Color of Blood - Book Tour and Giveaway

Color of Blood
A Dennis Cunningham Thriller Book 1
by Keith Yocum
Genre: Romantic Thriller 

A CIA investigator is sent to Australia to look for a missing agent lost in the Outback, only to discover the bitter and dusty truth about himself and the agency.

"A scary, smart, sweet, sexy CIA tale" -- Kirkus Reviews

Dennis is glad to be back at work. His wife's death left him devastated but he'll do anything to lose himself into work at the Inspector General's office of the CIA. A brilliant, if prickly investigator, he's spent his career chasing down the Agency's thieves and liars. When his boss forces him to take a low-level assignment to investigate a missing employee in Australia, he soon finds that even in the red dust of the Outback, there is romance - and death - just a sweltering heartbeat away.


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​Chapter 1

He was not angry. Not now. It was too late for that. As he lay on the ground staring at a pair of shoes that were inches from his face, he felt a profound disappointment. The shoes belonged to the person who had just shot him. How sad and strange that he missed the hints that led to this moment. So many peculiar things had occurred, and now, as the deafening roar of the discharged weapon faded, he could see how stupid he’d been in not figuring it out. He, the smart one! The one too cynical to be taken in by lies. And if regret were not enough to torment him as he slid away, it was that damn poem (a poem of all things!) that kept repeating in his head like a skipping vinyl record: “Happy are men who yet before they are killed can let their veins run cold.”


Six months earlier.


They looked at each other in near silence.
The only sound came from Marty’s school bus–yellow No. 2 pencil he tapped on top of his desk like a droning metronome.
“It feels demeaning,” Dennis said.
“Oh, don’t be silly,” Marty said. “It’s nothing of the sort. It’s a project you could take on without skipping a beat. You’d be done in a couple of weeks, maybe a month.”
More silence.
“Dennis, this is the perfect assignment to get you up and running again. Get your sea legs back. Open and shut in a month, max.”
“This kind of thing is more suited for a junior investigator,” Dennis said. “What about that new hire, the kid you hired about a year ago from Army CID?”
“No,” Marty said. “I can’t have some beginner chasing down this one.”
“But an MIA?” Dennis said. “I can’t remember being asked to evaluate a Missing-In-Action investigation. I didn’t think we had purview over that kind of stuff. Operations folks police their own work.”
Marty sighed.
“Dennis, the CIA Office of Inspector General has a wide scope of practice, and you know that. We have efficiency experts, accountants, lawyers, and a small team that does the really crappy work. You’re on that team, and you’re there because you’re good at it. The IG has been asked to review an old investigation into an MIA. I’m repeating myself here, but you’ve just returned from a six-month medical leave of absence, and this is the perfect assignment for you. Please trust me on this one, OK?”
Silence fell over the two men again, but it was different. Dennis’s expression was one of reluctant acceptance. Marty beamed in victory, dancing the kind of small, triumphant jig that managers do every day after cajoling employees to take on tasks they tried to avoid.
“Four weeks max,” Marty repeated.
“OK,” Dennis said, standing.
“Read the report I sent you and get your travel planned. We’ll go over the case tomorrow and get you going.”

Keith Yocum is an author of eight novels and lives on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. He was born in Ridgecrest, California, the civilian town supporting the China Lake Naval Weapons Center in the Mojave Desert and grew up overseas as an Army brat, including long stints in the Panama Canal Zone and Western Australia. He has an undergraduate degree in philosophy and a graduate degree in journalism. He has an extensive career in publishing. He was the founder of a group of weekly newspapers in the western suburbs of Boston. He has also worked for publications like The Boston Globe and The New England Journal of Medicine.


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Tell us something really interesting that's happened to you!
Perhaps one of the strangest things that happened to me occurred when I was in first grade. I grew up in the Panama Canal Zone when the U.S. still maintained the canal. Our elementary school was located smack dab on the street that was the border between the U.S. Canal Zone and Panama. Anti-government riots broke out one day and they canceled school. Parents were called to come to get their children. We were led outside into the waiting arms of our mothers, who were across the street. Unfortunately, the Panamanian National Guard had started firing tear gas at the rioters across the border and it wafted onto the U.S. side. I saw my mother across the street waving for me, so I ran to her. Unfortunately, I also ran into tear gas and found myself bent over and gasping for air, and throwing up. What’s so funny is that I can’t remember what I did three days ago, but I can remember exactly what happened that day in first grade!

Where were you born/grew up at?
When people ask where I grew up, I just fudge it a bit and say, “All over.” That raises a few eyebrows, but the truth is that’s what happened. I was born in the Mojave Desert in California, moved to the Panama Canal Zone when I was 4 years old, lived in Australia for six months, then back to the Canal Zone, then St. Louis, MO, then back to the zone. Then to northern Virginia. Then to Australia for two years, then back to Northern Virginia. So, “All over,” kind of covers it.

When did you first consider yourself a writer?
When I was in high school in an Australian boarding school, I started a diary. I still have it today and chuckle at some of the silly adolescent things I wrote. But I got the bug somehow, and in college, I started writing for the school paper and kept trying to figure out how a writer could make a decent living. My conclusion was journalism. I ended up getting a master’s degree in journalism and spent many years writing and editing for many publications including The Boston Globe. This in turn led to my writing novels. I’m on novel number nine now, and still plugging away at it.

Which of your novels can you imagine made into a movie?
Color of Blood is a novel that has all the ingredients of an exciting movie. There is a strong female character, authentic people with complicated family lives, exotic locations including the Australian Outback, an unlikely romance, a thrilling mystery, and plenty of action. Many reviewers say they can’t wait to see the movie! Either can I…

What inspired you to write this book?
John le Carré, the British-Irish writer, wrote an espionage thriller published in 1968 titled A Small Town in Germany. I loved the premise of a missing agent and a sharp-elbowed investigator sent to find out what happened. That theme stuck with me for many years, and I eventually wove it into Color of Blood, set mostly in Western Australia and involving a missing CIA agent. Once you’ve spent any amount of time in the desolate areas of the Outback—where we lived for a while—it gnaws at you like a whizzing insect. I just had to make it a backdrop to a mystery.

How did you come up with the title of the book?
One of the really fun things about writing novels is that you can weave into the story passions or interests that you have. I have a particular interest in the poets of World War I. In the early 20th Century, poetry was still popular (sadly, not today), and many British poet-soldiers created breathtaking poems about the horror of modern warfare. Perhaps the most celebrated war poet was Wilfred Owen, who was killed in battle one week before the war ended. In Color of Blood, the male protagonist—who suffers from a family tragedy—discovers Owen’s poetry and is touched by it. The title Color of Blood comes from a line in Owen’s poem “Insensibility.”
Having seen all things red,
Their eyes are rid
Of the hurt of the color of blood forever.

What book do you think everyone should read?
It’s very difficult to recommend a book that everyone should read since the reading experience is so subjective. But I think Of Human Bondage, by W. Somerset Maugham would be on my list. Yes, I know it’s over 100 years old (written in 1915) but is still on some lists of the best English-language novels of the 20th century. The story is partly autobiographical for Maugham and follows the travails of Philip Carey who struggles with disruption, loneliness, and a desire for happiness that always seems just out of reach. His relationships with women, especially with Mildred, are so painful and realistic that the reader cannot turn away. It has excellent writing, good momentum, and thoughtful insights into human impulses and desires.

Describe your writing style
Every writer, it seems, has an idiosyncratic approach to writing. Most—but certainly not all—of my writing is sparse of adjectives and adverbs. Rightly or wrongly, I ascribe to Hemingway’s approach, which is to keep sentences relatively short and declarative. Avoid flowery phrases and overly wrought descriptions. And let the characters’ dialogue—inner and outer dialogue—tell the reader who this person really is. There is a writing app (I’ve never used it but find it amusing to think it exists) called hemmingwayapp.com, that shows how to reduce extraneous phrases and complex sentences. How cute.

What are you currently reading?
Just finished John Banville’s The Sea, which won the 2005 Booker Prize. An Irish writer of some repute, The Sea is a bittersweet, wonderfully written piece about a middle-aged man returning to an Irish seaside town after his wife passes away. The story moves back and forth in time, while the protagonist seeks to discover something about his childhood that will let him heal in the present. It’s very touching and is a literary masterpiece of simile and metaphor that most writers–especially me—won’t attempt for fear of abject failure.

How long on average does it take you to write a book?
From start to finish of the first draft, it usually takes about six months. For me, the process of writing a novel is a little like a courtship: I have to fall in love with the story, and that sometimes takes time (like a courtship!). If I have one unnerving and reprehensible (at least to me) habit during the writing of a novel, it’s the propensity to wake up in the middle of the night and process some element of the novel I’m writing. Sometimes I get so involved in a plot twist or narrative arc that I have trouble getting back to sleep. On occasion, I will get up (my poor wife Denise will attest) and jot down a few notes. The good news is that once I fall in love with the story, it’s smooth sailing (a lovely metaphor).

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