New Release - Between the Lies

Week three in October and Omnific has our third release of the month! And you know that the holidays are just around the corner...so this is one to add to your list for Santa!

This week, Omnific author, Alison Oburia's Between the Lies will be available. Alison already has  one book with Omnific, a collaboration with Jessica McQuinn, Passion Fish, but Between the Lies is her first solo endeavor, and we are all very excited for the release.

Doctoral student Cari Lopez’s academic life is in a rut, but when she comes home to discover a stranger asleep on her doorstep, her personal life becomes immediately more interesting. British accountant Tristan Saunders is a kindred spirit—with a fantastic accent—and there’s a connection kindling, but Cari soon learns he’s made an enemy of the Bulgarian mafia. His trip to the US is far from a vacation.

The enemy is hidden, yet ominously present and always watching. And though they’ve known each other merely a few days, Cari and Tristan are soon on the run for their lives.

Alison Oburia’s layered storytelling reveals a tale of international intrigue and complex relationships, which is distilled to its essence in two hearts. Not everything is as it appears, and people are not who they seem to be. Faced with deception at all angles, Cari must sort out what’s real. If she’s to stay alive—and possibly fall in love, she has to find the truth…between the lies.

Alison was so kind to take time out of this busy week and answer some of our crazy questions...

Omnific: Between the Lies is your second book, but your first time writing without a co-author, was the editing process easier or more difficult when it was all on you?

Alison: It was…different. I thought I’d learned a lot from the first book – how to write cleaner sentences, eliminating the unnecessary words and phrases and, in some cases, entire scenes. I imagined the editor this time would return my manuscript with a “Wow! That was easy!” But, alas, I found I had a LOT to fix (for one thing, I used the word “that” way too often). It was nice to work one-on-one during each editing process. The Omnific editing staff is really good about maintaining as much as possible of the author’s work while streamlining, re-ordering, and tweaking to make the finished product much better. My editors were my first readers; they convinced me to move a few plot twists, thus strengthening the story tremendously.

Omnific: What was your inspiration for your Between the Lines?

Alison: The premise of money laundering was based on two real-life situations. I met Dmitry Vovk, a Ukrainian who became my Tristan Saunders character, about ten years ago. He was an accountant who was beaten severely by the mafia when he discovered millions of dollars were missing from his company. Around the same time, my brother-in-law was working in Asia, leading a team of accountants investigating money laundering that lead to the downfall of a country’s president. They were on the run within that country, the mafia out to stop them, a price put on my brother-in-law’s head. I blended the incidents of Dmitry and my brother-in-law, and added an element of romance, to become Between the Lies.

Omnific: Can you share a little bit about your writing process with us? Are you a planner/outliner or do you just write as it comes?

Alison: I’m definitely a planner – once I’ve got some of the story written. Between the Lies has multiple scenes going on simultaneously so I had to keep track of when each scene was taking place so when I had various characters in the same scene, it all made sense. I really need to get myself a little recorder for my car, though, since so many scenes or bits of dialogue would come to me while I was driving (I travel a lot by car). When I have time in front of my laptop, I’ve often forgotten some of what I wanted to include. I tried keeping a notepad and pencil IN my bed so I could write snippets as I was falling asleep. That failed miserably; I would wake the next day to discover disjointed phrases about penguins and a “nose hair murderer.” I still don’t know what I meant when I wrote that.

Omnific: Since Omnific is all about the romance...what is your favorite romance scene in a book?

Alison: I enjoy writing the slow romance…the little scenes that show each character discovering an interest in the other: the flirtatious comments, shy looks, inadvertent touches, and the internal dialogue (and self-arguing) that build up to that first kiss. By the time that happens, readers will know it’s true love.

Omnific: Now, if they made that into a movie who would you want cast opposite you?

Alison: Oh, I get to be Cari? ~giggles~ I’d have to have an actor who looks like Tristan, because his eyes are mentioned so often. It would have to be an actor with really light blue eyes. If I had my say as the author helping with the casting of Cari and Tristan, I’d want someone like Emmy Rossum and a younger version of Clive Owen.

 

Omnific: Finally, are you already looking forward to your next project, and is it anything that you want to share with us?

Alison: I’ve got three projects I’ve been working on. The first would actually be better suited as a drama on television. In writing, I’d make it a trilogy as if follows four people who have experienced tragedy. The second involves a child custody case, a plane crash, modern day pirates, and lots of plot twists. The third, whose characters have been very active in my head lately, will likely be my next book, tentatively titled Waiting for Mercy. It’s a story based on true events with an addition of a little bit of paranormal: a young journalist writing a human interest story on an old man discovers through his dementia that he possibly witnessed a woman’s murder fifty years earlier but never reported it. Soon the ghost of the woman visits the journalist, providing clues as to what really happened. I’ve asked for opinions from a few friends about each of these projects, and Waiting for Mercy is the clear winner. If, however, a movie studio wants to do Between the Lies, I’m okay with that too!

Thanks Alison! I know that all of your readers are excitedly awaiting the release of this one and am sure they will love it when they get their hands on it.

If you want to find Alison to ask her any questions of you own, here's where you can do that:

Alison Oburia

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