About the Book
Title: Spiral (The Salzburg Saga Book One)
Author: D.U. Okonkwo
Genre: Literary / Adventure
Left to
raise her three younger siblings at the tender age of seventeen, Nina Bishop is
accustomed to solving problems. Now that she and two friends run their own law
firm, she gets paid for solving other people’s problems. And as a
businesswoman, she can always smell a great opportunity. So when her biggest
client, Parker Drayton, organizes a networking ski trip to Salzburg, Austria,
she is the first to board the plane. There's only one drawback: Parker is
bringing along his two notoriously difficult, grown-up sons, Justin and Hugh.
Even
before take-off the tension between Parker and his sons is palpable. But when
Hugh causes their small jet to crash, plunging them all into unforgiving back
country, the networking trip goes from tension-filled journey to living
nightmare.
Author Bio
D. U. (Davina Uchenna) Okonkwo is the
author of the novel, RISE, and the Salzburg Saga. She was born and raised in
London, United Kingdom. An avid reader from a young age, she cites her
favourite childhood books as Tiger Eyes by Judy Blume, Hacker by Marjorie
Blackman, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis, and The
Twits by Roald Dahl.
Davina began to write her own stories at
age ten and would give them to her schoolteachers to read. Not limiting herself
to any one genre, she wrote stories about children’s fiction, romances, and
mysteries. She fondly remembers enjoying her mock GCSE English exam at age 15
because she was required to write a story: “I wrote about a teenage girl
who finds out that her boyfriend is cheating on her,” she recalls. “I remember
my teacher giving me an A grade and writing at the end of the paper, 'What
a creep!'
She didn’t
think about writing again for several years and instead pursued higher
education and graduated with honours in European Business with Spanish from the
University of Salford. The course had included an ERASMUS placement in La
Universidad de Salamanca, Spain.
It was when, upon graduating and working
full time, that the idea of writing once again occurred to her. While in a
bookstore she suddenly had the thought, ‘I wonder what it would be like to
write a book one day.” She says that as soon as she had the thought, a
powerful jolt seemed to go through her, actually pushing her back a step.
Dismissing the strange sensation she left the bookstore but it was later that
very same day that the idea for RISE surfaced.
She wrote and revised RISE around her full
time day job. While she did so, digital changes began shaking up the publishing
industry. It was seeing how these digital changes were empowering authors that
made Davina decide to publish RISE independently. In the summer of 2014
she launched her own publishing company, A Few Words Press
Limited. RISE was the first book published under AFWP in January 2015.
In her spare time she enjoys salsa
dancing, spa breaks, swimming and watching tennis.
Links
Author
Website: http://www.duokonkwo.com
Get the book for FREE on:
Book Excerpt
Nina slipped her passport
into her tan leather cross-body bag and zipped up her roller bag. The sharp
slide of the bag’s zip punctuated the tense silence of the living room. After a
moment’s hesitation, she flicked a glance at the man sprawled on the long cream
sofa three feet from her.
In ripped blue jeans and a
too-tight white polo shirt, his gray-socked feet hanging over the arm of the
sofa, Alex Riley raised his light brown eyes from his latest issue of Classic Cars, his eyes clashing with her
blue ones.
They eyed each other for
several seconds. Alex eventually broke the stare, his eyes dropping resentfully
to her luggage. “All ready then?”
Though her lips thinned at
his tone, Nina nodded and buttoned her sky blue ski jacket over her red wool
jumper. “Yes, but, Alex–” She broke off. No,
she would not succumb to another argument about this trip.
“It doesn't bother you at
all, does it?”
She tightened her dark
brown ponytail. “I can't let it bother me, Alex. Like I’ve said, this is a
business networking trip. How could I ask to bring my boyfriend along?”
“You could have asked
Neil." Bitterness laced his words.
Her teeth ground
together. “This isn’t Neil’s trip; it’s Parker Drayton’s. You know he’s our
biggest client. Besides, you don't even like him or his two sons that he’s
bringing along.” In all honesty, she wasn't crazy about Justin and Hugh Drayton
either, but Parker himself was fine. At ages twenty-nine and twenty-seven
respectively, Justin and Hugh Drayton held senior positions within their
father’s chain of hotels. As a solicitor and partner with the law practice she
had set up with her two friends Angela Akura and Neil Vaska, Nina was proud
that their firm gave legal expertise to well-known clients in the leisure
industry such as Drayton Hotels. They had a good working relationship with
Parker Drayton himself, but his sons Justin ad Hugh? Not so much. For some
reason both Justin and Hugh communicated poorly with their father. Whether
there was a power struggle going on or a private family conflict she didn’t
know, but Justin ad Hugh often failed to return her messages, failed to get
contracts and affidavits signed by Parker on time, and Hugh, whose struggle
with alcohol was well known, was the worst. It often made for uncomfortable
conversations with their father.
“Why must I like
them?” Alex asked as he flipped a magazine page with a flick of his wrist.
“While you network, I could be on the slopes. You said Parker’s rented a
ten-bedroom chalet. Good enough for me. I don’t have to talk to him or his
idiot sons.”
No comments:
Post a Comment