Author: jett-ward

  • An October Spotlight on the 2021 Global Thriller Awards

    An October Spotlight on the 2021 Global Thriller Awards

    Time is running out! The 2021 Global Thriller Awards are due in October!

     

    You’re working the puzzle, the patterns you see that no one else pays attention to. You’ve been at it for days, your eyes are burning, your throat dry, when a message notification beeps on your smartphone.  You tap to open:

    “We know who you are and your time is running out.”

    The smartphone beeps again. This time, the message reads:

    “You have until October 31, 2021, 11.59 p.m. to turn in your Global Thriller, or you will have no chance of winning…” 

    Don’t let this happen to you!

    Turn in your High-Stakes Thriller, your Chillers, your multiple Killers for a chance at the prize! But one thing is certain, if you don’t enter, you won’t have a chance of winning!

    The Global Thriller Awards Spotlight

    The clock is ticking… you’re working on a deadline while your spouse is across town, picking up the kids. You’ve taken the day off and gone to the cabin. You have to write that last chapter… the one that will get your work noticed, like J.D. Barker or Stephen King kind of noticed.

    The Chanticleer Global Thriller Awards recognizes High Stake Thrillers on an International Scale, including Lab Lit. While Lee Child’s Jack Reacher series might be the first thing that comes to mind, there is a wide variety of espionage and mystery that can fit into the Global Thriller genre. One thing is for sure, it will keep you up late, and, if you can sleep, it’ll be with one eye open.

    The only certainty is that the competition for this CIBA Division Awards is steep. Let’s take a look at some of our favorites.

    The Bucharest Dossier, a Novel by William Maz

    Chanticleer Review is forth coming.

    Blue and Gold Badge for the Global Thriller Grand Prize for High Stakes Thrillers The Bucharest Dossier by William MazCover of William Maz's The Bucharest Dossier, Chanticleer Grand Prize Global Thrillers Winner 2020

     

     

    Doubt and Debt
    By John Feist

    Doubt and Debt Book Cover

    Pipelines—large industrial pipelines through which pour oil, gas, and other natural elements—are not the usual stuff that writers tackle for intelligent, sophisticated international high-stakes spy novels. But then again, most writers aren’t John Feist, whose lawyering background in, yes, global pipelines and related industries such as steel, coal, and shipping companies make him the perfect choice to turn these typically pedestrian subjects into absorbing books. His work introduces us to complex issues involving international trade at the highest level, greed, murder, and above all, the intricacies and rewards of multinational, prominent, and sometimes multiracial families.

    Read More here! 

     

    The Kurdish Connection (Book 1 in the Bedlam Series)
    By Randall Krzak
    Semi-Finalist in Global Thrillers

    A Girl looking down. Largely taupe colors with a badge for the Chanticleer Semi-finalist position

    International writer Randall Krzak addresses one of the world’s saddest ongoing tragedies in The Kurdish Connection, a thriller about the plight of the Kurdish people and a desperate plan to free them from their fate.

    In a world awash with refugees, perhaps no greater tragedy exists than the ongoing fate of the Kurds of the Middle East, roughly 30 million sect members spread between Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Turkey. Connected by language, religion, and history, this group has no country to call their own. The Kurds have been the subject of several attempts by international agreements to help them create a haven, the most recent in northern Iraq’s no-fly zone. Meanwhile, all four host countries have ruthlessly suppressed Kurdish hopes and dreams politically and especially militarily.

    Read More here!

    Execute Order
    By Jett Ward
    First Place Winner in Global Thrillers

    On a military base outside Las Vegas, Lieutenant Brent Parker sits in a bunker in a darkened room looking to an outsider to be playing a sophisticated aerial combat video game. But this is no game. People live and die with Parker in control of a lethal drone nicknamed the Reaper flying over forbidden Syrian air space in 2011, striking American enemies on the ground with killer missiles from several miles in the air.

    Enemies are one issue, but collateral damage—men, women, children, whole families who die in a missile attack as a side effect of bringing down a terrorist—weighs heavily on Parker’s conscience. It doesn’t help when his ultra-sensitive cameras see the face of a woman who his missile will obliterate as a side effect of bringing down a military-mandated target, a face that haunts him as he leaves the bunker for the clean, and safe, American desert air of Nevada.

    Read More here! 

     

    The Kafir Project
    By Lee Burvine
    First Place Winner in Global Thriller Awards

    From page one, things are not going as planned on The Kafir Project, and author Lee Burvine has many more surprises in store before this undertaking ends. The action leaps off the page from beginning to the grand finale in this thought-provoking thriller. The villains are well-organized and highly motivated to stop the Project dead, as well as anyone who gets in their way.

    Gevin Rees is a television science communicator, a celebrity who explains complex scientific discoveries and theories to television audiences. He interviews guests on specific topics and is surprised the world’s most celebrated and reclusive physicist, Edward Fischer, wants to meet with him. It’s even more curious because Fischer’s death in an explosion had been broadly reported. However, he stands before Gevin Rees and begins to tell a story of intrigue about a secret project on a pier along San Francisco Bay. The story is interrupted with gunfire. This time there is no doubt that Fischer is dead. Now on the run, Gevin Rees is a new target.

    Read More here!

     

    Hong Kong Central (Book 3)
    By Marilyn Larew

    Former CIA agent and all around badass, Lee Carruthers, returns for the thrilling third book in the series, Hong Kong Central by Marilynn Larew.

    Lee is looking forward to some well-earned downtime, so when her ex-boss and mentor, Sidney Worthington calls with another job, Lee is not amused. During her previous mission, people tried to kill her—multiple times. All she really wants right now is some serious R&R. However, she is the gal who will never say “no” to a job. And besides, Worthington swears it’s an easy gig.

    Read More here! 

     

    Bishop’s Law
    By Rafael Amadeus Hines
    First Place Winner in Global Thriller Awards

    Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast. This is the code that John Bishop, one of America’s most decorated military heroes, teaches his men to follow whether they’re on a mission in the heat of the Middle East or in the jungle that is New York’s Lower East Side in Rafael Amadeus Hines’ novel, Bishop’s Law.

    To say his life is complicated is putting it mildly. In this second volume of the John Bishop series, several high-level assassins are hell-bent on killing him for his actions as a soldier. At the same time, he’s deep in his crime family’s military-style battles against various opponents’ groups. All these forces are closing in on him simultaneously, even as the United States government had hired him and his family to protect the country from bad guys using whatever means necessary.

    Read More here! 

     


    Have a great Global Thriller? Submit before the end of October for the 2021 CIBAs! 

    When you’re ready, did you know that Chanticleer offers editorial services? We do and have been doing so since 2011.

    Our professional editors are top-notch and are experts in the Chicago Manual of Style. They have and are working for the top publishing houses (TOR, McMillian, Thomas Mercer, Penguin Random House, Simon Schuster, etc.).

    If you would like more information, we invite you to email Kiffer or Sharon at KBrown@ChantiReviews.com or SAnderson@ChantiReviews.com for more information, testimonials, and fees.

    We work with a small number of exclusive clients who want to collaborate with our team of top-editors on an on-going basis. Contact us today!

    Chanticleer Editorial Services also offers writing craft sessions and masterclasses. Sign up to find out where, when, and how sessions being held.

    A great way to get started is with our manuscript evaluation service, with more information available here.

    And we do editorial consultations for $75. Learn more here.  

    If you’re confident in your book, consider submitting it for a Editorial Book Review here or to one of our Chanticleer International Awards here.

    Also remember! Our 10th Anniversary Chanticleer Authors Conference (CAC22) will be April 7-10, 2022, where our 2021 CIBA winners will be announced. Space is limited and seats are already filling up, so sign up today!  CAC22 and the CIBA Ceremonies will be hosted at the Hotel Bellwether in Beautiful Bellingham, Wash. Sign up and see the latest updates here!

  • EXECUTE ORDER by Jett Ward  – Political Thriller/Suspense, Military Thrillers, Action/Adventure

    EXECUTE ORDER by Jett Ward – Political Thriller/Suspense, Military Thrillers, Action/Adventure

    On a military base outside Las Vegas, Lieutenant Brent Parker sits in a bunker in a darkened room looking to an outsider to be playing a sophisticated aerial combat video game. But this is no game. People live and die with Parker in control of a lethal drone nicknamed the Reaper flying over forbidden Syrian air space in 2011, striking American enemies on the ground with killer missiles from several miles in the air.

    Enemies are one issue, but collateral damage—men, women, children, whole families who die in a missile attack as a side effect of bringing down a terrorist—weighs heavily on Parker’s conscience. It doesn’t help when his ultra-sensitive cameras see the face of a woman who his missile will obliterate as a side effect of bringing down a military-mandated target, a face that haunts him as he leaves the bunker for the clean, and safe, American desert air of Nevada.

    Early on, we find out that Parker isn’t as safe as he thinks he is. Forces across the globe are watching as his drone wipes out an apartment building in the Middle East where a renowned Iranian bomb maker is holed up. When a missile controlled by Parker takes out the bomber and decimates the site, an incident widely reported by the international press, sophisticated military men in the enemy camp want the head of the man who murdered their prized weapons maker. They dispatch an assassin to infiltrate the U.S., track down and kill the killer of their esteemed techno genius.

    That’s only half of Parker’s problems.

    The other concerns another mission where Parker’s eye in the sky over Libya spots the transfer of some suspicious crates looted from a former Libyan dictator Gadaffi stronghold that turns out to be surface-to-air missiles that could wind up in the hands of ISIS. A U.S. crew is parachuted into Libya to stop the hand-off, but the mission becomes complicated when they are detected and are outnumbered by a superior number of ISIS soldiers. To complicate matters, a helicopter used to support the U.S. soldiers is shot down, and the soldiers’ orders are to kill the pilot to avoid him falling into enemy hands. Parker makes a decision to help the trapped soldiers, using a method frowned on by his superiors and puts him in danger of being court-martialed by his own command structure.

    This tense action novel gives the readers a close-up, first-person knowledgeable view of the massive, sophisticated technology with which war and the collateral spying that goes with it. It feels hands-on real, both in the descriptions of the various weaponry and the way it is used. Someone lived this life, which makes it all the more readable. It also delivers a satisfying portrayal of the international forces focusing on controversies that Parker kicks up in the performance of his job as the pilot of a remote killer aircraft, and the actions he takes that have international repercussions.

    There is more back story including a relationship that Parker develops with a well-paid Las Vegas escort and various battles with bad guys from both America and the Middle East. Some are bloody detailed hand-to-hand struggles, others are vicious mind games played by both sides.

    Parker himself is portrayed in terms that would fit well in a graphics novel or a Jason Statham movie. Some of the dialog between him and other characters is less than stellar. But this isn’t a novel you read for Eudora Welty-level characterizations. You read Execute Order for the rush of an action novel with complex plots, a knowledgeable narrative, and a surprising, satisfying conclusion. On that front, Execute Order delivers the goods, and then some.

    Execute Order won First Place in the CIBA 2019 Global Thrillers for Military Thrillers.

  • SPOTLIGHT on GLOBAL THRILLERS High-Stakes Thriller, Chillers, multiple Killers – CIBA Thriller Books, Book Awards, Best Thriller Books

    SPOTLIGHT on GLOBAL THRILLERS High-Stakes Thriller, Chillers, multiple Killers – CIBA Thriller Books, Book Awards, Best Thriller Books

    It’s come down to this…

    You’re good at deadlines… cutting the right wire under pressure is nothing. You can take down dozens of bad guys with just your wit and some duct tape.

    You can certainly make this deadline!

     

     

    Our new deadline for the 2020 (only) in the  CIBA GLOBAL THRILLER  Awards is October 31, 2020, at 11:59 p.m.

    (*Beware, my friends, for the Global Thriller Awards deadline next year will be one month earlier ~ September 30, 2021! …tick, tick, tick!)

    ENTER TODAY!

    Avanti Centrae pulled the trigger just in time and brought home the CIBA 2019 GRAND PRIZE in GLOBAL THRILLERS Book Awards for SOLSTICE SHADOWS – A VanOps Thriller!

     

     

    The First in Category Winners for The 2019 Global Thrillers are: 

     

    • Randall Krzak for Carnage in Singapore
    • Courtney Leigh Pahlke for Life Force Preserve
    • Jett Ward for Execute Order
    • Nicole Mabry for Past This Point
    • Avanti Centrae for VanOps: The Solstice Shadows
    • Joanne Jaytanie for Salvaging Truth, Hunters & Seekers, Book 1

     

     

     

     


    In 2018, Michael Pronko won the Global Thriller Awards with The Moving Blade.

     

     

    The 2018 Global Thrillers First in Category Winners are:

     

    • Magenta is Missing by Richard Garis
    • Dangerous Alliance by Randall Krzak
    • The War Beneath by Timothy S. Johnston
    • The Sunken Forest by R. Barber Anderson
    • Never Again by Harvey A. Schwartz   
    • Beyond Control by  Lawrence Verigin

     

     

     


    Sara Stamey took home the Grand Prize in 2017 for The Ariadne Connection

     

    The First in Category Winners for 2017: 

     

     

     


    Here are some winners that came before: 

    From the 2016 CLUE Awards:

     


    From the 2015 CLUE Awards:

    • Blended Genre: Timothy S. Johnston – The Tanner Sequence: The FurnaceThe Freezer, The Void
    • Espionage/Spy: Michele Daniel  The Red Circle

    We also had Cybertech Thrillers and Political Thrillers such as John Trudel’s Raven’s Resurrection and the Raven’s Series.


    Here’s your assignment, if you choose to accept it…

     

    Submit your Thrillers in the following categories by October 31, 2020,  for a chance to bring home a First in Category WIN the 2020 CIBAs in Global Thrillers – or a Grand Prize – or maybe even the Overall Grand Prize! 

                • Historic
                • LabLit
                • Science Fiction
                • Dramatic
                • Action/Adventure
                • CyberTech

    If you never enter, you’ll never know!  

    Follow this link and enter today! 

    Tick Tock…


    (For light-hearted, cozy, or classic Mystery and Suspense entries see our Mystery & Mayhem Awards and for Thriller/Suspense/Hardboiled-Detective series, please see the CLUE Awards)

    Don’t delay! Enter today!

  • GLOBAL Book Awards for High Stakes Thrillers – 2019 CIBAs

    GLOBAL Book Awards for High Stakes Thrillers – 2019 CIBAs

    Congratulations to the First Place Category Winners and the Grand Prize Winner of the GLOBAL THRILLER Book Awards for High Stakes Fiction, a division of the 2019 CIBAs.

    The CIBAs Search for the Best Suspense High Stakes Thriller and Lab Lit  Novels

    Chanticleer Book Reviews is celebrating the best books featuring Suspense, Thrilling stories that put the balance of world power or that will end the world as we know it. We include with Global Thrillers the Lab Lit genre. Lab Lit is when Fiction Meets Real Science and Research or stories that are based on real science and research up to a certain “what if” point. We love them all.

    The 2019 GLOBAL THRILLER Book Awards First Place Category Winners and the GLOBAL THRILLER  Grand Prize winner were announced at the Virtual Chanticleer Authors Conference that was broadcast via ZOOM webinar the week of Sept 8 -13, 2020 from the Hotel Bellwether in Bellingham, Wash.

    Sara Stamey, author of The Ariadne Connection –  2017 GLOBAL THRILLER  Grand Prize Winner announced the 2019 GLOBAL THRILLER Book Award Winners.

    This is the OFFICIAL 2019 LIST of the GLOBAL THRILLER Book Awards First Place Category Winners and the GLOBAL THRILLER Grand Prize Winner.

    Congratulations to:

    • Randall Krzak for Carnage in Singapore
    • Courtney Leigh Pahlke for Life Force Preserve
    • Jett Ward for Execute Order
    • Nicole Mabry for Past This Point
    • Avanti Centrae for VanOps: The Solstice Shadows
    • Joanne Jaytanie for Salvaging Truth, Hunters & Seekers, Book 1

    The GLOBAL THRILLER Book Awards 

    2019 Grand Prize Winner is 

    SOLSTICE SHADOWS – A VanOps Thriller

    by Avanti Centrae

     

    This is the badge for the 2018 GLOBAL THRILLER Grand Prize Winner – The Moving Blade by Michael Pronko

     

    How to Enter the 2020 GLOBAL THRILLER Book Awards?

    We are accepting submissions into the 2020 GLOBAL THRILLER  Book Awards until October  31, 2020. After this date, all entries will go into the 2021 GLOBAL THRILLER Book Awards. 

    The 2020 GLOBAL THRILLER Book Awards winners will be announced at CAC 21 on April 17, 2021.

    Don’t delay! Enter today! 

    A Note to ALL the WINNERS: The coveted CIBA Blue Ribbons will be mailed out starting in October. We will contact you with an email to verify your mailing address and other items. We thank you for your patience and understanding.

    If you have any questions, please email info@ChantiReviews.com == we will try our best to reply in 3 or 4 business days.