“Called in to consult after a young woman disappears, Tracy Crosswhite has the uneasy feeling that this is no ordinary missing-persons case. When the body turns up in an abandoned well, Tracy’s suspicions are confirmed. Estranged from her family, the victim had balked at an arranged marriage and had planned to attend graduate school. But someone cut her dreams short.

Solving the mystery behind the murder isn’t Tracy’s only challenge. The detective is keeping a secret of her own: she’s pregnant. And now her biggest fear seems to be coming true when a new detective arrives to replace her. Meanwhile, Tracy’s colleague Vic Fazzio is about to take a fall after his investigation into the murder of a local community activist turns violent and leaves an invaluable witness dead.

Two careers are on the line. And when more deadly secrets emerge, jobs might not be the only things at risk.”

I am delighted to welcome you to the blog today and to my stop on the A Steep Price blog tour. A Steep Price is the sixth book in the Tracy Crosswhite series written by bestselling author Robert Dugoni. To celebrate the book’s release earlier this week I have a fantastic guest post to share with you today about Robert’s path to becoming a full-time writer and the obstacles he had to overcome.

So without further ado, I’ll hand over to Robert…

I knew long before I became a lawyer that I wanted to be a writer. I just needed the courage to pursue that dream.

I come from a family of compulsive overachievers. I have nine brothers and sisters. Growing up as the middle child I watched my siblings choose their career paths – doctors and pharmacists and accountants. My siblings were all science oriented, but I was always different. I’ve always wanted to write novels. That was my dream since I was a young boy.

My mother was an English teacher out of college and had terrific books around the house that I gravitated to. I read The Great Gatsby, The Old Man and the Sea, Of Mice and Men, To Kill a Mockingbird, and many other classics. As I got older I recall reading, All the President’s Men in one day. I read books like Lonesome Dove, A Prayer for Owen Meany, The Great Santini, and many others. These inspired me to want to tell stories.

When my high school basketball career fizzled I got the best advice of my life from the most unusual source. The basketball coach told me while cutting me from the team that the journalism instructor mentioned that I could really write, and he suggested that writing might be a better path for me. I remember leaving his office and feeling relief. I remember being excited to get the chance to write, and to have people read my articles. So I became the editor in chief in high school and moved toward a career in journalism at Stanford University. Again, however, my peers were all heading to professional school and I felt pressure to join them. I’d ruled out medicine, but I thought I could go to law school, get a degree, and put that in my back pocket while I pursued a writing career.

It didn’t work out that way, at least not right away, but the passion to tell stories never left. I found different outlets. I pursued acting and landed roles in theatres all over the San Francisco Bay Area. Those ten years instilled in me a desire to not give up on my dream to write. When that desire hit me hard again in my thirties, I pursued it without hesitation, but a lot of trepidation. I was married with a young son when I left the practice of law and all the security a regular salary provided to take on a new adventure.

I started with legal thrillers, something I first started to think about in law school when I read Presumed Innocent. Scott Turrow and John Grisham exploded onto the market with best selling legal thrillers. It seemed a natural fit for a lawyer looking to start a writing career. There were a lot of stops and starts – mostly stops – along the way, but I fell under a lucky star when I reluctantly attended a party and met an agent from the Environmental Protection Agency. Together we wrote The Cyanide Canary, a 2004 Washington Post best book of the year selection. I then created the character David Sloane, an attorney in San Francisco seemingly unable to lose a case. That story became The Jury Master. Four more novels with David Sloane followed. I then created Tracy Crosswhite and wrote My Sister’s Grave which became a runaway bestseller in half a dozen countries and has sold more than a million and a half copies.

Just recently I had a chance to write the story I grew up reading as a young boy, the novels my mother used to hand to me. The story came to me in bits and pieces, but when I had the character, the plot came in a wave, and I found myself getting up in the middle of the night to write The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell. It is a story of a man looking back on his life with Ocular Albinism. He has red eyes. It is a story of love, of faith and of hope that reminded one reviewer of the early works of John Irving.

It’s taken me nearly twenty years to reach my dream of telling stories fulltime, but it is a journey I would not trade for any other profession in the world.

Thank you for joining me today Robert and sharing your road to becoming a full-time writer. It’s always fascinating to see the dedication and drive of a writer; that desire to write, no matter what.

A Steep Price by Robert Dugoni was published in the UK by Thomas & Mercer on 26th June 2018 and is available in paperback, eBook and audio formats (please note the following links are affiliate links): | amazon.co.uk | amazon.com | Waterstones | BookDepository | Goodreads |

Robert Dugoni is the critically acclaimed New York Times, #1 Wall Street Journal and #1 Amazon Best Selling Author of The Tracy Crosswhite series, My Sister’s Grave, Her Final Breath, In the Clearing, and The Trapped Girl. The Crosswhite Series has sold more than 2,000,000 books and My Sister’s Grave has been option for television series development. He is also the author of the best-selling David Sloane series, The Jury Master, Wrongful Death, Bodily Harm Murder One and The Conviction, and the stand-alone novels The 7th Canon, a 2017 finalist for the Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award for best novel, The Cyanide Canary, A Washington Post Best Book of the Year, and several short stories. He is the recipient of the Nancy Pearl Award for Fiction, and the Friends of Mystery, Spotted Owl Award for the best novel in the Pacific Northwest. He is a two time finalist for the International Thriller Writers award and the Mystery Writers of America Award for best novel. His David Sloane novels have twice been nominated for the Harper Lee Award for legal fiction. His books are sold world-wide in more than 25 countries and have been translated into more than two dozen languages including French, German, Italian and Spanish.

Author Links: | Website | Twitter | Facebook |

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