When I began to write A Trail of Vengeance I had several ideas in mind. The first was the setting. The cover art is a rendition of a photo I took at the Murrells Inlet jetty. I chose this site for both the opening scene and the climactic scene for its shear natural beauty and the sense of isolation one feels several miles away from any form of civilization. If you are 'caught' out there, there is no place to get any quick help. These two factors heighten the intensity of the story.
The second concept I wanted to employ were two different applications of time. When I read Greg Olsen's The Last Thing She Ever Did, I liked how he employed an opening scene of a tragedy. Then Chapter 2 picked up with the same characters many years later. Of course, the events in the opening chapter tie into further plot twists. So I did the same thing here. The other application of time I used was to compress time as the book drew to a climax. Once the key elements of the story were in place, the events over the last half of the book takes place in about 36 hours. No time elapses in the multiple scenarios where readers are left to wonder, 'what happened in between?'. I think this helps in making the book a true page turner.