Making Diamonds

A Twisty Psychological Crime Thriller

A young woman with Dissociative Identity Disorder joins an all-woman team of Park Avenue grifters who con ruthless men of their ill-gotten wealth, but cannot escape the underlings of a gang leader only one of her personalities remembers killing.

Maddy Delgado is horrified to learn she may be a serial killer.

Maddy suffers from Dissociative Identity Disorder. She yearns for a normal life, free of her alter Samantha’s meddling and safe from her mother’s wolfish boyfriend Snakes, leader of Connecticut’s most violent biker gang. But Maddy’s dreams are shattered when he attacks. Samantha fights back, killing him in a gory, freak accident. Maddy has no memory of this, but the blood on her heel reveals the truth.

Fearing the gang and the law, Maddy flees to New York City. Haunted by memory fragments of the trauma that forged Samantha, and unable to get legitimate work, Maddy is plagued with self-doubt as Samantha fights her for dominance. Penniless and out of options, she faces a stark choice: return home to face her crime, or take up sex work. But a seemingly chance encounter with the irresistible Georgia Sinclair presents a new path: join Georgia’s Diamond Girls, a dozen Park Avenue grifters who get rich conning ruthless men of their ill-gotten wealth.

Maddy evolves into an accomplished grifter, mining the highest levels of New York society. She joins a massive Wall Street con where impulsive, passionate Samantha asserts herself. But the gang tracks her down. They demand nearly everything the women earn, or they’ll be sold into a sex trafficking ring. Eventually, Maddy suspects she is a pawn in a cold-blooded conspiracy, born on that deadly night in Connecticut. As she pieces together the puzzle of her own past, her father’s suicide, and the treachery enveloping her, her choice becomes clear. Then comes the hard part.

MAKING DIAMONDS (103,000 words), a psychological thriller, is a story of a woman both shy and extraverted, repressed and passionate, and her struggle to merge those parts into a cohesive whole. It will appeal to fans of complex, flawed protagonists, as in Megan Goldin’s STAY AWAKE, and Lisa Unger’s CONFESSIONS ON THE 7:45. You might think of the story as Sybil meets Ocean’s Eight.

Stories about con artists have always fascinated me. In the 1920’s, Victor Lustig ran wildly successful schemes all across Europe. He established his own rules for running a con. The 10 Commandments for a Con Man included such gems as #1: “Be a patient listener (it is this, not fast talking, that gets a con man his coups)”. Or #7: “Never pry into a person’s personal circumstances (they’ll tell you all eventually)”. This guy was stunningly audacious. He even sold the Eiffel Tower to a scrap dealer in the 1920’s for 70,000 francs.

One of Lustig’s favorite cons “the Rumanian Box” is featured in MAKING DIAMONDS. Later called “The Money Box”, this crafty little device prints counterfeit money. Or does it?

MAKING DIAMONDS features a team of a dozen gifted female con artists who ply Wall Street, Madison and Park Avenues for the most ruthless, narcissistic, money-grubbing men they can get their hooks into. Named the Diamond Girls, these women have resurrected the cons of the 1920’s, realizing that nowadays, wealthy people are looking out for the internet schemes – the phishing frauds, Nigerian Prince scam, the phone hack.

The old cons are new again. These are physical cons from before the internet, played by gifted gorgeous grifters who can weave a tangled story of hard luck or sudden riches, who can be exactly who their narcissistic victims expect them to be, where nothing is as it seems. And when that gifted grifter is a spectacular woman in Chanel or Givenchy, a woman who oozes the promise of sex (yet rarely, if ever, bestowed), a woman who feels nothing for her victims – ruthless Wall Street titans or wife-beating Madison Avenue Shooters – you are promised a twisty, sexy tale full of secrets, clues, misdirection and…vengeance.

MAKING DIAMONDS is the story of Maddy Stone, a singer with an incredible future and an adoring fanbase. But when the leader of a brutal criminal biker gang attacks, she defends herself with everything she has. And now his best friend wants revenge.

Maddy flees to New York and without a job or even an identity, she makes desperate choices. But a chance encounter with the stunning Georgia Sinclair gives Maddy a path out of hell. Georgia’s all-woman band of high-society grifters get rich conning ruthless, wealthy men. But when Maddy’s past threatens to cast them all into every woman’s worst nightmare, their grifting skills are put to the ultimate test against a violent gang hell bent on vengeance.

Here’s a sample of Making Diamonds.

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