New Release by Nike N. Chillemi - Acts of Malice - Enjoy this Interview of Nike by Lorilyn Roberts

Q:  What is the key theme and/or message in the book? Is it inspirational, ethical, a matter of justice, or something else?

A: In ACTS OF MALICE there are two murders. The story is driven by the murders, the search for the killers, and the need for justice for the victims. The characters are either trying to stay out of the crosshairs of the killers, trying to find the killer or both. Closely related to this is the subtheme about the widows and family left behind, and how they mourn and struggle in the wake of these devastating, senseless murders And, there is a strong inspirational, Christian message. Still, it's the search for the killers and the desire for justice that pushes the story forward. That's why I say that I write from a Christian Worldview, rather than saying I write Christian fiction because what I actually write are classic murder mysteries. Many of the most important characters in my mystery novels happen to be Christians.

Q:  Villains can be hard to write. How did you write yours?

A:  I find most villains disturbing, even the ones I create. That's why I don't get into their mindset too much. I show them in social situations where they've got their public face on. Of course, I do give an inkling of their interior being so that when it turns out at the end that they are the killer, it's believable. I have put down and stopped reading thrillers by authors that delight and revel in the demonic mindset of the psychopathic killer.

Q:  What comes first, plot or characters? How do you develop one or both?

A:  The murder and its motive come first. Then the main characters drive the story and the plot forward. It becomes a question of what would they do next to find the killer(s) and to survive the killer(s).

Two fun bullet questions:

Q. What is your fav thing to eat? Least fav?

A:  Since Thanksgiving is coming up my fav dinner thing to eat is the turkey with gravy and cranberry sauce. My least fav is the traditional green bean casserole of frozen or canned French cut green beans topped with canned onion rings and canned cream of mushroom soup. Then it's baked. Ugh. I even wrote a blog article about my dislike of green bean casserole.

Q:  Do you have a library membership? Do you use it?

A: Yes, I do. I used it for ACTS OF MALICE. I went to my local library and looked up Caracas, Venezuela in the large atlas-type books. This is where my first victim was murdered. I wanted to see the streets in large color photos and get a feel for the city. I needed to understand the layout of the city and how the city was surrounded by mountains.

ACTS OF MALICE in a nutshell…

A taut and compelling classic murder mystery with a national security underlying theme. Interpersonal relationships, greed, dry humor. Uplifting.

Lavender Raines gets the 'doorbell ring' no wife ever wants to get. Her husband has been brutally murdered, and the FBI is more secretive than helpful. The problem is, his body was found in Caracas when she thought his business trip had taken him to New Orleans.

Mackenzie just opened a second beach resort-town restaurant, this one in Ribault Beach, Florida…but now the clandestine national security organization that from-time-to-time sends him on covert missions wants him to find Lavender's husband's killers.

Forces from within the "Deep State" have shaped circumstances that will alter the course of both their lives. Then a local man is murdered. Lavender and Mackey are polar opposites. He is emotionally shut down about his life, but protective of others. She is a pillar of strength in her family, but distrusting of Mackey and guarded around him. Can they find common ground amidst this treachery and turmoil?

Short Bio:

Nike N. Chillemi writes classic murder mysteries/detective novels. It's been said she writes literature that reads like pulp fiction. Plenty of action, a dash of grit, wry humor as her characters navigate through situations and relationships, and there's as an uplifting message. There's usually a national security/public safety underlying theme to her work. She likes her bad guys really bad, her good guys smarter and better. Her newest endeavor is ACTS OF MALICE

ACTS OF MALICE on sale at Amazon, click here to learn more or purchase

Nike's blog.  https://nikechillemi.com/

Nike on Facebook.  https://www.facebook.com/nike.chillemi

Twitter:  @NikeNChillemi

Four in the Garden by Rick Hocker and Narrated by Nicholas Messina - Highly Recommended, Book Review by Lorilyn Roberts

I listened to "Four in the Garden" by Rick Hocker (Author), and Nicholas Messina (narrator) as an audiobook, which provided a whole different experience for me.  

The narrator was excellent, and I really enjoyed the plotline. The symbolism was very well done, and as someone who enjoys allegory, I found "Four in the Garden" intriguing and captivating.

The message is profound and biblically-based. I highly recommend this book for anyone who enjoys novels similar to Pilgrim's Progress or CS Lewis' Narnia Series or Space Trilogy. 

This book is appropriate for teens and adults. "Four in the Garden" is one of those books I'll be thinking about for a while as it's one of the best stories I've come across in a while. Highly recommended.

To purchase from Amazon, click here.

Reaching Teens for Christ Through Christian Fantasy

I would like to give away some copies of Seventh Dimension - The Door for Christmas.

I'm going to share something that's been on my heart for a while, and I'll select a winner from those who leave a comment.

Even though I'm not as young as I used to be, I still love young adult books, probably because I remember how much I enjoyed reading books as a teen. When I was twelve, I remember falling in love with Jesus, or, more succinctly, I remember the first time I felt loved by Him unconditionally.

In many ways, I was Shale Snyder from the Seventh Dimension Series - bullied, smart, and insecure, and spent my early years in a broken home. My childhood pet, Gypsy, came to me much like Much-Afraid did with Shale, unexpected and miraculously, and I had a dark secret I never wanted to share with anyone.

But enough of the similarities. Through the years, I've come to appreciate how much writing has helped me to grow as a person. When I write, I clear out cobwebs from my mind. More often than not, they are lies I've spun from mistakes rooted in condemnation. 

I remove stones from my heart that weigh me down, and I escape into this beautiful dimension of enchantment as I commune with God, my Lord, and Savior. Sometimes it's hard to turn off that voice in my head at night when I go to bed. I just want to create stories.

As I look at young adults today, their world is different from my world of long ago. Teens have so much more materially than I ever had. I didn't grow up with much in the way of those kinds of things. I read books. 

My life was forever changed when I discovered I could read at the age of eight. You see, as strange as it may sound for an award-winning author, I was forced to repeat the first grade because I couldn't read. 

If I could give one bit of advice to the young people of today, it would be this: You can make your plans, but the final outcome is in God's hands (My paraphrasing of Proverbs 16:9).

I believe the affluence of America today has hindered the appetite of many for the things of God. Young people see what we have in America as theirs, and while our country has its flaws, it's still the greatest nation in the world. 

If you are willing to work hard at something, you can succeed. If you are eager to get an education and work hard at something, you can be an achiever. If you are willing to postpone gratification, work hard, get an education, and make many sacrifices, you stand a good chance of achieving your dreams. Maybe you want to be a professional basketball player. Perhaps you long to be a lawyer. The list is only as short as you make it. Practically anything is achievable because America is great, and opportunities abound. 

But what happens when stuff happens? When things don't turn out the way you thought they would? When tragedy strikes? 

I remember many years ago going somewhere with one of my daughters and the family of a friend of hers. She was a teenager at the time, and I remember getting into a discussion with my daughter's friend's father. He surprised me by something he said. His comment basically was this: "Why talk about the end times with our kids. Let them live their life, get married, and have a family. They don't want to think about the world coming to an end or the Lord's return. They just want to live their life."

I didn't have a good response to him at that time because I remembered struggling with that same thought also when I was young. There is one particular memory I recall as if it happened yesterday.

I was putting my husband through medical school at the time, and he was in his second year of a four-year residency. We were watching a show on HBO, and basically, it was a documentary focusing on an end-time scenario, primarily based on the writings of Nostradamus (not the Bible).

That was back in the days before I knew not to trust such writers. While there might be a degree of uncanny accuracy in what they say, it's not based on the Bible, and therefore will never be a hundred percent accurate. Anyone who predicts anything that is not one hundred percent accurate is not a prophet of God. Occultists are relying on demonic powers, and the Bible tells us not to listen to them.

I digress. That's not the point of this article. The point is, as I sat there and watched the documentary with my then-husband, in my heart, I was telling myself, I don't want the end to come. I don't want Christ to return. 

Not after doing all this work and putting my husband through medical school. I want to have children, buy a big house with a pool, and enjoy the fruits of what we've worked so hard for. That hard work was arduous labor for me as a court reporter. I put in long hours in a small town that didn't think women should make more than minimum wage.  

I wish I knew back then what I know now. And it is this: We long for the things of this world because we have no idea what better things God has in store for us in the next. 

And while the years pass by, we fill our hearts with material things. We get married, and husbands commit adultery. We raise children who rebel against us. Young people turn from the Lord and go their own way. I personally know of two Christian families that had sons who committed suicide. I know of other Christian families whose children have chosen alternative lifestyles.

I lost my hair through chemo treatment

You see, we can make our plans, but because we live in a fallen world, sooner or later, we will face adversity. However, the imperfections of life in some ways can become a blessing. Without suffering, I don't believe we can become all that God created us to be because He created us for so much more. Pain allows us to turn something meant for evil into good.

It is out of our suffering that we learn obedience, and in our willingness, we see God. We see beyond this world into the next. We know that we weren't made for a fallen world - we were made for perfection in the future one. 

Recently, I went to the "Understanding the Times Prophecy Conference" in Minneapolis. As I looked around at the audience of six thousand people, I didn't see a single young person. I expected to see at least a couple, perhaps some homeschooling families who brought their teens. But nada, not one.

My heart's desire is to win over young people to Christ. As I wrote many times throughout the Seventh Dimension Series, "time is an illusion until God's appointed time."  

It's true, most young people will have many years to live before God calls them home, but Jesus could return tomorrow. Death is only a heartbeat away. If only I could encourage young people to know Christ personally and to live their life for Him and not for themselves.

I won't reveal the final scene in the last book of the Seventh Dimension Series, The Howling, but the idea is "to occupy" until God returns. That means for young people to live their life, get an education, raise their family, and enjoy life, but live for the glory of God, live to share God with others, live in a way that brings honor to Jesus Christ. 

Young people need to have a personal relationship with their Savior and live as if God could come back at any time. I believe the priorities for most young people do not put Christ first. 

We must not live to please our own appetite. We should occupy until God's return or until He calls us home. That's a vastly different mindset than I could have imagined that day when my then-husband and I watched that apocalyptic HBO pseudo-documentary. I didn't want to live for God. I wanted God to let me live the way I wanted to live. And in His mercy, He did. He showed me a better way, and it was a way of suffering.

So my question is, how can we get young people, teens and young adults, to realize how quickly time flies, that time is an illusion, and as James 4:4 says, our lives are merely a vapor, here for a little while, and then gone? 

When we look around at the world today, we can't help but come to the conclusion that God has made us for so much more. How do we get young people to seize this day, this hour, this moment, for Jesus Christ? 

I've written the Seventh Dimension Series in hopes of reaching those who, like me, love to read. While it's a dwindling number of teens, I believe our future leaders of tomorrow are the young people who read today. A person can't learn all he needs to know to live well only through personal experience. Reading opens the door to biographies of famous people, traveling to other places, and "tasting" different cultures. For the creative ones, reading can take a person to faraway places in time and space, as in the Seventh Dimension Series. 

Books can teach the reader about God in ways he is unlikely to learn any other way. That's one reason why God gave us the Bible, which includes sixty-six books written by many authors. Life is just too short to experience everything personally. But vicariously, a reader can experience so much more, and in my opinion, it can be better than a trip to Disney World.

What do you think? Please share your thoughts in the comments, and I will choose some winners to receive a signed copy of The Door.