Thanks for checking out the blog tour for Trick Roller, the second book in the Seven of Spades series!

We rejoin Levi and Dominic three months after the events of Kill Game. Although most of Las Vegas believes the Seven of Spades is dead, our two heroes know better. It’s only a matter of time until the killer resurfaces…

Please welcome Cordelia Kingsbridge to The Blogger Girls! Tell us a little about yourself, what prompted you to start writing?

I actually got my start writing Harry Potter fanfiction! After many years in the fandom, I decided to branch out and try my hand at original fiction as well. I created a new pseudonym, distinct from my fandom identity – it’s always been important to me to keep the two separate – and began publishing an original WIP called Close Protection on sites like LiveJournal and Fiction Press.

Close Protection took off pretty quickly, and after that, I focused all my creative energy on original fiction. I wrote five original novels online, posting at a rate of a chapter per week, for years before I landed my first professional publishing contract with Riptide. Those early novels have been removed from the internet now, but I look back fondly on those times!

Tell us a little about the Seven of Spades series, how did you get the idea?

The Seven of Spades series started with the final line of the first book in the series, Kill Game. That line struck me out of nowhere and sunk its claws into me so deeply I couldn’t shake it. From there, I developed the Seven of Spades’ identity and motivation before any other element of the series, including the protagonists. Once I had established who the Seven of Spades was and why they behave the way they do, the rest of the concept for the series kind of unfolded organically.

What made you want to create a series out of it instead of one or two books?

The Seven of Spades’ story – as well as the story of Levi and Dominic’s relationship – could never have been told in only one book. In fact, I knew from the very beginning that the story I wanted to tell would require exactly five books.

I plot all of my novels using a classic three-act structure. That’s true for the books in the Seven of Spades series as well, but I also used a three-act structure to form a framework for the series as a whole. Each book in the series plays a specific role within that structure: Kill Game is Act I. You’ve got your setup, the inciting incident, and the first major turning point that forces the protagonists into a brand new world. Trick Roller is the first half of Act II – the protagonists are making progress and things seem to be going well. Then comes Cash Plays, the midpoint climax, the point in every narrative arc where things start going off the rails. This leads into One-Eyed Royals, the second half of Act II, where the problems get thornier, the stakes grow ever-higher, and the consequences for failure are increasingly dire, until the story barrels headlong into A Chip and a Chair, the climactic finale.

Have you ever been to Las Vegas? If so, did you base certain aspects of the story on the Sin City or did you create your own places for your series?

Unfortunately, I’ve never been to Las Vegas! As such, the series has required a ton of research, as I do include plenty of real-world settings. In Trick Roller, for example, the characters visit places like The Mirage and The Fremont Street Experience. Resources like Google Earth have proven invaluable!

The Seven of Spades series also includes several locations of my own invention, however – such as Stingray, the LGBT nightclub where Dominic bartends, and McBride Investigations, the elite PI firm introduced in Trick Roller.

Explain Trick Roller in five words or less!

Badass couple hunts criminals!

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