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Today, we have author Alana Woods featured on the blog’s ‘Indie Saturday‘ for her debut award-winning best-selling suspense legal thriller Automaton and follow-up suspense espionage thriller Imbroglio.

Here are 5 star reviews of Automaton and Imbroglio (respectively) from book blogger Here’s The Right Side Of It:

‘It’s difficult to decide where to begin with Automaton. This is an exemplary novel by a master of the craft. Set in Australia, it is so deep, so well written, so intelligently thought out and flows so smoothly that I felt like a participant and personal observer within the events, rather than a reader who was sitting comfortably in my office as the story unfolded. Woods’ experience as a Court Reporter makes her tale as authentic, intriguing and interesting as any you’ll ever read. It’s not a quick, shallow read – it’s a real novel … Regretfully, I can only give this one 5 stars. I assure you I’m waiting for Alana Woods’ next novel.’

‘Alana Woods’ suspense novel Imbroglio. This lady can definitely spin a tale … In short, it’s what any card-carrying crime fiction fan is looking for … ‘

Alana Woods writes :

So, when is a good guy a good guy, or a bad guy a bad guy, or good bad, or bad good?

It’s the question occupying the minds of Elisabeth Sharman in Automaton and Noel Valentine in Imbroglio.

And when is a girl telling the truth or taking you for a sucker?

That’s the question occupying Robert Murphy and David Cameron – the aforementioned good guys, or are they the bad guys?

Let’s take Elisabeth Sharman and Robert Murphy first because they’re the main players in my debut novel Automaton, an award-winning best-selling legal suspense thriller.

Murphy is Sharman’s instructing solicitor in a murder trial, but he’s having a hard time of it. She’s prickly, unfriendly and downright uncommunicative until the night she lets him take her to bed. Problem is, the next morning she goes right back to being prickly, unfriendly and uncommunicative. He can’t help but think she seduced him to keep him quiet. But he’s hooked and when all’s said and done, they both have the interests of their client to look out for. A client who’s only 19 and allegedly can’t remember committing the crime he’s on trial for.

There are so many skeletons stuffed into the closets in Automaton they rattle.

A book store manager once remarked to me about Automaton ‘It’s quite literary, isn’t it’. I considered it to be a terrific compliment.

Once you’ve figured out the relationships in Automaton you can try to unravel Noel Valentine and David Cameron’s in espionage suspense thriller Imbroglio.

Not easy, I’ve been told. Valentine saves Cameron’s life and finds herself in a resulting spiral into trouble that has her head spinning. She’s already on very shaky mental ground because of something in her past. She desperately needs to care about something and her choice just maybe couldn’t have been worse. But when the bad guy’s gorgeous, it can be hard to see straight, let alone think straight, right? There’s car crashes, sharks, guns, traitors. It’s a wonder anyone survives until the end.

More on Alana Woods!

When I first started work, it was as a publications typist at a weapons research establishment. It helped put me in the right frame of mind when I wrote Imbroglio some years later.

Later I spent five years in court reporting. That’s when the idea for Automaton occurred. I’d sit in court and watch the accused and their families. Some were lost, had no idea what was going on. The words spoken may have been familiar but the language used was foreign. My heart used to break for the parents especially.

In fact, my jobs generally have been good sources of material for books. I’m working on a corporate crime novel at the moment that’s a direct result of my years as an editor and subsequently Director of Publishing at the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission. I’m tossing up whether to make it a trilogy. I know series are popular and sell well, but I also note a trend to short novellas in series. I like long books, so if I do decide on a trilogy I’d like each one to be the length of a traditional novel, which requires a bit of work!

Born in England but an Aussie in heart and soul, at the moment Alana Woods has a hankering to buy a masseria in Puglia and go live there. The food and wine are to die for. She just has to convince her other half … and learn Italian.

Writer, editor, book reviewer, reader, traveller, food and wine lover – all of these describe Alana.

Alana Woods’ books are all available in Kindle and paperback formats on Amazon. Samples are available on her Scribd.Com page (and also embedded here)

• Automaton
• Imbroglio

You might also like to check out her 25 essential writing tips: guide to writing good fiction that she wrote after critiquing manuscripts for many years. It’s aimed at aspiring authors but if the reviews are anything to go by seasoned authors are also giving it the thumbs up.

You can also check out Alana Woods’ Amazon author page for more info and her other books.

You can follow Alana on: her website: alanawoods.com, Facebook: alanawoodsauthor, Twitter: @alanaewoods, Goodreads, Google+ and Shelfari

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Do you want to be a featured ‘Indie Saturday’ author too? Go here for more info!

Read an embedded sample of “Automaton” and “Imbroglio” after the jump!

“Automaton”

“Imbroglio”

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