The Desert Thief #author Andrea Barton

How far would you go to protect your family?

Jade never set out to become a thief, especially not in the Middle East, but breaking into her husband Brett’s office is the only way to get information about a missing miner.

After the miner turns up dead at the copper mine where Brett works, a letter leaked to the press implicates him in the crime.

In search of the truth, Jade uncovers a web of infidelity, industrial espionage and royal intrigue. But can she keep her husband out of jail and save him from the death penalty?

A high-stakes mystery, THE DESERT THIEF is the fifth book in the Jade Riley Mysteries series by Andrea Barton.

To connect with Andrea ....
https://andreabartonauthor.com/
https://andreabartonauthor.com/books/
https://andreabartonauthor.com/about-andrea/
https://brightsidestorystudio.com/

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Good morning, Andrea Barton. Welcome again to Yellow Shelf. Thank you again for having me. Uh Andrea, you know, you are one of my oldest, dearest author friends. And it's so wonderful to be able to support you with your latest book. Congratulations. Exciting times ahead again.

SPEAKER_01 0:26

The Desert all happened in a bit of a whirlwind, hasn't it, these last few books? So um, yeah, we just continue um along the path. Yeah, tell us all about the latest book, The Desert Thief.

SPEAKER_00 0:39

A Desert Thief.

SPEAKER_01 0:40

Okay, so this is in here, The Desert Thief. It's the fifth book in the Jade Riley Mysteries series. So the fifth time we have spoken. Um, it's currently also the last one, um, which isn't to say that I'm ruling out the possibility of ever doing another one, but um, we it there's nothing currently in the works. Um, so it's wonderful to read the whole series. Each of the books absolutely works as a standalone. So you could start with the desert thief and then go back to the others, or you could start at the beginning with The Godfather of Dance and work all the way through. Um, so one of the things about my series is the setting is super important and each book is set in a different place. And this one is set in the Middle East. Um, I've actually fictionalized the country. We can talk about why that is in a moment. Um, so it's a Middle Eastern country called Nassart. So it's not actually a real country, but um, I did live in Doha, Qatar for uh three years, so it kind of is is based on that. Um I'm gonna read you the blurb because it's it's kind of fun. So, how far would you go to protect your family? Jade never set out to become a thief, especially not in the Middle East, but breaking into her husband Brett's office is the only way to get information about a missing miner. After the miner turns up dead at the copper mine where Brett works, a letter leaked to the press implicates him in the crime. In search of the truth, Jade uncovers a web of infidelity, industrial espionage, and royal intrigue. But can she keep her husband out of jail and save him from the death penalty? So that is that is the premise. Um, thematically, it deals a lot with issues about who has a voice, um, especially like in an oppressive regime. So in this country, everybody's very careful about criticizing anything to do with the country, in particular, it's royal family. Um, and the character's position in society sort of dictates how freely they can speak. So obviously, if they're royalty, they can speak a lot more freely than if they're not. And so a lot of the workers are um expatriates, so the country population is actually quite small, so they import all their workers. So the expat working class has very little rights. The expatriate managers, which is kind of where Jade and Brett sit, um, have a little bit more power because of position and title within the company, um, but obviously not as much as those who are local. Um, and also then there's the female versus male thing where females' voices are not regarded as highly, perhaps, as male voices. So again, it's it's all about who has a voice. Um, so in this one, Jade is a journalist, um, but she doesn't feel confident about writing under her own name. So she's actually writing a blog under a pseudonym in this book. Um, and I've called, fun fact, I've called the her pseudonym is Betsy Sharp, which is the initials BS, um, which is just a bit of fun. Um, but yeah, so it's um so she can write more freely when she isn't it's not clear who she is. Um, and it's a comment on that blog that leads into this mystery where somebody asks, she's writing about workers' rights, which is another thing that is very um problematic in those areas. And so again, for her to write that under her own name would be quite uh risky. So she writes it under Betsy Sharp, and then there's a comment on the blog that talks about this missing minor. So that's what leads her really into the mystery.

SPEAKER_00 4:11

Yeah. And Andrea, having known you for such a long time, and you know, I've been on the Jade Riley box series as we we've shared the books, um, you know, you've lived in these countries. So I just want to share that. You know, you this this you um yeah, you know, you have experienced first hand. So the things you write about in certain countries in the books, you know, you've you've experienced. Um I'm gonna throw a question out that um got me wondering. Uh beyond your experience of living in these places, do you go back and research? Like, what's the process as a writer?

SPEAKER_01 4:48

Um, I try to use as much as possible my own experience, my lived experience, because that's a lot what we talk about. So I definitely draw from that. Um I do there are certain elements that I have to go back and research. There's obviously details that I forget. Um, so one of the things, so so yes, I lived in Dohakata for for three years, um, and I fictionalized the country because there is royalty in the storyline, and I just didn't want to cause unintentional offence to the book family, and it actually gave me a lot of creative freedom. So I did create some things as an arts festival that's really important in the book, and that's just something I wish they did, but they don't do. Um, so yeah, that there were things like, for example, they have um you can't buy alcohol there because that's not allowed. But um, expats they had this one kind of supermarket where you could go, but you had to have an alcohol license to prove that you weren't from the country, that you know, and you could afford it, and all those things. So there's certain things where you get a liquor license. So you could only go to this shop and buy alcohol if if you had that card. And they also had sort of in the back corner um a place where you could buy pork products, which of course aren't allowed in in those countries. So um there were details about that. Uh so I I you know, I talk about I do a bit of a riff on that in the book, and there were some details of that I couldn't quite remember. So, of course, I had to go in and research that. So, usually it's it's driven by what I need for the story. Um, and so I'll go back in and make sure that I have got the details right. Um, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:23

Yeah, no, I was thinking about that process uh around, you know, yeah, lived experience as well as, yeah, like like you mentioned, changing storylines and um yeah. And so tell us what um, you know, this is the the last book in the series, in this particular series. Um, I know you do lots of work outside of being an author, you're involved in uh Brightside Studio. Like, do you want to tell us a bit about you? If if someone's watching for the first time, tell us about you, about your work, anything we need to know, and maybe even future, future writing.

SPEAKER_01 7:02

Oh, cool. Okay, that's fun. So, yeah, so besides writing, I um run Brightside Story Studio, which is a book editing company. So I work with other authors. I love working particularly with um beginner authors and helping them craft their stories and learn the whole process of um developing a novel from scratch or in some cases memoir. Um, so that's a large part of my time. I also work on the Mansfield Readers and Writers Festival Committee, so that's fun. We do a festival every other year. So we did one last year. Um, this year we're not doing a festival, but we are actually doing a writing competition. So if any of your readers are authors, um the entries are due by the end of June. Um, and we have three categories. We have a short story competition up to 2,000 words, memoir up to 2,000 words, and poetry up to 100 lines. And the theme is wild, which we thought was pretty fun. So um, yeah, if anybody wants to enter that, you can look up Pomansfield Readersandwriters.com, just go to our website or just search for it. High Country Words is the name of the competition, and um, yeah, all the entry details would be there. Um, so yeah, so I've got a pretty full life and it all revolves around writing and stories one way or another. Um, and I've always got other, I've always got too many ideas. I've already got too many things that I want to work on. So at the moment, um Jade is kind of finished, say for now, I may I may go back to her. It's not to say that I will never write another Jade book, but um I for now she's done. Um so I'm actually working on a standalone, which I've been with Jade for 11 years now. That's been a long, long time. Um, so this has just been really fun to do a standalone. It's still in the crime fiction genre, it's more of a climate change thriller. So um it's certainly delving into those sorts of issues. And it's um it's just been really fun to have a new cast of characters. In this one, the main character's a scientist, uh, climate scientist. So that's a glaciologist, actually. So she goes down to Antarctica as part of it. So that's really, really fun. Um, and I've got a whole bunch of other things that I want to do. Um, my son has actually recently joined me in Brightside Story Studio, Matthew, and he's he's always been my plot whisperer. So when it with the Jade series, whenever I run into plot issues, we'll go for a walk and I'll explain where I'm up to in the story. And you know, I need this to happen and that to happen, but this can't happen with this and that and whatever, and we talk it all through, and he's he's amazing like that. So, yeah, so he's just joined me in Brightside Story Studio, which is fantastic. And um, there's a couple of projects we have joint projects as well. Once um, when he was in high school, we actually wrote uh a young adult, might maybe more middle grade um fantasy novel. So um we I've never gone back and really edited it, and so the bones of the story there, it's it's fully drafted, but it needs a lot of rework. So we're sort of toying with the idea of going back to that as well. So I've got a lot of ideas. Yay!

unknown 9:58

So good to be here.

SPEAKER_00 9:59

So Matthew, he when he's ready, he can come on Yellow Shelf. Awesome. I'm sure he'd love to. Um, look, in the meantime, look, enjoy the last book in this Jade series. Um, enjoy, you know, all the things ahead and next chapters, and we know you never know. Jade might come back, like you said. And um it's wonderful to go on the journey, the Jade journey with you. Um, and congratulations. You're not really having downtime, you're just moving on to different projects, aren't you?

SPEAKER_01 10:32

I am, yeah. Downtime doesn't really feature too much. It would be nice, but maybe I'll be bored.

SPEAKER_00 10:38

I don't think it's it's a good problem to have, isn't it? Too many ideas sometimes.

SPEAKER_01 10:42

But that's right, yeah, yeah. No shortage of things to do. And look, I cannot thank you enough. I mean, I've said this before, but I mean, it really means so much for authors to be able to get their books out there and to be talked about and you know to have a bit of a buzz on social media and um all of that. So it really does um what you do really makes a big difference. Uh and Yellow Shelf is such a great idea. It's short, sharp, punchy, and um yeah. So congratulations on the concept, and I wish you all the best with the success of the podcast as well.

SPEAKER_00 11:13

We and we are not going anywhere, we will be around. So keep running. Wonderful. Uh let's stay connected. Andrea, thank you so much. All the best. Thank you. Bye bye.