As the numbers mounted up in the first few days, Breakaway Media chose to also offer the second and third books in the Laura Cardinal Series for free on that Saturday, the last day of the promotion. Dark Side of the Moon and The Devil’s Hour together accounted for more than 31,000 additional downloads! Darkness on the Edge of Town was catapulted into top rankings in the Amazon Kindle Top 100 Free, reaching #32, and all three books reached 1,2,3 rankings in Police Procedurals Free.

The books have retained top rankings currently with Darkness on the Edge of Town at #3 in Police Procedurals and #14 in Thrillers, Dark Side of the Moon at #7–Police Procedurals and #58–Thrillers, and The Devil’s Hour at #5–Police Procedurals and #37–Thrillers. A special thank you to all our readers who made this success possible.

For a limited time, Darkness on the Edge of Town, Dark Side of the Moon, and The Devil’s Hour are all available from Amazon.com for $0.99

Breaking News: J. Carson Black has three novels in the Amazon Top 100
#20 THE SHOP
#28 THE DEVIL’S HOUR
#59 DARKNESS ON THE EDGE OF TOWN

Okay, now that we have that out of our system (wahoooo!), lets move on to the scintillating and entertaining Vincent Zandri and the latest installment of the Vincent Zandri and J. Carson Black Q&A.

Without further ado, you may now go to The Question of Multiple Climaxes from The Vincent Zandri Vox Blog–May 26, 2011

From Zandri’s post:
Ok, get your mind out of the gutter.
This is a family show after all.
But what J.Carson Black has me exploring this time is this: Is it possible for an indie author (to) experience multiple climaxes with his or her books or, what’s known as “spikes” up the E-Book, Kindle, and NOOK bestseller lists?

Why is this significant? Yes, the visibility and prestige of the ranking does translate into more sales, in addition to the sales that propelled the three Laura Cardinal thrillers to this ranking. In this new digital publishing world, Amazon ranking on these bestseller lists means greater exposure to readers. More important, readers will find this new 1-2-3 ranking significant in that the core of the Cardinal thrillers lies in the narrative thrust of Arizona DPS detective Laura Cardinal’s quest to get justice in the extraordinarily difficult homicide cases she investigates.

J. Carson Black meticulously researches both the context for her stories and the nitty-gritty “inside baseball” particulars of a state agency investigator facing daunting challenges in her personal life, in her professional circles, and coming from really bad guys (and gals) doing their best to do bad things to a lot of people.

Black sought and gained the trust of an Arizona Department of Public Safety detective in Tucson Arizona who shared with her his decades of experience as a investigator with that agency. The depth of primary research that Black pursued with this detective went so far as to actually walk a fictional crime scene with him for Darkness on the Edge of Town in Bisbee Arizona. Read about this in J. Carson Black’s post on this site, “Walking the Crime Scene for Darkness on the Edge of Town”.

Take a look at the Laura Cardinal Series published on Kindle and see what tens of thousands of readers find entertaining and engaging about this breakthrough series of crime thrillers: Darkness on the Edge of Town, Dark Side of the Moon, and The Devil’s Hour. Like many of us, you may fall in love with Laura and walk with her on the path to get justice for the victims of the crimes she investigates.

Ironically, J. Carson Black’s Dark Side of the Moon depicts an all-too plausible scenario where a breach of internal security enables a group of terrorists to hijack a shipment of plutonium waste out of the Nevada Test Site.  Regular plutonium waste shipments leave the NTS, travel down major Interstate highways through Nevada, Arizona and New Mexico to the WIPP near Carlsbad.

My character, Laura Cardinal, is a detective with the Arizona DPS. A veteran homicide investigator with DPS worked with me on the story, and even drove down to the old mining town of Bisbee to “walk the crime scene.” The story opens with a girl found dead in the Bisbee park band shell.

My friend took me through the whole process, looking at the scene as if it were real. We didn’t have a body (some things you have to fake), but he told me what to look for. Standing there in the hot sun, following his lead, I could feel the story materialize around me. One thing I learned was how my friend kept from touching anything. He made it a practice to tuck his hands under his armpits so he would not be tempted. So my character Laura did this as well. It was spooky, fun, and illuminating all at once. Hands-on research is one of the most edifying tasks of writing a novel.

I will always remember that time of year, that day, for what I learned and the help from my DPS detective friend—he was the model for Laura Cardinal and I couldn’t have found a better one.

Darkness on the Edge of Town is available in Kindle Edition on Amazon.com

In 1997, the disappearance of three young girls rocked the desert city of Tucson, Arizona. Eleven years later, one of those girls, Micaela Brashear, comes home—alive.

Detective Laura Cardinal of the Arizona DPS Open-Unsolved Unit pieces together Micaela’s fragmented memories in the hope she will find the whereabouts of the other two children, alive or dead. But the killer isn’t through yet, and after the horrific death of her partner, Laura knows she is facing an implacable enemy.

In the mountains above Tucson, geologist Steve Lawson meets a little girl near his grandfather’s cabin. He comes to believe she is the ghost of Jenny Carmichael, one of the kidnapping victims from eleven years ago. When his dog digs up her bones near his cabin, Steve alerts the authorities—-and becomes their number one suspect.

Increasingly dogged by feelings of doom, Steve searches for Jenny’s killer. He discovers there are worse things than death, and must come face to face with it—inside The Devil’s Hour.

THE DEVIL’S HOUR is Book 3 in the Laura Cardinal Series of thrillers by J. Carson Black.

Thus begins DARK SIDE OF THE MOON, the second book in the Laura Cardinal series. When two newlyweds are found murdered at an Arizona campground, Arizona Department of Public Safety detective Laura Cardinal is enlisted to investigate. Laura Cardinal has made a specialty of troublehshooting serious crimes in small towns. Teamed with a partner who is working her last nerve, and visited by the ghost of her mentor, homicide cop Frank Entwistle, Laura’s already walking an emotional tightrope. The lies she uncovers create a chilling portrait of the dark side of love. And when she discovers one victim’s ties to an underground organization, she is plunged into a high-stakes conspiracy played out against the unforgiving backdrop of the Mojave Desert—where there are no second chances.

“DARK SIDE OF THE MOON takes you on a perilous descent into a shadowy underworld where light cannot reach, trust can be fatal, and the deepest truth is only another lie….A harrowing nonstop thrill ride.”

– New York Times Bestelling Auhor of Mortal Faults, Michael Prescott.

Praise for the first book in the Laura Cardinal series, DARKNESS ON THE EDGE OF TOWN:

“A superb debut…Welcome to a strong new voice in American Crime Fiction”
–T. Jefferson Parker, two-time Edgar Award winning author of California Girl

“A well-crafted, suspenseful police procedural, rich in characters, plot, and setting. J. Carson Black gets it right and mystery fans couldn’t ask for more.”
–Michael McGarrity, bestselling author of Slow Kill.

“J. Carson Black is a … genre treasure… Black can make you believe she’s the first person ever to use the material she does.”
– Chicago Tribune

Arizona Department of Public Safety investigator Laura Cardinal knows immediately what she is up against: a cunning Internet sexual predator. But why is she being plagued by memories of the abduction of a schoolmate some eighteen years earlier?

In a runaway case that propels her from a lavish Tucson estate to the secretive heart of Florida’s Forgotten Coast, Laura must confront the ghosts of her own past—even as another child goes missing and she must race against the clock to find her.

DARKNESS ON THE EDGE OF TOWN is the first novel in the Laura Cardinal Series of thrillers by J. Carson Black.

“Welcome to a strong new voice in American crime fiction.”
–T. Jefferson Parker, New York Times Best Selling Author of Iron River

Order the Laura Cardinal Series from Amazon Kindle today!

Darkness on the Edge of Town

Dark Side of the Moon

The Devil’s Hour