AUTHORS

TODD BORG

I first met Todd Borg in 1998 when I was skiing at Squaw Valley.  I was having lunch out in the sun at High Camp near the top of the mountain when I overheard him and his wife talking about a detective novel he was writing.  

This book apparently took place in Lake Tahoe and involved an ex-cop from San Francisco who loved art, owned a Great Dane named Spot and had a girlfriend who was a forensic entomologist.  This sounded like an unusual combination, so I introduced myself and said that I was a big mystery fan.  I wondered if he had other books out.  He said this was the first of what he intended to be a series.

Although I'd been in the ski business for most of my adult life, I was such an avid reader of thrillers and mysteries  that I'd always toyed with the idea of starting a publishing house that specialized in such books.  I asked Mr. Borg if he had a publisher.  When he said no, I told him about my publishing idea, gave him my card, and said I'd be interested in reading his manuscript when he was done.

Two years later I was well into the details of beginning my fledging publishing company with my silent partner (every business person needs a guy with money) and had forgotten about our meeting.  A Priority Mail package arrived one morning.  I opened it and found a manuscript by Todd Borg entitled TAHOE DEATHFALL.  I read the first page and was hooked.  

Like other detective novels, TAHOE DEATHFALL features a detective who is a loner with a dark past (a shocking incident that is revealed in the second book in the series, TAHOE BLOWUP).  But unlike many detective novels, TAHOE DEATHFALL is humorous, and the protagonist, Owen McKenna, has a wonderful relationship with his girlfriend Street Casey and his Great Dane Spot.  Although Owen McKenna is a thinking man and uses art to help him find clues to his cases, there are none of the heavy, existential overtones so common to the genre.

Read about Borg's novels on the Featured Thrillers page.

You can also visit his personal website at: toddborg.com.

THOMAS CAGE

Another author at Thriller Press is Thomas Cage.  Mr. Cage approached me at a Writer's Conference where I served on a publisher's panel.  He said he'd written a thriller called THE HUNTRESS about a Los Angeles woman who tries to save her kidnapped children. It sounded interesting, so I asked him to email us the first ten pages. 

The next week Cage sent us the prologue to THE HUNTRESS.  It had a great setup, a tension-filled plot, a climax and a resolution with a twist. It could stand on its own as a short story. (You can read it on our excerpts page.) Yet, as a prologue it suggested an ominous story to come. We immediately asked Cage to send us the manuscript.

The novel that arrived was a thrill-a-minute ride through the hell of kidnapped children and the amazing response of this particular mother. 

Needless to say, we were thrilled to be able to publish THE HUNTRESS (due out in 2003) and can't wait to publish Cage's next thriller. (He has several in the works.)

Mr. Cage lives with his wife and three children in Los Angeles County where he is a lawyer in private practice.  You can find out more about Cage's thrillers on the Featured Thrillers page.     

Robert Skaggs is a Boston native, now living in upstate New York, who once owned a karate school.  A former Black Belt in Korean Karate and a friend of three different people with bipolar illness, he wanted to blend the discipline of karate with the discipline of coping with manic-
depression.

Skaggs had published 2 other thrillers with a large New York publisher (under a different name), but he was unhappy being just another cog on the big publishing gear.  Looking for a smaller publishing house, he approached us and we were eager to take him on. 

Skaggs is writing a series featuring a manic-depressive protagonist who is not exactly a karate expert, but knows a few moves well.

His first novel with us will be published in 2004. His website will be announced when it is online.

EXCERPTS

To read excerpts from the books on this page, please visit the excerpts page.