Guest Post: "Meet Ellie" by Cat Connor

Mystery/suspense author and New Zealand native Cat Connor was kind enough to write a guest blog for Sleepless Nights, where she introduces us to Gabrielle "Ellie" Conway, an FBI agent and lead character of the Byte series. Read on for a glimpse into the mind of this complex heroine and to find out how to get a free copy of Torrent, Cat's recent collection, for your Amazon Kindle!

***

Howdy,

I’m SSA Gabrielle Conway – you can call me Ellie. (Or whatever you’d like - just don’t call me, Gabrielle, we DO NOT use the ‘G’ word.)

Let me tell you a little bit about myself, I’m a Supervisory Special Agent with the FBI. I lead a team called Delta A – based in Washington DC. We mainly investigate serial crime. There are four of us in Delta A; SA Lee Davenport – or as we like to call him Special Agent Ridiculously Good looking; SA Sam Jackson; and SSA Doctor Kurt Henderson. We tend to work in two teams. Often it’s Lee and Sam, me and Kurt, but not always. I’m also the main character in The _Byte Series of novels written by Cat Connor.

I like to let Cat tag along when we’re working. She still thinks she made me up, one day, one day I’ll tell her I’ve always been here but I didn’t always let her hear me.

It’s kinda cute how she thinks she’s making it happen when I’m the one showing her the movie footage she sees in her head. I’m the reason she can’t change the outcome. She’s telling my stories and they don’t always end well. In a perfect world we could pick our own ending. But from where I stand -the world is far from perfect and you have to play the hand you’re dealt. (Or fold… and I’m not much for quitters.)

A few years ago my husband was gunned down – I was trying to come up with a gentler way of saying it - but there isn’t one. I was in the middle of a crime scene when I heard the gun fire outside. Sometimes you just know it’s bad. It could’ve been someone shooting at any of the police, fire, paramedics, or even bystanders outside the house – but I knew it was my car he opened fire on and my husband that lay bleeding on the road while paramedics tried to save his life.

Cat wanted to change that part of the story so badly; it almost did her head in. I was trying to explain to her that she doesn’t get to re-write history, this about telling the story as it happened. She still struggles with the images I showed her that day. Truthfully, we all do. The kid he saved that night, she struggles more than the rest of us.

Some days I think Cat is close to figuring out how she writes what she writes. Other days, while I watch her trying to change history, I know she has no fuc’n clue. Really, you think I would’ve killed the love of my life for fun or to surprise the shit out of readers? No.

There is stuff I hate showing her, because I know she’ll fight tooth and nail to try to stop it happening. You can’t stop what’s already happened. There is no way to change that.

The things I’ve shown her are way ahead of what anyone has read. Rebel e Publishers has published three of the Byte books so far (killerbyte, terrorbyte, Exacerbyte). The fourth (Flashbyte) is embroiled in the editing process now with Rebels glorious editor Jayne Southern. But meanwhile, I spilled my guts to Cat about another chapter in my life, and she wrote it. The 5th Byte novel, Soundbyte. I thought I was going to lose Cat by the end of that story. It’s tough. It took me a lot longer to show her all the movie reels for Soundbyte. Sometimes there are things you don’t want to see again.

When it gets too scary for her (and me) - I tell her shorter stories that are mostly fun or me trying to deal with the fallout from my crazy life. She put a collection together recently and released it as a Kindle book. It’s called Torrent. If you ask her nicely, she’ll give you a copy. (Just tweet her @catconnor and say you read this post and would like a copy of Torrent… but be warned those stories contain spoilers.)

My biggest question to date: Is this a parallel universe thing or am I dead?

I’m not sure I want to know.

***

You can pick up the Byte series now on Amazon.com! For more information on Cat Connor, please visit the following links:

Ellie's Blog: http://otherwisecat.blogspot.com/
Cat's blog: http://catconnor.blogspot.com/
Rebel E Publishing: http://rebelepublishers.com/