, the perfect place for living, laughing, and loving.

But the sandy beaches and the turquoise sea can provide no cover from the deadly eyes of the unknown stalker pursuing Cuff. Murder leads to murder as he attempts to untangle the terrible web in which he has suddenly become entangled.

The twists and turns are relentless, the roads of the fast action leading in all directions, but time is running out, and Cuff, his faithful Rosie at his side, knows it.

Excerpt:

These were not naked eyes, for the distance between these eyes and the beach bar at Cathy’s Fancy was too great for the naked eye to discern who was who. No, these eyes had planned meticulously. The eyes were glued to a pair of terribly expensive and unbelievably powerful Swarovski Optik binoculars. The balcony on which they now worked, taking in the scene before them, was the perfect place to see but not be seen. The powerful binoculars saw to that.

The distance, the palm trees, and the rays of the sun all helped. The position had been hand picked, after careful consideration. Every angle had been considered, and, one by one, they had all been discarded for one reason or another until this very spot, the perfect place to observe while not being observed, had been selected. 

Yes, the eyes had seen it all. The eyes had seen precisely what they had hoped to see. They were like a master puppeteer.  They planned, controlled, and observed, but from a safe distance. They did not miss a trick.

The eyes. The deadly eyes of St. Croix.

Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWLBtVDUdC4

About the Author:

I have resided in and have visited many places in the world, all of which have contributed in some way to my own published writing. I have literally traveled throughout the world, on numerous occasions. I have lived in Finland, Germany, Thailand, Saudi Arabia, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, on the island of St. Croix, where DEADLY EYES is set. I gained the wanderlust to see the world, to experience other cultures, at an early age, and this desire has never left me. If anything, it has only gained in intensity as I have aged. I try to travel internationally at least once a year. In the interim, I spend lots of time traveling around both my home state of California and other nearby states.

I spent my early years in the small town of Lone Pine, California, the home of almost every western movie, in addition to a wide variety of other genres, made in the 30’s, 40’s, 50’s, and 60’s. In fact, Hollywood still films parts of big-time movies there today. My dad, the town’s lifeguard at the time, personally knew John Wayne, Lloyd Bridges, and Lee Marvin, all of whom came to the town’s pool, the Memorial Plunge, at times to cool off after a hectic day of working in the sun. I was even an extra in a movie filmed there in 1957, MONOLITH MONSTERS, a B-cult favorite even today. I was ten years old at the time. Even though I resided in a small town hours from the big city, I was exposed to the excitement of action and heroes at a formative age, and, thus, my interest in writing novels of suspense such as DEADLY EYES was born.

As a recent retiree from a forty-year career as a professor of writing, I now live in Southern California wine country with my wife, Kitty, and our two other cats. 

Amazon author’s site: http://www.amazon.com/Michael-Meyer/e/B005E7M8CW/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_1

Goodreads author: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/674626.Mike_Meyer

Facebook writers’s site: https://www.facebook.com/MichaelMeyersWritingLife/app_191387770912394

Pinterest writer’s site: http://pinterest.com/temmike/#