Guest Post & *GIVEAWAY* // Hide In Place by Emilya Naymark

Hide In Place Book Cover Hide In Place
Emilya Naymark
Mystery Thriller & Suspense
Crooked Lane Books
February 9, 2021
278
Partners in Crime Virtual Book Tours

She left the NYPD in the firestorm of a high-profile case gone horribly wrong. Three years later, the ghosts of her past roar back to terrifying life.

When NYPD undercover cop Laney Bird’s cover is blown in a racketeering case against the Russian mob, she flees the city with her troubled son, Alfie. Now, three years later, she’s found the perfect haven in Sylvan, a charming town in upstate New York. But then the unthinkable happens: her boy vanishes.

Local law enforcement dismisses the thirteen-year-old as a runaway, but Laney knows better. Alfie would never abandon his special routines and the sanctuary of their home. Could he have been kidnapped–or worse? As a February snowstorm rips through the region, Laney is forced to launch her own investigation, using every trick she learned in her years undercover.

As she digs deeper into the disappearance, Laney learns that Alfie and a friend had been meeting with an older man who himself vanished, but not before leaving a corpse in his garage. With dawning horror, Laney discovers that the man was a confidential informant from a high-profile case she had handled in the past. Although he had never known her real identity, he knows it now. Which means several other enemies do, too. Time is running out, and as Laney’s search for her son grows more desperate, everything depends on how good a detective she really is–badge or no.


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Thank you to Author Emilya Naymark for stopping by and sharing insight into her writing. Once you’ve read her guest post, get a copy of her latest, Hide In Place, and read her fantastic writing for yourself!



Short Stories to Novels

from Hide in Place Author, Emilya Naymark


I’ve always been a fan of short stories, and my first forays into writing were short form. Even as a child, I wrote short stories. I officially decided to become an author late(r) in life, when I realized that my first passion—painting—was no longer fulfilling me, though I did and still very much enjoy design. I needed a creative outlet that would allow me a complete escape from my mind and writing proved to be that. 

I had to start from almost zero since my education and career had been art related. I believe everything can be taught, and anyone can do anything, given the right recipe. So, I took classes. An exercise in one of my first classes turned into a biographical short story and was eventually published in a collection by HIAS, an organization that helps refugees around the world. 

I still didn’t know how to put together a novel, but everywhere I turned I was told that a collection of short stories as a debut was a nonstarter. I took more classes, read a heap of novels, and outlined the ones I liked to reverse engineer the plots. 

Eventually I wrote something that resembled a novel and began querying agents. That novel went nowhere, as did the second one, but somewhere in the mix I started writing short stories again and sending them out. And I began placing them! In anthologies, literary journals, online and in print. Suddenly, I had writing credits when I sent out my query for the third novel, which became Hide in Place. 

I enjoy writing both formats. The lovely thing about short stories is that I can get one researched, written, workshopped, and sent on its way in about a month. A book takes a year at best. I outline both, though both short and long form begin with sketches and character development. I will often write to a prompt with an idea, and once I have the idea fleshed out, I outline. 

Short or long, writing is like playing music—I can feel when I’m off key. I write and re-write until the plot, the characters, the pacing, and especially the ending begin to sing. Having said that, I, like many writers, can quickly get to a point where I have no clue if my words make sense, much less if the story is good. That’s when it’s time to step back and let it simmer for a week. 

My novels follow average, middle-class people who behave badly (commit crimes) or find themselves in utterly untenable situations. I especially like writing morally ambiguous characters.  But my short stories seem to take a more subconscious route. I’m more likely to write from a male POV (still don’t know why, but I’m not arguing with my unconscious), and my characters tend to be from poor working-class backgrounds (my past rising from the depths?) I’m prone to adding seemingly supernatural elements to my short stories, though it’s important to stress that I’m a crime writer through and through. If I include a mystery, it will always have a real-world explanation.

There is nothing so fascinating as all the ways perfectly normal people can go bad. We all have dark corners in our souls, and those corners make for the best kind of reading. And writing, short or long.


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This is a rafflecopter giveaway hosted by Partners in Crime Virtual Book Tours for Emilya Naymark. There will be THREE winners. ONE winner will receive (1) physical copy of Hide In Place by Emilya Naymark (U.S. addresses only). The giveaway begins on March 1, 2021, and runs through April 2, 2021. Void where prohibited.

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Author Emilya Naymark Image
Author Emilya Naymark

Emilya Naymark’s short stories appear in Secrets in the Water, After Midnight: Tales from the Graveyard Shift, River River Journal, Snowbound: Best New England Crime Stories 2017, 1+30: THE BEST OF MYSTORY, and in the upcoming Harper Collins anthology A Stranger Comes to Town.

She has a degree in fine art, and her artworks have been published in numerous magazines and books, earning her a reputation as a creator of dark, psychological pieces.

When not writing, Emilya works as a visual artist and reads massive quantities of thrillers and crime fiction. She lives in the Hudson Valley with her family.


Click here to view Hide In Place by Emilya Naymark Participants via Partners in Crime Virtual Book Tours.