A Dangerous Stage

By Camy Tang

Description:

Tessa Lancaster worked for her uncle in the Japanese mafia until she was sent to prison for a murder she didn't commit. Now, after finding God behind bars, she takes odd jobs as a bodyguard to keep her distance from the family business.

In A Dangerous Stage, the second book in Camy Tang's Protection for Hire series, Tessa gets caught up in the web of lies surrounding a shady singing competition. Hired by one of the contestants, she works with Charles Britton---the lawyer who sent her to prison---to discover the dark figures manipulating the contest from behind the scenes.

Tessa's abilities will be tested like never before as she's forced to balance the safety of her client's family and her deepening relationship with Charles. In the midst of the chaos, she holds on to her faith to keep her safe and bring down the shadowy organization.

Book Takeaway:

I really enjoyed writing about Tessa and Charles again for multiple reasons. Tessa's struggles with forgiveness parallel some of my own struggles with forgiving people who have hurt me, and I hope readers can relate and also find hope that the hurt can be healed with God's help. 

I hadn't written that much about Charles's character in Protection for Hire, but I knew I needed to reveal more about his heart and his spiritual walk in A Dangerous Stage, and I was strongly impacted by Psalm 90:7-12:

We are consumed by your anger and terrified by your indignation. You have set our iniquities before you, our secret sins in the light of your presence.  All our days pass away under your wrath; we finish our years with a moan. Our days may come to seventy years, or eighty, if our strength endures; yet the best of them are but trouble and sorrow, for they quickly pass, and we fly away. If only we knew the power of your anger! Your wrath is as great as the fear that is your due. Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom. (TNIV)

I thought it was an important reminder to me that I am flawed but Jesus has saved me, and I need to remember God's power and respect Him rather than taking Him for granted. Life is short and I need to take advantage of each moment God gives to me. It made me look at my life differently and make different choices, trying to follow God's will rather than my own.

Charles struggles with these types of choices and whether he is truly passionately committed to Christ. My prayer is that his struggles will help readers make their own decisions to follow Christ with intensity and passion.

Why the author wrote this book:

I love Stephanie Plum and The Joy Luck Club, and so I wanted to write a book with all the humor of both and with the action/suspense of the Stephanie Plum series.

I also love strong, capable heroines like from the TV shows Alias, Nikita, Covert Affairs, and the movies Tomb Raider and Resident Evil. I wanted to write about a strong woman with a heart for God, so I came up with my character, Tessa.

I wanted to give Tessa a reason to keep being involved in different crimes (so that I could have more books with her as the heroine) and the idea came to me that if Tessa had a shady past before coming to Christ, that past would provide good spiritual conflict as well as causing external problems in her life. I am a fan of The Sopranos--I don’t care much for the violence, but I liked the more humorous parts of the series, especially those involving the family fiascos. I thought it would be fun if Tessa belonged to the Japanese mafia, and I created a Japanese version of The Sopranos, which makes it both exciting and funny, mirroring the feel of the Stephanie Plum series.

For her hero, I thought up the most unlikely pairing--a straight-laced lawyer from Louisiana--and as I wrote, I let the sparks fly!

When I first wrote A Dangerous Stage, I knew I wanted the backdrop to be a singing competition like American Idol, or The Voice, or X-Factor. I couldn’t use the name of any of those shows for legal reasons (and I wouldn’t want an angry note from Simon Cowell anyway!) so I had to come up with a name for my fictional singing competition.

I brainstormed for days, but couldn’t come up with anything better than “Screechers,” which my husband vetoed. :) So I posted on my Facebook Author page (https://www.facebook.com/CamyTangAuthor) to ask my Facebook friends for help.

I had a ton of great ideas! The best one was from Amancay, which was Grab the Mic. I loved that title right away and inserted it into my manuscript only a few days before I sent it to my editor at Zondervan.