The Enigma Gamers – A CATS Tale: Author Interview

The Enigma Gamers – A CATS Tale (The Enigma Series Book 7)

Has today’s technology advanced to the point that the line between the real and cyber worlds has vanished? If so, will this unchecked digital landscape provide new social predators with opportunities to unleash terror and pain on unsuspecting victims, while avoiding detection from anywhere in the world? How does anyone find the culprits holding international cities, big businesses, air traffic, and even emergency systems hostage to terrifying digital ransom demands.

Julie and Juan’s cyber assassin technology services team are immersed in these outrageous cyber-crime events occurring at multiple locations around the world. The CATS team is the next generation of hunters in the find and fix contest of cyber warfare, unlike any seen to date. How will they prove that the of 21st century video game playing has evolved beyond the that simple after-school distraction for children? With Supercomputers, the adage ‘bigger toys for bigger boys’ takes on a whole new definition. These Gamers may be after far more than just points.

George, Ty, Ernesto, Mercedes, EZ, and even Juan—travel to and investigate their respective assignments where they find they are undermined by organization’s leadership unwilling to listen to reason, playing the part of victim. Tampering with automated processes, driven by today’s explosion of technology use, is only the beginning of the competitive nature of these players. Cyber bad guys always think they can’t be caught or stopped.

Award-winning authors, Breakfield and Burkey, take their fans into this grittier story of The Enigma Series to explore virtual hacking within our technology dependent world. Book 7 of the series, The Enigma Gamers, A CATS Tale, is focused on misguided technology using Julie and Juan’s talented and tenacious team of professionals committed to finding and punishing evil achievers in every corner of the real and virtual worlds.

You may find yourself trying to rewrite the ending to match how you see the world, or how it should be.

Kindle / Paperback / Audio

Interview with the authors

1. Does a big ego help or hurt writers?

Overall ego is an important element for humans. It is essential that it not go to your head. Breakfield and Burkey find it interesting to use ego for some characters to illustrate the way they think far too much of themselves. The characters, like people, can fall into the trap of thinking they are invincible. As the stories are narrated you can hear some of this egocentric overtone in the conversations of these characters. Readers can feel this in their imagination, or at least that is what some have said.

As people we don’t have that issue, thankfully, but we would love success. Success for us is getting thousands of raving fans, which in turn, will make us want to create more stories, relevant to people today with technology all around them.

2. What is your writing Kryptonite?

For both Breakfield and Burkey, it is a lousy review with no foundation behind it. We get that not every book is suitable for every reader or listener who gets it. However, to say something is poor and disparage it without a reason, sounds more like the reader/listener simply had a bad day and took it out on the author. We have had a couple of these and it is hard to totally ignore.

Our goal is to delight our readers and our listeners with fictional stories that take them away into their recesses of their imagination. We would love your followers’ feedback on if that is easier with reading or listening to a book.

3. Have you ever gotten reader’s block?

Breakfield and Burkey have gotten writer’s block at times with regards to the next step or turn for a character. Typically, we end up talking about it to resolve or working on another aspect of the current story, letting the problem sit for a bit.

We have also found that one aspect of audio book production is to listen to what has been recorded and approve it. That has helped as we write new work ahead of the audio book being produced. The listening of prior story aspects has been known to jump start a problem area. Fortunately for us it never lasts too long.

But reader’s block? Well not really. We usually get the reverse where they crab about not having our newest book available that is still in production.

4. Did you ever consider writing under a pseudonym?

This has come up as a discussion a couple of time. The original was when we were trying to find out if we wanted to write as coauthors and have both names on the cover. Obviously, the choice there was to go for it. It has caused some issues because many back-end sites where we allow our stories to be told struggle with a coauthor concept. Workarounds from one site to another differ.

If we move into some different genres, we have considered changing author names to help maintain the branding. There are a lot of great authors who have use other names so we would not be the first. It would be interesting if your followers would comment on what they think of author photos on a piece and the use of pseudonyms.

5. Do you try more to be original or to deliver to readers what they want?

We, Breakfield and Burkey, try to be originals with the wish that we can deliver readers what they want. We love storytelling and tend to write a story that is for adult readers with life experience. We do not write for children, though we might at some point as we love them and believe lessons in technology are suitable at younger ages all the time.

We went down the path of delivering audio formats for our fictional series as we honestly believe that is the direction more and more people enjoy. After getting more and more positive feedback on the audio book transformation of the series, we feel it was the right choice. Your followers may not realize but the investment in time, marketing, and hard dollars to convert a written book to audible is significant. Without stellar narration such as what our voice actor Derek Shoals delivers, the audio formats would fail. We love what he does with our words and the over 150 characters laced throughout the series.

Award-winning authors, Breakfield and Burkey, take their fans into this grittier story of The Enigma series to explore virtual hacking within our technology dependent world. In book 7 of the series, *The Enigma Gamers*,
The CATS Team, led by Julie and Juan, is committed to avenging and administering justice to evil doers in every corner of the real and virtual worlds.