In Reference to Murder

Confessions of a Catholic Cop

Thomas Fitzsimmons grew up in an Irish neighborhood in the Bronx, part of a family of career cops. He served in the Navy on a guided missile cruiser on its way to Vietnam after high school before joining the "family business" as a cop with the New York City Police Department. He spent 10 years in the precinct dramatized in Paul Newman's move Fort Apache, The Bronx, collaring armed robbers, drug kingpins and arsonists.

Then his career took an unusual turn. He came to the attention of a talent scout who signed Fitzsimmons up for modeling with the Ford Agency in his off hours, which eventually led to on-camera positions as co-host for the magazine-format talk show Now and stints on soap operas and TV commercials. But he never completely left his law enforcement roots, becoming a security consultant and bodyguard to A-list celebrities including Catherine Zeta Jones, Michael Douglas and Gwyneth Paltrow and appearing on shows such Good Morning America, Geraldo Rivera and Montel Williams as a security expert.

Turning his attention to writing, Fitzsimmons penned a memoir, two short story collections, three screenplays, pieces for Esquire and New York Magazine. His first novel, Confessions of a Catholic Cop, has an autobiographical edge, as it follows ten-year police veteran Michael Beckett, who lands a small role on Law & Order, and decides he can start a new life in front of the camera. But when the neighborhood of a young, hot Law & Order scriptwriter, Solana Ortiz, becomes the target of a string of arsons, Beckett uncovers a scheme that reaches into the deep pockets of power and greed in New York City and lands him on the same path as an old friend Beckett would rather forget.

Formally published by Forge Books as City of Fire (which sold more than 20,000 copies worldwide), Fitzsimmons has re-released Confessions of a Catholic Cop under its original title.  A portion of the proceeds from the re-release will go to support the New York City Police Foundation, which works to make New York City a safer place for residents and visitors. He took some time out to participate in a Q&A:

IRTM:  First of all, part of the proceeds from the re-release of Confessions is designated to support the New York City Police Foundation. Can you tell us more about that organization?

TF:  The New York City Police Foundation was established in 1971 by business and civic leaders as an independent, non-profit organization to promote excellence in the NYPD and improve public safety. The Foundation supports programs designed to help the NYPD keep pace with rapidly evolving technology, strategies and training. The proceeds I donate are earmarked for their “Crime Stoppers” program which offers rewards of up to $2,000 for anonymous information to the 800-577-TIPS hotline, which leads to the arrest and indictment of a violent felon. This public/private partnership between the NYPD and the New York City Police Foundation has been an invaluable crime-fighting tool since the program’s inception.

IRTM: How did you get from police work, modeling and acting to becoming a security expert, bodyguard and private investigator? Were there classes or licensing you had to go through, or did you mentor with someone or work in a firm?

TF: I was an active duty cop when I started acting and modeling. I acquired a New York State license and bond and founded my own security company soon after leaving the NYPD. Once word got around that I was a cop, (and later an ex-cop who was licensed and bonded), celebrities frequently asked me for advice on everything from what to do about drug addicted children or spouses, to checking up on new employees, and even verifying the finances of potential film investors. If a stalker appeared on a film set, or a jealous spouse, or jilted lover, or if there was a physical altercation of any kind—you’d be surprised what transpires on film sets—I was the one they’d usually ask to handle the situation. Which I did with as little ruckus as possible.

IRTM: You've said you decided to turn to writing due to all the stories and unique characters you'd collected from your job as an officer and security expert. But you were initially discouraged from writing until Truman Capote read a short story of yours, told you that you had a future as a writer and introduced you to an agent. How did all of that come to pass, and were you influenced any by Capote's writings, such as In Cold Blood?

TF: Truman Capote and I worked out at the same gym, the now defunct Profile Health Club on East 47th Street in Manhattan. I also saw him frequently at Studio 54 and other nightclubs, and spoke to him at length about his writing and the merits of In Cold Blood and the novella, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, two books I related to. As a cop, I’d known more than my share of sociopaths, like Hickock and Smith, (the killers depicted in In Cold Blood). And I’d known more than one Holly Golightly; still do.

IRTM: You've mentioned Dennis Lehane, Donald E. Westlake, Walter Mosley and Robert B. Parker as authors who inspire you. What is it about their styles that impressed you, and do you see any parallels between their writing and yours?

TF: Lehane, Westlake, Mosley and Parker’s works are entertaining and readable. Judging by the fan mail I receive, my books are too—I hope.

IRTM: Confessions of a Catholic Cop has been called a "scandalous romantic thriller." What made you decide to choose that genre rather than, say, a straight hard-boiled police procedural or private-eye tale?

TF: I know it may sound like a dodge, but I didn’t decide on the genre; the characters in my book did. I had the general story in my mind, and when I began writing, the book sort of wrote itself. Although the book has elements of a typical hard-boiled police and private-eye tale, I felt like a spectator during the writing process, rather than the creative force behind the book. That make any sense?

IRTM: Since you're a former cop from a family of cops with lots of friends and connections in law enforcement—do you ever worry about getting a detail wrong? I doubt they'd ever let you live it down!

TF: A few would say that I have gotten a few details wrong already. In an early draft of Confessions of a Catholic Cop I had a cop clicking the “safety” off of a Glock .9mm. Half a dozen cops balked, told me that there is no such feature on a Glock—but there is, of course. It’s a custom gadget that several cops I know had installed. But, I took out the reference just the same. Also, because the Browning’s .9mm rounds didn’t photograph well for the front cover, the art director insisted on using .38 rounds—there’s no way that that Browning could fire a .38 round. I still get some grief from a couple of my cronies for that one.

IRTM: Did you base any characters on friends or colleagues? Has anyone given you a hard time thinking that you did? (Especially those celebrity clients.)

TF: One cop took a swing at me for using his name. (I ducked). The fact the character was nothing like him didn’t seem to make a difference. And so I avoid using the names of anyone I’ve worked with. In reality, all the characters are composites. Although everyone seems to recognize that the R. J. Gold character is, in reality, based on my old pal Donald J. Trump. Donald has yet to say anything to me.

IRTM: Publishing is a tough business, even for folks who have excellent credentials such as yourself. You apparently experienced this first-hand when Confessions was first published under a different title, and apparently you had one horrible experience after another during the publishing and marketing process. What would you do differently, if you had to do it all over again?

TF: In a perfect world I would have waited to find the right publisher. As it was, I jumped at the first opportunity to be published by a major publisher. Although there were early signs that my youthful editor was wrong for the project—he thought the cops on TV were for real—I figured things would work out. They didn’t. And once a publisher buys the rights to your book, you have little, if anything to say.

IRTM: What's next? As I understand it, there are Confessions of a Suicidal Policewoman and Confessions of a Celebrity Bodyguard in the works, which sound like continuations in your series with your fictional partners Michael Beckett and Destiny Jones. Any standalone thrillers ahead?

TF: Confessions of a Suicidal Policewoman is a Michael Beckett novel, but Confessions of a Celebrity Bodyguard is a standalone thriller.  I’ve also written about 15 short stories that are standalones. “Rockers” is available everywhere.  You can find more information on thomasfitzsimmons.com.

IRTM: So—the Yankees or the Mets?

TF: Yankees, dude!

Sheldon Russell is on "The Insane Train"

Author Sheldon Russell is a former Oklahoma public school English teacher and professor emeritus from the University of Central Oklahoma, who currently lives in Guthrie, Oklahoma, with his artist wife, Nancy. Russell has previously won the Oklahoma Book Award and the Langum Prize for Historical Literature but has also penned crime fiction titles, beginning with Empire, in 1993, and The Yard Dog: A Mystery in 2009, which introduced the one-armed railroad detective (or "yard dog"), Hook Runyon, set during World War II.

In Russell's follow-up novel, The Insane Train, the Baldwin Insane Asylum in Barstow, California, has recently burned to the gound, costing many inmates their lives. Hook Runyon is put in charge of security for a train that is to transport the survivors and the head of the asylum, Dr. Baldwin, to a new location in Oklahoma. Hook hires a motley crew of down-on-their luck army veterans to help, but things start to go awry when several inmates and attendants are found dead, and Dr.Baldwin seems increasingly disoriented and incapable of running operations. With the help of a nurse, Andrea, Hook begins investigating the suspicious deaths and uncovers a trail of revenge that has been a long time in the planning.

Russell stopped by IRTM for a Q&A, and you can also enter the giveaway for a free signed copy of Insane Train (via details at the bottom of this post), a book Publishers Weekly deemed one of the top mystery books of 2010.

IRTM: You apparently based Insane Train in part on a real-life event. Can you tell us a little more about that?

SR: Perhaps not so much an event as a series of events.  When I was a child, I had an uncle who returned from WWII with serious mental issues.  I went with my father to have him committed and that experience left an indelible mark on me.  Later, as a college student, I visited this same institution and saw the process from a different perspective.  Stark images, some too awful to describe here, have remained with me over many years. 

All of this, in addition to years of studying psychology, came together to inspire THE INSANE TRAIN.  After all, what better than having Hook Runyon in trouble on a train?  Contrary to what one might think, THE INSANE TRAIN is not a dark book.  All that’s human can be found in mental disorder, and humor often shines brightest from out of the darkness.

IRTM: You taught English and education, yet you've focused on historical fiction and nonfiction. How did you develop this passion and turn it into a literary career?

SR: Well, I have a minor in ancient history and studied the classics as an English major.  But I think my upbringing influenced my interest in history as much as my studies.  I grew up on a cattle ranch in the Gloss Mountains of Oklahoma.  It was an isolated existence, and I was surrounded by adults who were products of The Great Depression and WWII.  I listened to stories about those events my whole life.  In many ways the past became more real to me than the present.

I’ve always enjoyed museums, antiquity, old books, and  biography.  I love wandering around in the past and discovering things long forgotten.  Historical fiction indulged all of these passions.   

IRTM: Writing a historical novel can be tricky, having to conduct a lot of research to get details as accurate as possible. That must be even more difficult when dealing with mental illness practices of the day, in this case, the 1940s. Where did you look for inspiration and background information for the events depicted in Insane Train?

SR: While digging through the historical society achieves one day, I came upon an article about a fire that destroyed a private mental institution shortly after Oklahoma had become a state.  Many of the inmates, a term used for mental patients in those days, were buried in a mass grave.  At about the same time, the federal government turned over a fort to the state, and the decision was made to convert it to a mental institution.  They transferred the surviving patients to the fort by train.  This was, of course, a perfect situation for Hook Runyon, railroad yard dog.

I learned to research as a graduate student and refined those skills as a professor.  For me, it’s been one of the more enjoyable tasks of writing.  I first read widely about my subject and then narrow it to specifics.  I read books about the criminally insane early in my research for THE INSANE TRAIN. 

But one of the last things I went to was the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, a reference published by the American Psychological Association. While the reference bolstered my confidence as a writer and opened up my thinking, I worked hard at keeping it from showing through in my writing.  I try never to state facts about anything.  Readers of historical fiction don’t want to read about history.  They want to live it through the characters.   

IRTM: Where did the inspiration for Runyon and this series originate? He's certainly an unusual and fascinating protagonist even living in a caboose.

SR: As a youngster I was fascinated by the rail yards, the steam engines thundering in and out all through the night, the smell of heat and creosote, the men in their oil-soaked overalls.  None was more mysterious and interesting than yard dogs, railroad security agents, men known for their lack of fear and their quick execution of justice.  They dealt with desperate men and in the most dangerous of places.  Stories about the ferocity of yard dogs abounded, so my interest in them was inevitable. 

In my view, journeys make the best stories, and men with flaws make the best protagonists.  The railroad, the caboose, and Hook Runyon all fit the bill.

IRTM: The first novel in the series, Yard Dog, deals with a Nazi POW camp in Oklahoma. I having a feeling that many people probably aren't aware there was such a place in the 1940s. Do you feel the teacher in you coming out a bit in these novels by way of helping introduce readers to places and events they might not have learned about otherwise?

SR: THE YARD DOG is set in Camp Alva, Okla., a POW camp that was designed to hold the most dangerous Nazi prisoners near the end of WWII.  At it’s height it contained over 5,000 prisoners. 

There were many POW camps in the United States at that time, often located in isolated areas for security reasons.  I’m always surprised at how many people are unaware of this.  Even the locals, particularly the younger ones, have a limited knowledge of the prison and what happened within its walls. 

My priority in writing is to entertain, so I resist the urge to teach.  That said, I do believe that curiosity is an inherent human trait and that most of us enjoy learning something new, particularly when it’s painless.

IRTM: Author James R. Benn called your writing "mid-century American noir." Would you agree with that description, as related to the Runyon series?

SR: Yes, in large part.  Hook is certainly hard-bitten and cynical.  He drinks too much, and it’s not always clear on which side of the law he’s operating.  He’s been known to drop the hat pretty fast and has little compunction about doing whatever it takes to survive. 

On the other hand, he has intellectual curiosity.  He reads, collects rare books, and has an affinity for the underdog.  Hook likes his women smart and strong, loves his old dog, Mixer, and cuts a lot of slack for his sidekicks, who tend to be off center.  

IRTM: You list Conroy, Steinbeck and McMurtry as authors you admire. Do you feel they have influenced your writing, and are there any others in the crime fiction world who have made an impression?

SR:  I  learned from Conroy to worry more about quality and less about quantity.  From Steinbeck, I learned the power of place and from McMurtry, the structure of narrative well told.  I’m still learning from the world of crime writers, Robert B Parker’s incisive use of dialogue, John MacDonald’s seamless  transitions in his Travis McGee series, James Patterson’s cliff- hanging suspense. 

But most of all, I just read to fill the well because ideas spawn ideas, and ideas are a writer’s currency.

IRTM:  Your next Hook Runyon novel features a railway tunnel in the Arizona desert that was under guard during WWII. What's next for Runyon in this book and beyond?

SR: The neat thing about this series, from my point of view, is that I can couple up Hook’s caboose to Frenchy’s steamer and move him to the next trouble spot.  This kind of flexibility permits new situations, places, and people.  Not only does this keep the stories fresh and vigorous for my readers but for me as well. 

In the next book Hook comes face to face with a changing world, a world no longer obsessed with World War II.  Like after any traumatic experience, adjustments have to be made to new realities.  Hook is no exception.  

I’ve a couple ideas brewing for future books beyond that and plan to keep Hook in trouble for as long as there’s interest.

IRTM: Since you're an Okie — Woodie Guthrie or Garth Brooks?

SR: I’m going with Woodie here.  You gotta’ love a man who looked out for the underdog, had the courage to speak his mind and the nerve to live in immigrant camps while doing it.  It’s something Hook Runyon might do.   

Russell Sheldon is giving away a signed copy of his book, Insane Train, to one lucky tour visitor. Go to his book tour page, enter your name, e-mail address, and this PIN, 8399, for your chance to win. Entries from In Reference to Murder will be accepted until 12:00 Noon (PT) tomorrow. No purchase is required to enter or to win. The winner (first name only) will be announced on his book tour page next week.

Vicki Delany's "Negative Image"

Author Vicki Delany took early retirement from her job as a systems analyst in the high-pressure financial world to take a year off travelling across North Americ before finally settling down in bucolic Prince Edward County, Ontario, where "she rarely wears a watch." Her two mystery series take full advantage of the rural Canadian settings where she lives, including the historical Klondike Gold Rush mysteries and the Smith and Winters novels, set in a traditional British Columbia village.

Negative Image is the fourth Smith and Winters installment featuring the young Constable Molly Smith and her mentor, hard-edged Trafalgar City Police Sergeant John Winters, whose wife Eliza is a former supermodel. The story centers on famous photographer Rudolph Steiner who arrives in town to reconnect with the woman who left him twenty-five years ago (to marry another man), none other than Eliza Winters. When Steiner is found murdered in his luxury hotel room, suspicion falls on Eliza, and Sergeant Winters is forced into the most difficult decision of his life: loyalty to his job or to his wife. Meanwhile, Constable Molly Smith has her own troubles including a series of breakins has the peaceful town in an uproar, her overprotective Mountie boyfriend who is fighting with her colleagues and a vengeful stalker watching her every move.

Vicki's on a promotional tour for the novel and stopped by In Reference to Murder for a chat.

IRTM:  Negative Image is a book that explores the meaning of family, as well as the forces that bind or separate them. Without giving too much of the plot away, can you elaborate on that theme?

VD: Family dynamics are important in all my books. I like to explore various types of families and relationships and ask what works and what doesn’t. In Negative Image I ask the question: What would you do if you believe the person you trust most in the world has betrayed you? What would you do if you discover that the person you trust most in the world believes you capable of betrayal?

A visitor to Trafalgar is murdered and Sergeant John Winters begins to fear that Eliza, his wife of twenty-five years, isn’t the woman he thinks she is. Another long term marriage ends, and a new relationship is getting off to a very rocky start. Part of the reason I love writing, and reading, crime fiction is that a mystery novel is a perfect way of exploring the human psyche under pressure. Let’s see what a suspicion of murder does to a happily married couple or what happens to young love when the female partner works in a traditional male field.

IRTM: The Molly Smith books are set in the fictional town of Trafalgar, British Columbia, which is based on the real town of Nelson. Have you based any fictional characters on real-life personalities, and/or do people in Nelson ever ask if they've become fodder for your writing?

VD: With one exception, I don’t use real life people in my books.  Here’s a line from Winter of Secrets, the third book in the series:

Slightly ahead and to her right a bright red Toyota Echo, dotted with magnetic black circles that made the car look like a giant ladybug, backed out of a parking space. The ladybug hit a patch of ice and slid downhill, very slowly, coming to rest against the bumper of the police car. A tall, slim middle-aged woman climbed out, spiked purple hair, red coat, blue scarf, yellow mittens, and clanging jewelry.

That is a friend of mine, and such a well-known and well-loved person in town I thought it would be fun to include her. I let her read the paragraph first and got her permission to describe her. I have a good relationship with the Nelson City Police and they always say things like they should dress nicely today so they look good in my book. Generally speaking the people in my life are far too boring to provide much fodder for a crime novel.

IRTM: One of the challenges of setting a crime fiction series in a more rural setting is how to work in a series of plausible and unusual murders and/or other crimes in a succession of books (I grew up in a town with a small population—almost exactly the same as Nelson—where violent crime is somewhat rare, so I speak from experience). How do you set about finding plots and storylines that can arise organically from such a setting?

VD: That can be a problem for sure. Trafalgar, like Nelson, is a tourist town and also sees a lot of transients passing through. In Winter of Secrets it’s a group of university students on Christmas vacation who run into trouble, and in Negative Image it’s a photographer in town to do a feature on mountain tourism. I want these to be realistic police novels and not have the townsfolk dropping dead all over the place. On the other hand, the books are fiction. In Nelson, no one can quite remember when the last murder was.

IRTM:  You've indicated that generally speaking, Canadian books, even police procedurals, are concerned as much with personalities and relationships as with solving the crime. What other differences do you see between Canadian  crime fiction authors and those from the U.S. or other countries?

VD: Canadian crime writing tends, generally, to be neither as soft nor as hard as American mystery novels. There are not many, if any, real cozies published in Canada although there are Canadian cozy writers published in the U.S. On the other end of the spectrum, you don’t get many really hard-boiled or noir crime novels set in Canada. Louise Penny’s books are a good example: she created a lovely little village and populated it with interesting people who have very intricate relationships. Generalizing again, but you are more likely in Canadian books to have a resolution arrived at by the detective solving the crime following the clues and by observing the people, than a shoot out with the bad guy. My opinion only. Others may differ.

IRTM: You are currently writing two books a year, which is a pretty amazing schedule. Do you write more than one book at a time or finish one before starting another, and do you find it difficult to keep the two sets of plots and characters separate?

VD: I write one series at a time, but I sometimes have to interrupt one to return to the other when I get the edits back from the editor or the proof. I do find that I have to write one in its entirely before starting the next. I don’t have trouble with plots and characters but I do with tone. The Klondike books are intended to be comedies. The Molly Smiths are not, and I find it hard to keep things light after dealing with very serious issues, not so hard to go the other way. So what I do is find a couple of humorous books to read and that seems to help lighten my mood. 

IRTM:  One of your greatest pet peeves in mystery fiction is the author who is too much in love with his or her character. Not mentioning names, of course, what do you mean by that and how do you avoid this in your own work?

VD: A tough question. It’s something you almost can’t quite put your finger on, but somehow the character just seems to be too good and too perfect, and everyone (in the book) thinks they’re so special.  I guess the way to avoid it is to create a complex, conflicted character and have them make mistakes and not always be perfect.

IRTM: You also blogged recently about a desire to avoid crime fiction labels, i.e. "murder mysteries" vs. "cozies" vs. psychological suspense or adventure novels. Unfortunately, most agents and publishers these days almost demand that they be able to classify a manuscript in a specific category. What do you feel is lost in this rigid classification process for writers and readers?

VD: What I worry about is formula.  It’s a struggle for us as crime writers to get recognition from the literary ‘establishment’ (particularly in Canada) and the idea that a crime novel must follow a formula doesn’t help. So many good books overlap sub-genres that if you are classifying a book by its subgenre, readers of other sub-genres might not even find that book that they might well love. Also what happens if books get mis-classified or one person interprets a sub-genre as meaning something different than what other people interpret it as? Where this came about is that someone in an organization I belong to thought police procedural means extensive forensics (like CSI or Kath Reichs) and mis-categorized my books very badly.

IRTM: Your next book in the Constable Molly Smith book, the fifth, is titled Among the Departed and deals with a reopened police investigation into a man's disappearance, and how the lives of the missing man's wife and two children were destroyed by the case. How do you see Smith and your other characters evolving over time?

VD: As far as I know Molly Smith is unique in police procedurals as she is young and green and very naïve. She is on probation in the first two books. I did that because first of all I want to explore issues of growing up as a young woman today (I have three daughters in that age group). For example in Negative Image her boyfriend, who is also a cop, is so over-protective she worries about what would happen if they were in a situation together. I want to have lots of opportunity to have her grow as a woman and as a police officer. So I see Molly changing a lot over the course of the series. John Winters, not so much, he’s been a cop for almost thirty years and is pretty much set in his ways. Although I do hope that he and Lucky Smith, Molly’s hippie mother, learn from each other, and each have some of their prejudices reduced. Lucky, by the way, is in for some big changes.

Vicki's book Negative Image, published by Poison Pen Press, is due in stores this week, and you can also catch her postings on the crime fiction blog Type M for Murder.

Stephen Jay Schwartz is "Beat"

Bestselling author Stephen Jay Schwartz spent a number of years as the Director of Development for film director Wolfgang Petersen (whose credits include Das Boot, In the Line of Fire, Air Force One, The Perfect Storm) where he worked with writers, producers and studio executives to develop screenplays for production. Stephen's own film work has exhibited at the AFI Los Angeles International Film Festival, the Directors Guild of America, The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, California.

Schwartz's debut novel Boulevard introduced his protagonist, the gifted LAPD robbery and homicide detective Hayden Glass, who also happens to be a sex addict and goes to 12-step meetings for his addiction. The follow-up novel is Beat, in which Glass, who suffers from a deep desire to connect with anyone, seeks refuge in the seedy world of strip-clubs, prostitution, and Internet pornography. He becomes obsessed with Cora, a web-cam vixen and prostitute operating out of San Francisco. While on leave from the LAPD, Glass soon finds himself making weekly trips north in attempts to save Cora from herself, but his quest leads him to a massive sex slave trade run by the Russian mafia and protected by a group of powerful and corrupt San Francisco cops. 

Stephen took time out of his busy book promotion schedule to do a little e-mail back and forth chatting with "In Reference to Murder":

Q: The wonderfully talented author Michael Connelly said that "just when I thought there wasn't an original take left on the detective novel, along comes Stephen Jay Schwartz and [Hayden Glass]." How did you decide to feature such a complex and tortured hero, a sex addict, as your protagonist?

Hayden’s journey really stems from my own struggles with sex addiction, which existed as a shameful secret for far too many years of my life.  I didn’t know that my compulsive behavior was actually an addiction until a counselor suggested that I go to a Twelve-Step meeting.  There I learned what was behind my actions and I was given a chance to heal and change.  As I began to consider the topic for my first novel, I thought about my history and I realized that if I had read a popular novel about a protagonist who struggled with his sex addiction (as opposed to the typical cop-alcoholic) I would have recognized myself in the pages, and I might have found help sooner.  That’s when I realized that I should dig deep into myself to present a painfully flawed and unique character who, despite his transgressions, really wants to be good.  He goes to the meetings, he has a sponsor, he struggles for sobriety.  But he’s human, and when the world comes crushing down on him, he buckles.  I believe that we are all frail creatures, and that most of us want to do good.  But life has a way of beating us down and sometimes we react by lashing out to hurt others, and sometimes we react by turning inward to torture ourselves.  Most addicts are incredibly sensitive people who’d rather hurt themselves.  It’s interesting to note that Hayden Glass does not hurt women – he uses women to hurt himself.

Q:  I was interested to read a posting you wrote about how deeply you immerse yourself in research (a/k/a "going native"). For Beat, you spent time embedded with members of the San Francisco Police Department, rode with narcotics officers and patrol officers, interviewed captains and city councilmen and went on vice calls and foot patrol. What was that experience like?

Man, I love research.  Sometimes I think I’m a writer as an excuse to do the research.  With BEAT I started by meeting a San Francisco patrol officer who worked the North Beach beat.  We hit it off, and he brought me into the Central Police Station to meet his sergeant, lieutenant, and all the other patrol officers.  Before long I was interviewing police captains and doing ride-alongs.  Soon I noticed that the residents and business people in North Beach were treating me as an undercover cop.  I noticed that I was getting special treatment at the cafes and restaurants.  And I heard a few “Serpico” comments along the way.  And, seriously, if I weren’t a writer I’d want to be a San Francisco police officer working the North Beach beat.  It’s community policing at its best.  By “imbedding” myself with the officers I was privy to their world, as seen by the people who work the streets every day.  I came away with almost a hundred pages of single-spaced, typed notes detailing every aspect of their jobs, with particular emphasis placed on the unique nomenclature used by the SFPD.  It’s hard to get this kind of detail from doing only book research.  And it’s fun.  Research is kind-of like method acting—I get the opportunity to live in their shoes, to fill my world with their experiences, until those experiences are mine.  Then, as I write, I reach into that vast storage space to pull “memories” and “experiences” to enrich my characters.  I got so lost in the research for BEAT that I almost forgot to write the book.

Q: You've also said that when you tell people you're a writer, they'll tell you the most amazing things, since everyone wants to be remembered. What is one of the most unexpected or outrageous tales you've encountered from these "confessionals" and did you end up using it your writing?

Being a writer is like being a bartender.  People need to be heard, they want someone to hear their story.  And everyone has a story to tell.  I can understand how you’d tell your innermost thoughts to a bartender, who most likely won’t even remember it the next time you meet.  But to tell that story to a writer?  It tells me that people really need to be heard.  San Francisco is a city filled with scandal.  The policemen, the city council members, the folks on the street—everyone has a vibrant point of view.  I’ve heard some high-ranking people tell me stories that I’d never repeat, and yet they seemed to be giving me permission to use the information anyway I see fit.  And I realize that I don’t really need to use the stories per se, because the knowledge they impart tends to influence the background of my character’s world.  If I hear a story about how the Chief of Police ruined the career of an up-and-coming officer I can take that idea and weave it into my story as motivation for why a particular policeman bends the rules.  He might fear the repercussions that could come if he reports an incident as it actually happened.  These stories, these “confessionals,” help me design a realistic environment for my characters to inhabit. 

That said, I did hear many great stories and I used as many as possible in the book.  A lot of them add levity to what would otherwise be a very dark journey into the bowels of San Francisco’s underworld.

 Q: On Murderati, you posted photos of your "office" — a writing cafe — and said that you can only write in cafes, because your home or the library is too quiet. Other than spending a certain portion of your advance on lattes, how do you think such an environment inspires your work and why is silence such a barrier?

Yes, I titled that blog post “Too Lonely to Write Alone.”  As writers we spend so much time in our heads.  It can be maddening.  My solution is to take that lonely world out into the public.  The café experience is the only way I know how to write.  I need to see people, living their lives, having fun, engaged in conversation.  It reminds me that the world exists beyond my own little story, and it helps me capture the nuance of human interaction in words.  Also, there’s a point in my writing day where I hit the wall.  It helps to look up from my computer screen to see other writers, friends of mine, hard at work, or drifting off because they’ve hit the wall themselves.  That’s my cue to stand up, grab another coffee and engage.  It gives me the opportunity to talk with other writers, to discuss their project or mine, to go on about the news or weather or politics.  It gets me out of my head for a while.  Then, when guilt grabs me by the throat, I step back to my table and tackle my story with fresh eyes.

 Q: Some of your favorite literary authors (who also spent their days in Parisian cafes) are Hemingway, Gertrude Stein and James Baldwin. What influence, if any, do they have on what you write, and are there any crime fiction mentors who inspire you, or would you say you're more influenced by your film background?

Lots and lots of influences on my writing.  Music is a huge contributor, since I began studying music in the fourth grade.  I started on clarinet then moved to saxophone in high school.  I spent my first college year as a Jazz Studies major at the renowned music school at NTSU.  To me, a sentence is a musical line.  The consonants and vowels create syncopation and staccato or legato and pianissimo.  I read my sentences out loud as I write them to make sure they sound right to my ear.  When I heard Jack Kerouac reading his work I realized that he had fused music with writing.  He reads his work like Charlie Parker plays “Donna Lee.”  And his sentences are written for his specific performance.  You should really listen to Kerouac reading “On the Road,” accompanied by Steve Allen on piano.  It opened my eyes.  And so I tend to lean towards writers who have this sense of musicality and who are playful with words on the page.  People like James Joyce, who is unsurpassed in his ability to mimic sounds with words.  Or Gertrude Stein, who uses alliteration to emphasize her statements.  I seem to be drawn to American authors of the Twentieth Century – Steinbeck, Hemmingway, Katherine Ann Porter, Flannery O’Connor.  But I’ve been influenced as well by a number of modern writers like Chuck Palahniuk, Jhumpa Lahiri, John Updike, Charles Bukowski and Jim Thompson.  Thompson’s work is amazing – lean, efficient, shocking.  I read about eighteen of his novels as I was writing BOULEVARD.  I learned to tighten and cut by studying his work.  I’ve also fallen in love with the works of Elmore Leonard.  There are so many crime writers I’ve yet to read, since I really didn’t discover the genre, or my passion for the genre, until a few years ago.  And, of course, now that I’ve found them, there’s simply no more time to read…

 Q: As part of your movie/documentary past, you wrote "Inside the Space Station" for the Discovery Channel. As a big of a space-nut myself, I was wondering if you have any science or astronomy in your background? Even if not, perhaps we'll be seeing a Stephen Jay Schwartz astronaut detective one of these days...

An astronaut-detective sounds intriguing.  You’ve got me thinking now.

However, I earned a C in my college astronomy class—perhaps because my classmate, author Brett Battles, didn’t let me cheat off his tests.

I do love space.  I love reading Scientific American and all the science magazines.  When I had more time to read I was checking out String Theory and the Theory of Relativity.  It’s all fascinating stuff, but requires more mental attention than I have to spare.  I’ve gained a greater appreciation for science as I’ve grown older.  I would love to take a trip to space one day, just to get the feel of zero grav and see the contours of our planet from above.

I did a ton of research for that Discovery Channel project.  I really had to come up to speed quickly, just to have a conversation with anyone at NASA.  Once I could hold up my end of the conversation, I was talking to astronauts, cosmonauts, program managers and scientists from around the world.  I went to Edwards Air Force base where we shot the drop of an X-38 emergency landing vessel from a B-52 bomber.  The X38 was designed to take six astronauts back to Earth in the event of a disaster on the International Space Station.  I learned so much and I’d love to put this knowledge to use in a story or screenplay someday.  I combined forces with a film director friend of mine once and we wrote a detailed treatment for a film about one man’s journey to a planet, where he is forced to make a crash landing.  We pitched it as “Cast Away” in space.  It was a really great concept, filled with surprises that could only come from outer space.  Hopefully the project will be resurrected some day.

 Q: What other literary projects do you have in the pipeline?

Well, I’ve got a “Hayden” short story that will publish on Kindle for free soon, something my editor suggested I do to introduce new readers to the world of Hayden Glass.  I take us back to Hayden’s first year in the LAPD, when he’s doing a stint in Vice.  It documents the moment he “crosses the line,” after he picks up a prostitute and fails to arrest her.  It marks the beginning of his addictive behavior.  It was fun to write a short story, to know that I could capture an element of his world in 7,000 words.

I’m doing research now for my third novel, which is a standalone.  The protagonist is a young FBI agent who gets in over his head chasing a hit-man through Europe.  The hero is an everyman, someone who hasn’t yet considered the vastness of the world, hasn’t been forced to make the really tough decisions in life.  He’ll face them in this book.

After that, I’d like to do a third Hayden book, perhaps placing him in the San Fernando Valley, the porn capital of the United States.  I think that just might offer a little challenge to his sobriety.

Beat was released September 28th and is now available in stores. You can also check out Stephen's web site linked above and his blog posts over at Murderati. 

Karin Slaughter Definitely Isn't "Broken"

Author Karin Slaughter took the standard schooling route, including college at Georgia State University, where she studied Renaissance poetry. Then, things got a little more interesting — in a standing-out-on-a-limb sort of way. She dropped out with just two classes left before graduation to work exclusively on her start-up sign company. But when the urge to write got so intense, she sold the sign company and turned to writing full-time. The result? Since 2001, which is when her first published novel,  Blindsighted, was released (the first title in the Grant County series, shortlisted for the Barry,  Macavity, and Dagger Debut Awards), she has been on several bestseller lists and sold 17 million books in 30 different languages.

The Grant County series is set in the fictional Georgia town of Heartsdale and features Dr. Sara Linton, the town’s pediatrician and part-time medical examiner; her ex-husband, Jeffrey Tolliver, the county’s police chief, (who took a controversial exit from the series in Beyond Reach); and Detective Lena Adams, who has a perennial chip on her shoulder. Slaughter also writes a series with Will Trent and Faith Mitchell, special agents for the George Bureau of Investigation in Atlanta. She merged the two series, first in 2009's Undone and again in her latest novel out this month, Broken.

Broken focuses on Special Agent Will Trent who arrives in Grant County and finds a police department determined to protect its own and far too many unanswered questions about a prisoner’s death. He doesn’t understand why Officer Lena Adams is hiding secrets from him or her role in the death of Grant County’s popular police chief. He doesn’t know why the chief's widow, Dr. Sara Linton, needs him now more than ever to help her crack this case.

Karin Slaughter is on a whirlwind tour, both online and "off," and took some time to answer a few questions for In Reference to Murder.

IRTM:  Before you started writing thrillers, you owned a sign company—but then you sold it so you could start writing. You've said it was important for you to cut that safety net of a steady job and paycheck. Most "experts" advise writers to not quit their day jobs. Was this a difficult or smooth transition for you?

KS:  The transition was actually pretty smooth because I had a lot of things going for me: I already had an agent.  I’d already written a book.  I had money saved up so that I wouldn’t starve.  So, it was a calculated risk, but it was still a risk.  I think each writer has to make the decision of when to go it alone, if ever.  I’ve got a risk-taking personality, so it worked for me.  For someone else, it might make them turn to the bottle or hide under the bed, neither of which is conducive to good writing.

IRTM: You've likened book writing to a "short but passionate love affair." So how do you keep the passion alive in that love affair, book after book?

KS: I try to tell something new about the characters in each new book.  I also have a lot of secrets about my characters that I don’t always share with my readers.  In Broken, for instance, we learn some new things about Lena Adams, whom I’ve been writing about for over ten years.  I’ve always felt very strongly that if you don’t have anything interesting to say, you shouldn’t say it, so a lot of times when I’m plotting out the books, I’ll deliberately throw obstacles in the way of characters so that their personalities have to change.  Lena has certainly benefited (if I can use that word) from this over the years.

IRTM: You are proud (and rightly so) of being a southern writer and get annoyed with stereotypes toward southerners. (I'm from Tennessee and when I traveled to New York City once, had a cabbie ask in all seriousness why I was wearing shoes and did I have a moonshine still in my backyard.) Do you feel you're educating those stereotype-holders through your writing in some way?

KS: I hope I am, but let’s face it: New Yorkers tend to have their heads up their butts, as we say Southerners like to say.  If you hired a hundred people to walk around Midtown in red shirts, all the newspapers and all the news shows would have stories the next day about how everybody in America has started wearing red shirts.  They think what they see outside their window translates to the rest of the world, when really, the city is extremely segregated (especially in the publishing business), extremely antiquated and very hard to live in unless you’ve got a lot of money. That’s not the America I know, but that’s who represents us to the world. I’m glad to do my part in disabusing readers of those notions.

IRTM: You killed off a major character in your Grant County series and got hate mail for it. Yet you say while killing off Jeffrey was one of the hardest things you've ever done, you think it was the best thing for the series. (For the record, one review I read of Broken said that, "although the Jeffrey is certainly missed, this book proves the series can move forward without his presence." So there.)  Can you explain a little more about that "best thing for the series" idea?

KS: When I talk about the “best thing for the series” what I mean is the best thing for me as a writer.  Let’s face it: it would’ve been very easy for me to write the same stories over and over again.  That’s the basis of a lot of crime series, and while I have no problem with that, in my own work I was afraid I would get stale.  One of the things readers (hopefully!) like about my books is that I’m telling fast-paced, emotionally gripping stories.  I think the fact that folks had such an extreme reaction to Jeffrey’s death means that it resonated for them, and that I did a good job of developing him as a character.  But, it wasn’t easy, and it wasn’t contrived to sell more books (generally, authors don’t equate hate-mail with increasing sales).  It was organic to the story, and it gave me an opportunity to pull Sara into a new and different world.  Also, in Broken, it gave me the opportunity to show Lena without Jeffrey’s influence, which was very interesting.

IRTM: You write detailed and believable characters, both men and women, and also from both male and female POV's. Do you find it's harder to write men or to write women characters?

KS: Men are actually easier for me because women think in a much more visceral way.  For instance, when I read Lee Child and Reacher comes upon a body, it’s going to be very mechanical in the telling. “Here’s the knife.  Here’s the blood.  Here’s the body.”  If I read something by Tess Gerritsen, it’s going to be, “This is the smell in the air.  This is the taste.  This is how the victim looks.  This is probably what the victim was thinking when he or she died.”  I’m not saying either approach is right or wrong, and thank God they’re different because these are two authors I love reading.  I’m just saying it’s different, and when I’m writing Will I am conscious of that.

IRTM: In that same vein, I like what you once said about the great thing about being a man is if you get mad at someone, you can kick their ass, but women have to spread rumors and give them nasty glances in the hallway. Also, you get complaints about your female characters cussing but not your male characters. How do you deal with and/or get around these gender traits and
biases in writing?

KS: Well, the new thing I’ve been getting is, “you write like a man,” which I suppose is a way of saying that I am a good writer, because women only write chick lit and knitting mysteries where Amish cats solve the crime.  I once heard Carol Shields interviewed wherein she said that anytime a man writes something, it’s considered more valid.  I recall thinking, “crap, and she won the Pulitzer.”  It’s hard out in crimeland if you’re a female author writing about what some view as “male” themes, but here is the interesting dichotomy: over 85% of all books are purchased by women.  One look at the bestseller lists tells you that the majority of books being bought are crime fiction, and not just crime but realistic crime of the sort I write.  Now, what does that tell you about women?  Obviously, we are interested in these stories.  It follows that we would start writing about them.

IRTM:  It's been said that your heroes are extremely flawed and messed up, but still ultimately likable. Do you find yourself putting qualities in characters that are part of you, or rather traits you wish you had, or do you even consciously think about those types of parallels?

KS: I’m sure some of my characteristics show up in the characters without me thinking about it.  I think one thing about most if not all of them—even the bad guys—is that they have very good manners.  Maybe that comes from me being southern, or maybe it’s just because I know that there is no such thing as a 100% bad or 100% good person.  We all have strengths and flaws. But, you know, as a child I always went to church with my grandmother, and after the services she’d introduce me to her friends, and as soon as the friend turned her back, my grandmother would tell me this dark secret about her.  “You know her husband drinks,” or “You know she came home from church last week and found her son trying on her underwear.”  I love that sort of thing.  It’s those little peccadilloes that make us interesting.  Some more than others, of course!

IRTM: You knew for years that Jeffrey was going to die but didn’t give a lot of thought to what would come after. Following that event, you combined the Grant County series with the Will Trent/Atlanta series in Undone and now again in Broken. When did you decide to blend the two series as the next progression in Sara's life after her husband's death?

KS: I couldn’t think about what would come after because I knew I would never be able to write the lead-up to the tragedy.  It was very hard touring for a few years because I am basically an honest person, and I had to lie to folks about Jeffrey and to some degree Sara.  Even though they are fictional characters and I get paid to make things up for a living, I had a hard time with that.  I knew when I wrote Triptych, the first book with Will, that he would end up meeting Sara and Lena.  So, I laid a lot of groundwork into putting together his character and making sure that he wasn’t just a carbon copy of Jeffrey, because what’s the point if I just throw in a guy who is exactly like Jeffrey?  Will lacks the self-confidence and sexual prowess that made Jeffrey who he was.  He’s not the kind of guy who wants to be the center of attention.  He’s a team player and doesn’t want the spotlight.  A lot of this comes from his dyslexia.  When you have a secret that big to hide, you avoid scrutiny at all costs.

IRTM: You feel it's import to be realistic without moving into sensationalism regarding the violence in your novels, something a lot of crime fiction authors deal with. How difficult is it to find such a balance?

KS: I don’t find it difficult to find a balance at all because I have one rule for both the scenes of sex and the scenes of violence in my work: if I can take out that scene and it doesn’t change anything in the book, then it doesn’t belong there.  I think what I get nailed on is that I am writing so frankly about these topics and I am a woman.  Not that I’m complaining too much, because of course it gets me a lot of media attention, but I’ve never written a story where a serial killer inserts a snake into a woman’s private areas, and I’ve never had a victim who was burned alive by a broken steam pipe so that the skin peeled off, but James Patterson and Jeffrey Deaver have, yet you don’t see stories about them mentioning these things.

IRTM:  Your books are described as being quite dark—has writing the novels changed the way you look at the world, made you more pessimistic about the human species (or our chances of surviving into the next century)?

KS: Believe it or not, I’ve got a fairly laid-back outlook on the world.  I think most crime writers do.  We get our angst out on the page, then we go along with our lives in the normal way.  I really don’t think of my books as dark.  There’s a psychological component that makes you feel connected to the characters and stories in a deeper way, but all good books should do that.  And, let’s face it—at the end of the day, the bad guys are caught and our heroes go on to fight another day.  You can’t get a more positive outcome than that!

IRTM:  You're a stickler for research, but have said you still make up a great deal of things since you're not writing textbooks, and that it's important to know the rules so you can break them in a way that keeps it realistic. Are there any rules that aren't made to be broken (or that you won’t break)?

KS: I have learned the hard way that you’ve got to get every single gun detail correct or people will absolutely jump on you with both feet.  They will call you names and accuse you of all types of mental disabilities.  They have no problem believing this one small Georgia town has been the stomping grounds of a serial rapist, a child porn ring, a serial killer and various murderers and bad folks, but get a gun fact wrong and their suspension of disbelief is very unwilling indeed!

IRTM:  I believe your next book (or an upcoming book) is set in the future and titled The Recidivists. Can you tell us more about that?

KS: The Recidivists is a graphic novel project I’ve been working on for a few years now.  It’s not ready for the presses as I have to write my regular books in between, but it’s in the pipeline.  The next book is tentatively titled FALLEN, and it opens with Faith coming home to some bad stuff and having to kick some butt.  I love it!

IRTM:  I'm jealous you had a chance to try out weightlessness in the zero-G Vomit Comet. And you have plans to enter sub-orbital space via Virgin Galactic's space program? Have you already pre-booked a flight? Can I come with?

KS: The Zero-G thing was a fabulously fun time, and I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to know what it’s like to be weightless for a few seconds at a time.  I’m ready to go on Virgin Galactic, but they’ve had some set-backs.  I promised my dad I wouldn’t fly until at least 100 people have gone before me.  The ship carries six people at a time, so that might be sooner than my dad thinks!

IRTM: Is Gimme Goobers going on tour?  

KS: Lookit, send us some plane tickets and we’ll be there.  We are all about the road.

Karin will be appearing at Houston's Murder by the Book store tonight (Tuesday, June 29th) at 6:30 to sign and discuss Broken. MBTB will donate a percentage of the sales to The Women's Home, whose mission is to help women in crisis regain their self-esteem and dignity.

In Broken Places

Early in her career, Sandra Parshall had one of the most prescient jobs a future author of crime fiction could have—newspaper obituary columnist. She moved from there to work for newspapers in West Virginia and for The Baltimore Evening Sun, covering a variety of issues that varied from school board meetings to a mining disaster, health care in prisons, poverty in Appalachia, and the experiences of Native Americans.

Parshall's first published novel, Heat of the Moon, won the Agatha Award for best first mystery in 2006. It featured veterinarian Rachel Goddard, who has turned up in all three of Parshall's novels, including the recently-released Broken Places.

In the latest outing with the southwest Virginia veterinarian, Rachel is drawn into a murder when she's an "earwitness" to the murder of Cam Taylor, whose wife Meredith is also found murdered shortly afterward. The number one suspect is a childhood friend of Rachel's, Ben Hern, and Rachel sets out to prove him innocent. The victims' scheming daughter, Lindsay, has other ideas as she pushes for Ben's arrest and initiates a campaign of intimidation against Rachel, her rival for the affections of Deputy Sheriff Tom Bridger. As Rachel digs deep into the past, she uncovers buried secrets that could well make her the next victim.

Sandra took time out of her busy schedule to answer a few questions for IRTM.

IRTM:  Your protagonist, Rachel Goddard, is a veterinarian. You've mentioned on one occasion that if you had to start over, you wouldn't mind being Jane Goodall. Is that why you chose a veterinarian as a main series character, or do you have a little veterinary school in your background?

 

SP: No, I haven’t been to vet college, but I do love animals, and making my protagonist a veterinarian allows me to have them in every book. I don’t write the kind of mysteries in which pets solve crimes, but I’ve found ways to make them important to the stories. A dog, for example, plays a role in the climax of Broken Places. A poignant scene earlier in the book shows how much Rachel will risk to save an animal she loves.

IRTM: In the second installment of your series, Disturbing the Dead, you included Melungeon culture. They're a fascinating people with a history few know about (it's even been said Elvis had a touch of Melungeon blood). Did this come from research conducted during your newspaper career?

SP: I grew up in upstate South Carolina, within sight of the mountains, and later I lived in West Virginia, so I had heard about the Melungeons and other mixed-race groups in the region. Whatever they were called – Melungeons, Redbones, Brass Ankles, gypsies – I was sure they had a fascinating history I would never learn about in any classroom.

IRTM: Speaking of your newspaper background, it comes into play for your latest novel, Broken Places, which has 1960s activists turn up as the murder victims. Did you get this idea from the War on Poverty you covered as a cub newspaper reporter?

SP: I tried for years to fashion some kind of fictional story around the young antipoverty workers of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, but I couldn’t pull it together. In writing Broken Places, I asked myself what those young people might be like 40 years later. Most went on to ordinary lives. But suppose one or two stayed in the mountains and never let go of their idealism? How would the passing years – decades – have affected them? Like other characters in Broken Places, Cam and Meredith Taylor have been broken by lives that didn’t turn out as they’d hoped.

IRTM: How did you decide to switch from journalism to novels, and did you have any writer role models who inspired you to try your hand at a mystery?

SP: I’ve always wanted to write novels, from the time I was a child. Newspaper jobs were a way to support myself. I wrote fiction for years without selling any of it. The work of Thomas H. Cook and Ruth Rendell inspired me to try writing a psychological suspense novel.

IRTM: Which is easier for you, non-fiction journalism or fiction writing?

SP: Nonfiction is easier because all I have to do is arrange words in a way that is clear and makes sense. It’s not a challenge. Fiction is a constant challenge in every respect, but much more fulfilling.

IRTM: Is there anything from your experiences with writing obituaries that has found its way into your work?

SP: Not really, but doing obits made me wonder about the lives behind those short notices. It seemed sad that an entire existence could be reduced to a few dry sentences. I was always curious about the whole story.

IRTM: You won the Agatha Award for Best First Novel, but you've said awards don't make a big difference in sales. (I especially love your anecdote about the woman who asked if the Agatha was for female mystery writers and the Edgar for men.) Do awards still have relevance?

SP: I don’t see any correlation between awards and sales. Many mystery writers who sell well have never even been nominated for awards. Receiving an award is certainly a boost for a writer’s ego, but I don’t think we should attach too much importance to winning. We certainly shouldn’t assume that an award makes us special, better than other writers.

IRTM: Despite the fact Publishers Weekly complimented you on "a suspenseful tale distinguished by its sharp prose," you had a 28-year-old editor at a major publisher describe your writing as "old-fashioned." I found this puzzling since I keep hearing young people are turning away from reading and most mystery fans are middle-aged and older.

SP: If I could explain what’s going on in N.Y. publishing, I’d be very popular at dinner parties! The book business is changing – drastically, by all accounts — and we might see publishers going after particular markets such as younger readers. But they’d be crazy to ignore the older readers who are keeping traditional publishing alive.

IRTM: Many unpublished authors think the Holy Grail is to be published by one of the big houses. What do you think a smaller house like your publisher, Poisoned Pen Press, brings to the experience that larger houses can't?

SP: I can only talk knowledgeably about the one press I’ve worked with, but I think being with a smaller publisher relieves the writer of a lot of pressure. You have to sell enough books for your publisher to make a profit on your work, but no one will expect you to rack up huge sales to justify your place in the catalogue. There’s not so much pressure to write for the commercial market. It’s okay to be a “niche” writer and concentrate on doing what you do best. Some brilliant writers are publishing wonderful books with small presses these days. Many of those writers used to be with bigger publishers but were dropped because they couldn’t make the leap to bestsellerdom.

IRTM: What's next with your writing? More in this same series, or perhaps a standalone?

SP: The next book will be another in the series. After that, who knows? I have other ideas I’d like to explore, other characters I’d like to get to know.

Broken Places received a starred review from both Library Journal and Publishers Weekly. It was published recently by Poisoned Pen Press. For links to book information, check out Sandra's author site. You can also catch her postings on the multi-author blog Poe's Deadly Daughters.

A Stop at "The University"

English majors don't get a lot of respect. Case in point, jokes such as "How do you get an English major off your porch?" (Answer: Pay for the pizza.) But author Jeffrey Leever has done very well with his English degree, thank you. After starting out writing for newsletters and working as a senior editor and PR staff member for Colorado Governor Bill Owens, he turned his pen to crime fiction with his debut, Dark Friday, released in 2007.

In the second installment in the series, The University, investigative journalist Kevin Gibson lets his cousin, a former cop, talk him into looking into a student's disappearance at Tremont University. Along the way he encounters a coed hiding dark secrets and a comatose former student injured in a brutal attack two years ago who holds a critical piece of information. Gibson's investigation ultimately points toward a conspiracy involving faculty, students and some well-connected people in high places.

Leever is embarking on a blog tour this week, and graciously agreed to answer some questions for "In Reference to Murder."

IRTM:  What inspired you to write that first book? A lot of people often have the desire, but fewer are able to make it happen.

JL:  I enjoy a good writing-related challenge — the give and take, the late nights. With book one (which for me was DARK FRIDAY), the question I confronted was "Can you take something you originally thought was a short story idea and turn it into a trade paperback novel?" The desire came from genuinely wanting to tell the story of those characters and what happened in their town. There was one scene in particular that was "the payoff" for me of all the effort (which comes in Chapter 33 of my first book).

IRTM:  Any particular writing influences — favorite authors, mentors?

JL:  JL:  Dave King, the coauthor of the book SELF-EDITING FOR  FICTION WRITERS was a definite influence. I also enjoyed Stephen King's ON WRITING, although I've never actually read a King novel. Both of these books are like ongoing reference material for me. Some of my favorite authors over the years have been Harlan Coben, Nelson Demille, James Byron Huggins, Philip Yancey, and a host of others.

IRTM:  You were an English major and have even spoken at your alma mater about using that particular major in the real world. Do you think such a degree helps or hinders the creative-writing process? Do you ever have a little nagging voice in the back of your head saying, "But Professor Smith said never write that way!"?

JL: I always like to go out and talk about writing in general. To be able to encourage college students makes it even more enjoyable. I personally think that having an English major helps (or at least can help) the creative writing process. Maybe I'm lucky because I've have never  had a  "Professor Smith" type critiquing me in my head like that. I'm sure I do break my fair share of grammar rules as taught by some of the high school and college English teachers that I've had. None of them have ever sent me an angry note or anything, so that's good.

IRTM:  You indicated that you came up with the idea for your first book, Dark Friday, while in an airplane. I think it's fascinating how the brain can pop out ideas at times when you least expect them. Was the university-based plot for your latest novel also serendipitous?

JL: Yes, it started with a  nightmare that I had where I couldn't find my best friend. It was one of those dreams that you just can't shake for a long time even after you've awakened. Premise-wise, I kept coming back to the idea of how scary it would be if you just sort of lost track of your closest friend during a night out...and then gradually you end up realizing that they're truly missing and not coming back...then it hits and you realize you'll never see that lively, vibrant person again.

I began to ask some "What ifs" and eventually the story took shape. I ended up on a college campus with a student disappearing and his friend trying to figure out why — and really not liking where the answer leads him.

IRTM:  In your first book, you chose a real town as the setting, Jasonville, Indiana, a place you found on the Internet but actually visited, interviewing the locals. In this latest novel, you've instead chosen a fictional town of Tremont, Nebrasaka. Was that due to some negative feedback from using a real town, a liability concern or just a desire to create and control all the details in your own imagined setting?

JL:   It was more just a matter of wanting to do something moderately different. I basically used the real town of Kearney,  Nebraska, but created a fictional suburb and renamed the university that's there (which is actually the University of Nebraska at Kearney).

IRTM:  Taking the "real" vs. "fiction" question further, have you based any characters in your novels on people you've known or encountered in your life? 

JL:  Without question. Some are composites of various people. They're always fictionalized, of course. I find it hard to believe there are many authors who could truthfully answer no to this question. To quote Simon Cowell, "It's just an opinion."

IRTM:  The protagonist in your two books is investigative journalist Kevin Gibson. Most authors who create a journalist as protagonist have worked in the business themselves. Did you have any qualms about getting details right or find that you had to do preliminary research or interviews to help portray an investigative journalist accurately?

JL:   I do have a decent amount of journalism in my  background and have spent time in several newsrooms in  different states. I almost majored in journalism in college before going to the English route. Of course, one of my favorite genres to read and study,  other than mystery, is true crime. I've done a lot of research on  investigative techniques and have many articles from investigative crime reporters in my files. If I'm ever accused of murder or some other heinous act, the police are going to find a lot of "evidence" in my files.

IRTM:  You had a short story adapted into a play, which was performed on stage. Has this whetted your appetite for writing mystery plays or even screenwriting?

JL:   Yes. It was fascinating to see an actor's portrayal. I do have a couple of scripts in the works. It's certainly a different art, but I like approaching storytelling in different ways.<

IRTM:  Do you have any interesting or unusual writing quirks?

JL:  I have been known to take my MacBook to strange places to capture a scene. I also write at odd hours. I'm probably one of the most nocturnal creatures you'll ever find outside of the vampire world.

IRTM:  I understand you play the drums! I suppose they're a little too big to carry around to book signings for some added entertainment (although that would certainly get people's attention), but maybe we'll see a drummer protagonist in the future? Any additional plans for Kevin Gibson?

JL:   I am not above taking drums to a book  signing...actually I think I like that idea now that you've brought it up. I come from a very musical set of siblings and when I was a teenager,  my older brother had this cool set of drums that he told me not to touch. Guess what I did whenever he was gone? It was all self-taught and surreptitious.

I don't know if you'll ever see a drummer protagonist in one of my books, but I think Kevin may cross paths with a rogue drummer at some point in a future story. See what I think of myself? The drummer should be a villain and not a protagonist...

Jeffrey Leever is giving away a free signed copy of his book, The University. Go to Jeffrey's book tour page, enter your name, e-mail address, and this 4-digit PIN, 8166, for your chance to win. Entries from "In Reference to Murder" will be accepted until 12:00 Noon (PT) tomorrow. The winner (first name only) will be announced on Jeffrey's book tour page next week.

The Secret Keeper

Paul Harris has held the post of U.S. Correspondent since 2003 for the world's oldest Sunday newspaper, The Observer. Prior to that he reported from Africa for the Daily Telegraph, the Associated Press and Reuters. He's covered conflicts and trouble spots all around the world, including Iraq, Sudan, Burundi, Somalia, South Africa, Zimbabwe and Pakistan. In 2003 he was embedded with British forces during the invasion of Iraq. His first novel, The Secret Keeper, was inspired by his reporting on events in 2000 in Sierra Leone as that country’s long civil war came to an end. 

In The Secret Keeper, journalist Danny Kellerman receives an urgent letter from an ex-lover in Sierra Leone, where he once was a war correspondent. But it's already too late; she's been murdered in a roadside robbery. Danny returns to Freetown, where his investigation uncovers secrets that shed a shocking light on the woman he though he knew-and reveals a hidden truth that could destroy those in power. Trapped in the heart of a dangerous nation where he can trust no one, Danny is soon forced to choose between his integrity and the devastating consequences of speaking the truth.

Harris is on a book blog tour to promote the paperback release of The Secret Keeper and agreed to a Q&A with In Reference to Murder.

IRTM: In the novel, your protagonist, Danny Kellerman, talks about how journalism "had always been what he'd wanted to do since he was a little kid" and "of how chasing a story could feel a little like chasing a drug, getting high, moving on to the next one. Of how covering a war had seemed like the ultimate hit." Since you started a newspaper at the age of 9 and were yourself a war correpondent, are Danny's thoughts here parallel to your own? And is chasing a story a little addictive, perhaps?

PH: Definitely. It may sound silly but I still remember the thrill of bringing out a school newspaper (one issue only!) when I was nine. The front page story was an update on a recent burglary at the school where a video recorder (remember them?) had been stolen. A teacher read the story and said: “I didn’t know that!”. I found that thrilling. That I was able to find out something this adult teacher did not know and then tell him. I think that is the heart of journalism and, yes, it is certainly addictive.

IRTM: Sierra Leone has had such a tragic history, what with Europeans and Americans using it as a trading post for slaves, to revolts, riots and wars throughout the 20th century, corruption, coups, drug cartels, the torture and maiming of civilians in the diamond trade. That's certainly a lot of fodder for a crime novel, but what made you focus on child soldiers?

PH: I think it was the surreal experience of going through roadblocks manned by teenagers and sometimes kids younger than that. These guys would have guns and undoubtedly many of them had done and seen terrible things. But often the interaction was still very much that of an adult and a child/teen. They would smile, laugh, be surly or deferential. It was scary but also fascinating. Beneath it all – and despite the fact they could kill you without much thought – they were still kids. I think I wanted to shed a little light on the implications of that.

IRTM: You've said before that few people cover wars or crises and emerge untouched, but also that journalists often go into these situations with their own agendas. That's kind of a paradigm for a novel, isn't it? The author often has his or her own social or moral beliefs that spur the writing of a book, and a good novel will touch its readers on a deeper level than just mere entertainment. Did you begin The Secret Keeper with a certain motivation in mind, and do you feel you accomplished it in a way that won't leave your readers untouched?

PH: I wanted to explore moral complexity and the fact that almost everything in life is a shade of grey, not a black or a white. That is certainly my belief. While I acknowledge that there are a few moral absolutes in life, they are exceedingly rare. The journalists, aid workers, child soldiers, diamond dealers, politicians and generals in The Secret Keeper inhabit that grey world. Sometimes the right things are done for the wrong reason; sometimes the wrong thing is done for the right one. Other times the right thing causes more harm than the wrong thing and vice versa. I hope that a reader of my book will understand that morally complex and, I think, deeply human, view of the world. Perhaps that will then help them view their own life experiences a little differently.

IRTM: Since this book is based in part on your own experiences, did you find it harder to write from true life or from your imagination?

PH: In the end I wrote from both. I used my own experiences to provide a backdrop and inspiration for certain characters and situations. But after that I just let my imagination run free. For example, the character of Ali – a Lebanese diamond/arms dealer – was taken from a man I saw once on a helicopter ride in from the airport. He was sitting opposite me, wearing very cool shades despite being inside. It was a time of great panic in Freetown as the RUF were approaching and everyone was afraid. But this guy was cool as a cucumber. I spoke a few words with him and he just did not seem bothered by the threat at all. Or even that interested. I never saw him again. But the mental image of him stuck with me and eventually became Ali. So, to answer the question, I did not find it harder one way or the other because I tried to fuse my real life experiences and my imagination together.

IRTM: Many of the reviews for The Secret Keeper praised your knack for dialogue, something I imagine was honed via years of interviews and talking with a wide variety of people. What advice would you give for other writers on how to create realistic, believable dialogue?

PH: That’s a good question. I have to say I never really thought about that. Dialogue just does seem to come naturally to me and perhaps that is indeed linked to my day job as a reporter. I would say that a writer should focus on making dialogue snappy by keeping sentences and whole pieces of speech not more than a few sentences at a time. A common mistake is making a chunk of explanatory dialogue long and full of commas and sub-clauses, like an entry from an encyclopaedia. Real people just do not speak that way. It is far better to split that up into short sentences and several different chunks of speech.

IRTM: It seems there are daily reports about the death of journalism, with such sites as the Twitter feed "The Media is Dying" chronicling the collapse of one publication after another. Do you agree we're hearing the death knell of print journalism, or is it just evolving?

PH: Now that is a question dear to my heart. I am afraid I am very much a pessimist on this subject. There are great things about the Internet in that has democratised information and broken down barriers to direct communication. But the damage done to journalism has been immense. Journalism and communication are not the same thing. Journalism is vital to a democracy and its business model has been destroyed. Nor will it come back. I don’t think newspapers will die off completely. But there will be less of them. They will have a much smaller staff. They will report less from the field. I look at the struggles of my own newspaper, The Observer, and I can see it. We still put out a great newspaper but the brutal fact is I am the sole remaining staff foreign correspondent of The Observer who is based abroad rather than just travelling out from London. Internet evangelists will call me a Luddite, but I think that is a tragedy. I don’t believe a good blog beats professional journalism.

IRTM: You're a fan of popular science books like those by Richard Dawkins and Richard Fortey (good choices, by the way). Can we expect a science-based thriller down the pike? (Science reporting might be ripe for some good stories.) Or will there be a sprinkling of scientific elements in future efforts?

PH: I had not thought of it but now you mention it…. I think that would be great. I love science and get incredibly annoyed when anyone says it is boring. Science is, in my opinion, inherently as beautiful as any great work of art. After all both seek to unlock truths and tell us about our world.

IRTM:  Speaking of upcoming books, you're starting a new book about an American presidential campaign, I believe. Is that to be a nonfiction book or a political thriller, and is it a standalone or are you thinking perhaps a series?

PH: Yes, I am coming to an end of the first draft of writing. It is intended to be a standalone thriller. Again I am taking the background and inspiration from my own experiences reporting on the 2004 and 2008 campaigns but then letting my imagination run off with it. I have written about 80 percent of it and should have it finished in a month or so. Then I cross my fingers and send it off to my agent.

IRTM: You have how many thousands of air miles under your belt -- and you also have a fear of flying. How do you manage to work around that? (Or maybe I can you give a few tips from my pilot hubster...)

PH: I would welcome tips. My fear of flying is not too bad. It is not debilitating. But I get very nervous at take-off, landing and any form of turbulence. But I just suck it up. I fly all the time for work and I live away from my parents and family and I love travelling to foreign countries. Not flying is simply not an option. I have a few superstitious rituals that I go through (idiotic, I know, but whatever keeps the plane in the air!) and if we hit a patch of rough air I practise counting my breaths slowly. It is a meditation technique that works pretty well at calming oneself down.

IRTM:  So, you're a poker fan. Will we be seeing you at the U.S. Poker Championship at the Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City some day soon?

PH: I think that would be a bad and expensive idea. I love poker but am currently on a year-long streak of what feels like awful cards but is probably just an inkling that I have become as good at the game as I ever will. Luckily, my home game is small stakes and, in all honesty, I play for the relaxation and the company of good friends as much as anything else. I live in New York and so even a losing Friday night at my home game is going to be cheaper than dinner and drinks out at a restaurant.

Paul Harris is giving away a signed copy of his book, The Secret Keeper, to one lucky tour visitor. Go to his book tour page, enter your name, e-mail address, and this PIN, 4934, for your chance to win. Entries from this blog site will be accepted until 12:00 Noon (PT) tomorrow. No purchase is required to enter or to win. The winner (first name only) will be announced on his book tour page next week.

To learn more about the author and the book, visit his website at TheSecretKeeper.us.

Murder on the Cliffs

Joanna Challis lives and writes in a colonial house with wrap-around verandas and an English garden in Queensland, Australia, surrounded by family, old paintings, and anything fleur-de-lys. She is the author of several romantic suspense novels (Silverthorn was a finalist for the Romance Writers of Australia's 2004 Romantic Book of the Year) but has recently turned to mystery with Murder on the Cliffs, the first in a new series featuring a young Daphne du Maurier. She's currently on a blog tour and took the time to answer some questions.

IRTM:  You live in Queensland, Australia, and Murder on the Cliffs is set around Cornwall in the United Kingdom, which is pretty far apart, roughly 17,000 kilometers or 9,000 nautical miles. Did that make it difficult for you to pin down details about the setting and environs for the book?

JC:  It makes travel a necessity. I love Europe, its history and scenery so trips over there have always been part of my life.  If I can't travel, then I re-live it through journals, photos, books and the internet is an invaluable tool when one can't travel in person.

IRTM:  How did you get the idea of using a young 21-year-old Daphne du Maurier as a protagonist? Somehow, I'm guessing it wasn't the author's novella The Birds that inspired you, or you would have written a horror novel instead. Perhaps more Rebecca?

JC:  Rebecca exactly! It's my all-time favorite novel and combines those elements I love the most: history, mystery and a touch of romance. I love the setting too...an old mansion full of secrets by the sea...

IRTM:  Your previous novels were mostly in the romance vein, and in fact you were a finalist for the Romance Writers of Australia Ruby Award 2004 with your novel Silverthorn. Although Murder on the Cliffs has some romance included, it's branching off more into the romantic suspense line. Are you edging more towards the mystery genre these days in your writing?

JC:  Yes. Silverthorn had the history-romance-mystery mix, the Daphne du Maurier series will have the mystery-history-romance mix (stronger mystery theme). I am trying to keep the overall atmosphere like du Maurier portrayed in Rebecca and each of the Daphne mysteries will inspire her later novels. For the romance side, we have Daphne's love interest (her future husband in real life) featuring and progressing in each book.

IRTM:  Thus far, your books have all been historicals. Is this the subgenre you're most comfortable with, and are there any plans for switching back and forth with contemporary settings at some point?

JC:  I love historicals. All my favorite books are set in some kind of historical era, though I do enjoy modern mysteries too. As for contemporary settings, I am writing one book on the side, something that's been niggling at me for a few years. It's based on a true story--hopefully my agent can find a home for it one day.

IRTM:  Do you find there's more research involved with historical settings than you might otherwise have with contemporary plots? And as side note to that question, did you read a lot of biographical material on du Maurier in order to flesh out her character in your book?

JC:  There's definitely more research involved for any historical setting and even more so when using a real life person. I did a great deal of research with Daphne (there are so many differing accounts) that in the end I prefer to use her own words from her book Myself When Young. It shows the young Daphne up until the publication of her first book and marriage to her husband (that is the time period I am using with the Daphne mystery series).

IRTM:  The Australian and British (and American too) flavors of the English language can be quite different at times, with sentence construction, vocabulary, spellings, etc. Does it get a bit confusing at times when you're in the middle of putting the words down to keep the dialect consistent?

JC: Sometimes. I realized I turned in book #2 to my publisher with the English / Australian spelling and quickly changed it. As my heritage is Welsh, I grew up reading predominantly British authors and at school we used British textbook material. I believe my voice is more British-English as a result.

IRTM: You're working on the second book in the Daphne du Maurier series. Is there a release date for that and are there other installments lined up for the future?

JC: Peril at Somner House will come out in 2010. No official month yet but I suspect later in the year. Presently, I am upon the third Daphne mystery and if the series goes well, I have plenty more mysteries for Daphne to solve.

IRTM:  And last but not least, is vegemite really a food?

JC:  Vegemite is my friend. I take it with me when I travel...I think it's a food -- lots of salt and plenty of B vitamins. It's one of those things you grow up with and can never shake.

Joanna Challis is giving away a signed copy of her book, Murder on the Cliffs, to one blog tour visitor. Go to Joanna's book tour page, enter your name, e-mail address, and this PIN, 6931, for your chance to win. Entries from "In Reference to Murder" will be accepted until 12:00 Noon (PT) tomorrow. No purchase is required to enter or to win. The winner (first name only) will be announced on Joanna's book tour page next week.

An Early Halloween

Since stores now put up their Halloween displays around the Fourth of July, it's only fitting to feature an author who specializes in horror and paranormal suspense and has been nominated for a Bram Stoker award for best debut novel. Deborah Leblanc is also the president of the Horror Writers Association and active in the  Mystery Writers of America's Southwest Chapter and Sisters in Crime. In addition to being part of paranormal investigation teams, she's also own a funeral service business and is a licensed death scene investigator. I asked her a couple of quick questions about those items and her literacy program.

IRTM:  I understand you're a licensed death scene investigator, although that's not your primary living. What made you decide to get the license and what's involved in getting certified? Have you ever been called upon to use this experience outside of your books?

DL:  Curiosity and frustration caused me to look into death scene investigation. I've worked in the funeral service industry for a number of years now, primarily as a management consultant. When I first started, I had to earn my stripes by learning the trade from the ground up--no pun intended--in order to be accepted in that industry. Earning those stripes included assisting with removals, embalmings, casketing, cosmetizing and even schlepping flowers to gravesites. It took about two years before the industry finally recognized me as one of their own. But even after that 'trial by fire' period was over, I continued to help with the 'hands-on' duties whenever I can and still do today.

All that said, it was during that two year training period and doing removals that initially sparked my interest in death scene investigation. I'm overly curious by nature, so each time I helped remove a body from a homicide scene or one where the cause of death didn't appear clear-cut, a million questions raced through my mind. The 'who--what--when--where--how--and whys plagued me long after the body was embalmed. And so it went for five more years.

Then one day, as fate would have it, the Safety Director for the National Funeral Directors Assoc. , who also happened to be my mentor in the business and a priceless friend, handed me a brochure about a death scene investigation program that included licensure at a Georgia university. There was a prerequisite for licensure, however. The applicant had to have served in law enforcement for a minimum of ten years--or had to have worked in funeral service for at least seven years. Remember the fate I mentioned earlier? I had just finished my seventh year in funeral service, which made me eligible!

Before you could say CSI Miami, I signed up for the program and was soon elbow-deep in text books, lectures, and hands-on workshops that focused on blood spatter analysis, DNA testing, fingerprint analysis, profiling---it was Nirvana!

I've never been called upon to use this experience outside of writing, but it has served other purposes. It's allowed me 'behind the scenes', where I can question something I think has been overlooked, which occasionally has detectives looking in new, more productive directions to solve a case.

IRTM:  You also have worked in the funeral/mortician business? What types of
experiences has that involved, and how do those work their way into your
writing?

DL: Funeral service is a fascinating business to me, and I hold directors and embalmers (in many states they're one in the same) in high regard. It takes a special person to deal with death and the bereaved everyday and still maintain a positive outlook on life.

Being involved in this unique business has provided a treasure chest of experiences that would be invaluable to any storyteller.  Even if I lived to be a hundred, I'd never be able to pen enough novels to write about them all. From a writer's perspective, the best part about experiencing even the worst this death business has to offer is authenticity. It brings a ring of truth to my readers' ears.

When I write about a murder scene, you can bet all your bananas on the fact that you're reading the real deal. I'm recalling an actual murder scene I've witnessed--sights, sounds, smells. If a tale involves a shooting, not only can I give an accurate accounting of gunshot wounds and blood spatter, I know the weight and feel of the weapons used. I'm licensed to carry concealed, so I spend as much time as time allows on the firing range. Sometimes I target practice with a 9mm Glock, a 9mm Luger, and know all too well the rapid casing spray from an automatic M11.

If one of my stories takes you into an embalming room, chances are it'll read as if you're actually there--because I've actually  been there. You'll read secrets of the trade that few outsiders ever hear about.

I'm a stickler for details because my greatest desire is to have a reader truly experience my stories. I want him or her to feel as if they are standing right in the scene.

The same holds true when I write about paranormal experiences. You can bet most of what you're reading comes from a first- hand experience. I've been a paranormal investigator for over 15 years, and have found myself in some of the creepiest places on the globe.

I have to admit, though, that sometimes I can take this obsession for detail a tad too far. Like the time I had myself locked in a casket. I was writing GRAVE INTENT at the time, and since one of my main characters wound up locked and trapped in a casket--I HAD to know, instead of imagine, what that felt like. What were the movement limitations REALLY like inside a casket. What about the smell? Did ANY light filter through cracks? Did sound penetrate through a coffin? Yep, that adventure was a bit intimidating, to say the least--but it sure was a rush experiencing it!

IRTM: I'm very much interested in the organization you founded, Literacy, Inc., since I'm a firm believer in literacy for all ages. The Leblanc Literacy Challenge has cash incentives for reading--including this year a potential grand prize of a free college education--which involves reading some of your books and taking a quiz and writing an essay. Certainly, the scholarship and funds for the kids and their schools are a great idea, and I'm curious as to what response you've had thus far? Are you considering branching out and including other books in the future?

DL: The Literacy Challenge is now in its fourth year, and the program response has exceeded our wildest expectations. So you can witness the impact it's had first hand, I've included a few comments we've received from teachers, students and parents:  "The workshop was very enlightening to my students. It not only motivated them to read, but excited them about the challenge. I was thrilled by the way you were able to relate to the students, get on their level and share with them the boundless opportunities that await them if they only try." 

Deborah Leblanc's latest paranormal suspense novel is Water Witch. She's also currently writing a paranormal thriller for Harlequin Nocturne, part of a trilogy with Heather Graham and Alexandra Sokoloff.