The Story Behind the Book

The Story Behind Crashers by Lindy S. Hudis

The Story Behind Crashers

By Lindy S. Hudis

CRASHERS is a crime-thriller about a trio of reckless and impulsive young people who, by no fault of their own, get caught up in the seamy underworld of crime, violations and auto insurance fraud by staging car accidents to collect insurance blood money. They all suffer the nightmarish descent at the events inevitably spiral out of control. It’s a cautionary tale but also a character study about greed, desperation and eventually, redemption.

The story is set in Los Angeles, California, where I have been living for the past thirty-three years. This story could only have happened here with so much hustle, bustle and drama. There are so many cars and so much traffic here that driving is almost crazy! I was inspired to write this story because I was a victim of auto insurance fraud, so I came up with that idea. I learned that there are criminals out there who do this kind of thing for a living. So, I wrote about those people, who must be horrible and desperate.

The main characters are an innocent young couple planning a life together. They are good people who are deeply in love and hope to become married one day. They literally fall on very hard times, though no fault of their own, and become desperate. Shari is a film student at USC and Nathan is an ambitious, young accountant at a prestigious Beverly Hills firm. Both lost their jobs due to strange events and Shari winds up in a staged accident, unbeknownst to her at the time.

The attorney John Nastic is the one who runs this underground crime ring. He’s super intelligent and charismatic but has a dark underbelly to his personality. His employee Bryce is his scout, so to speak. He finds vulnerable people and exploits them, trapping them in the downward spiral of crime and fraud by promising them lots of cash. It helps that he is mysterious and sexy, too! I

wrote him like that on purpose!

My characters are unique in the since that my work is very character driven but also the story takes the characters of this horrific journey. It’s a combination of cautionary tale, suspense,

crime thriller and yet it is also a character study of what lengths people can and will go to when they are greedy and happen to get a taste of another life. If you are a fan of crime fiction, pulp novels and redemption, I do have to recommend by story. I have been told that it’s a page turner, and I’ll humbly accept the compliment.

I also have Crashers the screenplay. I entered it into the Sherman Oaks Screenplay Competition. The screenplay was an official selection and, although it didn’t win, we got great literary representation out of the contacts we made. Crashers is currently in development with Face 2 Face Productions, as our manager is also a producer. I am still very ambitious and have never given up on my Hollywood Dream. Many people have told me that it would make a great movie, so I acted on that advice. Crashers – The Feature Film is currently in development with Face 2 Face Productions.

Title: Crashers

Author: Lindy S. Hudis

Publisher: Project X Publishing

Publication Date: August 24, 2024

Pages: 269

Genre: Crime Thriller

Formats: Hardcover, Paperback, Kindle, KindleUnlimited

How far would you go to get rich?

What if you were desperate? What if you were completely out of options? Would you cut in front of a sparkling, new Mercedes on the busy L.A. freeway and slam on the brakes? What if it were that easy?

Enter the world of Crashers…

The con is simple: Get in a car accident. Collect the insurance blood money. What could go wrong? That’s what Shari believed when she found herself in dire need of cash. When she meets the sexy and mysterious Bryce, the teaches her all about how to be a “capper.”

Soon, Shari realizes that by staging more of these accidents, she’ll have more money than she knows what to do with.

But as she becomes more and more obsessed with her strange new world, she discovers there’s no such thing as easy money. And what started out as a simple payout soon turns into a deadly game.

Read sample here.

Crashers is available at Amazon and is currently in film development with Face 2 Face productions.

Lindy S. Hudis is an award winning filmmaker, author and actress. Lindy is a graduate of New York University, where she studied drama at Tisch School of the Arts. She also performed in a number of Off-Off Broadway theater productions while living in New York City.

She is the author of several titles, including her romance suspense novel, Weekends, her “Hollywood” story City of Toys, and her crime novel, Crashers. Her latest release, “Hollywood Underworld – A Hollywood Series” is the first installment of a crime, mystery series.

In addition, she has written several erotic short stories, including “The S&M Club”, “The Backstage Pass”, “Guitar God”, “The Guitarist”, and “The Mile High Club”.

Her short film “The Lesson”, which she wrote, produced and directed, has won numerous awards, including ‘Best Short Film’ at the Paris International Film Festival, The Beverly Hills Arthouse Film Festival and the San Francisco International Film Festival.

She is also an actress, having appeared in the indie film Expressionism, the television daytime drama “Sunset Beach”, also “Married with Children” , “Beverly Hills 90210” and the feature film “Indecent Proposal” . She and her husband, Hollywood stuntman Stephen Hudis, have formed their own production company called Impact Motion Pictures, and have several projects and screenplays in development. She lives in California with her husband and two children.

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The Story Behind Shape of the Sun by Paula Omokhomion

The Story Behind The Shape of the Sun

By Paula Omokhomion

Shape of the Sun was really inspired by how fiction canon traditionally does not express male leads in an unflattering manner, and going further, how some actually have male leads that do terrible things but put in major efforts to compensate for it, which could come off as whitewashing in realtime. Raj, SOTS’ male lead really is that central character that is by no means misunderstood and is particularly consciously unreliable. There is also meta-fictional commentary on whether romance can really wipe out negativity as well as the effect of family neglect and performative masculinity.

Like for instance, what is it like if the nice guy isn’t actually nice or how do we deal with a villain that we can see being molded into that in real-time, but at the same time isn’t some hidden innocent or wholesome person. There’s all these contradictions in traditional fiction roles, and that was intentional because in real life, there are many people whose lives mirror that of what leads are especially if they have everything that anyone would want, but at the same time, do not have the traditional main character energy of being Mary Sue or just kind and bright and always willing to help and so on. If you think about it, these sort of people are underrepresented, at least in my perspective.

Summarily, I was most interested in a honest male lead, especially since the grace that extended to male leads are usually not granted their female counterparts. So here was a dude who was thrown by the author under the lamp to be scrutinized.

I also think that it was interesting writing characters that are majorly high-income or part of high-society in one way or the other. In that way, we have a good view at the rot that might come with wealth, and the struggle is less of fighting against the system and more of fighting against oneself to thrive or not to thrive within the system.

Concerning the publication process, I got self-published through Draft2Digital, which is a very cost-effective and proactive way of getting your work out there and on different retail platforms. I didn’t really think traditional publishing matched with my intent for SOTS which was a very independent and small work.

I hope everyone enjoys reading it, and I am always open to feedback. Happy reading!

In a world where novels defy conventions and heroes defy expectations, Shape of the Sun dares to ask: What if the one at the center isn’t kind? What if no one is misunderstood? What does it mean to be the hero or the villain?

Beware: this is not a love story. The author just likes meta-fiction a bit too much.
Rajkumar ‘Raj’ Reddy is top-tier Male Lead material. And a freaking DRAMA KING.

He is a gorgeous, disgustingly rich, and ultra-confident Child Abuse Pediatrician. He’s also emotionally finished, a narcissist, and a scammer all but in name.

But what did it matter if he was soulless or morally bankrupt? Why should anyone care that he married someone only because of their money?

He was the Male Lead, right? Since when were Male Leads ever held accountable?

And then he falls in love. Utterly useless. Very, very unnecessary. Annoyingly delicious for someone as self-aware as he is.

Raj knows he’s in love. He knows it every second he smiles when she talks to him or says good morning Rajkumar, in that sweet voice he dreams about more often lately.

So now, our Male Lead is on a mission to GET OUT OF LOVE.

This relationship holds too many green flags!

Painful. Also doesn’t allow him to be hypocritical for more than three seconds. Horrid, really.

And in the background is the Reddy family. It’s not an easy home. It’s never been easy with all that power and wealth involved. There’s too much scheming and engineering in one place.

There’s an overlooked half-brother that literally descended from hell, a sweet twin sister that has more than her fair share of buried grudges to Raj (and vice versa), and a patriarch that might be loving father and enabler all rolled into one.

There are traumas that our Male Lead wants to never remember.

You see that’s the thing about Romance with Accountability. It can be sweet. It can be deadly.

Will our Male Lead manage to protect his secrets and secure the inheritance, or will his deepening emotions force him to confront his inner demons? Can greed truly give way to love? Or is that just something we only see in the movies?

Will he finally go to therapy?

A gripping tale of love, family, the high stakes of inheritance, and the journey to self – Shape of the Sun explores what happens with leads in a world where the rest are left to silence.

Read a sample here.

Shape of the Sun is available at Amazon, Kobo and Apple Books.

Paula Omokhomion is a Master of Public Policy student at the UC Riverside School of Public Policy, though she’s fairly certain that won’t be forever. She holds a B.S. in Public Health Nutrition from UNC Chapel Hill, where she also minored in Creative Writing (Fiction) and graduated with highest honors for her 120-page thesis novella, New Age Taffeta.

Paula developed her skills and love for writing fiction in a very, very interesting Nigerian boarding school, where the lack of television meant she had to invent entertainment for everyone else. She loves reading manhwa, watching Indian TV dramas, listening to music, and writing short stories.When not doing any of those or in the classroom handling R code, she’s refining her LinkedIn or taking Instagram selfies.
She lives in California with her family, including her two fellow triplets, and is currently dreaming of a future PhD in public health—and maybe another novel.

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The Story Behind Wooded Discovery by B.B. Swann

The Story Behind Wooded Discovery

By B.B. Swann

Every story I’ve written comes to me in a different way. Sometimes it’s a song that spurs an idea. Other times, it’s a dream that starts the creative thoughts. When I was still teaching, my first grade students were excellent muses that would say or do something funny or touching that planted a seed in my mind for a picture book. There were plenty of days when I had to scribble down a new story in a notebook or on a few post it notes while I wolfed down my lunch in the teacher’s lounge. Wooded Discovery started for me with the characters. Specifically, the main character, Zaidyn Mitchell. He is mostly based off my oldest son. (Shhh! Don’t’ tell him because he would be so embarrassed.)

Zaidyn is a shy-ish guy who doesn’t feel like he quite fits into his world of peers. He’s smart, loves to read, and doesn’t see anything wrong with telling his parents most of the things he has going on. My son didn’t tell me everything, but I know he told me more than most guys would—according to my husband at least. I wanted to capture that kind of essence for my character because not every YA teen has to be the popular kid who everyone likes. Mama’s boys need their time to shine, right? (I told you he would be embarrassed!)

Once I had the character figured out, building the story around him was fun. I usually build an outline of the story structure to keep me on the right path for the plot, but I don’t have to stick to it completely. My favorite part of writing is when the characters decide for themselves what they want to happen. They’re usually right. That definitely happened in Wooded Discovery and the story is better for it.

His senior year just turned magical. Now if only he can win his crush’s affections without getting killed.

Seventeen-year-old Zaidyn Mitchell would rather not be weird. But nothing can be stranger than when the self-proclaimed bookworm wakes up one night, floating several feet above his bed. Still desperate to fit in after his parents unceremoniously unlocked his abilities, all Zaidyn wants is to date the girl of his dreams.

With his magic a little uncontrolled, the budding wizard finally makes a move and promises his beautiful classmate to help stop a construction project from destroying the nearby woods. But when an unknown force attacks and tries to separate them, Zaidyn fears this supernatural world is about to send them to their doom.

Can the teen would-be hero find a way to save them both?

Read sample here.

Wooded Discovery is available at Amazon.

BB Swann is a twenty-seven-year retired elementary teacher who writes books for children and young adults. Her issue-driven stories focus on characters who face difficulties most readers can relate to, and how they succeed through perseverance, ingenuity, and hope. She is also a literary agent at FinePrint Literary Management in New York representing a diverse group of authors that write picture books through adult manuscripts mostly in the genres of sci-fi, fantasy, or speculative fiction. You can visit her at Facebook, Instagram and TicToc.