Coming August 30: The Tin Man, a thriller by Nina Mason

Here's an excerpt from The Tin Man, from the middle of Chapter 2, whereupon I introduce the secondary protagonist and love interest, Thea Hamilton. The book, a high-octane political thriller, releases Aug. 30 from Crushing Hearts & Black Butterfly Publishing. Hope ya'll enjoy. :)

She’d met Alex Buchanan back in 2008 while both were covering the Elliot Spitzer call-girl scandal—he for World View and she for the News. She found him ruggedly handsome in that way that always made her heart beat just a little faster. He had a limp, but so what? In her book, that made him better. Without it, he would be too perfect. Who wanted to date Mr. Perfect except Ms. Perfect? And that sure as hell wasn’t her.

After a quick shampoo, she stepped out and grabbed a towel off the rack. The mirror was too foggy to see herself in, so she swiped her hand across it before grabbing the comb and pulling it through her shoulder-length mostly black hair. She’d thought a few times about taking out the gray, but what the hell? She’d earned every one of those gray hairs just like she hoped to win a Pulitzer one day.

Letting out a sigh, she looked hard at her reflection. She was thirty-eight, still single, and hadn’t had a date in months—partly because of her busy professional life, but also because she’d become invisible.

Not literally, of course, but in the way women over thirty-five did in America’s youth-obsessed culture. Sadly, she'd reached that age when strangers now addressed her as “Ma’am” instead of “Miss” and she no longer looked “good,” she looked “good for her age.” The kitten had matured into a cougar—a predatory older woman. She swiped a “paw” at her reflection and hissed before laughing it off.