Have you heard the story behind Isle of Savages?
Hi, there. My name is T. Briar, the author of Isle of Savages. Thanks for taking time out of your busy day to drop by to visit with me. I really appreciate it.
Now I have a few confessions to make… Isle of Savages isn’t my first published book. As a matter of fact, I’ve published twelve other books in a different genre.
You see, I never really had any aspirations of becoming a thriller writer even though I’ve always loved the adrenaline rush the genre provides. Yep, survival tales rank especially high on my reading list.
You probably know the kind of tale I’m talking about. It’s always set in some sort of dark and foreboding environment where the threat of imminent death looms around each unexpected twist in the story. And you just know that with one accidental misstep the hero’s and heroine’s lives will end in bloodshed. Without a doubt, those are my absolute favorite kind of thrillers to read.
But still, I never thought the genre was for me as a writer. I mean, when I first started writing, life sort of pushed me in the other direction. And, after many years of dedication to learning the craft of writing, I finally got a book published. Other books followed the first. One of them even became an Amazon Bestseller.
So how in the world did I ever come to write Isle of Savages since I’m adamant that I never thought I’d write something so different from my usual genre?
Well, it’s not that complicated an answer. I saw Eric in my mind’s eye, lying face-down in wave-wash, coughing and sputtering, simply trying to live.
At the time, my only thought was: What in the world happened to you, buddy?
When he didn’t answer right away, I decided to take a closer look to see what was going on with him. Yeah, just call me a Good Samaritan because I couldn’t let him or his story die on that beach, all alone in the dark.
To my immense surprise, by the third page I was completely hooked on the story. I quickly discovered that Eric was only seventeen years old and had shipwrecked along with a group of students on a seemingly deserted island. That he was desperate to reconnect with his only friends amongst the students, Mia and Keri. But the girls are nowhere to be seen.
To make matters even worse, the despicable captain and his watchdog of a first mate have survived also. Those two villains have sinister plans for Eric, Mia, and Keri, as well as the other students, if they can only catch them.
The hair-raising chills and thrills that followed was especially exciting to write. On one hand, the captain and first mate are treacherous adversaries for the trio. On the other hand, the subhuman savages proved themselves even more treacherous as they start collecting what the storm has delivered. No one was ever really safe and it was a race to the finish to see who would live and who would die. And yes, people did die on the island. Some even died badly.
To be totally honest, once I’d finished writing it, I reread it and thought it a pulse-pounding story, full of unexpected twists and turns, and adrenaline-filled to the very end.
But what was I ultimately going to do with it? I wasn’t a thriller writer. I’d always written in that other genre.
As it turned out, I agonized for over two weeks before sending it in. I finally decided I couldn’t not send it in. Lea Schizas, my publisher and editor, said she’d take it on and here we are. Only a little over a year later and it’s made it to publication.
Now you know the story behind the story.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot. One last confession to go. In that other genre, I go by the name of Thomas Briar.
Thanks again for visiting with me today!
Isle of Savages
T. Briar
Genre: New Adult Action Suspense Thriller
Publisher: MuseItUp Publishing
Date of Publication: June 13, 2017
eBook ISBN: 978-1-77127-926-0
ASIN: B07195LTB8
Number of pages: 220
Word Count: 59,400 words
Cover Artist: Eerilyfair Design
Tagline: Eleven souls are shipwrecked on an island teeming with sub-human cannibals. Who will survive to tell the tale?
Book Description:
On July 20, 20— a charter school’s sponsored sail from San Diego to Hawaii hits a reef during a violent storm. Sixteen souls abandon ship. Nine students, along with the hated captain and first mate, wash up on what they believe is a deserted island.
Separated into three groups by circumstance and mutual distrust, treachery and death lurks for all. Over the course of a single day, one student betrays all the others. Another drowns. Two others get ambushed by a great white shark. And, like falling dominoes, the captain, first mate, and six students fall prey to a tribe of bloodthirsty cannibals.
In the face of almost certain death, who will escape from the isle of savages to tell the tale?
Excerpt:
Date: July 20,
20—
General
Location: Pacific Ocean
Definitive
Longitude and Latitude: Unknown
Through
strangled, sputtering coughs, Eric Kovac’s eyelids flickered open to stark
darkness. He lay face down in receding wave-wash, naked except for a pair of
board shorts, drenched to the bone. A tortuous grittiness seared the tender
linings of his mouth, nose, and throat; pain wracked his body, inside and out.
As he struggled to make sense of his peril, the sound of crashing waves
thundered. A sudden rush of warm saltwater buried him underwater.
Choking and
coughing violently, he forced himself up onto his hands and knees, stomach
clenching in excruciating spasms as he vomited up great bouts of saltwater.
Although the purging left him weak—on the verge of blacking out—it cleared the
irritating sand from his breathing passages. Survival instinct, more than
cognizant reasoning, sent him crawling up the shoreline. After only a few feet,
his battered body could go no further and he collapsed onto wet sand while his
feet and legs still lay in the incoming tide.
The sound of
crashing waves slowly returned, and with it, the recognition of something new.
Wind buffeted his body from all directions…storm-washed, freshly cleansed wind.
Beneath the dizziness threatening to overwhelm him, he had only one coherent
thought.
What happened to
me?
For the life of
him, he couldn’t remember how he’d come to be on this beach, hurting and
possibly grievously injured. Despite the horrendous pain, he rolled over onto
his side to lift himself on an elbow and scan the darkness for clues.
In the edge of
the surf, a dark silhouette resembling the shape of a human body floated, the
incoming and outgoing surf pushing and pulling at it. It was a tossup as to
which would win the tug of war.
Instantly, the
memory of the ship’s boom careening into his forehead materialized out of
nowhere. In something akin to shock, distorted memories of the chain of events
leading up to the blow that had laid him low flitted through his mind…
The storm had
come out of the northwest late yesterday evening, the leading edge blue-black
and roiling. It’d chased after them relentlessly, finally howling down on their
sixty-foot blue water cruiser in the middle of the night, crackling long
streaks of lightening that were blinding in their frequency and intensity.
Fierce winds and towering waves tossed the yacht to and fro as if it were a
toy. Deafening claps of thunder reverberated through the vessel to drown out
the terrified shrieks of the sixteen students cowering below deck. Then,
without warning, when only the tiniest tendril of hope remained, the yacht ran
into something, cementing their fate—
That’s right!
We’d run from the storm well into the night, hoping to angle out of its path to
safety. But we hit something…
Snapshots
flashed through his mind, one after the other in quick succession: the
sickening crunch of fiberglass shattering; the non-stop rush of water breaching
the hull; the ear-splitting cries of his classmates’ despair; the captain
ordering everyone from below deck to abandon ship; the screeching wind and
stinging rain above deck merciless; brilliant veins of lightening illuminating
the pitch blackness to reveal the shoreline of an island; so much water in the
air, breathing seemed almost impossible; a boy and a girl at the very end of
the line of joined hands snatched up like kites and flung out into darkness;
the terrifying fear that the rest of the line would quickly follow; the glassy,
shock-stricken stares of his classmates waiting their turn to be helped over
the side into the life raft; the white boom breaking loose from its mooring and
whipping toward him; trying to duck and almost making it; total blackness…
Eric, trembling
in the aftershock of surviving the impossible and being grateful simply to be
alive, remembered something else…there had been a girl he was intent upon
saving…and one of her friends. He’d helped them into the raft right before his
accident. But what were their names? Who were they to him?
He concentrated
on summoning their faces, unable to shake the feeling they had been his close
friends, or perhaps, one of them had been more than a friend.
Slowly, like
gooey fluid forced through a half-clogged strainer, the image of a dark-haired
girl—seventeen years old and of Asian-American descent—with a beautiful oval
face, olive skin, and dark eyes took form in his mind’s eye. The face of a
pretty, blue-eyed blonde with curly, shoulder-length hair quickly followed.
Mia! I was
trying to save Mia Miller! And her best friend, Keri Shaw!
Peering at the
floating body again, a burst of adrenaline coursed through his veins,
energizing him into action. The sickening hollowness in his stomach and the
aches in his body disappeared. He flipped back over onto hands and knees to
scramble toward the dark silhouette in the white surf. As of yet, he couldn’t
tell if the body was male or female.
Please don’t let
it be Mia. Please, anyone but her.
His eyes made
out what he thought looked like the muscled back and arms of a young man and
his fear receded…somewhat. Grasping the corpse by the hair of its head, he
lifted the face out of the water to ascertain that it wasn’t Mia—instead was
Charles Darry, a Low Country kid from South Carolina. He’d been the only other
Southern student on their cruise of horrors, which had given Eric and him
something singularly in common, although they had never become what one would
call friends. He released Charles, frantically glancing around the darkness.
“Mia!” he
attempted to yell, but the name came out strangled and weak. He tried again and
it came out clearer and louder this time.
“Eric!” answered
a frightened, high-pitched voice. “I’m over here!”
About the Author:
Always striving for pulse-pounding action, sitting-on-the-edge-of-your-seat suspense, and hair-raising thrills, T. Briar’s mainstream thriller writing places courageous heroes and heroines in the fight of their lives against the elements, hostile surroundings, morally bankrupt villains, and any other obstacles T. can think of.
But be warned, once the wheels are set into motion with the first sentence, it’s a twisting, turning journey to the end to see who lives and who dies. And make no mistake, someone’s going to die. Some will even die badly. That’s just the way it is when fighting for survival under perilous conditions. The only question is: Will it be the heroes and heroines, or the villains?
T. Briar’s target audience is New Adults who boldly step up to meet life’s challenges with the confidence of youth urging them on.
Please checkout T. Briar’s page at http://thomasbriar.com to find out more about T. and his thriller writings.
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