About your Book:
THE ORANGE MOON AFFAIR is the first book of an exciting new thriller series by the best-selling author of CONTACT. It’s a gripping, action-packed page-turner with a hero and heroine you hold your breath for! Thomas Gunn, ex-British Special Forces – aided by his loyal girlfriend Julie – is drawn back into his old life of international intrigue and danger following the murder of his billionaire father. The deeper he digs the more complex the puzzle becomes until he uncovers a global conspiracy so abhorrent that it sends Thomas and Julie running for their lives.

The haunting question that tears at Thomas’s soul is – could this evil conspiracy have possibly been his father’s creation? And what will uncovering the truth cost him? Readers have hailed the book as “riveting, thrilling, captivating” and have said: “If you haven’t read it, you are missing out on one of the best books in the genre.”

As a former Captain of Britain’s elite Parachute Regiment and son of an MI6 operative, the author brings his unique and eye-opening experiences to the character and exploits of Thomas Gunn, as well as an unsettling blurring of the lines between fiction and reality when exploring the ruthless abuse of power and position for personal gain.

Targeted Age Group: 18+

Genre: thriller

The Book Excerpt:

Mojave Desert – October 2012

Flying a helicopter requires a clear mind, concentration, balance and a delicate touch.
Flying a helicopter you are unfamiliar with, in the dark, with two nasty bullet wounds in a body that has not slept in thirty hours, is an exercise in surreal survival. I had ten hours flight time in this model MD 902 Explorer, so it wasn’t total guesswork.
I made sure Julie was strapped in tightly and flipped on the switches. There wouldn’t be enough time to sit and let the engines warm up completely. We needed to get airborne before the local police showed up. In the distance beyond the factory building, where the car exploded in the arroyo, a pall of smoke billowed into the moon lit night sky.
Once I got the machine off the ground, stabilised and then flying on the heading Danny had given me, I asked Julie to call him and write down the co-ordinates of the destination, then talked her through entering the figures into the GPS navigation system while I concentrated on the instruments. All I had to do was make sure I didn’t hit anything flying at an altitude of fifty feet across the desert, following the route on the EFIS from Mojave to Desert Rock airstrip, wherever the hell that was in the vast expanse of the Nevada desert.
As we flew, the rising sun glimmered just below the horizon to our left. Dark sky turning light blue just before the sun appeared as an orange-white ball throwing shadows across the desert. The distant terrain rose in craggy rock mountains, rising ever higher to about five thousand feet, and I had to fly the aircraft through the narrow gorges maintaining the pretence of a special operations training flight at ultra-low level.
“Can you see if there are any sunglasses in the side pocket,” I asked Julie, feeling my left arm begin to stiffen.
“Here you go.” Her voice sounded strangely distorted in my headphones. Or perhaps it was just my mind beginning to shut down as my body leaked valuable blood onto the seat from the wound in my side.
“Thanks.” I tightened the lock on the collective and flexed my left arm, ignoring the pain, just trying to get some feeling back into it. Estimated flight time was just under an hour and a half, and I wasn’t confident of being able to last that long.
“I’m sorry I got you into this,” I said stupidly, as if what I said would make any difference.
“I could have said no.”
“But you didn’t.”
“Nope. Don’t ask me why, but I didn’t.”
“Did you get the bug into the computer before they ambushed us?”
“I did.”
“Well at least one of us accomplished something today. How’s your head?”
“Hurts like hell. How’s your…?” she paused looking across at me. “Everything?” She laughed. A desperate sound hurled against a bleak outlook.
We hurt more than either of us could describe.
We didn’t know what the future held for us, but we laughed anyway as the sun rose across the desert, and I banked the helicopter into the first of the rising mountain ravines.
After an hour throwing the helicopter through the narrow canyons and rocky gorges, I could feel my strength and concentration ebbing slowly away. But that seemed inconsequential in the surreal experience that was the excuse for reality.
Julie massaged her temples, and when she spoke her speech was slow and slurred. I knew she was concussed and slipping into shock.
By ‘red-lining’ the helicopters engines I could force more speed, but as the sun came up the temperature would rise, and everything could go very wrong very quickly.
But there was no choice.
I inched up the collective, dropped the nose and advanced the throttle a touch, watching the gauges creep toward the danger zone.
Waves of nausea blurred my vision, so I used the only tool I had to sharpen my mind.
Pain.
By wriggling in the seat I could press against the wound in my lower abdomen, not too much, but enough pain to sting my sagging consciousness into wakeful concentration. Now was not the time to sink into peaceful, blissful oblivion. I had a precious cargo to deliver, a woman I loved more than my own life.

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