![]() I loved this line in your novel: “The woman’s eyes showed her story was deep and troubled and not yet over.” It summarizes this story. So, I need to ask, how did this story come to you? You’ve selected one of my favorite lines and I’m so glad it resonated with you. In many ways, those who know me would say that The Direction of the Wind does not seem like a story I would write, and that is mostly because I am someone who has never even smoked a cigarette, so I’m dealing with subjects outside of my personal sphere of knowledge and that needed to be heavily researched. (My google search history while I was researching The Direction of the Wind would certainly raise a few eyebrows.) But at the end of the day, the story is about addiction and the impact it has on a family. And that theme, is far more common than we speak about. I have had people close to me who have struggled with addiction, and whether that relates to alcohol, drugs, food, gambling, or anything else, addiction is at its core a mental health issue that requires serious treatment. I really wanted to bring awareness, empathy, and compassion to this disease that is often misunderstood or judged by society, and through Nita’s and Sophie’s eyes, I was able to give two perspectives. I have also spent a lot of time in Paris and consider the city a second home, but I wanted to show a grittier side that is not often portrayed in media. There is a commonly held sentiment that the “West is best” when speaking about lifestyles and cultures, and I wanted to show that for someone like Nita, the West wasn’t the best choice for her despite her romanticized notions of it. I also love the line, which sets the overall theme: “The direction of the wind cannot be changed, but we can change the direction of our sails.” Where has the wind taken you? Especially your journey as a writer. I’ve been fortunate that the wind has taken me to many places thus far, and I can’t wait to see the places it takes me next. My journey as a writer was far from linear. As a nine-year-old girl, I knew I wanted to be a writer, but having grown up in an immigrant household that lacked financial stability, I knew I didn’t want that for my life. So, I became an entertainment lawyer and worked in Hollywood for nearly twenty years. Halfway through that career, the pull to write resurfaced, especially as I was working in an industry that centered around storytelling, but didn’t have the representation of my culture that I hoped to see. So, in 2009, I began taking writing classes and writing what would become my debut The Taste of Ginger. Within a year, I had finished my draft and began the process of querying agents and had some interest, but ultimately the book never found a home. For the next decade, I continued revising it and eventually started writing The Direction of the Wind, thinking that I’d have more success with another story and maybe The Taste of Ginger would be my “drawer book” that was good practice but would never be published. Then in 2020, during the midst of a global pandemic and racial tensions in the United States following the murders of George Floyd and many others as well as rising Asian-hate, I was offered a book deal for both The Taste of Ginger and The Direction of the Wind. It was a difficult series of events that led to my childhood dream coming true, because the publishing industry along with so many others was having a racial reckoning that it hadn’t been equitable in promoting all voices in the past. I wrestled with feeling like a token. But the converse is that it seemed the world was finally ready to start hearing authentic stories of immigrant families and the sacrifices and burdens associated with assimilation and acculturation. I was grateful to finally have a platform to share my stories and truly believe that my books were published at the right time. Because of the social climate, I was able to cover issues in a more direct and authentic way. During the decade in which I was writing and revising without a book deal, I was growing and developing along with the world, and I think that my books were able to reach a much wider audience in 2022 and 2023 than they would have ten years earlier. In 2022, I was able to fully achieve my childhood dream and retired from my legal career in order to be a full-time writer. While all of my novels center Gujarati families, each book takes place in a different country, allowing me to combine my love of travel and writing. I am so grateful that my life and work now consists of traveling the world and creating stories. Having quoted two lines from your work, all of us who have read this novel are reminded of the beauty of your prose. Can you tell us how you developed this skill and how you can dig deeply into emotions? Especially through dialog. First of all, thank you for the generous compliment. As for the focus on emotional development in my stories, I am someone who has always been fascinated by psychology (it was my university degree), and I think emotions and the human condition are at the heart of everything I write. Writers need to be observant, and I love seeing how people behave and trying to understand the why of people’s actions. When I started out, I took many writing classes at UCLA, because writing is a skill like any other, and I knew that creative writing was very different from the legal writing on which I had built my first career. That set me up with a good foundation from which to further develop my craft. I am someone who loves learning, and writing is an area in which we can continue to improve each day. My personal goal is to challenge myself and learn something new and grow with each book that I write, and so far, that has been the case. The layout of the narration by time and point of view allows the reader to become deeply involved in the story’s journey. Did you construct the novel by writing various drafts or outlines? Writing a dual POV across two different time periods was a big challenge for me, because each storyline had to be engaging unto itself and they had to be connected in a way that made sense. I am someone who loves doing puzzles, and I saw this book as a big puzzle that needed to be put together. I had notecards with each scene written on them and had one color for Nita’s story and another color for Sophie’s story, and spread them out on my dining table, moving them around until I had a story that made sense and would be cohesive. In terms of drafts, there were many, as I was still very much in the learning phase of my writing. Plotting is the key element that keeps readers turning the pages, so I focus my first drafts on making sure that pacing is strong. Once I’m satisfied, then I go back through it and focus on the language and make sure each sentence is essential to the story and constructed in the best way possible. We move through Sophie’s character arc by attaching ourselves to many of her experiences or learned lessons. Possibly, some readers can identify with abandonment, curiosity, compassion, forgiveness, or at least compassioned understanding. Wow! Did you see this arc for Sophie when you grabbed this story idea? Where does Sophie come from psychologically—from a hurt inner child to a healed adult? Sophie’s arc was always very clear to me. I knew I wanted to write a character who had lost her mother early in life and had lived a very sheltered, comfortable life in India alongside her father. I wanted someone who would experience France and have a far more positive experience than her mother had, but still choose India as her home and not be seduced by the West. Sophie needed to grow into her own independent person who could take care of herself by the end of the story, and she navigates that journey well despite the many hurdles in front of her. While I am fortunate to have been raised in a healthy, loving two-parent household, the older I get, the more I realize how rare that is. Through conversations with friends or family, I’ve seen the impact that not having that stable upbringing can have on a person, and I wanted to delve into the emotional journey that stems from feelings of abandonment. And most importantly, I wanted Sophie to find compassion for her mother and use that as her guiding compass in life because compassion is one of the most important traits we can have in life. Okay, easier questions: What satisfaction did you receive when you placed THE END on this manuscript? What goals did you achieve? There is no better feeling than typing THE END on that first draft. Even though I know I’m going to go back through it at least a dozen more times, that first draft is the one where I know I have a book and haven’t wasted months (or years) of my life on a story that is going nowhere. After that first draft, I move to what I consider the fun part of revising, which is making sure the story flows and has the language I want. But the process of writing a first draft is all about battling imposter syndrome, and it’s nice to be able to move past that and really focus on making the story the best it can be. Why do you think the novel has been so greatly received in the marketplace? That’s such a tough question to answer. When I’m writing, I focus on writing the best story and not worrying about whether anyone will actually read it. But, naturally, that becomes a question when it’s heading toward publication because publishing is a business at the end of the day. I think many of the themes covered in The Direction of the Wind are very universal. As I’ve heard from readers since the launch of the book, I’m aware of how many lives are affected by addiction and I think that theme and the way Sophie responds to it has really resonated with readers. I’ve been humbled by messages I’ve received of people who have forgiven or changed the way they view loved ones who have battled addiction. For me, that is the power of good storytelling, and I’m humbled that the book has resonated with such a large audience. Working on another? Always. With writing as my full-time career now, I’m always working on another. My third novel A Good Indian Girl is being released on September 3, 2024, and I’m so excited for this book to reach readers. It takes place in Italy and is the culmination of my obsession with food and cooking, complete with original recipes in the back of the book. It is an immersive, fun and heartfelt novel about a disgraced Indian American divorcée who spends a summer in Italy, reconnecting with her passion for cooking and reckoning with cultural expectations to make the choice of a lifetime. I had so much fun working on this novel. I’ve also completed my fourth novel, which will be released in 2025 and takes place in Singapore. So, my days are currently spent working on my fifth novel, which takes place in Bali. Future goals you have set? I aim to write a novel each year and have so far managed to keep up that cadence. Having had the career in Hollywood before becoming a writer, I would be thrilled to see one of my stories adapted for the screen and have a true full circle moment of being on the other side of one of those talent agreements that I used to negotiate on behalf of the studios. Anything more you wish to share? Only to say thank you for reading and getting the word out about The Direction of the Wind. Writing is a very difficult business, and I would encourage everyone who enjoys reading to support those authors they love in whatever way they can. For those who can’t afford to buy the books, there are several free ways to support like requesting books from your local libraries, posting on social media, or leaving a review on Amazon and Goodreads. Every little bit helps to ensure that authors continue to have a platform to keep telling their stories, and we all appreciate the help from our readers so much.
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![]() What I like most about your book The Booklovers Library is that not only does the story take me through a historical period, but the narrative makes me feel as if I, too, had the same experience. This was the first time I’d heard of a lending library—other than our public library in the U.S. How did you come upon this type of library? I’m always reading some article or another, so I can’t recall where I first heard about the original Booklover’s Library, but my imagination immediately began wandering down a path of possibilities. I was intrigued by the name, because it's so perfect, but also by how women who worked there had such long engagements because they did not want to give up their jobs to get married (this was during the marriage bar). I knew writing a book about the children's evacuation was going to be a little heavier and the Booklover’s Library created the perfect setting to offer lightness and comfort – not only for my characters, but also for readers. In your book’s afterword, you mentioned visiting the Bromley House Library in Nottingham and spending time there. Do you always physically research your settings? What is your ratio of time spent on research/outlining to writing? I have been fortunate to have visited on location for three of my historical fiction novels (Lisbon, Portugal and Lyon, France for The Librarian Spy, Warsaw, Poland for The Keeper of Hidden Books, and Nottingham, England for The Booklover’s Library). The only book I have not gone onsite to research was The Last Bookshop in London as it was written during the pandemic. However, being an Army brat, I spent about 12 years in Germany which means I had the opportunity to visit London many times and was able to draw on those experiences. I do a lot of research. Writing a historical fiction novel takes me approximately one year with 80% of that time spent on research and 20% on writing. Would you state this is true with all of your books? Yes. I love research! LOL It makes the world I’m writing come to life for me. Once I have about eight months of research under my belt, the entire story plays out in my head like I’m living the life of the character and I write the story as I experience it. I don’t think I could do that without so much research. he mother-daughter theme, combined with themes of sacrifice and survival, was an intriguing plot and character concept. How did you decide to do this historical story from this point of view? As a mother, the idea of the children’s evacuation in England during WWII has always plucked at a deep place in my heart. Having to send a child away for an indeterminate amount of time, to an unknown location, to stay with people you’ve never met…it’s unfathomable to have to make that kind of call. Especially when the idea of keeping your child home meant you risked them being killed or injured from bombs. I wanted to write about this to understand what those parents went through and help others realize how deep their love for their children was to make the sacrifice of sending them away for their safety. In the afterward, you state that you included several personal experiences in your story. Is this usual, or is it more prominent in this book? There are parts of me in all the books I write. However, I put a lot more of my own personal experiences into this particular book. I was a single mother for several years and the protagonis, Emma, is a single mother as well. I drew on my own situations, feelings, and some particular instances as inspiration for this story. Additionally, I used my two daughters as the foundation for creating Olivia’s character, which only endeared her to me all the more. The mention of excellent novels to read included in your story—because where would a library story be with books—made me want to read them all again. How great that you added a list on your website. How did you decide which books to use? It’s always so fun for me to include some of my favorite books in my novels. Some of them are just personal favorites that have had an impact on my life. Like Anne of Green Gables, for example, which has an important role in this story. Other books are ones mentioned in that time period and come up again and again in my research. Books like Lady Chatterley’s Lover for being so risqué the library would never allow it to be out on the shelves. Or like Gone with the Wind that took the world by storm. What is the best book for those who want to write a historical novel? I think the best book in general to start with for brand new writers is Stephen King’s book On Writing. It’s a great intro. For historical fiction in particular, I would recommend joining HNS (Historical Novel Society) and taking advantage of opportunities to network with other authors, attend conferences, and take workshops. Is this your favorite genre? Why? Confession: Aside from historical fiction (which I feel is the obvious answer) I love thrillers. I have no idea why, but I’ve always been drawn to them ever since I was a girl sneaking R. L. Stine novels under my covers with a flashlight way past my bedtime. I think it’s the wild excitement of the story, but knowing that it ultimately ends up OK in the end. The romance in this story is placed toward the end. Did you place the romance here so that romance didn’t take over the novel? Because I’ve written romance novels previously with 35 published, there are some preconceived prejudices about my putting romance into books. I intentionally tone down the romance subplot as a result. But it is important to me to always still include a romance of some kind – after all, romance is a part of our daily lives. Our spouses, our partners, boyfriends/girlfriends, or even the absence of having someone in one’s life – it’s such a huge part of our daily world that not including romance of any kind would flatten the characters. What book should readers start with to learn your work? What are you working on now? My first historical fiction was The Last Bookshop in London which is a great one to start with. All my historical fiction novels are stand alone and can be read independently. My next book is coming out September 2025 and is called The Secret Book Society. Set in Victorian London, a thrice widowed countess seeks to liberate repressed women through her secret book society operating under the guise of afternoon tea, but rather than gossip and other 'banal, womanly pursuits', the conversations take a far more subversive direction and enable the women to pursue freedom from their current lives. ![]() The Orphanage by the Lake is a new series with Hazel Cho as your detective and protagonist. Where did she come from? I’ve always loved detective stories and I’ve wanted to write one for a long time. However, I felt like the grizzled, alcoholic, white guy with a haunted past had been done to death. I thought it would be fun to take that convention and turn it on its head with a smart, fun, spunky female detective like who resembled many of the women in my life. How is this series different from your Tree of Knowledge series? While I love them both, the two . are quite different. The Tree of Knowledge is more of a speculative fiction adventure series about larger historical themes: faith vs. logic, democracy vs. authoritarianism, etc. The Orphanage By The Lake is a much more focused, real-life mystery-thriller series about the demons we face every day. I like that Hazel is mid-age, 30 years old, single, and that her private investigator business is going under. The reader immediately roots for her to succeed. Economics, or social levels, play a big role in this book. What are you saying beyond the mystery plot? Beyond the mystery plot, The Orphanage By The Lake is fundamentally about power and how it impacts everything we do in both subtle and overt ways. As an African-American orphan child, Mia is the personification of the powerless, so no one makes much an effort to find her. It’s only when Madeline (a powerful white woman) and Hazel (a fighter for the powerless) intervene that things begin to change. Likewise, because the perpetrators in Mia’s disappearance are powerful, no one with the power to find Mia actually wants to know the truth. I find this to be a major theme in our society, how power corrupts our search for truth. A missing person’s case linked with an orphanage was a captivating idea. What—WHAT IF—brought about the idea for the story? I actually reference the case that catalyzed the idea in the novel. I saw an article about a children’s home in which hundreds of children had run away over the years. I asked myself, “how could this be?” And the story flowed from there. Your novel is very informative about missing person cases while Hazel is ferreting out how a girl from an orphanage could have vanished. Where did you get your research? How extensive did you research before writing? I did a ton of research before writing this because I wanted the book to ring true. I spoke with experts in the field, including police and private investigators who had worked on missing persons cases. I also read everything I could find on police procedure. Finally, I had experts read the novel to check if anything I wrote missed the mark. Your plot features many characters with complex character arcs, many of whom become prime suspects. Do you outline your character arcs and plots before writing? Yes, and I swear by this as a writer. Before I write an ounce of story I write detailed character sketches so that when I’m writing the character I know everything that makes them tick. This enables the plot to flow naturally from the characters motivations. For example, Mackenzie isn’t just mean to Hazel because it serves the mystery, he’s mean to Hazel because he cares deeply about St. Agnes and doesn’t want to see his legacy ruined. “…looked more like haunting houses now. Each one has a simple light on inside, big enough to lure you in but dark enough to trap you.” The novel is set around Halloween and has some dark elements. But you keep the atmosphere more in shadow than darkness. Were you tempted to go darker? If not, why not? Great question. No. I’ve always liked Hitchcock’s approach of leaving the horror behind the curtain to allow people to imagine the worst. The Orphanage by the Lake became an immediate bestseller. Why do you think it hit the market so big—other than it is a well-written and intriguing story? Did you set your mind to your reader and keep to that focus? Research marketability? I think there were two big factors. First, was the fact that, unlike with the Tree of Knowledge, I targeted a very specific audience with the style and substance of this book. I wrote a book that would appeal to people who like fast-paced thrillers like Freida McFaddens, Charlie Donlea, Lisa Jewell, etc. Second, there’s something uniquely creepy about the old-school orphanage in our imagination that makes it irresistible to thriller-lovers. Book 2 of the Hazel Cho series, The Red Letter, will be released on February 25th. Do you see this series as multi-volume? I would like to do at least three Hazel Cho stories. Beyond that, I’m not sure. It will depend on whether I feel like there’s a real story to tell with Hazel versus just cranking out another book. What are you working on now? And how best can readers connect with you other than here on this website? I’m putting the finishing touches on The Red Letter, which I actually like better than The Orphanage By The Lake. We’ll see if readers agree. After that, I’m working on a stand-alone novel. More to come on that. I love hearing from readers and they can email me anytime at [email protected]. I also post and interact a fair amount on Facebook and Instagram so please follow me there. ![]() 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. ![]() Thanks for talking about this wonderful read. Please tell your readers how you got the idea for your book—which is how I think all great stories are generated. With The Ghost Cat there was a key moment: it was when we let our cat, Tabitha, out of her carry box the day we moved into our current flat. We live in an Edwardian tenement in central Edinburgh and Tabitha immediately took exception to one room – the back room that overlooks the garden. She hissed and looked around as if seeing something. Maybe there’s a ghost cat here! I said to my wife jokingly. That simmered in the back of my mind for the next month or so: if there was a ghost cat in the flat, I thought to myself, what would it have seen? when did it die? How many residents would it have seen pass through? I have always adored old houses and often wondered how I could tell their stories, but never quite known the way ‘in’ that was digestible, popular and compelling. I remember, when I was around 10, trying to tell the story of the house we lived in through a film made on an early iteration of Windows Movie Maker! I suppose Tabitha hissing simply inspired the framing around a desire to write a house’s story which had been simmering decades… I believe The Ghost Cat is very similar to Sipsworth by Simon Van Booy in that it can be categorized as an adult story tale—defined as full of creative embellishments. How would you categorize this novel? Cue the next entry on my TPR pile! I’ve never read Sipsworth, but already I can see that it’s a book after my own heart. I think, you’re right. I’m very exorcised by C. S. Lewis’s famous quote: “Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.” I’ve always felt that books meant for kids are incredibly engaging – they have to be written with a concision and vibrance that adult fiction can get away with not having on the grounds of ‘being literary; similarly, ‘grown up’ books can be brimming with childish playfulness (we never truly escape our childhoods, after all). Charles Dickens is famously credited for always writing ‘with the eyes of a child’ – and haven’t his characters stood the test of time. Ultimately, I have always written true to myself, rather than for any given market trend. As a result, books like The Ghost Cat are just me having fun; they’re the meeting place of several themes I find interesting but which are perhaps not considered compatible: footnotes, magic, history, humour, tragedy… thinking cats. I’ve always loved YA fiction and feel that, often, the unabashed innocence of their narrators has a purity that’s much more compelling to read. They’re opinionated; naïve; puffed-up; accident prone; starry-eyed… and all those things make them fun to be around. But at the same time, I have a serious side: I have completed three degrees in English literature, so have read a fair few monographs! I love the stuffy majesty of an old archive and the pristine geometry of a Shakespearean quatrain. Equally, I have an obsession with British comedy and love performing. Put all those things in a blender and I suppose you come out with something approximating my writing style! It doesn’t fit neatly into a given category (and it spooks the hell out of some editors!); but then the people who get it really get it, and that’s enough for me! The blend of literary devices used must have been challenging. Using footnotes and summaries could--but don’t—disturb the readers’ narrative flow. Using footnotes also reminds me of another novel The Confederacy of Dunes. While John Kennedy used footnotes for a different literary value, your use of them to bring in greater historical detail was very creative. How did you come to use them? What gave you this idea? And how did you plan so that the notes did not disturb the narrative? Another book to add to my TBR pile! Loving these recommendations! On the one hand, I think the choice to include footnotes stemmed from my desire to poke fun at the stuffiness of academia and take it down a peg or two. Going to an ancient university like the University of Edinburgh, you can really lose yourself in the ‘boffin cloud.’ You work among people who have never existed outside academia and it fascinates me how unworldly, arrogant and drunk on ideas people can become. Maybe it’s something to do with the fact my family background isn’t remotely academic, both parents having come from very working-class homes. So I love the idea of footnotes poking fun of that and of offering verification to a ‘fact’ which is self-evidently absurd. Writing a cat’s great because you and swerve between inhabiting their apparent aloofness one minute, and their goofiness the next; they’re the perfect vehicle to take modern academia down a peg or two, and boy does it need it. Equally, I like how a footnote brings verisimilitude – after all, I am telling the story of an actual flat on an actual street, that intersects with actual points in history, whether big or small. In a funny way, you’re recruiting history to do some of the storytelling for you – everyone knows where they were when they heard of the death of Queen Elizabeth II. These moments of realism help induct the reader into the story. Okay, I have to giggle here. You do the opposite of Blake Synder’s recommendation to “Save the Cat.” Our character, Grimalkin, dies at the very beginning. However, he is resurrected to continue with his remaining 8 lives. Any play on humor here with this idea? Ah, now that is a book I HAVE heard of! And the save-the-cat technique is a fantastic one to live by. If I did indeed subvert this notion, I can only claim to have done so subliminally! That said, I did enjoy the bite of having a lead character die at the outset. You get the emotional punch in there from the early pages – you’ve snared the reader with emotion. And telling a life both backwards (through our history), but forwards (through the cat’s history) was something that I felt was unusual and weirdly beguiling. I love Eilidh’s character. We would all wish to be owned by someone like her: “Her eyes permanently sparkled, as if she was always on the point of telling a joke, and their turquoise irises were so deep and kind one could tell, just by looking at them that their bearer could be trusted with your secrets.” You use Eilidh to point out a social perspective in the book. You also use other images to do this. Was this social comment one of the goals of the story? Yes, definitely. I guess this goes back to my mum reading me loads of Dickens as a kid where there’s a social commentary lurking around every corner. We all love an underdog story, but with Eilidh I wanted this to have a twist; something that linked back to the main narrative. Having the charwoman reveal the realities of servile duty in contrast to the wealth of those around her was a nice way to kick things off with Eilidh. I also wanting this book to be touch; to describe the effect pets have on our lives without being cloying. I think keeping a foot in the social realism agenda helped this. I also wanted to make clear that these social divisions have never really disappeared. Take the University of Edinburgh, for example; in my first-year halls, students from working class backgrounds were scraping by each week on ready meals, while their neighbours in the rooms opposite were children to blue-chip CEOs and Middle Eastern royalty. The social injustice war has never gone away, and in The Ghost Cat, Eilidh is its quiet custodian. Cat lovers will love this book: “He was a thinking cat, and as such, enjoyed a life of quiet intellectual contemplation.” This line also serves as a great foreshadowing for the reader to accept Grimalkin's intellectual lessons. Why did you give your ghost cat more intellectual musings than antics? I suppose focusing on musings rather than antics concertedly lifts the book out of the category of children’s literature. Also, it can be easy for the story to turn too farcical and pantomime-esque if it’s all about antics. By and large, cats are creatures of subtlety and quiet decision-making. Just like in my former book The Library Cat, I have found this makes the perfect foundation on which to build a contemplative persona. The conflict in how Grimalkin sees the world, versus how it actually is, gives a potential for comedy and meaning which is almost endless. The antics have their place though; we always have to remember that Grimalkin is, first and foremost, a cat: he scratches, he sniffs, his tail goes fat with anger, he tests the laws of physics. This gives opportunities for more slap-stick type comedy which is important too; ironically, it keeps the main character real and believable. Born in 1887, Grimalkin’s “life” periods extend through many historical periods. How did you choose which to use? Very good question! In the early chapters, I was guided very much by local history. The theatre where I work, the King’s, was built in the early 1900s. I discovered it was built by the same guy who built our flat, the famous architect William Stewart Cruikshank, whose styles are contemporaneous with Charles Renee Mackintosh. This got me looking into the Rockefellers who spent time in Scotland at the beginning of the century and how this could feed into the social commentary. Basically I went down a bit of a wormhole! I wanted to include big moments in history, but not so many that it felt contrived. In this sense, I wanted it to be like life itself: a mix of the ordinary and the extraordinary, with a slight bias towards the extraordinary, given Grimalkin was ultimately an upper-middle class Victorian. I was very influenced by David Nichols’s One Day in this sense – the idea of witnessing a character develop by visiting them for little snapshots across the time. Sometimes you drop in on them having a banal, dull day; other days you drop in on them in the midst of a huge life crisis like a death or marriage or birth. Is this paradise? Cat-Sỉth comes from Celtic Mythology. You use it for the ONE who comes down to judge Grimalkin while in his limbo: “…a giant black cat paraded up and down. It was easily triple the size of any feline Grimalkin had ever beheld…a great white spot that shone out from its chest like a moon was almost too bright to look at directly.” Black generally symbolically represents the devil or a bad omen, as in a black cat crossing one’s path. Why did you choose this opposite representation? I wanted to pay homage to a broadly unknown feline mythology. Originally, I’d had Cat-Sìth as the Egyptian cat-god “Bastet”, but that didn’t feel right somehow. Why Egypt? Scotland is such a wonderful repository or various mythologies and legends it felt fitting to call upon the myth kitty here. I was really struck by the ‘campness’ in visual depictions of the Celtic god, Cat-Sìth’s – I thought that’d be fun to write. It made me think of the perniciousness of the Greek gods and how they’d make huge decisions based on flights of fancy or stroppy grievances. I thought these behaviours fitted Cat-Sìth’s image as the black cat with the swirling white heart on his chest, as did the rejection of the Christian binary of ‘good’ versus ‘evil’. He was just the sort of god that would send Grimalkin on a helter-skelter whistlestop tour through time because he wasn’t paying attention at his point of death! What is nice about your structure is that you lay out this story for the reader. “All cats have nine lives on planet Earth—three when they stay, three when they stray and three when they play.” Did you need to outline, or did you write drafts of this story to bring it to completion? The first chapters took a fair bit of rewriting. I like to spend quality time with my main character, building up a kind of ‘muscle memory’ as to who they are. The structure, funnily enough, came to me as I was walking past Scotmid in Marchmont, Edinburgh (Scotland’s equivalent of England’s ‘Co-Op’ – a convenience store). It came in the form of the subtitle used on the original UK hardback: 12 decades, 9 lives, 1 cat. It sounds cheesy, but a subtitle can really help distill a plot idea. Landing on a good structure was tricky, though; perhaps the hardest thing, in fact. Having a solid structure gets you through your darkest moments. I feel that writing a book is very much like building a suspension bridge; you can always tweak the carriageway and the cables but the location and strength of the piles that bore through the seabed are fundamental. You need to depend on them absolutely. It took a while to get those piles situated in sure enough ground to support the story. For some reason, as Shirley Jackson stated with her story The Lottery, the story came to her all at once; from your wonderful descriptions, use of color, and ease of narrative, it felt like this story came to you all at once. Can you speak to this? In one sense, yes – Tabitha hissing in the back room was a kind of “Harry Potter Moment” akin to when JK Rowling looked out a train window and the entire seven book Harry Potter series ‘came to her.’ In reality, as I’m sure many authors would agree, these moments do more for journalistic click-bait and marketing than they do honour the reality of the process. I always remember Sue Townsend, the author of the Adrian Mole series saying on her death bed in a documentary just how agonizingly hard the whole process of writing was… even right down to the final books in the Mole saga. I remember being amazed… her hero, Adrian, feels so real: he just LEAPS off the page. And surely, by the time you get your character to book 8 in the sage, the books just write themselves? It turns out not! I could go on and on asking questions. Your book is full of insights, life-lessons, thoughts to consider and muse upon. I loved it. So, I need to ask, what are you working on now? Thank you so much, and thank you for these wonderful questions! Yes I am indeed writing a new book! And I’m just free of the foundation building mentioned in the above bridge analogy. I feel like I’ve just cleared a hold up on a motorway and the cars are all speeding ahead which is a great feeling. This book – The Ship’s Cat – features a very different type of cat who turns up unexpectedly on foreign shores. I don’t want to give too much away but gentle magic features again, as does Homer’s The Odyssey as a narrative touchstone, together with my own experiences working as a deckhand as a teenager in my summer holidays… Thanks for discussing The Ghost Cat. This book will be a great success. My pleasure, DJ! ![]() Your book offers a wonderful story using captivating elements: history, mystery, and romance. .I’d like to begin with the narrative’s point-of-view: Devisha, creating a magical spiritual atmosphere; Chloe in 2015, discovering her grandmother’s wartime diary; and Lena (1944) recounting her own experiences during the war. Have you used this narrative technique in your previous work? Yes, nearly all my books involve a dual or triple timeline. I started this with Bamboo Heart: A Daughter’s Quest, my first novel, which tells the story of a soldier imprisoned by the Japanese on the Death Railway, and his daughter in the 1980s trying to uncover his story. The book swaps between the soldier’s backstory in Penang in the 1930s, his time on the Death Railway, and his daughter’s journey in the 1980s. All my books follow a similar pattern. Some involve three characters, others two and in some I have a single character looking back over her own past. .It was impressive how smoothly you shifted from Lena’s diary entries in first-person to third-person. Did you have prior experience using this in your previous work? Do you know of any previous instances where this has been done? This is the first time I’ve used that particular technique. In several books I have written complete diary entries, and in the first draft of the Fortune Teller I started by doing that. However, it didn’t work very well. The diary form didn’t lend itself to the sort of detail I needed to include, so I rewrote Lena’s story completely, putting it into the third person and just including a small introductory entry from the diary in each chapter. I don’t know of instances by other authors, but I’m sure there must be some. Most of your books take place during World War II. What is your interest in this specific era of history? My father served in the British-Indian army in the Malaya campaign, was captured by the Japanese at the fall of Singapore and was a prisoner of war on the Thai-Burma railway. He died when I was seven, so growing up I became fascinated in his story and began to research as much as I could about that campaign and the plight of prisoners of war. I discovered his records in the National Archives in 2010 and my first book, Bamboo Heart: A Daughter’s Quest was inspired by his experiences. That led me to delve deeper into the war in South-East Asia and research different aspects of it. Most of my subsequent books are set during the war in SE Asia, relating the experiences of different people affected in different ways by the conflict. However, I have also written about British India during the 1930s, Germany and France during WW2 and also London during the Blitz. Your book enlightened me about the historical specifics of the India-Japan war. It captivated me completely. What led you to discover this? Finding out about the Burma campaign was an extension of my original research as outlined above. I wrote about it in The Tea Planter’s Club, which tells the story of a woman who has to escape the fighting in Burma by walking through the mountains to Assam with her baby. After that I wrote The Lake Palace, about a nurse who worked in a field hospital behind the front line at Kohima and Imphal during the Burma campaign. During research for those books I stumbled across the story of the Wasbies, and decided I would write about that too one day. This brings me to the discovery of the Wasbies, also known as the Women’s Auxiliary Service in Burma. How did you come across their service? What was the reasoning behind including it as one of Lena’s experiences? I think I’ve answered that partly in my above answer. I stumbled across the Wasbies when I was researching the Burma campaign for other books. I was interested in the roles that women played in the war. There were very few women at the front line apart from nurses. I found it fascinating how the simple act of serving tea and cakes to soldiers could have had such a profound effect on their morale. I read a diary of a Wasbie ‘Frontline and Fortitude’ which brought home to me the bravery, strength and camaraderie of those women who were prepared to put themselves in danger to support the troops. Your novel is a captivating blend of romance, adventure, and mystery. Which do you like better, when the romance is the main focus and the mystery is secondary? Maintaining parallelism between the two areas is a challenge for authors. How do you approach it? This is difficult to answer because I don’t necessarily separate them like that in my mind. I like to read page-turners myself so really try to make my plots fast-moving, complex and surprising. That involves blending mystery and adventure in equal measure. And I also love to include a love story to invest readers in the characters’ journeys. However, I wouldn’t necessarily write either an adventure, mystery or romance without the other elements too. I think the way they come together in a book is down to planning, editing and rewriting if things don’t work the first time. I’m curious, do you extensively outline before, during, or after completing the first draft of a novel? Yes, I plan very carefully. I draw up a high-level outline and tweak it until I’m satisfied, then I write a chapter plan and try to follow that when I write. However, I often find myself departing from the chapter plan because interesting plot-twists come to me as I write. .Your reviews often mention that your depictions of Napal are so realistic that readers could use your book as a travel guide. How familiar are you with this specific area of the world? I have been to Nepal twice. Once in 1988 as part of a much longer journey, when I spent time in Pokhara, Kathmandu and trekked to Ghorepani as the characters do in my book. I wrote a diary on that trip, which I drew on extensively whilst writing the book. I returned last year while I was writing it, spending time in Kathmandu and Pokhara and did the same trek (much harder now than when I was in my twenties, and a lot has changed). I also spent a couple of weeks in Darjeeling and Kolkata in 2019. I loved Darjeeling – the beauty, the atmosphere and the people - and thought it would make a perfect setting for a book. What is the desired takeaway for readers after finishing this book? I hope that readers are able to escape into a different world when they read The Fortune Teller of Kathmandu, and that the book brings that world alive for them. I would also like people to understand about the hardships experienced by so many during the war and that a lot of ordinary, unsung people, like Lena and Billy made huge sacrifices for the sake of others. I also hope they remember Lena, her strength and her bravery and her desire to be true to herself and to those she loved. Working on the next? Tell us more. Since writing The Fortune Teller of Kathmandu, I have published another book, A Rose in the Blitz. It tells the story of May Rose, a nurse with the ambulance corps in London during WW2, and her daughter Rachel, to whom May tells her story years later, and who goes on to uncover various explosive family secrets. I have also written two books about WW2 set in Germany for my publisher, Bookouture, which are about women and families affected by the Nazi’s Lebensborn programme. The first of these, The Orphan List, will be published on August 15th 2024, the second will be published in November. I am currently working on another book set during WW2 in South-East Asia, this time focusing on Pearl Harbor and the war in the Philippines. That one is called The Lotus House. I’m not sure on a publication date for that one yet, perhaps either October 2024 or January next year. ![]() “I came across a story about an unhappy-looking blonde who had checked into a Hollywood hotel and was linked to the scandalous murder of Cecil Wells in far-off Alaska.” Okay, was it just because you couldn’t find anything written on this story that captured you to write it? What continued to intrigue you? When I read about the circumstances of the murder – and the later suicide of Diane Wells – I was astounded there wasn’t a movie about the case, let alone more information online, as it seemed such a quintessential film noir, especially since the inter-racial affair between Diane and Johnny Warren would have been a big deal too. Later I found the story had indeed been covered in many magazines – both of the serious and pulp variety – but more than that, I was just curious. What had really happened the night of the murder, and what happened to Marquam Wells, the 3-year-old son of Cecil and Diane? When I found out that the family members knew little about what had happened either, and hadn’t seen Marquam in years, it became a real mystery that got its hooks into me. Now however I was trying to find answers not only for myself, but for several generations of people. Why chase this story and not an untold Hollywood story since much of your other work is involved in Los Angeles? Well, about half of The Alaskan Blonde does take place in Hollywood. It was where Diane and Marquam came as soon as she made bail, and where her friend William Colombany, the so-called “Third Suspect”, also came to as well, in order to be her constant companion. He was arrested in LA twice too, and of course Diane committed suicide in Hollywood. The Alaska connection was especially interesting to me though, as I knew very little about the huge state (which in 1953 was still a territory), and that added another level of complexity. I found I couldn’t put this story down. I needed to find out “who did it.” I am fascinated, however, with your take on Diane at the beginning of your investigation—compared to your overall discovery. How did you find yourself relating to her as the investigation developed? Thanks, I’m so glad that you found it a compelling read. It’s ultimately a difficult and unhappy story overall, with so many contradictions and ideas that change over the course of the narrative. Initially, Diane was very much seen by many people – and particularly the press – as a young, blonde gold-digger who was clearly after Cecil’s money, and probably killed him for it so she could run off with her *gasp* Black lover. But talking to people who knew her, especially her eldest daughter from her first marriage, Saundra, revealed a different, more complex person. Saundra and her younger sister Bonnie never saw their mother after the divorce, and Saundra was justifiably angry about that – but my research led me to believe Diane hadn’t forgotten her daughters at all; her letters and calls probably weren’t passed on. Other stories too showed Diane was someone very different from the narrow, titillating media portrayal. She was no angel per se (she was always the most attractive woman in the room, and seemingly initiated a short but passionate affair with Johnny, despite her many denials), but in Cecil she had an abusive, jealous husband, and found herself living in a very small town with challenging extremes of weather. Moreover, it seemed she suffered from postnatal depression, then a condition all but unknown to the medical community (as was the term “domestic abuse”), and before she died, she was depressed and taking barbiturates. I couldn’t relate to much of that directly of course, but I began to get more of an understanding of her – or at least what might have been an understanding – the more I heard and read about her. You write from a journalistic and investigative point of view, but I found that you sometimes gave a “first-person” opinion. Was it hard not to become involved with the characters you presented? I was urged by several friends – and potential publishers – to put more of myself in the story; to relate it more to my life, as that is very much a popular tactic in true crime writing. It’s true to say that true crime books are often written by people directly connected to the case or the victim, but that wasn’t the case with me. I didn’t know anyone involved, had never been to Alaska (at the time), and wasn’t even alive when it happened. The focus should be on the living family members I felt, not on me. And besides, as a journalist I always find other people more interesting; they’re the ones I want to meet and interview. You will occasionally step away from the investigation to offer historical information about Alaska or other biographical information on organizations or witnesses. Why did you feel this added information—not necessarily relevant to the actual murder—necessary? Again, that was something suggested to me, mainly because most people know very little about Alaska, let alone Fairbanks, even today. I spoke to some people in The Big I pub in Fairbanks who told me that tourists – foreign and American – often think Alaska is an island. Why? Because it’s in a box on the TV weather forecast, so they assumed it was like Hawaii! As for background about other organizations or witnesses, I included that because I wanted to give a rounded look at the whole picture. More practically, I didn’t have an overabundance of witness interviews to draw from, as the case happened 70 years ago. If you were to write another True Crime novel, what would you like to tackle as a mode of craft that you didn’t attempt here? I would still be uncomfortable about inserting myself into the story unless it actually happened that way, though I would certainly try to avoid reexamining crimes from so long ago because, as I mentioned, almost everyone involved with them has passed away, or cannot remember much about it. The police/FBI files related to them are less likely to still be available either. What advice would you give someone wanting to write a True Crime book? A golden rule is to befriend and always be kind to the librarians, archivists, historical society volunteers, museum staff, law enforcement officials and others that you encounter during your research. They nearly always really want to help, and can access places and have ideas you’d never think of – maybe even find something vital that will help you. As for doing interviews, just be patient and respectful, and make sure to listen to what your interviewees are saying, even if they take some time getting to the subject. Recalling and talking about an act of violence or tragedy – even if it was decades ago – is always going to be difficult if not traumatic, though I often found that people wanted to talk, and wanted answers (even if they weren’t the ones they wanted to hear). Almost anything is better than the black hole of not knowing. I always find coincidences to be karmic. You suggest this in your Epilogue. Do you still feel that way? Have you written other stories that have given you this same cycle of events in life? As any true crime writer will tell you: you couldn’t make these things up. There’s also nothing stranger than real people, and what they will do and say to each other. In fact, there was another utterly bizarre karmic coincidence that I found out about after the book had been published. In the early days of my research, a bookstore called Book Soup in West Hollywood asked for local writers to come and be “living exhibits” in their window. My wife Wendall Thomas, who is the novelist behind the Cyd Redondo mysteries, and I both signed up, and there’s a picture of me in the window, sat at a desk with my laptop. I took a large picture of Diane in a frame with me too, so I could show passers-by who I was writing about. Years later, I found a picture of where the mortuary where Diane was taken to after her death: it’s now the location of the Book Soup bookstore. I know your Gourmet Ghosts books. Do you plan to do more of these, or do you plan to stay with true crime? People often ask about another book, but I vowed that the bars, restaurants and hotels I featured – and the true crimes, ghost and celebrity stories that happened behind their doors – must have a solid backstory in terms of the newspaper archives/witness accounts, and though I look into new and old locations all the time, I still haven’t found enough good ones to justify a whole new book. As for true crime, there was another death that happened in Fairbanks – coincidentally also in the Northward Building, where Cecil Wells was murdered – that someone messaged me about. It’s a very suspicious suicide from the 1970s, and I’ve got a couple of witness interviews already, though the current family members, of course understandably, have not replied to any of my letters, emails, messages or calls. Unless I hear from one of them or more, whether it’s a book or not will probably come down to whether I can get the FBI file on the case. I have the file number, but they sent a standard response to my FOIA request, and so I appealed. If that doesn’t go my way, I may well use the circumstances of the case as the basis for a fictional mystery/crime story in the future (though that’s moving into my wife’s lane, as she calls it, so I have to tread carefully!). What are you working on now? At the moment I’m writing and pitching the travel/lifestyle/feature pieces I write as a freelance journalist, and working at my regular day job – got to pay those bills! But every now and then I come across a great historical crime story, or just a very weird one, and go down the research rabbit hole. Sometimes there’s an article in it for Crime Reads, or LA Magazine or somewhere else, but sometimes not. Even so, the thrill of finding something in the archives and wondering “what happened?” keeps me going! ![]() Quoted from his book: THE UNDERHANDED “I don’t care what the experts say—someone put these things in motion through cyberspace and social media. Then fear and anger took over, and the movements fed themselves as mainstream politics moved them forward.” Your bio supports your credibility in writing an espionage novel. You are a Silver Star recipient and a former CIA paramilitary officer. Why did you decide to add Novelist? My desire to write fiction is fairly simple, I think. Yet, the reasoning behind it is perhaps a little more nuanced. Fundamentally, after all my years in uniform and then with CIA, I wanted to create something that people could appreciate, that entertained, that captivated, that made people think. I had this need to write stories that people would want to read, and when they turned the final page, felt like they’d left a real place and said goodbye to people that they enjoyed getting to know, spending time with, and perhaps wanted to see again. Like most authors, I’ve been a reader my entire life, and for some books, I can tell you exactly where I was when I read them going all the way back to elementary school. I devoured fantasy, literature, historical fiction, and of course, spy thrillers. In some of the most challenging periods in my life with the Marine Corps or as a paramilitary officer, books gave me joy. And even though they were a form of escape, books grounded me. Thus, about twelve years ago while on an operation in Africa, I had some time, and that’s when I wrote my first scene for what would become my first book. This book has not been published—the manuscript is in a box in my office—but that was the beginning. And nine years later my first novel, Landslide, debuted. I’ve loved every minute of it. I very much like your protagonist, Professor William Dresden. He is broken yet equally heroic. What were your thoughts when creating this character? In addition to serving as a Marine and CIA officer, I am an academically trained historian, and during graduate school, I met a professor about my age. When he was an undergraduate in the 1990s, he’d gone to Bosnia to work in orphanages. When I was a young Marine, I’d served in the Balkans, too. We didn’t know each other at the time, of course, but we both witnessed some of the horrors wrought by that conflict. This shared experience allowed us to bond and we are still friends to this day. Fast forward fifteen years, and along with two other prominent experiences in my life while in Eastern Europe with CIA, I started formulating the idea for The Underhanded. I appreciate intelligent mysteries, spy thrillers, and action/adventure stories, and I love when historical elements and conspiracies are woven into the plot. Therefore, I wanted my protagonist to add the intelligent and historical components, yet also have had experiences and a background that would justify his actions as well as his layers and complexity. Professor Dresden was the result … Knowing that many of your readers won’t have your extensive background, how do you determine how much background history needs to be given? I read somewhere to never talk down or underestimate the knowledge of your audience; meaning, don’t explain every little thing or action. But how do you know if your readers will understand a unique aspect of tradecraft in espionage or know about a particular time in history? I think that’s why fiction is a form of art, because we’re trying to walk a line using words to illustrate a story, but not getting bogged down and lost in details and explanations that detract from the plot and characters. Therefore, I try not to spend time excessively explaining real-world events or things, assuming that my readers will already know about them or, if they don’t and want to know more, will quickly look them up. But, if I’ve added fictional elements, that is when I spend a few sentences or paragraphs to give that background or additional insight. How do you balance that information so your information and explanations don’t slow down the plot? For my writing, I strive to make the background, the technical explanation, the context, the description, or whatever is—I endeavor to make it part of the action. I don’t want to explain, I want the background to come out in the heat of the narrative. Perhaps the conversation about someone or something’s background will be confrontational with another character, or the use of a technical device will happen just as the security guard is about to come through the door … I want to give just enough so that a reader will believe the events credible, but then get back to the story and characters and keep the plot moving. I thought it interesting that you placed your protagonists' backstory more towards the end of the story. I found this a good builder to the ending conflicts to climax. As a reader, I continued to gather questions, which you then answered. Did you style this plot structure after other authors you have liked? I really admire authors who in the beginning of their stories create intrigue about their characters, which they then slowly reveal throughout the narrative. As you said, it’s the idea of creating questions and mysteries that readers want answered, so they keep reading. Placing a critical element of Professor Dresden’s backstory in the final third of the book was intentional because of what it was. I referenced these aspects of his background—major events—at the beginning of the book, but those experiences were so traumatic and suppressed that he would never discuss them casually. Therefore, I felt I had to put the characters through some shared trials for Professor Dresden to finally reveal that dark history of his life. Authors that you feel mentored you in this genre? Without a doubt, James Rollins, Brad Meltzer, Dan Brown, and Steve Berry. I love their work and the blending of historical intrigue with contemporary conspiracies, and I wanted to take those elements and add my perspective and insight having been a US Marine and intelligence officer doing covert action. The result, I feel, was a blend of spy thriller fiction and action/adventure. Your first book, Landslide, was well-reviewed and received. How did you work to meet the pressure in creating an equal -- not part of the first series-- if not a better second book, The Underhanded? Thank you for your kind words about my novels. When I am writing my books, ideas for other stories are constantly popping into my head and I don’t want to lose these nuggets. Therefore, I will either write down a short note or, in some cases, take the time to write a quick summary. Consequently, I already had a basic foundation for The Underhanded while I was writing Landslide. And with everything I learned writing Landslide, I built upon that to craft The Underhanded. And because I am a very diverse reader, I like the idea of being able to write books that are in different genres or that blend genres, and to create series with different storylines and worlds. The Underhanded is not part of the first series, yet it ends as if it can be one. Do you plan to continue the characters or antagonist? Absolutely. I’m writing the next book in the series now. The series pressure is now on. Readers are waiting--One book a year needs to be published. Have you found your writing schedule has changed? Plotting more? Writing requires time and discipline—you have to make the effort to write every single word and eventually put approximately 90,000 of them together in a coherent stream. However, due to other personal and professional commitments including having a family with two young children, I must carve out time in the day to write. It’s tough, but I have chosen a routine where I wake up a little after 4am and write for a few hours before the day begins. That is my protected time when it is still dark outside, I have my coffee, and the rest of the house is still asleep. And then, if I can find a stolen moment later in the day or if I’m not too tired at night, I’ll edit or focus on other aspects of being an author like promotion or outreach or preparation for upcoming events and conferences. What are you working on now? Will we soon find the second in the Mason Hackett series? I have three projects going on right now. I just finished the manuscript for the sequel to Landslide, and Mason Hackett will return with a vengeance as he tries to thwart a Russian plot to destabilize NATO and penetrate a CIA operation. I also just started writing the sequel to The Underhanded where Professor William Dresden and Adeline Parker team up with a mysterious operative to subvert the machinations of an authoritarian leader in Eastern Europe. And the third project is a memoir of a contemporary of the Kennedys, the late John Carl Warnecke. I am working with the family as the editor for the memoir, and this book should be coming out in the next year. ![]() There is no question in your ability to produce a scene so terrifying the reader experiences it along with the character—Alison, lying on her bathroom floor covered in a wet blanket, waiting to die in the bushfire. How were you able to write the scene, keeping the description of what was happening equally balanced with her fear? At the time of the Black Saturday fires in Victoria, I was working as a court reporter for The Age newspaper, and the courts round is one of those collaborative kinds of rounds, where journos from all the publications work out of the same office, and help each other out. Of course, if you’ve got an exclusive you keep it to yourself, but the big trials and crimes, we’re all in there together. One of those journalists nearly died on Black Saturday, and he wrote a searing, visceral account of his experience for his newspaper. After the fires, I was transferred to the State Politics round and I went out on a lot of stories where I met people who had survived Black Saturday, or saw the ruins of the towns and bush. I drew on all of that when writing that scene, and I think if you can marry description with emotion, it is far more powerful, and that’s what I tried to do the whole way through the book. Radiant Heat, defined at the beginning of the novel, becomes a major theme. Why did you decide to use this as the title? I love this question because it allows me to do something I love to do and talk about how writing a novel is both an incredibly solitary thing, but also, it takes a village. When I began working on Radiant Heat it had a working title—After the Fire—and I didn’t love it, but titles are not my forte, so I just went with it. In my first workshop for Columbia’s Fiction MFA I submitted the draft first chapter of this book, and when my friend Michael handed me back his draft with markups, he had circled the words ‘radiant heat’ in the dialogue between Jim and Alison and written “Title?”. As soon as I saw it I knew he was right. Because Radiant Heat is the silent killer of a fire. You can’t see it or anticipate it, and it’s not the danger you’re paying attention to. There’s a lot of that in Alison’s life, it just fits. How did you create and plot the minor themes using this major theme? I think there’s obviously a lot of symbolism in fire, and I wanted to write a book that considered that the lives of the people who are devastated by natural disasters had befores, and they have afters. How do you deal with catastrophe and manage your life? How does something so extreme change us, and how does it affect everything else we’ve got going on? For Alison, fire or not, there was something coming to shake her up and put her in danger, but the fire changed the game, turned it into something else. And that’s what I was interested in. How does that change how you behave. I think Alison would have reacted very differently to what was coming had there been no fire. So without the fire, there’s no book—but the fire isn’t the story here, and so while it’s an anchor, it also inspired me to find those other threads, and bring together a world around it. A world that felt true to Australia, and to the other things I’ve seen as a reporter that I wanted to unpack. The fire reflects the 2009 Black Saturday fire in Australia. How were you affected? I lived in Melbourne at that time, and I’m lucky that my family is pretty much all in Queensland, very far from those conditions, and so I wasn’t personally affected by the fires directly. I remember that day so well. It was so so hot, but also really dry, and the sky was dark and orange and you could smell the smoke on the wind. No one knew how bad it was. The fire moved so fast—it was days before we understood the extent of it. I remember I was out for breakfast with my friends on the Sunday morning, and the late edition of the paper had it as front page news, with a horrible death toll of—I think—around 40. That number would quadruple in the coming days. I think we were all in shock. I wanted to go out and cover the fires like so many of my colleagues at the paper, but there was a huge trial in the Supreme Court, and another one in the County, someone had to stay and write them up. When I talked to my friends after they came back, they were all so quietly shaken by what they had seen. I read all the coverage, every story of survival, every list of names. It was devastating, and consuming, and profoundly sad. On the one year anniversary, I was sent to talk to a family who had survived about their year. They were still living in a shipping container on their land, waiting to rebuild. Their two children had a menagerie of pets the little girl wanted me to meet. I was so struck by their stoicism, their optimism. I think about them, and about everyone I met during that time a lot. I admire them greatly. The bushfire almost becomes a character in itself. What advice do you have not to let your event take over the story? And was this even more difficult since it was an event you experienced? I think landscape and place are always characters in our lives and stories, so it is important to me to bring that into my fiction. Having been in Melbourne for Black Saturday made me perhaps more cautious about how to write about something like it. I didn’t want to sell it short, or to exploit it salaciously. I hope that’s a line I’ve managed to walk, and that the bushfire is respected for what it is, a terrible, awesome force of nature that we have absolutely no control over. This is your debut book after a career as a journalist. How hard was it to transition? What tricks did you learn to help? A lot of great journalists also write novels, and for those of us who became journalists to write (which is why I did it), it makes sense. The parts of the transition that are hard are really also, I think, made easier by the experiences of being a reporter on a newspaper. Writing to deadline every day, whether you want to or not. Finding the human interest in a boring political announcement or a dry report. Observing details of places and people so you can bring them to life on the page. Journalism teaches you a lot about people, and a lot about writing if you’re paying attention. And I don’t see it so much as a transition, but more of an extension of my skills, a meandering maybe. Writing for a job and taking on a second career as a novelist, advice? You have to have space to write the book. That sounds obvious, but it’s actually really hard to use your words all day at work and then come home and find new ones for your novel. I was really lucky that while I was writing Radiant Heat I was, largely, not doing much outside work. I was studying for my MFA full time, and then I was doing some freelance work that didn’t take up a lot of my time. I know a lot of other novelists who have completely unrelated jobs, and some who teach writing, and some who do PR or grant writing or work in offices… the only thing that matters is making space for your personal writing work and finding a way to prioritize getting it done. What are you working on now, and when can readers seek it out? I’m deep in the first third of a new book—it's about a lot of things—friendship, destructive love, late-stage capitalism to name some of them—and like Radiant Heat it uses a disaster as an entry point, but it’s a man-made one. There’s murder, a lot of madness, and a deeply destructive friendship at the core of the narrative. I’m excited to get it on the page—and then to readers, as soon as I can! ![]() Thank you for chatting with us about your work. I liked the way you started this novel, “Opening Credits.” It gives the reader more than a prologue for the subject and character. Do you start all your work in this way? I do start every one of the Clare Carlson books with the “Opening Credits.” Yes, it’s a quick introduction to Clare and the story and sets the tone for the rest of the book. In BROADCAST BLUES, for instance, I have Clare talking about her insecurities about approaching her 50th birthday - and the impact that might have on her career and on her life. There’s also a quick setup for the crime story that will follow. Every author likes to have a unique way to introduce his book to the reader, I guess - and this is mine. Voice: not that a man cannot write from a female perspective, however many male writers cannot capture a female’s essence and persaonlity. You have no trouble with that. In fact, it’s the voice of Clare that pulls me from one page to the next, wanting to know more about her and her “big story.” Why a female protagonist? And how do you get into the female mind-set so brilliantly? Clare is a female protagonist because she needed to be a woman for the first book in the series. No spoilers here, but the plot of that one involved very personal things - traumas only a woman could experience - from Clare’s own past. So I had no choice on the gender. Having said that, I’ve used female protagonists in the vast majority of the 21 novels I’ve published so far. I somehow find them more interesting to write about than traditional male heroes. How do I get into the female state of mind? I’ve known - and I’ve worked with - a lot of terrific, talented women in my own journalistic career. Clare is a composite in some ways of many of them. Funny, your female characters in this novel were pretty much “all business,” while the male characters are more sexual-based. Are you making a statement here? To your male readers or female? I’ve never really thought about that. It may well be true. But Clare herself is certainly “sexual based” in terms of pursuing her romantic relationships even though she’s “all business” on the job. I just try to create all my characters - men as well as women - to be the most interesting I can. That’s because I believe the characters are the most important part of any book. Sometimes that involves making them “sex-based” or “all business” or maybe even both. But I don’t do it as any kind of a gender thing. This duality “sex-business” also worked well to emphasize your theme of abusive relationships. Do you begin writing by deciding what themes you want to discuss? Or find a plot that has prominent themes? I don’t really have any kind of political or issues agenda when I write my books. I just go where the story takes me. In this book, that idea of a private investigator who spied on cheating lovers led to “abusive sexual relationships” in some cases. Previous books of mine have dealt with the #metoo movement and the homeless and even the treatment of military veterans. But all of this is done simply to tell the story, not out of any political push on my part. With an extensive career as a journalist, what motivated you to write mystery and thrillers over non-fiction? Ha! I’ve always done both so there was really no decision to make. I began writing crime fiction very early on in my journalistic career and published numerous novels at the same time I was working as a top editor at the New York Post, New York Daily News, Star magazine and NBC News. Non-fiction and fiction have always been a fun combination for me. I’ve gotten the opportunity to chase facts as a journalist, then also just make stuff up for my novels! You can’t beat that… “Newcasters—don’t have to be cute, perky, young talking heads to succeed in the media world…” This quote from the novel accentuates the fine line you provide with Clare. She is defined as being personable and witty, while also very serious about her intent and career. Do you plot in order to keep this witty/professional tone level in the story? Yes, it’s a balance. But you can be a serious journalist and still be fun too. Believe me, I’ve known a lot of journalists like that. I’ve tried to create Clare as a colorful character - the kind of person you’d love to work with or just hang out around - but someone who is also very serious and dedicated about her job in journalism. Hopefully I’ve accomplished that. Clare’s female boss and Clare are very competitive. More competitive in personality and tone than any of the other characters. What are you saying here? The owner of the news station is male, why make Clare’s immediate boss female? The horrible female boss, Susan Endicott, is a new addition to the series. Up until the last book, Clare had an older male boss that she respected and liked. But I wanted to shake things up in her career a bit, so I replaced him with Susan Endicott. She is what I think of as “The Boss From Hell” - totally cold-blooded and ambitious and verbally abusive to Clare and others at the station. She’s someone I want the reader to hate. And I like the fact that she presents a whole new challenge for Clare to deal with in her job. I like the subplot of the novel, Clare turning 50. It definitely helps lighten the more serious tones of the mystery. Do you think subplots should be used to lift the story as well as to create deeper themes for the overall plot? Every novel - especially a crime novel - needs a subplot. It might be an alcohol problem or a divorce or a medical issue or any of the other things people deal with in everyday life. Clare has had a LOT of problems in her personal life. But I did focus on the age issue in this book because of the emphasis on youth and sexiness for TV newscasters, especially the women. I also was able to work in an added subplot (related to turning 50) about her relationship as she grows older with her own daughter and granddaughter. Readers should be aware Broadcast Blues is the recent Clare Carlson mystery, it is the 6th in the series. However, there is no problem reading them as stand-alone. What are you working on now? I have three new thrillers coming out in April, but not under my name of R.G. Belsky. These are written under the pen name of Dana Perry. (There are four earlier Dana Perry books too). The ones coming out in 2024 feature a new protagonist, FBI agent Nikki Cassidy - who returns to her hometown searching for a serial killer and uncovers shocking new secrets about the long -ago murder of her own sister. All three of these Nikki Cassidy thrillers will be released simultaneously by Bookouture publishers to produce a kind of “binge-reading” experience. In other words, you’ll be able to read all of them one right after the other. First time I’ve ever done anything like this, it should be interesting! |
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