Addison Brae

Author

accountant

How characters find a place to call home

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Sugar Creek, Missouri

Book heroines often mirror what happens in real life and return to their childhood hometowns. Some have a sense of adventure that takes them across the country or to the other side of the world. Just like us, other main characters fight to escape bad memories by moving as far away as possible.

Gillian, the heroine in Dark Energy, Return to Becker Circle, opted to leave her small-town childhood home of Sugar Creek, Missouri behind. Gillian’s world crashed when her mom lost her battle with cancer. Then she watched her father slip into the bottle. Gillian could mix the best martini of any 12-year-old. Luckily the bar where he was a regular was only a block from their house, so he could stumble home safely. Gillian left her hometown as soon as she could with a scholarship to Harvard.

Becker Circle

After graduation, Gillian headed to Dallas for a fresh start. The weather was warmer than Boston or Sugar Creek. It was a great place to find an accounting job. There were tons of young professionals. And Dallas was far away from her past.

Kross Lounge & Restaurant, Sugar Creek

I researched middle-America towns near metropolitan areas to create Gillian’s roots and found Sugar Creek. Visual mapping and websites helped me locate her schools, part-time job, newspaper where her father was the editor, home, and the bar in the next block.

Visiting Sugar Creek confirmed the town was right for Gillian. Sugar Creek has a Moose Lodge, town gazebo, and shady streets lined with pre-WWII homes. Best of all is the Kross Lounge & Restaurant, exactly the place I picture as the local bar where Gillian’s dad was a regular. It’s a place where everyone knows your name. I ate lunch at the bar and chatted with the bartender who had worked there for 19 years. When I told her why I was visiting, she agreed she would likely be the one who made sure Gillian’s dad made it home.

Blending fiction with real settings and situations helps create relatable characters. Most people who’ve worked hard to start over in a fresh place will understand why Gillian might have selected her new Dallas neighborhood home.

How did you find your place to call home?

Whistle Bitch’s playlist

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Whistle Bitch can whistle a tune to fit any situation. Her real name is Makinzie. She’s one of my favorite Becker Circle and Dark Energy characters. She earned the nickname from her coworkers because of her amazing talent and ability to brings smiles to any stressful situation with her tunes.

Makinzie is a server and bartender (and cook when they’re in a pinch) in Pinkie’s Too and the George & Dragon, the two bars where these stories take place. A real bartender in an all-night bar/diner near the Space Needle in Seattle inspired Whistle Bitch because she whistles while she works.

Here is Whistle Bitch’s playlist, in the order the songs show up in the two books. Take a listen. This playlist is 45-minutes of music that will make you dance and smile, just like Whistle Bitch does in the book. Curious what situations triggered Makinzie to whistle these songs? Both books are available on most ebook retail sites.

Find Becker Circle & Dark Energy – Whistle Bit*h’s Playlist on Spotify.

You are the Sunshine of my Life by Stevie Wonder
Crazy Little Thing Called Love by Queen
Heartbreak Hotel by Elvis Presley
Holiday by Madonna
You’re Gonna Miss Me by 13th Floor Elevators
Tequila by The Champs
9 to 5 by Dolly Parton
Material Girl by Madonna
Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen
Cheers (Drink to That) by Rihanna
The Twilight Zone Main Theme by Geek Music
Dark Energy by Brian Miller
Dark Energy .germans remix by Brian Miller and Bobby Hoke

The last two songs are bonus tracks I co-wrote to go with the books. Jon, the adorable guy in one of the bands falls for Gillian, the main character, who inspires him to write a song called Dark Energy in the Becker Circle story. As Jon explained the song to Gillian, “I wrote it about someone who had a streak of bad luck and how they changed it with good karma.”

Listen for Track 12 (on Spotify) toward the end of the book trailer. If you are a Foo Fighters fan, you will like Dark Energy.

Find your beat today with a little music.

Fictional song now real

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Dark Energy .germans mix featuring Brian Miller & Bobby Hoke lyrics by Addison Brae from the Becker Circle novel series

Music has always been a part of my life. All the way through school I played instruments, took part in church choir. My favorite tunes were on while I did homework. The songs that inspired me most calmed my nerves before the most dreaded college finals. My first marketing job was radio and music video promotions for a major record company. But I never had enough talent and drive to be a professional musician.

Music also inspires me. It’s always playing in the background while I write. Dark Energy and Becker Circle take place in the bar scene around live music. Jon, the adorable guy in one of the bands falls for Gillian, the main character, who inspires him to write a song called Dark Energy in the Becker Circle story. As Jon told Gillian, “I wrote it about someone who had a streak of bad luck and how they changed it with good karma.” It hit me while writing Dark Energy: Return to Becker Circle. The song had to be written in reality.

The song symbolizes the dark energy and dark matter theory in the cosmos. Dark matter allows gravity to pull stars, suns, planets, and other matter together the way I see some people draw us together. Dark energy is the vast empty space that opposes dark matter. It slips into the voids of our lives trying to disrupt like it pushes matter apart attempting to destroy our universe.

I never dreamed I would become a songwriter. Thanks to Brian Miller and Bobby Hoke, Dark Energy has music and is recorded and released. Listen for this version toward the end of the book trailer. And now we have Dark Energy .germans mix by Brian Miller and Bobby Hoke, released on March 5.

The chorus below (and all of the lyrics) represents the strength people possess that can help them push past economic, emotional and other hardships that strike even the most careful and good people.

Chorus
Find someone else to conquer.
What does it mean this dark energy?
Dark energy won’t control my fate.
I don’t deserve this dark energy.

Deep thanks to Brian for writing the music and recording both songs, and to Bobby for his vision for the .germans mix and for doing such an amazing job producing. Thank you John Harrell for the beautiful song art and Katlyn Steele for modeling. If you are a Foo Fighters fan, you will like Dark Energy.

You can find Dark Energy by Brian Miller and Dark Energy .germans mix by Brian Miller and Bobby Hoke on your favorite music retail and streaming sites including Spotify, Pandora, YouTube, and Apple Music.

Find your dark matter and enjoy the songs.

Cryptojacking in a bar scene romantic suspense?

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“Cybercrime creeps in right under my nose when a cryptojacking scheme lands my boss, Pinkie, in jail.”
Gillian, Dark Energy heroine.

Cryptocurrency is one of the hottest investments. It’s digital money people use to buy goods and services. Bitcoin, Facebook’s Diem (originally Libra), and as many as 5,000 others are cryptocurrency varieties. People invest in cryptocurrencies like stocks or commodities. They also steal it. Cryptojacking is what I call digital pickpocketing.

Like anything related to money, cryptocurrencies attract criminals, especially when values shoot up (like they did recently) and tank (like they did about a year ago). Traders move it through exchanges where transactions untraceable. Cryptocurrency can be routed through these exchanges or other online wallets to launder millions of dollars. This virtual world is where dark energy creeps in; the dark side where cryptocurrency fits into Dark Energy: Return to Becker Circle.

In Dark Energy, Pinkie owns two bars typically packed with people likely to have cryptocurrency. Knowing this, vicious criminals pull Pinkie and other honest business owners into their cryptojacking scheme to cover their digital trail. But these criminals don’t know they’ll have to answer to Gillian. The FBI arrests Pinkie leaving Gillian to run the bars and prove her boss had nothing to do with the scam. She and Jon, the most talented musician on the bar’s stage and the perfect boyfriend, will not let her mentor and friend go down for something he didn’t do.

Read a short excerpt from Dark Energy to learn about cryptojacking during this telephone conversation between Gillian and her favorite Harvard accounting professor. Watch the trailer and find the songs Dark Energy by Brian Miller and Dark Energy .germans mix by Brian Miller and Bobby Hoke (lyrics for both by Addison Brae) on your favorite music retailer or streaming sites.

Practice safe cryptocurrency spending. Double encrypt.

Chapter 16 excerpt
Paper rustles during a longer than normal pause. I also remember Dr. Daran being my only professor who still carried paper around. Everyone else kept lecture notes on a tablet, but not him.

“Dammit, if I could only break the habit of printing important things thinking they’ll be easier to find in this paper mound on my desk.” More papers crinkle. “Found it. A CIA buddy forwarded a cybercrime alert a few weeks ago. It’s making me think. This reeks of theft. What’s the most common theft in bars?”

“I don’t know—food, bartenders over pouring drinks, servers scamming tips, customers walking tabs? I get it. Pinkie doesn’t put up with crap from anyone. If we do, employees are fired—or customers are banned.”

“Good, Gillian. Think bigger. Not the random employee or customer wanting to get ahead. Think about real criminals who steal for a living.”

I pause and stare at the concrete wall in front of me while I think. “Occasionally, people have had their wallets or purses stolen, especially when we’re packed during live music weekends.”

“Bingo. Pickpockets. Are these bars located in the suburbs or in the heart of Dallas?”

“Definitely in the middle of everything. Both bars are surrounded by high-rises—office buildings, apartments, condos. The new location I manage has tech startups and banks in office towers above and all around us. Could those servers have been stealing information?”

“You did listen in my classes. There are lots of ways to commit theft using computers. I’d put my bet on cryptojacking.”

“You taught us all about digital money—cryptocurrency and bitcoin—but cryptojacking?”

“It’s like digital pickpocketing on a much larger scale.”