![\"LeeGimenez_Picture\"](\"https:\/\/anne.myupcomingsite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/LeeGimenez_Picture.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nThe inspiration for Lee Gimenez’s first novel, Azul 7,<\/i> was a SciFi short story that he first got published in Nature<\/em> magazine.<\/p>\n “I was writing sequels to my short stories,” recalls Lee, a retired technology marketing executive and military veteran. Lee says he always wanted to write books and began pursuing his craft in earnest back in 2006. He has published 11 novels over the last decade — the first five were Sci-Fi-based and the more recent ones fall under the genre of present-day mystery thrillers.<\/p>\n \u201cI got to the point where I like writing about things happening now \u2013 real places,\u201d says Lee, who strives to publish one book a year.<\/p>\n His 2014 novel, Killing West<\/i>, is about a CIA operative named Rachel West. \u201cIt was the first time I had a woman in the lead,\u201d he says. \u00a0\u201cThe reason I wrote it is that a lot of my readers are women \u2013 in fact, 75% of all fiction books are bought by women.\u201d<\/p>\n Common elements to all his books, which have a following in the US and internationally, are “a nice cover, snappy title and compelling characters.”<\/p>\n One of his more popular characters is J.T. Ryan, an Atlanta PI, who does contract work for the FBI.<\/p>\n “I always begin with a \u2018What if\u2019 [scenario],” he says. \u00a0With Killing West,<\/em> the \u2018what-if\u2019 question is: “What if a person controlled the internet?\u201d<\/p>\n With his 2015 thriller, Skyflash<\/i>, Lee poses the question, \u201cWhat if there was a perfect wonder He\u2019s a big advocate of GMC:<\/i> Goal, Motivation and Conflict<\/i><\/a> book by established publisher and author \u00a0Debra Dixon, co-founder of BelleBooks\/Bell Bridge Books. \u00a0Lee says he sets up his story on page 1 \u2013 often in the first line.<\/p>\n An MBA grad with a career doing marketing for companies like Verizon, Lee knows how important book marketing and promotion are \u2013 he\u2019s savvy and successful at garnering social media fans, recently crossing over the 47,000 threshold of Twitter followers.<\/p>\n \u201cI attribute it to following other writers,\u201d says Lee, who has to limit his time on Twitter to a half hour a day if he wants to meet his writing deadlines. He advises writers to make good use of hashtags such as #books, #bookbloggers, #bookclub, #amwriting to get their tweets found by other authors, readers and book reviewers. \u00a0He\u2019s even created hashags for some of his more popular characters (#JTRyan).<\/p>\n \u201cMarketing is one of the most important things you can do as a writer,\u201d he says. Lee is constantly thinking about his readers when considering the cover design and the titles of his books \u2013 he opts for shorter titles and one simple, dominant image on his book covers rather than elaborate scenes because people who are perusing books on Amazon will only see a thumbnail image of the book. \u00a0\u201cYou have to start talking about your book before it\u2019s out but that\u2019s a two-edged sword \u2013 pre-promotion to get people excited about your book, but it\u2019s important not to reveal too much or you risk someone stealing your idea.\u201d<\/p>\n He uses his own travels and experiences in technology to bring realism to his stories. \u00a0In SkyFlash<\/em>, several scenes take place in Juneau, Alaska, as well as Colombia, places he\u2019s visited. \u00a0\u00a0In contrast, Killing West takes place in Helsinki. \u00a0Lee says he enjoyed walking around the city and talking to lot of people to get ideas for his story \u2013 noting that it was easy to do so since a lot of people speak English. \u00a0Another city that factored into his writing was St. Petersburg, Russia, which he visited four years ago. \u00a0\u00a0\u201cWhen I write a scene about a place, I look at street maps and the intersections \u2013 I give it a page or a half page of description. It really helps add color and mood to my writing.\u201d<\/p>\n Lee is also a big believer in using all five senses in his novels \u2013 and he deftly integrates his characters\u2019 experiences through sight, touch, taste, smell and hearing into every chapter.<\/p>\n His final advice to aspiring writers? \u201cNever give up. Even when things are not going the way you hoped. I had to send 86 query letters before my first book was picked up.\u201d<\/p>\n ________________________<\/p>\n About the Author<\/strong><\/p>\n Lee Gimenez<\/a>\u00a0is the author of 11 novels.\u00a0His latest thriller, SKYFLASH, was published in 2015 and is a new J.T. Ryan novel. Several of his\u00a0books became bestsellers, including The WASHINGTON ULTIMATUM<\/em> and BLACKSNOW ZERO. <\/em>His thriller KILLING WEST<\/em> was a featured novel of the International Thriller Writers Association. His books are available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, the Apple Store, Books-A-Million, Books In Motion, and many other retailers in the U.S. and internationally. Lee is a member of International Thriller Writers (ITW) and the Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA).<\/p>\n He earned a Bachelor of Science degree from Georgia Tech University and a Masters degree from Fairleigh Dickinson University. After college, he served as an officer in the U.S. Army. During his business management career, he worked for three Fortune 500 companies: Verizon, Tech Data, and M&M Mars. For more information about him, please visit his website at: www.LeeGimenez.com. You can also join him on Twitter (@LeeGimenez<\/span><\/a>), Facebook<\/a>, and other social media sites. Lee lives with his wife in the Atlanta, Georgia area.<\/p>\n Lee\u00a0will be at this year\u2019s Decatur Book Festival <\/a>being held in Atlanta Sept. 4-6, 2015, as a panelist on the Mystery Thrillers Panel.<\/p>\n Atlanta area writers can also sign up for his upcoming writing class, “Ten Steps to Writing a Successful Novel.” The class will be held at the Jera Publishing office in Roswell, Georgia, on July 15th at 6:30 p.m. The cost is $10, and will feature tips and illustrated with writing examples from his own eleven novels and from bestselling authors such as Steve Berry, James Patterson, and David Baldacci. \u00a0\u00a0For more information or to register, visit: \u00a0http:\/\/www.self-pub.net\/blog\/event\/ten-steps-to-writing-a-successful-novel\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0\u00a0 The inspiration for Lee Gimenez’s first novel, Azul 7, was a SciFi short story that he first got published in Nature magazine. “I was writing sequels to my short<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,61,343],"tags":[852,850,854,851,853],"class_list":["post-2162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-author-interview","category-book-publicity-tips","category-social-media-tips","tag-killing-west","tag-lee-gimenez","tag-novel-writing-tips","tag-skyflash","tag-thriller-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/anne.myupcomingsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/anne.myupcomingsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/anne.myupcomingsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anne.myupcomingsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anne.myupcomingsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2162"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/anne.myupcomingsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2162\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2168,"href":"https:\/\/anne.myupcomingsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2162\/revisions\/2168"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/anne.myupcomingsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anne.myupcomingsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anne.myupcomingsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a>drug that could cure disease, old age — everything that ails humans?\u201d Of course, there are some side effects with it, Lee adds with a chuckle. \u00a0\u00a0\u201cI try to have conflict at the end of each chapter and to cliff hang my readers at the end of each book (to set up the next novel).\u201d
\nAfter crafting the what-if question, Lee writes a succinct synopsis of his novel. \u00a0\u201cIf you can capture your story in one or two paragraphs, you are a third of a way done,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n