Please Welcome Helga Zeiner

with Helga Zeiner

We are delighted to welcome novelist Helga Zeiner to Omnimystery News, courtesy of Partners in Crime Tours, which is coordinating her current book tour. We encourage you to visit all of the participating host sites; you can find her schedule here.

Helga's new novel of psychological suspense is Birthdays of a Princess (POW WOW Books; May 2013 ebook format), and today she tells us how a story about a child beauty pageant and turn into a thriller.

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Photo provided courtesy of
Helga Zeiner

With my new novel Birthdays of a Princess I have gone beyond my beloved "mystery and suspense" genre and have delved deep into the specific genre "psychological thriller". According to many of my readers, this particular genre is their favorite as it opens avenues of the soul they are often unfamiliar with. It appeals to their intellect.

And trust me, it sure opened up some hidden knowledge for me as well. While I researched the topic of my novel — based on the television reality show Toddlers&Tiaras, which I find, well, let's say: extremely weird … evading a stronger, more judgemental description — I had to admit to myself that I was moving into dangerous territory. Not only did the motivation of the mothers who subject their little girls to such exposure seem bizarre to me, the story line I had developed required me to think and feel like a former beauty queen who has to work through her extreme experiences.

Questions like: "Why does a mother make up her daughter like a mini adult?" and "How does this dolled up little thing feel while being paraded in front of drooling men?" as well as "What happens to her when she out-grows her nubile beauty?" didn't let go of me. I had to find out.

As luck had it, a well-known adolescent psychiatrist, whom I found in the course of my subject research, was gracious enough to guide me through the process of writing. He gave me valuable insight into the twisted world I was describing. Slowly but surely, the psychopathology of my characters drove the plot, and a dark and intense thriller emerged.

Birthdays of a Princess is not for the faint-hearted and comes with a warning to all those who think children's beauty pageants are harmless amusement. I am very proud of this novel, which has received amazing praise already, because I know that it can have the power to make readers think twice about what they support indirectly by giving those shows a good rating.

Hopefully, you will give it your attention. If you enjoy fast-paced psychological thrillers — I think this will be the book for you.

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Born and educated in Germany, Helga Zeiner left her home country when she was 18 to travel the world and experience the magic of life she was passionately reading about.

She spent the next 15 years in exotic places like India, Thailand, Australia and Hong Kong, where she worked her way up into managerial positions in large international companies. To achieve this she had to further her education and enrolled at night classes at the Chinese University of Hong Kong for her Diploma in Management Studies.

Love eluded her for many years. She was nearly 40 when she finally met her dream man and settled in Canada, where she now lives, neatly tucked away in the wilderness.

To learn more about Helga, find her on Facebook or Twitter.

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Birthdays of a Princess
Helga Zeiner
A Psychological Thriller

To be famous and be admired by total strangers can be very dangerous …

Her little girl has always been her princess. In fact, she was so lovely, Melissa entered her toddler into child beauty pageants, making her a star from an early age.

But her dreams and hopes are shattered one October morning, when Melissa watches a breaking news story on television. A young girl has been filmed by bystanders, committing a brutal assault in broad daylight in a downtown Vancouver Starbucks … and it looks like the girl is her daughter …