Lori Townsend

Hello, I'm Lori Townsend, reporter by day and fiction writer at night. I've been a reporter for more than three decades. My work has taken me to communities and reservations across the Midwest, Canada and Alaska. My work has garnered national awards. I have lived and reported in Alaska for 26 years.

I write about the things that scare me.

My first book is titled- American Home Wrecker-

In the first of my thriller series, we meet no-nonsense news reporter Zilla Gillette. After witnessing her mother's murder as a small child, Gillette is raised by a father who is determined she will always be able to defend herself. Years of training in Martial Arts by her late father, shapes Zilla into a tough, smart and unyielding reporter when it comes to testing the limits of endurance - just like Alaska, the state she calls home.

She always meets her deadline and she'll do (almost) anything to get the story - especially when it comes to exposing a racist militia group she suspects are responsible for recent homicides in Anchorage. The militia is led by the ruthless "General" Alex Burke, a Vietnam Veteran who is bitter about the direction of the country. The General plans a revolution to seize leadership and create New Patriot Alaska before advancing his plan to take America back.

To help recruit citizen soldiers to the Double Eagle Patriots militia, Burke enlists the skills of a lethal "New Messiah", the seductively evil Jamie Lynn Carter, who is only too happy to woo new troops and kill detractors. Her beauty is an asset to the General's plans, but her taste for illegal drugs becomes a deadly point of contention. With the help of astute fellow reporter Ray Walker, her friend Mo Scott, a gentle but fierce survivor of domestic violence, and the intriguing head of homicide, Sergeant August Platonovich, Zilla risks her life to report on this well-armed, murderous group bent on total destruction.

My second book is titled- Ghost Ship-

Intrepid reporter Zilla Gillette hunts down human traffickers after nine teenagers vanish off a beach near Nome, Alaska. The trail leads to an east coast import/export company ran by a ruthless heiress who has discovered that selling humans is much more lucrative than selling the imported wine and chocolate that made her grandfather's company prosperous. Ties between an east coast political elite and the heiress blow open the ugly story of buying political influence and the deadly consequences it can have.

My third book is titled- Operation Wind Storm-

The U.S. military loses a U.S. Supreme Court battle with environmental organizations over the cleanup of nuclear waste left from former military underground bomb tests on Alaska's Amchitka Island.

Shortly after the court decision, a massive earthquake at Amchitka destroys the waste material and kills military contractors who were there to remove it. Russia uses the destruction to spread disinformation, claiming the U.S. was staging new nuclear missiles in the Aleutians, raising international tensions.

Meanwhile, resource development devotees and conservationists are anxiously waiting for a remanded part of the decision in the Supreme Court case that would shut down most of the fossil fuel extraction industry.

Operation Wind Storm, the third novel in the Zilla Gillette series finds our intrepid reporter, right in the middle of the conflict, reporting on emerging facts. This assignment has Gillette tracking the explosive tensions between environmentalists and development proponents over the growing divide between those who want to end resource development in the name of slowing climate change and those who want to continue to create jobs in the fossil fuel extraction industry.

The carbon fuel fans in Alaska are under the leadership of former Arkansas televangelist shyster Jerry Justice, who enlists the lethal Jamie Lynn Carter, fresh out of prison for the murder of militia leader, General Alex Burke, (Zilla's first assignment in American Home Wrecker).