​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! 

I think you answered my first question in the book: “Autobiography? I didn’t want to write a book about myself. Who would be interested? ” So, taking off from that answered question, instead, what has it become to you since its publishing?

     I’ve received some wonderful reviews and emails from readers who it touched, either because of my personal story or because they related to it in their own experiences. My greatest hope was that it would help others, so these contacts are very meaningful to me.

Much of your story—or as you say with Jennifer’s help—is the story of your daughter’s murder. Yet again, in your book, you state you had no need for catharsis for her death. Why do you think—or feel—it is necessary to share your spiritual journey at this point in your life?
     I was pushed and prodded by Spirit into writing the book. As I have said, I thought at the beginning that I would write Jennifer’s story, but the ending was too sad. Now, 23 years later, I have a story to tell—what I’ve learned from my spiritual journey since her murder. I have learned a lot—and there is much more to learn. I speak about my experiences to anyone willing to listen. What I’ve found is—many people have spiritual experiences, but are afraid to share them in case people think they are crazy. I don’t worry about that—at this point in my life I believe that someone’s opinion of me is not my business.

You share your experiences of having been brought up as a Jehovah's Witness. Without that part of your life journey, do you think you would have reached this point?
      I didn’t realize just how strong an influence those twenty-seven years as a JW had on my life. If I had grown up in Church of England or Jewish, I have no idea who I would be now—maybe a medium! I wish my maternal grandmother had been able to share her experiences and beliefs with me about Spirit. That would have been a very different path than the one I’ve been on.

What would you like your readers to come away with from having read your autobiography?
     I didn’t mean to write an autobiography, but as I was writing the memoir, which is supposed to be about a specific part of one’s life, it kept expanding. I let it because it felt as though all the details I included were necessary. What I would like readers to get from it is, there is more to life than what we see with our physical eyes, and we don’t need to fear the unseen. After all, none of us question or worry about microbes and bacteria—we can’t see them, but we know they are there and we feel their effects, many of which are necessary and beneficial. Being willing to accept the unseen world is the first step to spiritual freedom.

Rarely have I read a memoir—ok, I hear it, “no autobiography”—that was so honestly written. Many write their life stories to review the past as a means to move on to the future. But for you, I felt in writing this you were embracing the present. Am I off here?
     This is a comment I have heard from many readers, and it makes me wonder if I blabbed too much; was too self-revealing. I wrote the book in 27 days, which makes me believe that Spirit was helping. Therefore, I guess I wrote what I was supposed to. Or is that a cop out? 😊

If you were to advise someone on how to write their life story, where would you tell them to begin? Some of your chapters didn’t always seem to be sequential, yet flowed together as one. Did you write them In order, or write the different chapters and then put the book together?
     We live life in a linear fashion, but it may not be as interesting when told that way. I recommend reading a few books on memoir and biography, such as Rachael Herron’s “Fast-Draft your Memoir in 45 hours.” I applied much of her advice, plus what I’ve learned as a mystery writer. Reedsy also has an excellent free video on the topic.
     I started with index cards, giving each one a chapter title that covered a part of my life. Later, I shuffled them around a bit, got rid of some, added others. Once I had finished writing in Word, I uploaded the book to Atticus, the software I use for formatting books, and was able to easily move chapters around when it made more sense for them to be elsewhere. 

 As an author, I see “my story” through my fictional characters and plots. As the adage goes, “There is a little truth in every story.” Can fiction be used as a memoir tool?
     I guess I anticipated this question in my previous answer. We may be writing fact, but the parts we use in fiction are a great way to keep it interesting—dialogue, setting, characterization, etc., takes those facts that might have otherwise just been a dry recitation and brings them to life.

Pema Chodron’s book, “How We Live Is How We Die” states that appearances manifest as powerful sights and sounds in the bardo (afterlife), later as specific forms. This is, to some degree, how we experience things even, or if we slow down enough to notice. In any encounter, first, there’s open space. Something moves toward me and the encounter is wide-open, full of possibilities, not solidified in any way….Then it comes into focus…” Sometimes it is not until I have written something that the embodiment of why I felt compelled to offer the story comes to me. It is after I give the work space that I see the need for the storytelling? Since the writing of your story, what clarity if any has come to you, or what has manifested showing further possibilities?
     That was so poetically put, DJ, but I am probably too pragmatic to go there. I got the story down as I wanted to tell it. I published it, and released it into the ether. I have not wanted to return to think about any of those details because they are often painful. I do feel that in some way my actual writing skills advanced to a different level, which is my goal with every book I write.

It has been fun interviewing an author on such as interesting topic. Is there anything you would like to tell others about your fictional work, or what you are working on now?
     Thank you, it’s been fun for me, too. I write two suspense fiction series, and one of them is about a young woman who communicates with Spirit—okay, she talks to dead people and helps solve murders. In my forensic series, my protagonist Claudia Rose does the same type of work I do—forensic handwriting examination. She doesn’t directly solve mysteries with her skills, but she does get to understand the characters that people the story through their handwriting, and that helps solve the mystery. I also write nonfiction books about handwriting. My next project, MAXIMUM PRESSURE, is a Claudia Rose story of murder at a high school reunion.

Any offerings of what it takes for someone from wanting to be a writer, to being a writer, and how to stay on 
the path?
      "Being a writer” can mean so many different things and what it means is highly personal to everyone who writes. My first book (nonfiction) was published when I was about to turn 50; my first fiction came 7 years later. I can’t say I like writing, but I do like having written. Editing is the part I like best. For me, writing is a compulsion. I don’t do it for fun; I want readers to get involved in the story and I work hard to make that happen. There is no greater compliment when someone sends an email or posts a review that says, “I was up all night turning pages; couldn’t put it down!” 
     What I tell aspiring novelists is this: first, hone your craft. Be a good writer before you ask the public to invest in you. And be prepared—writing is hard, getting published is harder (even if you publish independently), and getting your books in the hands of enough readers to make all your efforts pay off is the hardest of all. There are loads of resources to help you take all those steps, so educate yourself and, in the words of Neil Gaiman:
     "(1) If you’re going to be a writer, you have to write. (2) You have to finish things.”
       And knowing that unless you are unique, you are going to face many rejections, keep on going. It’s been 16 years since Poison Pen was published by Penguin and I’ve just finished re-editing my entire forensic series, applying what I’ve learned over those years. Improving is an unending process, and it should be. I wish you well.“
 
Again, thanks for the chat, Sheila.

​Thank you for introducing yourself to my readers. I enjoyed reading Incentive for Murder.






​

      The novel reads like a police report: Stick to the facts, maman. Even when moving out of the significant protagonists' POV, the narrative sounds like witness statements in the report. Was this voice a specific decision? Or is it your writing style?
You give me too much credit here.  It was simply the voice I heard in my head and translated to the written words.
   
      Special Agent in the Office of Special Investigations in the Air Force, a law degree, and a law professor; that is quite a career biography. What moved you to write novels, or have you always written?
I have been a compulsive reader since age 12.  I have consumed 2 or 3 books per week my entire life.  For the past 20 years, I have been focused on how authors assembled their plot, developed the characters and maintained the pace.  I have wanted to write novels for a long time and finally started reading “how to” write books, taking online seminars, and attending writing clinics taught by published authors.

     A lot is happening in this novel: in a week, two detectives need to unravel seven murders. The plot brings the reader along as if the reader is also a character. Where did the idea for the story come from?
Surprisingly enough, it came from a television commercial.  One night I saw a television ad about selling your life insurance.  It occurred to me that could turn out very badly if your life insurance fell into the wrong hands.  From that paranoid thought, I worked backward to develop the story line.

     I liked the use of Sherlock quips. "Kind of Sherlock Holmesian, isn't it?" Then, later on, continuing this quip: "Using my Sherlock Holmesian skills…" Are you a big Sherlock Holmes fan? Do these quips come naturally to your protagonist, Detective McDermott, or you?
When I was young, I loved following the original Sherlock Holmes stories by Conan Doyle.  I also liked the later imitators.  Quips flow naturally from my twisted brain.                

     Detective McDermott (Mac) Burke is an interesting protagonist. His relationship with his ex-wife (they still live together although divorced) is fascinating. And logical in subtext. What was your character motive in having this cohesive separation?
I wanted to create a different relationship between divorced spouses than is normally portrayed.  It made me smile at times.

     Maggie (his ex-wife) is also an investigator but for an agency. Did you see this division of offices (departments) as a way to create various plot events?
First, I started out with Maggie keeping secret from her ex-husband the fact that she actually worked for the CIA.  Second, I then complicated the picture by making her boss at CIA the mastermind behind the crimes being investigated by her husband.  They mostly worked in parallel without directly assisting each other until late in the book.

     Do you plot your work before writing, or are you a panser and write then plot? 
I am definitely a plotter.  I spent a month developing the plot line before I ever started writing.  It makes the writing of the first draft go so much faster.

     I read that you were an avid reader when you were young. Who do you think influenced your desire to write in this genre?
I have long been fascinated by mysteries of all types.  Frederick Forsyth’s Day of the Jackal captured me when it came out in 1971.  It is one of only two books that I have ever read twice, fifty years apart.  The book held up very well on the second reading.

     As a reader, what do you want to see in a mystery or thriller when picking it up to read?
The story has to capture you early.  Pace is very important throughout, including a climactic ending.

     What was the last mystery/thriller you read?
I just read Joseph Finder’s Buried Alive and Vanished (two of his Nick Heller series).  Currently reading the rest of the series.
   
     I taught logical argument, and your writing reflects your skills in writing legal documents and fiction. Where would you say your craft in writing developed? And has your legal writing influenced your work? How?
Good point.  Over my four decades as a lawyer, I wrote many appellate briefs which generally had a limitation of 50 pages.  A lot of editing and re-editing went into making the most persuasive arguments possible.  As many authors say, writing is all about editing.

     I look forward to reading more of your work. What are you working on now?
I am currently working on the next book in the Mac Burke series.  The working title is “Prepare to Die.”

Again, thanks, James!

 I love this quote. Placed at the beginning of your novel, this quote below offers both the atmosphere and tension for each character: “On the wall, his father’s clock counted out seconds like a warden’s pocket watch ticking down to an execution.” Quotes such as these are an author’s marvel in keeping the reader involved for the entire book. What skills do you work at to keep such tension?
 
Every chapter must have emotional conflict either on the surface or under it. I try to insert the tension in the descriptions, the dialogue, and the internal thoughts. The point of view in the descriptions can also add to that tension, like the simile you quoted above. Similes are very hard. When they work they are powerful. But when they don’t they clang through the whole chapter. Even the one above functions better in the context of a very tense scene than it does standing alone.
 
I think the opening chapter of a standalone book must immediately grip readers so that they both feel for the characters and are curious about what follows. I try to get emotion in through the way the characters act and in their thoughts. With multiple points of view, I have the opportunity to illustrate how characters both misunderstand and comprehend each other. These contradictions add both tension and realism.
 
As a thriller, the predicaments in my book should affect readers because they are both familiar and different. I want them to think, “That could be me.” I also want the reader to empathize with the impossible choices my protagonists must make. No matter what they decide, they will be both wrong and right, and the decision will unite and separate them. If readers think,“I don’t know what I’d do,” they feel the tension.
 
Conflicting emotions also add tension. In Saving Myles, the son resents and wants to distance himself from his parents. But he also wants their love and respect and regrets betraying his mother. The mother will not forgive her husband for being an absent father but still needs, admires, and loves him. The father has been totally focused on his work but longs to re-connect with his family and have a more meaningful life. That’s why he goes to yoga and takes up the guitar. All three protagonists feel guilty for their flaws and want to be good people. Because of that, the reader roots for them even as they fail and contradict themselves.
 
Creating the natural tension in the prose is hard. I had to learn how to show these character reactions more than tell them. And how to choose the descriptions that had emotional impact. Even a description without any attitude or point of view can work. For instance, I initially described the son’s kidnapping through his eyes in the third chapter. The reader would feel his terror as he was kidnapped. But then I realized the book would have more unexpected tension if the parents and the readers didn’t know what happened to him. I left out the abduction and just had the boy go into a dark and dank basement garage with a stranger. The cement on the ceiling is crumbling and he sees the shattered edges of a broken lightbulb next to the only exit stairs. That seemed to carry enough foreboding.
 
 You have tackled many themes in this novel: marital relationships, parent-child relationships, the effects of tough love, the need for dignity, truth, secrets, redemption, etc. When do you decide what themes you want your novel to present to the reader? What would you say your central overall theme is?
 
I try to write the book and discover the themes for different characters as I go. After I’ve made a few revisions I draw them out. Besides the themes you described, there are other ones like the ouroboros, the Jungian shadow, and the hero’s journey. Andre, the bank owner, is perhaps the most complex character. He seeks spiritual redemption and is a kind of New Age philosopher…but also involved in crime. I thought alchemy was the perfect interest for him. In alchemy, a man must rise to a higher spiritual level in order to turn lead into gold. Andre thinks that the ultimate form of laundering is the transformation of the man himself. This is his theme.
 
The overall theme/message is that, no matter how broken the family, they can draw together so that they forgive and cherish each other again. And sacrifice for one another. That is the only way they can survive.
 
While this is a crime, domestic thriller, what other audience were you targeting with this story? What was the message you wanted that reader to come away with?
 
I never want to forget that it can’t be boring. The story has to propel readers to turn the pages of another chapter. But I also want them to ride along with the characters as the characters evolve. That means my audience is people who like plot that is driven by characterization. The plot in Saving Myles amplifies the fissures in the main protagonists’ family.
 
There are actually two messages I want the reader to come away with: that even the most dysfunctional family can reconcile, and also that no matter how broken a marriage or a teenager, heroism hides inside them.
 
 The relationship between husband and wife, Fiona and Wade, feels remarkably honest. How deep did you dig to show an honest portrayal of parents working hard to be perfect parents and how this affected their marriage?
 
I decided to go for honesty, no matter how uncomfortable, to make it more real. The turmoil of bringing up a difficult teenager when the father is absent corrodes any family. When the explosions hit, the parents have clash over what to do. They can’t stop blaming each other and themselves. At a loss for how to help their child, they feel the only way to save them is to send their kid to a wilderness program or a treatment center. Their marriage inevitably suffers, and one parent may have an affair to feel something positive in his or her life.
 
The novel offers three points of view. Was this also a method for getting into the heads of husband, wife, and teenager?
 
Yes, it was. They are three very different perspectives. Writing their thoughts and emotions helped me identify with them more. When I first started the book I just had just Wade’s point of view. Then my agent suggested I include others. So I added Fiona and Myles. Those were hard. I’ve never written in a female POV and I’m a long way from being a teenager. For Fiona I read a lot of literature on why women separate from their husbands and have affairs. For Myles I looked at blogs and the language of teens. In the end, I tried to mimic more a young person’s thinking and emotions than the words they use. I hope that readers will feel for all these characters, even when they do selfish things and are not particularly likable. 
 
You offer two perspectives on cartel families; what was your goal n presenting the contrasts?
 
I decided that a cartel, like any other organization, must have different factions. There are the warriors who regard life as “us versus them.” They either restrain their emotions or get a high doing the wet work. Then there are others who are repulsed by the violence. They are involved in the clean, business side of the cartel. These are the money launderers. Andre’s wife is a warrior and Andre seeks redemption from the violence. But even the warriors have nobility. The villain tells the protagonist wife that there are two principles in life: 1) the children must survive, and 2) the children must have better lives than their parents. He’s a killer, but who can’t identify with that?
 
I see you have a banking background. With the adage that you should write what you know, was your financial crime in this story easier to plot? Do you see yourself becoming a financial-crime thriller author?

Some of it was easier because of my banking background. I know how banks are organized and how they look at business. I also used to finance imports and exports and understand how those mechanisms can be used for laundering money. But I didn’t know much about all the other types of money laundering. That led me to the Association of Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialists (ACAMS), an international organization that trains people how to spot and prevent financial crimes. I took some courses there and went to a few seminars. The people at there were primarily bankers and employees from the US Treasury, Homeland Security, and prosecutors’ offices. I could see them wondering about me, but they let me stay. I also talked with two agents from the FBI and two from the DEA to get more up to speed on both money laundering and kidnapping.
 
I guess I’m a financial-crime thriller writer now. My first book, Murderabilia, also took place in the banking world. My next one will too. But I think I want to expand beyond that setting for the book after that.
 
 Why did you write this stand-alone instead of a series?

I like how a stand-alone gives me the opportunity explore new characters. However I think it takes longer because I have to invent bios, tics, fears, motivations, etc. for new people in each book. That requires research and re-writing. With a stand-alone I also feel freer to try new things like a different voice or point of view or setting. That stretches my writing skills.
 
 How do you plot your story to provide equal emotional trauma and plot twists?

I constantly re-arrange scenes to keep momentum going and to vary the rhythm. For instance, I don’t want two life-threatening scenes in a row, if I can help it. At the same time, I don’t want too many chapters in a row of back story or character-oriented subplot.
 
I want the the plot to immediately drive the story forward while the characters establish an emotional connection with readers. That’s hard to do—especially in first chapters. As the book proceeds, the characters’ emotions must rise and fall as they gradually change. The end, like in most thrillers, is do or die. But by that point I hope that readers are emotionally involved in what these characters have to do to survive.
 
What are you working on now, and when can readers access more of your work?

My first book, Murderabilia, is available on Amazon. My original publisher closed its doors and gave me the rights back. Therefore, I am selling it as print-on-demand.
 
I am revising a third book. We still have to sell it to a publisher and go through the long publishing process. This book involves a different bank environment and different kind of family. The protagonist is a branch banker and deals with smaller companies. He is mourning the death of his wife. When his close colleague dies from a drug overdose he can’t believe she was using drugs. He is determined to find out what really happened. This book deals with grief and how a man can gradually recover to love again. 

Thank you for introducing yourself and your work to my readers.

1.        I read a great many books and Bell in the Fog offered me not a protagonist that wasn’t necessarily broken (although, emotionally he was), but one so emotionally honest I immediately became attached and will not forget. How important was it for you to keep an emotional honesty in this novel? 
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Well first, thank you for your kind words! I think all novels rely on emotional honesty. Even with an unreliable narrator or third person, emotional honesty is at the core of why we feel for characters, relate to them, and sympathize with what they’re going through. So it’s always one of the most important things.

2.       The novel is set in the 50s, after WWII, and before Korea, reminding readers what society was like at that time regarding social issues. I am so grateful we are evolving. Was that your intent, to remind readers what that time was like so they could reflect on the present?  

This is an interesting question, because intent is such a hard word for me. Going in, I think my only main intent was to write a good mystery and show the vibrant world of pre-stonewall gay life during a time when queerness was so actively persecuted. But once I set that intent and wrote these books, I do start to see similarities with queer oppression today, and while I might not try to make clear parallels, they’re kind of inevitable. With both The Bell in the Fog, and the first Andy Mills mystery, Lavender House, I found myself constantly stumbling into historical parallels I actually worked hard to make more subtle.

3.       Andy is vibrant in his portrayal that I am sorry he is not a real person and I can meet him for coffee. How did you get beneath his skin and into his heart? 

So much of Andy started with his opening scene in Lavender House. I knew I wanted a detective, caught in a raid on a gay bar, his life over in some regard, but I also knew I wanted that to be a gateway to a new life. But the question was always “what kind of gay man becomes a cop when the cops are raiding gay bars?” And that resulted in a complex guy; scared, proud, and genuinely hoping to help people but often so concerned with protecting himself he misses opportunities to do so. Now, in Bell, we get to see him trying to make up for that, trying to become someone better. That was the important thing I kept in mind writing him this time. He’s trying to help, he’s trying to be better.

4.       You offer a male homosexual perspective and that from a gay woman. Was it important to you to widen your gender base? 

And don’t forget Lee, who I think today might identify as genderqueer! I wanted to show a whole spectrum of queer identities, to show that we’ve always existed, in our myriad ways, even when what those identities meant at the time were different. So even though these books are first person, only from Andy’s point of view, I tried to have all kinds of queer people and their experiences on the page.

5.       Love is exploded in your novel as a prominent theme: romantic love, friendship, renewed love, complicated love, and letting go of love. I probably am not naming all of the minor themes under love or misnaming some. When you write, and the story evolves, do you also see your themes evolving? And if you do, how do plot them to arc so nicely?

I try not to map out thematic stuff. I start with character, and getting them into what I think is a situation that’ll allow me to explore them, the world, and let them attain something important. Level up in some way. Once I’ve mapped that out and start writing it, the theme tends to become clearer to me, and it’s only in editing those early drafts that I try to make sure it all lines up and evolves. So while I knew this would have an ex and a new potential relationship, because that’s a fun set-up, the ideas of love weren’t mapped out until after I had plot and character down. I think theme evolves from those.

6.       You bring in the higher brass.  While your characters are past lower Navy seamen and women, I see why this was important to the story. But how do you think this broadened the overall mystery for the readers?  

Well, it required more research on my part. But I did really want to explore the queerness of the military in WW2. There’s an amazing book, Coming Out Under Fire, by Allan Berube, that I used for a lot of my research. I could only use a fraction of the things in it, sadly, but it amazing how queer the military was. WW2 brought together a lot of people from across the country, which meant that suddenly, the one gay guy from his small town in Iowa was on a base in San Francisco with hundreds of other queer people. It created queer communities, and that crossed ranks. But in terms of the mystery, I think introducing people with more power always raises the stakes, because power over other people is always a weapon, waiting to be used.


7.       This novel reads so smoothly that I visualize the scenes. Have you played with screenwriting? 

In college, I was originally a playwriting major, until I started writing a novel. So I’ve dabbled, sure, most writers have. But it’s not something I’ve done on any professional level at this point.


8.       I see you have written YA books before this detective series. What brought you to the mystery genre? And I may be just uninformed about your YA books. So please let us know what you like to write. 

I write everything. My first novel was an adult steampunk romance, and since then I’ve done literary middle grade, YA romance and thrillers, adult sci-fi… I write what I would like to read, and I read broadly. But I’ve always loved classic noir. I was raised on the old bogart and bacall movies, and I knew I’d do a historical mystery at some point, I just needed to find my way in, my version of that. A visit to San Francisco and reading about The Black Cat did that for me.

9.       Whether YA or mystery, who has most influenced your work? 
I’m not sure any one thing influences my work more than others. What makes an authors voice unique, no matter what genre the write in, is the sum of their parts; why they wanted to write this book, why they wanted to write it this way. The author themself may not have a solid answer to those questions, but the answer is in who they are, everything they’ve experienced, whether that be life events, or art that touched them in a particular way. It all influences us.

Well, Lavender House is out in paperback in just a few days, and The Bell in the Fog is out next month! After that, in November, is Emmett, my YA contemporary queer version of Jane Austen’s Emma. After that, the third Andy Mills book will be out next year, and the fourth the year after that. There are some other things in the works too, but nothing announced yet. The best place to find out more, though, is on Instagram, where I’m @LevACRosen, or on my webpage, www.LevACRosen.com. Thanks so much for talking with me!