{Blog Tour/Guest Post} Satan's Chamber by Molly Best Tinsley & Karetta Hubbard

Welcome to our stop on Molly Best Tinsley's and Karetta Hubbard's Satan's Chamber mini blog tour, hosted by Tribute Books. We hope you enjoy their bios and guest post below.

Book Info:

ISBN #: 978-0984141203

Page Count: 294

Copyright: August 2009

Publisher: Fuze Publishing

Summary:

Junior CIA operative Victoria Pierce is posted to Khartoum, Sudan, where her father vanished five years before. Obsessed with solving the mystery of his disappearance, she uncovers a horrific plot that threatens to ignite World War III. A fast-paced spy thriller, Satan's Chamber shuttles between Washington, DC, and war-torn Sudan, geo-political intrigue and ancient mysticism. It introduces a rich array of memorable characters, from Bart Wilkins, the bumbling but buff young supply officer at the Embassy, to Kendacke, one-eyed descendant of the female pharaohs, to Adam Marshall, one of the richest and most ruthless men in the world.

Authors' Bios:

Air Force brat Molly Best Tinsley taught on the civilian faculty at the United States Naval Academy for twenty years and is the institution's first professor emerita. Author of My Life with Darwin (Houghton Mifflin) and Throwing Knives (Ohio State University Press), she also co-authored Satan's Chamber (Fuze Publishing) and the textbook, The Creative Process (St. Martin's). Her fiction has earned two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Sandstone Prize, and the Oregon Book Award. Her plays have been read and produced nationwide. She lives in Oregon, where she divides her time between Ashland and Portland.

As a businesswoman and entrepreneur, Karetta Hubbard has more than twenty-five years of experience in consulting, strategic management, and organizational change for companies throughout the U.S., Canada, Europe, and Japan. Having recently turned to literary endeavors, Ms. Hubbard credits her five grandchildren as her inspiration and encouragement to put pen to paper.

As an active member of the Washington, DC community, Ms. Hubbard has held appointments at the Small Business Advisory Council (SBA), the Tyson Business and Professional Women Foundation (BPW), and the Fairfax County Democratic Committee. Ms. Hubbard attended the University of Virginia and received her B.A. degree from George Mason University. She also attended Catholic University's Graduate School in Social Work.

Guest Post:

Pharaoh is just another word for King or Ruler, and in ancient times, the land of Nubia that lay south of Egypt (in what is now northern Sudan) was ruled by a series of queens, or female pharaohs. These were also called kendackes, and the English name Candace derives from that word. Relations between Nubia and Egypt were tense: the Egyptians believed that a particular mountain on Nubian land, Jebel Barkal, was sacred and the birthplace of key Egyptian gods. Thus they often invaded and occupied the region. One female pharaoh, or Kendacke, earned fame for leading her army to drive the Egyptians out of Nubia. She lost an eye during the battle.

Now here's the interesting part - and this sort of synchronicity happens all the time when you imagine stories. Molly was drafting a chapter early in the novel when the image of a regally tall woman, draped in blue, stepped onto the page. She had only one eye. That particular scene didn't survive in a rewrite - Kendacke's entrance was postponed until later - but as our research began to uncover more details for Kendacke's character - that of a selfless, mystical leader committed to unifying and redeeming her people - we were astonished to read that one of the famous Nubian queens had lost an eye!

Kendacke is absolutely critical to the story of Satan's Chamber as a counterbalance to the horrific evil at loose in Sudan - both in real life and in our novel - forces of greed, corruption, brutality, and betrayal. She represents for our protagonist, the young American CIA operative Tory Pierce, a powerful female model and strong reasons not to succumb to cynicism or despair but to continue to fight for one's ideals. Tory is also a fierce loner, convinced that by applying her reason, she can act unilaterally with success. Kendacke's modus operandi is collective and cooperative, and her appeal is to the intuition and spirit, but she's a tireless, effective warrior nevertheless.