Author Robin Tzivanis
My Story
I am not entirely predictable. I embrace change. I think that life and people are complex and there is no neat 'box' that fits any person or situation. Stereotypes and archetypes should be used to create an expectation to shatter or challenge. For me, writing is the ultimate fantasy come true. I get to project myself into the world I create and be/do/say things that are not 'me'. When I write, I can unleash all the wonderfully weird thoughts in my head and create the people who would do them.
I probably start a book the same way as any writer. I find inspiration everywhere and select something that turns me on. Then, my years of experience as a psychiatric nurse kick in, and I analyze what kind of person(s) would be involved in that idea. I wonder who they are, what they think of themselves, what pressures will mold them, what might change them, and who they are likely to become. I like to create complex characters, with some good and some evil in them, because I think that represents the actual people we meet every day.
My characters tell me the story. I just type it. That way, my characters are being true to themselves and to the way the storyline creates change for them, and within them. Sometimes, I giggle, or get tears in my eyes, and at those moments, I'm sure they are telling the story correctly.
Think about the classic romance of Scarlett and Rhett in Gone with the Wind. Their characters evolve, changed by everything they endure, yet they stay true to their basic natures, and it's so compelling I want to leap into the book and shake them both! Their idiocy is so upsetting, yet so true to who they are. I will never claim to be another Margaret Mitchell, but I confess to being influenced heavily by her, even down to the impulse to have endings that leave things unfinished. She was a master of 'always leave them wanting more'.
I can only hope that I can create that feeling sometimes and that you stay up too late or ignore the tasks you should be doing because you want to keep turning the pages to discover what happens next. I can only hope that my characters make you angry or sad, or that you are sorry when the story ends. Most of all, I can only hope that you have as much fun reading my books as I do writing them.
Mike and Sarah are in love, even when they want to believe it’s just lust. Since Mike is already married, he struggles with his feelings a lot more than Sarah, who instead struggles with how to live without wanting the love of her life. War erupts in the mid-East, and their Army Reserve unit is activated, throwing all the relationships into chaos and putting people at risk for their lives. The pull from home provides both security and uncertainty, as does the entry of a handsome, arrogant, and disquieting Israeli Colonel who is perfectly willing to be there for Sarah if Mike isn’t. This story looks at everything we think is love and the choices we make when we gamble with life, break the rules, and still hope to win.
No easy answers
Psychopathic Intentions
This book was written to pay tribute to all the talented mystery writers and books I've read all these years. I wanted to create a psychological thriller with a surprise ending. The killer...well, it could be anyone!
Rachel Kennelly is everything a mystery heroine should be, including her flaws. To the killer, she is the ultimate woman: "The One". The desire really is to possess the dream, not the real woman. In fact, the flaws that are revealed might be deadly. Meanwhile, others are being slaughtered in a macbre attempt to impress Rachel and make her understand the killer's twisted mind.
Psychopathic Creations
In this sequel to Psychopathic Intentions, the chase resumes, this time in Texas. Robert John Hamilton III is a rich man, courtesy of his grandfather, RJ1, who runs the largest oil company in Texas. Against family tradition, Bob wants to be a cop, and has achieved his desires with his high-ranking role within the Crimes Against Persons Division in Dallas. At least, he thought that, until he inherited a nightmare in the form of a botched FBI case, and a series of new high profile murders on his turf.
Florida detective Hillary Jansen is sent to help out and lend her expertise from the last task force. Before long, FBI Special Agent Robert Morrison is sent back into the fray as well, to redeem the reputation of the FBI, and try to save his own career.
The killer they seek, dubbed Dallas 180, is the most challenging kind to catch. He's organized, intelligent, and a total chameleon who changes his identity, and his MO as often as the whim strikes him.
This time he starts with the governor's daughter and it just gets more personal from there, with each victim slapping the chasers in the face with his audacity and cruelty. But, Dallas 180 has an Achilles heel, and that's Rachel Kennelly-Miller, PhD, the heroine from Psychopathic Intentions. She comes out to Texas to support her best friend, Hillary Jansen through a crisis, and creates an even bigger one when both women go missing.
Dallas 180's fascination with Rachel is finally going to get her killed ... or him caught!
Survival Games
Maria Fellini lives in 2116 and Calvin Lionel lives in 2016. They were never supposed to meet, and they were certainly never supposed to fall in love. Their worlds are drastically different, hers created because of the advancements made in his through the brilliance of his best friend Josh Hamilton, and Cal's brilliant management of the Hamilton Program through Operation Survival.
Their meeting is precipitated by a disaster in Maria's world that necessitates her getting help from Hamilton and Lionel and keeps them all at risk from terrorists and their own desires. Manipulating the events in both worlds becomes a game with devastating consequences...and wonderful possibilities as seven people try to determine the course of history and their own fates.
Kimberly Michelle Anderson-Richards is an ordinary woman content with her ordinary life. When her husband becomes a walking cliché and leaves her for his secretary after twenty-five years of marriage, her life is turned upside down. Then she meets Wayne Gibbons Jr, a young, charismatic, scum bag. His seduction-turned-rape creates a dark change in Kimberly, and when it seems that he will walk away from all charges, she decides she has to kill him. Before she can implement her plan, Wayne dies in a drunken car crash that also takes the life of a young woman and her toddler. Guilt for not killing him in time to save these innocents overwhelms her and she lays down on the kitchen floor for three days. When she gets up, she is no longer sweet and ordinary Kimberly. She is Kim Michaels, a hip, and self-sufficient woman who works with rape victims and knows how to punish perpetrators who never meet official justice, because she is also the Wallflower. As guilty men die, the last words they hear are, “when you get to hell, tell Wayne, ‘greetings from the Wallflower’.” But now, Kim is in love with a savvy detective, so she chooses love, and puts the Wallflower in retirement. Life is good until a heinous criminal is about to be freed and the Wallflower raises her head and wants justice. Now, she has to choose again: her new life and love, or her desire to make horrible men pay.
When a woman puts herself back together after trauma, there are parts of herself that never quite fit again. There are things she needs to let go or work to get back. Things she tried to get rid of. Things she didn’t. Things she'll miss. Things she never wants to see again. What if you were broken, and when you put yourself back together, you were different, really different? That’s what happened to Kimberly.
For anyone who wonders about how a perfectly normal person can do perfectly abnormal things, or anyone who cheered when the hero kills the bad guy, this book is for you.
OUR FIRM
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When Morgan and Jason met, it was a match made in Hell. Jason is a charismatic man destined for greatness- but with a dark and dangerous side that haunts him. Morgan is a brilliant, spoiled, young beauty, used to being the center of attention and getting her way with men. Jason sees her, wants her and claims her for his own, and she is captivated. She is the air in his lungs, the blood beating in his veins and he can’t- and won’t live without her. Morgan is mesmerized by his addiction to her, and she returns it unconditionally.
Together they move deeper and deeper into a sexually charged, volatile, and dangerous existence- a double life. One of service to their country that takes them to the pinnacle of success, and one of selfish, indulgent excess that takes them to the depths of depravity. Whether they are taking lovers of either sex into their bed, money-laundering, or issuing pay-to-play ‘favors’, they do it with impunity. They become their own creation- a myth even they begin to believe- the ‘new Camelot’. They are the couple with great ideas to change the country, the couple every other couple wants to be.
Using a sensual web of lies, sex, and the lure of easy money, Morgan and Jason can seduce people into getting anything they want. The concept of ‘mutually assured destruction’, and the dirt they have or create on them, keeps their minions in line. When it doesn’t, Jason’s old CIA comrade is available to take them out of the picture in creative ways.
As their power and influence expands, so too does their lust for more- and their determination to protect the myth. Their corruption grows like rust, eating away at their lives and souls, leaving few ways out as their victims pile up. No one can touch them. No one can stop them. Unless that rust corrodes enough of their souls for them to self-destruct, nothing else will ever stop them.
Mountain Madness
Samantha and Joe Weatherly are law enforcement officers who have earned the right to a quiet life in a small city in Montana, where they can raise their son in peace, but it appears that they aren’t going to get it when a resident is brutally murdered and leaves clues about counterfeiting and arms trafficking. Carefully, with the help of Secret Service Senior Detective Justin Gordon, they follow the breadcrumbs and discover a world of organized crime with its roots in Vietnam, and it’s governance right out of Greek mythology.
For fifty years, KOSMOS has spread its tentacles into all aspects of crime, weaving the participants into a generational web of wealth for reward and death for punishment. Plutus, the god of wealth, stands alone as the leader, and his power is enforced by Thanatos, the god of death.
The original men of KOSMOS are all aging now and come to realize that retirement from KOSMOS comes with enough money to support a small country, but they aren’t likely to live long enough to spend it. The closer law enforcement gets to the code name players, the more people die.
Many of the deaths occur at the hands of a female assassin, a dark Tinkerbell who is dubbed ‘Audrey’. Audrey is profane, outspoken, and as she puts it to Thanatos, ‘I’m not housebroken’, meaning that Thanatos might be in charge of death, but Audrey administers it her own way and with her own unique vision of justice.
As things unravel, it finally become clear that there is sabotage within the ranks of KOSMOS, which just might solve the case. Sam, Joe, and Justin can’t help but feel relief because taking the organization apart from the outside appears to come at a cost they are not willing to pay.
THE FALL
(coming soon)
In 2005, John Harrington became the man who single-handedly holds the record for initiating indictments and securing convictions against any organized crime family in the country. If the bad guys had a 'Most Wanted' picture wall, he would be their 'Ace of Spades'.
When John turned on the Irish mob in Boston, he was a hotshot lawyer and partner in a prestigious firm. He was married to another hotshot lawyer and partner of the same firm, and had a 15 year-old son. His family were taken by surprise when John first contacted the FBI and they wanted to put them all into the federal Witness Protection Program (WITSEC). So, John, Joyce, and Michael Harrington became Samuel, Judith and Marcus Crandall of Sacramento, California where they struggle to create a new life.
Marcus in particular is resentful and has an enduring anger towards his father. The story begins thirteen years later and is told from Marcus's perspective. He has experience as a Marine stationed in Afghanistan, and and now has a successful business as a bodyguard. Judith has changed her appearance and is a successful real estate agent for high-end homes. John is a CPA but Marcus has no clear understanding of his father and is still resentful of what happened thirteen years ago. Age has brought some perspective and Marcus wants to try harder to get to know his dad.
Within twenty-four hours of his arrival in Sacramento, Judith is late coming home. Then, Sam's phone rings, and a strange male voice announces, "We don't want Joyce." That one sentence destroys the Crandalls and starts a cross-country trip that can only succeed if both men learn to listen to and trust the other.
However, Joyce is no shrinking violet. She manages to escape from her captors and reunite with John and Michael. Together, they decide they are finished with the WITSEC Program. Their handler, federal marshal Harry Jenkins, had become a trusted friend, but his mission does not align with theirs now. They tried to do the right thing. They followed everyone's rules but their own forthirteen years. Now that the right thing has failed them, they want their lives back, and they are willing to do the wrong thing to make that happen.
Thirteen years ago, because the bottom fell out of their world, they called it THE FALL. Now, they call it that, because other people are going down.
