agents. My favorite read was a book called Ghost: My Thirty Years as an FBI Undercover Agent by Michael R. McGowan. It was entertaining and also a good reminder of how far government agencies have come in the last decades.
The one thing I want to make clear is that Dawson’s undercover status would never have happened in the real world of the FBI. He wouldn’t have been chosen for that role straight out of Quantico, and he certainly wouldn’t have gone undercover as himself. But it was fun to add the twist to the plot and to build in some characters that I want to introduce in future novels, like Special Agent Cruz Malone and his chasing of the Leskovs.
If you want to see how the FBI is really structured, what it takes to be an agent, and more, I highly recommend you spend some time on their website. They explain, in quite some detail, the nitty gritty of their organization. https://www.fbi.gov/investigate/organized-crime
My made-up crime syndicate, the Kyōdaina, is based in Japan. As such, I did my best to represent the culture, honorifics, and people of Japan respectfully. I’m grateful for my sensitivity readers for helping me on this journey. Some of the deviations from the honorifics I’ve done were on purpose. Dawson’s way of getting under people’s skin, or Violet simply copying the people around her. If you see mistakes, I hope you’ll be patient with me, but also let me know.
The boat race I made up in the book, Conquistar de la Atlántica cup, is as fake as my crime syndicate, although both were inspired by real events and real organizations. Want to know more? Just drop me a line, and I’d be happy to share.
Thanks again for reading Unmasked Dreams. At the beginning of the book—if you even saw it—I told you I didn’t want to fill your head with my social media sites, places to leave reviews, and other books because I wanted you to read the story and then decide how you felt about me and my words. I hope you loved Violet and Dawson’s story of love that I wove for you here. I hope the strength and resiliency of the characters, along with my mix of lyrics and story, burned a memory into your soul that you will think of every time you hear one of the songs from now on.
We talk about music, books, and just what it takes to get us through this wild ride called life a lot in my Facebook reader’s group, LJ’s Music & Stories. If you do nothing else with the links here, I hope you join that group. I hope that we can help YOU through your life in some small way.
Regardless if you join or not, I’d love for you to tell me what you thought of Violet and Dawson as well as Jada and Dax by reaching out to me personally. I’d be honored if you took the time to leave a review on BookBub, Amazon, and / or Goodreads, but even more than that, I hope you enjoyed it enough to tell a friend about it.
If you still can’t get enough (ha!), you could also sign up for my newsletter where I write lyric-inspired scenes and share them with you on a regular basis. Plus, you’ll get the details on releases and be entered into a giveaway each month for a chance at a signed paperback by yours truly ;-).
Finally, I just wanted to say that my wish for you is a healthy and happy journey. May you live life resiliently. With hope and love. I truly hope to hear from you!
Thanks for reading my little story.
LJ EVANS
♫ where music & stories collide ♫
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I’m so very grateful for every single person who has helped me on this book journey. If you’re reading these words, you ARE one of those people. Even if all you did was read my words, it’s important to me. I’m grateful to you for reading the stories that I can’t help but write.
Last book I wrote, my husband sarcastically remarked that he’d been boiled down to a sentence… So, can I just say, this man means more to me than I can explain in one or a thousand sentences. I don’t know what I’d do without him by my side, never giving up on me, forcing me to continue this journey, letting me cry and storm and talk for hours about worlds and people that are not real, but are