Storm Damage by Terry R. Bacon
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Storm Damage
When a banker opens fire at Folsom Flea Market, Detective Kat Hastings catches the case—but takes three bullets before she can stop the carnage. Now she’s in the ICU, the victim of a drugged-up killer.
That night, during a gig, Sonny Marshall watches helplessly as his band’s guitarist collapses mid-set, brought down by a drug no one can identify, his body locked in euphoric paralysis. The incident rattles Sonny, but the news about Kat hits harder. When he learns she was among the victims, he drops everything to be at her side.
Kat is more than a casualty—she’s the woman he loves, and the one person still holding him to the right side of the line.
As he begins to connect the dots, a chilling truth emerges: two designer drugs, no less deadly, created by the same phantom chemist.
Sonny isn’t a cop. He’s a blues saxophonist with a bad knee, a worse Oxy habit, and a white knight complex he can’t shake. With Kat recovering and chaos spreading, he steps outside the law—guided by a code the courts don’t recognize and a team that doesn’t ask for forgiveness.
As Sonny teeters on the edge, one question haunts him: How do you stop a killer no one can see—without becoming something you don’t recognize yourself?
To purchase your copy of Storm Damage, click the following link: Amazon.
Storm Damage Author Terry R. Bacon
Storm Damage centers on Sonny Marshall. What would you like readers to know about him?
Sonny Marshall is an unlikely detective. He is the saxophonist in a blues and jazz band in San Francisco. He is addicted to Oxycodone and has a white knight complex. When he was 12, his family suffered a home invasion, and his older sister was sexually assaulted. Since then, he is compelled to step in when others are in danger. It’s a compulsion that has nearly cost him his life.
He believes that mysteries are like music. Each clue is similar to a musical note. If he can link them, he can discover the melody and discover not only what the song is about but also who wrote it.
He learned martial arts after his sister was assaulted, and he relies on his skills in Aikido and Krav Maga when he’s facing mortal danger. He is a deeply moral man but knows that justice cannot always be delivered by the law.
Storm Damage continues the story of Sonny Marshall, and his relationship with Kat Hastings. Who is Kat Hastings and how did they meet?
When they met, Katrina Hastings was a detective sergeant in the Sacramento Police Department. She was the lead in the cold case of a five-year-old girl who was kidnapped seven years ago. Sonny took an interest in the case, and Kat initially did not welcome his involvement. But he brought insights to the case she did not have, and they worked together to track down the girl, along with many other children kidnapped by the same group.
They grew close during that case, a relationship that has deepened in Storm Damage, where they worked together to track down the rogue chemist who was designing lethal drugs.
Storm Damage investigates designer drugs and Oxy, and how deadly they can be in a community. What spawned your interest in writing about that epidemic?
I am fascinated by the fact that, as a species, our intelligence and capacity for invention are progressing faster than our moral development. A very smart psychopath armed with the right technology (CRISPR) could create a terrifying biochemical weapon, and I wanted to explore that possibility.
We can now edit genes, which gives us a godlike ability to alter nature, and that can be used for good or evil. I think the evil possibility will eventually happen, whether it’s done by a government or an individual. I thought it would be intriguing if such designer drugs turned up in a city and one man, with a white knight complex and a close group of friends, tried to stop the madman before he could unleash his drugs on the wider population.
Storm Damage takes place in Folsom, California. Why that location? How does the setting interact with the storytelling?
California is an expansive environment with a rich history and the country’s wildest population of misfits, dreamers, schemers, artists, and common folk all pursuing their version of the American Dream. I love the diversity of the place and its extravagance. It has an outsized sense of itself where life seems borderless. A psychopath like Rayland Major can be absorbed into the fabric of the place and be unnoticed until, disguised as a powerful wizard, he edges from darkness into light. Sonny’s quest to find this “ghost” could only occur in a setting very like a kaleidoscope.
Tell us about the music from the Storm Lake Blues Band:
Thus far, I’ve written two novels about the Storm Lake Blues Band. Both titles are also the titles of their albums. As I continue with the further adventures of Sonny and Kat, each title will be another SLBB album.
I was a sax player in a rock band in my youth, so music is deeply engrained in me. I couldn’t write about a band unless they produced music, so I wrote many of the songs in the two albums and produced the music using A.I. music software. I put those albums on my website (terryrbacon.com) so anyone interested could listen to the band. I love blues and jazz, so their songs are an amalgam of that kind of music. At one point in Storm Damage, Sonny compares blues to pop music, and he says that blues is “warm whiskey in a dirty shot glass.” As much as anything, that line captures Sonny’s soul.
What are you working on now?
I’m taking a break from Sonny and Kat to write a novel about fractured families and heart-shaped wounds. It’s a dystopian story set in the near future about a doctor trying to rescue his dying father from a repressive society and find the mother who abandoned them when he was a boy. The protagonist becomes an unwitting actor in a larger drama involving the resistance to tyrannical rule.
The underlying theme is the distortion that occurs to any ideology when it’s carried to an extreme and the sacrifices people will make when the only alternative to resistance is subjugation.
Words of Wisdom for Aspiring Writers:
Read as much as you can, especially from the masters of the craft. Write as often as you can. Don’t constrain yourself by convention.
Writing is invention, and the best inventions come from exploring what isn’t but could be. You have to wonder, constantly, what’s over the next hill and have the courage to press forward no matter what delights or monsters lay ahead. At the same time, writing is an agreement between the writer and the readers. Knowing what readers expect from you, and what they’ll find engaging or boring, is an essential skill. Mostly, write honestly and speak the truth as you know it. Don’t be afraid. The best writing lays bare the human heart.
Author Pet Corner!
My wife and I travel too much to have pets, but we have four grand dogs: (Johnnie) Walker, Marlowe, Olive, and Harvey. They often stay with us when their parents are away, and we’re blessed to have them.
We live in a house between two large, wooded areas in the mountains of Colorado, and the only way animals can pass to and from those woods is along a narrow strip along one side of our house. Every day, we have a virtual zoo of wild creatures passing by: bears, raccoons, deer, foxes, skunks, and the occasional mountain lion.
Every morning, we look at our trail cameras to see who visited us during the night. These marvelous creatures count as the animals in our lives.
Storm Damage Author Terry R Bacon
Terry R. Bacon is a poet, playwright, and award-winning author of more than a dozen books, including The Elements of Power, Elements of Influence, What People Want, and Selling to Major Accounts. A co-founder and former President and CEO of Lore International Institute, Bacon was named one of the Top 100 Thinkers on Leadership in the World by Executive Excellence magazine.
Since retiring, he has continued his work through a widely used website on power and influence while pursuing fiction and creative writing.
Bacon holds a Ph.D. in Literary Studies from American University and a B.S. in Engineering from the United States Military Academy at West Point. A longtime advocate for the arts, he co-founded Durango PlayFest, a festival dedicated to developing new plays, and has served on numerous nonprofit boards in his Colorado community. He lives in the mountains of Colorado, where he continues to write. Storm Damage is the second novel in his Sonny Marshall thriller series.
To learn more about Terry, click the following link: Website
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