Your journalistic talents are shown in reporting the death of Annalise. How do you balance your factual storytelling and your emotional narrative? For me, the key to sparking emotion in a reader is to try to take the reader deeper via a character’s unique point of view. Every person—every single character, even the ‘villain’—is the hero of his or her own story. Everyone has reasons for doing things, an inner logic, feelings, past traumas and triggers. If we can see and understand the motivations driving a particular character’s actions, I believe it’s easier to feel their emotions. I enjoyed your protagonist, Jane Munro. Why did you decide to tell this story in a multi-voiced narrative? Why would a writer choose multi-voiced over first-person? For my past few novels I’ve essentially been writing in two mystery/thriller sub genres: procedurals and psychological suspense. THE UNQUIET BONES—while leaning heavily into police procedural—is a bit of a combination of the two. A psych suspense wrapped in a procedural. The story follows Detective Jane Munro, my cold case cop, as she closes in on a group of old friends who made a pledge on a terrible night many years ago. At the same it shows how Jane’s peeling back the layers of the old friends’ lies messes with their heads, and they begin to psychologically unravel. The question becomes; how far might they go to stop Jane from learning the truth? And how might they turn on each other in order to save themselves, and to protect their own families? The plot comprises many characters, settings, and deaths. Are all your books structured like this? Do you use any writing tools to keep the many details organized? I do tend to use multiple POVs in all my novels, and I often include dual timelines and various settings. I write with Scrivener. It’s fabulous for keeping track of characters, settings, research notes and links etc. And Scrivener folders from one book can also be transported to other projects, which is great for ongoing characters and series. I like how the plot doesn’t twist and turn to where the reader needs to pause, gather the clues, and catch up. Instead, the plot grows like a pot set on a flame to boil. How do you think this method benefits suspense? What elements do you enhance to bring to the climax? I love the way you describe this. My goal was not to consciously craft the novel with this method, but rather to seed questions in readers’ minds (curiosity seeds), and to lay clues, and to misdirect with red herrings. Personally, I love to read stories where I think one thing is happening, and then realize—either suddenly, or with a slow, creeping dawning—that something quite the other is going on. And that the layers were much deeper than I originally thought. I particularly love it when I can then go back in the book and see—aha!— the clues were there all along. I love this ‘fair play’, and I strive to create a similar feeling when I write suspense. I love the line: “Just like the lines of tree trunks, our lives are written into our bones.” How extensive is your forensic knowledge, and how do you go about your research—before the writing or during? I have read a lot on the topic and attended various law enforcement workshops over the years that I have been writing. Hopefully my knowledge has kept on building over that time! Some of my research has been done before the plotting and writing begins. And some of it informs the plot. And then as I craft a novel I realize I might need more specific nuggets of information, and I hunt those out as I go along. I appreciated how the novel was informative allowing the reader to become knowledgeable, giving the reader what the protagonist knows and learns. Do you do character sketches of your characters before writing? Thank you! I do create character sketches for my key characters. I find it difficult to actually start writing until I have a sense of who they are: what their dreams are, their hurts, their losses, their loves, their passions, their triggers and drivers. I like to know a little bit about what might have shaped their pasts. Once I get a sense of them as ‘real people’, they begin to talk in my head J . They begin to drive the book. How did some of your other novels help in the writing process of this one? I suspect every single past novel helps shapes the writing processes of a future one. We are, after all, a result of our cumulative experiences. Your bio states that you are a “recovering journalist” who resides in British Columbia, where this novel is set. Please tell us about the settings in your other work. Do you think the setting is as important as another character in the plot? Or do you use it primarily for the atmosphere? Most of my recent suspense novels have been set in British Columbia, either in urban or rural environments throughout the province. I think characters—people—are products of their environments and environments create atmosphere that shapes both plot and character. To me they’re tightly interwoven. What is the next book we can expect? Will it follow up on Jane, her need for closure, and Detective Noah? THE SWIMMER, a psychological suspense more in the vein of THE MAID’S DIARY, is releasing September 10. This will be followed by two novellas set in the world of detective Jane Munro and forensic anthropologist Dr. Ella Quinn, and we will begin to learn a tiny bit more about what might have happened to Jane’s fiancé, Matt Rossi (the father of her unborn child who has gone missing in the mountains). Is Detective Noah and the search for a serial killer in other of your books? Yes!!! Forensic psychologist Dr. Noah Gautier and his hunt for a dark and cunning serial killer who has been operating for years will begin to take more of a center stage in the next Munro & Quinn works to come! Thanks, Loreth.. All of us enjoyed getting to know you and yours work.
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