In Reference to Murder

Author R&R with Mark Edward Langley

Mark Edward Langley was instilled with a love for the American West by his father. After many visits, his connection to the land and its people became irrevocable, but he was appalled at the way he saw Native Americans being treated. After spending almost thirty years working in the corporate world, he retired at the end of 2016 and began to focus on realizing his goal of becoming an author. He created a strong Navajo protagonist, a U.S. veteran who fights for his people and their land. Langley’s first novel, Path of the Dead, was released in August of 2018, and the follow-up, Death Waits in the Dark, was the recipient of the 2021 Gold Medal for Best Mystery of the Year in the Feathered Quill Book Awards.

Here's the description of the book:

In Death Waits in the Dark, as Arthur Nakai is attending the wake for a man he considered a brother while serving in the U.S. Marines, he receives a call from an old girlfriend whose sons have just been murdered. Feeling a deep and responsible obligation, Arthur investigates and soon finds himself embroiled in the multi-billion dollar world of oil and gas, coming face-to-face with an old adversary, Elias Dayton. Their paths crossed when Arthur was a member of the Shadow Wolves, an elite tactical unit within U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Now Dayton runs Patriot Security, a Blackwater clone that keeps the oil rigs, gas wells, and "man camps" secure from the Water Protectors, protesters pushing to stop the fracking and poisoning of Native lands.

While Arthur works through the case from his end, Navajo police chief Jake Bilagody tackles it from another angle, looking into the strained relationship between the oil company and the Navajo people, all while searching for a missing Navajo man who may have become an unwilling pawn on the reservation chess board. But when Arthur learns the identity of the boys' killer, he struggles to make sense of it—because if the clues are right, he will be forced to make a decision that will haunt him for the rest of his life.

Today, Mark stops by In Reference to Murder to take some Author R&R about writing and researching his novels:

 

I’ve been told by other authors that I do things a little bit backward. I start with a title, then create a story that fits it. Once I decide what the novel will be about, I begin by researching online anything that might fit the narrative. As with Death Waits in the Dark, I looked up everything I could about fracking because there are over 2,500 wells in the ninety-mile stretch of Highway 550 between Bloomfield, NM and Cuba, NM. I thought that would be a great backdrop for the story. Then, since I don’t live out there yet, I researched the pros and cons of it, followed by the native reactions given during meetings at local Chapter Houses to discuss the issue. I don’t like beating people over the head with viewpoints; I give all viewpoints and let the reader make up their own mind.

My reaction from the Navajo people concerning my writing is that they like the fact that I am bringing to light things that affect them on a daily basis—the alcoholism, the drugs, and poverty and the resulting and lingering affect the oil and gas industry is having on their beloved sacred land. With each book, I end up with a large four-inch binder of research to draw from. Since my stories represent life on and off the reservation, I have been lucky enough to develop a contact with the Navajo Nation Police Department, which is headquartered in Window Rock, AZ. They have been very helpful.

It wasn’t until researching my third book in the Arthur Nakai series, When Silence Screams, that my research began to affect me. The novel concerns itself with a fictional 19-year-old girl, April Manygoats, who was befriended by someone online with whom she arranged a meeting in Santa Fe. She was never heard from again. Then a 15-year-old girl goes missing, leaving behind nothing but her bicycle hidden under a bridge over an empty desert wash. To make matters even worse, a 22-year-old woman has been fished out of a power plant cooling lake on the reservation, missing something unthinkable.

Are the cases related? Or are they simply part of a bigger, more horrifying picture plaguing his beloved Dinétah? But—more importantly—will Arthur be able to piece together enough of the sadistic puzzle that will locate April . . . or is he already too late?

This story was sparked by the 5,712 missing and murdered indigenous girls and women who disappeared during 2016 alone on the reservations in the US and Canada. I listened to many interviews with family members, watched news reports, read stories, and printed out all of the fliers created during 2017 for the girls and women who were reported missing. My research then led me to the dark worlds of human trafficking, prostitution, and BDSM torture, all things I knew nothing about and wished to convey accurately.

As you can imagine, a great deal of time is spent plowing through anything that could be used in my novels. In fact, I am always collecting ideas for stories. I have an entire file drawer in my office filled with possible ideas. Since my subject matter is the land that I love, I feel a kinship with the people and the land itself, so my take on things is personal as far as where the stories take place, who is involved, and what the outcome will be.

To me, you can never have enough research. In fact, the next book I’m working on took me to a Zoom meeting with the Deputy Director of the New Mexico Livestock Board. I had emailed him explaining that I am a writer and was looking to develop a new series that would be built around some of their case files I had requested. He answered my initial questions and we set up a time to meet virtually. When I received the detailed case files, I read through them and began shaping how the story would play out and which characters would inhabit this particular world. The Deputy Director even invited me to take ride-a-longs with some of his inspectors so I could experience their daily duties first-hand. I am looking forward to that aspect.

Research is the backbone of your story; it's what drives your characters to do what they do and how they might react. I outline each chapter, but once I begin writing, the characters take over, and no matter how well I plan, they always lead me to a new level of dialogue, action, or outcome.

 

You can find out more about the author and his books via his website and follow him on Facebook, Twitter, and Bookbub. Death Waits in the Dark is now available via all major booksellers and Blackstone Publishing.

Author R&R with Patrick H. Moore

Patrick H. Moore is a Los Angeles based Private Investigator, Sentencing Mitigation Specialist, and crime writer. He has worked in virtually all areas including drug trafficking, sex crimes, crimes of violence, and white-collar fraud. Patrick holds a Master’s degree in English Literature from San Francisco State University where he graduated summa cum laude in 1990. Prior to moving to Los Angeles, he was lead vocalist and played rhythm guitar for Crash Carnival, a San Francisco rock ‘n roll band, and experienced the "naked lunch" of life on the streets for more than a decade. In February of 2013, Patrick started All Things Crime blog, a true crime and crime fiction website, which for several years was one of the most popular crime blogs in the U.S.

 

In 27 Days, Patrick's first traditionally published thriller, it's the spring of 2019 and veteran LA PI Nick Crane is on the run in the Pacific Northwest, pursued by a cabal of wealthy right-wing power brokers and domestic terrorists (the "Principals") led by Marguerite Ferguson and Desmond Cole. Things get worse when Nick’s close friend and business partner Bobby Moore is kidnapped by Marguerite and the Principals. Nick is then informed that he has twenty-seven days to surrender to Marguerite. If he does not turn himself in, Bobby will be sent to Scorpion prison in Egypt to be tortured and murdered, but if Nick surrenders, Bobby will be released. Help appears in the form of a young, idealistic female FBI agent named Carrie North who wants to arrest Marguerite for conspiring to commit domestic terrorist operations against the United States. Nick and Carrie join forces, and the race against time to rescue Bobby Moore begins.

 

Patrick stops by In Reference to Murder to talk about his work and writing:

 

The Making of 27 Days

by Patrick H. Moore

It is of course a curious thing that writers are able to take the wisp or thread of an idea and turn it into a full-length novel. I imagine every writer has his or her own distinctive method of moving from start to finish. In the case of 27 Days, my new Nick Crane thriller, I combined my own “lived history” with knowledge I accrued working as a Sentencing Mitigation Specialist for a PI firm in Los Angeles for the last 19+ years.

My Lived History

During my formative years, I spent a great deal of time roaming around the hardscrabble streets of California. This period of “in person” research was instrumental in giving me many of the necessary tools to write thrillers and crime fiction.

What did I learn on the streets? First, I learned that the world is full of colorful, eccentric characters––the sort of folks who do not appear in polite sit-coms or attend PTA meetings. I learned that many of these characters have utter disrespect for law enforcement and little respect for the ordinary mores of middle-class society. At the personal level, I learned that the cops are often not to be trusted. I also developed a great love for the vernacular of the streets.

At the age of 30, I made the decision to go to college. I had always wanted to be a writer, and while in college I wrote a couple of decent books including the memoirs of a PTSD Vietnam veteran named Warren Larry Foster. Warren became the inspiration for Bobby Moore, my protagonist Nick’s Crane’s sidekick and loyal friend. I met Warren in 1982 in an English class at Foothill Community College in tony Los Altos, CA. There he was, a big, tough muscular badass wearing shorts and a pink prosthesis on his right leg, which had been amputated just below the knee due to a war wound. Looking like he chewed nails for breakfast, Warren stood out like a sore thumb.

I was scared, I kid you not. Imagine my surprise when Big Warren insisted that we become pals. I got to know him and within a year I was writing his Vietnam memoirs. Based on the strength of this work, I landed an East Coast agent who shopped our book around New York unsuccessfully for the next two years.

My Legal Work and Education in Criminal Matters

Fast forward 20 years. In 2003, I moved from the Bay Area to Los Angeles to take a job as an investigator and sentencing mitigation specialist at a small LA firm. Here, on the job, I met scores of serious and accidental criminals of all stripes. As a sentencing mitigation guy, I learned the Law at both the state and federal level as it pertains to criminal matters. Over the last 19 years I’ve personally handled literally hundreds of federal criminal cases ranging from fraud to drug offenses to sex crimes. In the course of my LA education, I’ve learned that there are dirty cops everywhere and that the best thing a person can do is to simply give them a wide berth. Yet, I’ve also learned that at the individual level, most cops are good guys. I’ve represented plenty of them (after they’ve taken a fall, of course).

One of the most important things I’ve learned is how wicked and violent this world can be. One of my early cases was representing a dude facing serious federal charges for smuggling heroin into a state prison. As part of my workup, I interviewed him extensively at the Metropolitan Detention Center in downtown Los Angeles. I learned his mother was a raging alcoholic and his father was a most cruel junky. I learned the local cops shot and killed his older brother after a ruckus at a house party. All of this was fascinating, but perhaps the single most interesting tidbit was this: One day when he was about 17, he and his homies got loaded on PCP and went out shooting. Shooting, you say? Yes, shooting, but not at a gunnery range. Rather, they grabbed a couple of handguns and went driving around town firing randomly into other vehicles and at passing strangers. According to my client, they shot at 18 different groups of people that afternoon. Damn, that’s a lot of lead flying around town!

27 Days

This brings us to my current novel, 27 Days, which is a political thriller in which my protagonist Nick Crane is locked in a life and death struggle with “the principals,” an alt-right group of domestic terrorists. 27 Days is part of a series. Its prequel, Rogues and Patriots, will probably be published in sometime in 2024. I chose this basic set-up because I found it intriguing and highly relevant to our world.

In planning 27 Days, I made two important decisions. First, I decided to put my protagonist Nick Crane in a truly impossible situation. His partner Bobby Moore has been kidnapped by Marguerite Ferguson, a fiendish member of “the principals” who despises Nick. He is given 27 days to turn himself into Marguerite, who will then torture him as a prelude to execution. If he doesn’t surrender, Bobby Moore will be sent to the infamous Scorpion Prison in Cairo, Egypt, to be tortured and murdered. It is the devil’s own choice.

This led me to my second decision. Nick knows he needs help. He joins forces with an idealistic young FBI agent named Carrie North who is obsessed with bringing the evil Marguerite to justice. Thus, we have a sincere young FBI agent, who naturally tends to do things “by the book,” locked in uneasy alliance with Mr. Crane, who does virtually nothing “by the book.” Yet they need each other and learn, at first grudgingly, to work together. Over the course of a few short and desperate weeks, they learn to respect and even like one another.

In Conclusion

To conclude, 27 Days was made possible by my early years on the mean streets of America, my 19 years of working in criminal defense in Los Angeles, my belief that the alt-right poses a clear and present danger to the United States, and my decision to put my protagonist in such a treacherous position that he has no choice other than to make common cause with a certain progressive faction within the FBI.

 

You can learn more about Patrick Moore and his books via Down & Out Books, and follow him on Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads, and the All Things Crime blog. 27 Days is available today via Down & Out Books and all major booksellers.

 

Author R&R with Tessa Wegert

Tessa Wegert is a journalist and former digital media strategist. Her business and marketing articles have appeared in such publications as Forbes, The Huffington Post, Adweek, and The Economist. She grew up in Quebec near the border of Vermont and now lives with her husband and children in Coastal Connecticut, where she writes while studying martial arts and dance. Tessa is also the author of the Shana Merchant series of mysteries, beginning with Death in the Family. The latest installment in that series is The Kind to Kill. 

In The Kind to Kill, a missing tourist spells trouble for former NYPD detective Shana Merchant, who is now a skilled Senior Investigator keeping New York's beautiful Thousands Islands community safe. As she investigates the disappearance, the case threatens to destroy not just the annual Pirate Days celebration but what remains of Shana's reputation, revealing secrets she's tried to keep hidden.

Tessa stops by In Reference to Murder for a little Author R&R about the book:

 

True Crime in Fiction: A Killer in the Family

In recent years, we’ve seen a pretty sizeable uptick in thrillers with true crime themes. Chalk it up to North America’s true crime podcast obsession, the glut of new docuseries available on Netflix, or cyclical trends—whatever its origins true crime is booming, and weaving it into crime fiction makes perfect sense.

There’s a true crime connection with The Kind to Kill, my latest thriller, too. In the book, New York State Police Senior Investigator Shana Merchant’s secret is finally out: she’s related to a notorious serial killer, and the man she’s been hunting for years was once her closest friend. I did a lot of research on true crime while writing—you’ll see local journalist Jared Cunningham mention a few real-life cases in his conversations with Shana—but this is a book that looks at true crime through a different lens. Instead of solely focusing on the victim and killer, it also explores the killer’s family.

When the news gets out that Shana has blood ties to Blake Bram, she quickly becomes a pariah. Even members of her own family, who are related to Bram too, opt to shut her out. Exploring true crime from the point of view of the killer’s family fascinated me, and Shana provided the perfect entry point for this analysis. What would it feel like to discover a relative had committed a brutal crime? How would that revelation affect someone who was duty-bound to uphold the law? These were the questions I wanted to address. In the end, it didn’t surprise me that Shana’s struggle to accept the truth and reconcile it with her profession and deep-seated desire to protect others became the heart of this story about resentment, redemption, and the darkest family secrets of all.

 

You can find out more about Tessa and her books via her website and follow her on Facebook and Twitter. The Kind to Kill is available in ebook and print formats from Severn House and all major booksellers.

Author R&R with Gregor Pratt

Greg "Gregor" Pratt is a former Ohio attorney who retired after 40 years of general practice focused on litigation in the Cincinnati area. But he always wanted to be a fiction writer, and with the winding down of the practice of law, found time over the last several years to write his first novel, Ebola Island, drawing on his experience as a trial lawyer. Ebola Island is the first in a series featuring class action lawyer, Jack Gamble, who is thrust into the middle of a pandemic on an island with a cast of dynamic characters who must grow to trust each other in their dire circumstances if they want to survive.

Pratt's second novel in that series is Dragon's Eye, in which Jack's wife Maddy, a teacher, goes missing. The police think Maddy has run off with one of her students even though there are no clues—she’s simply vanished. When the police and other agents of the New Zealand government begin to pull back the veil on hidden evidence, Jack and friends embark on a harrowing journey to rescue Maddy from the grips of the Chinese government. But how do private citizens challenge an overreaching totalitarian government with limitless resources and connections?

Greg stops by In Reference to Murder to talk about writing and researching the novel:

 

Each author and each novel are different. Like most authors my very first novel is still in a box under my desk. It needs so much work! Researching it was great fun and I mention it because the research process was so much different than my later novels.

Since most of my first took place in Newport, Kentucky, which was close to my home at the time I was able to go there and see the streets and some of the buildings for myself. Of course that meant I had to separate out the new buildings. Focus was on the buildings that were there in the 1960s when the Kennedy Justice Department investigated Newport, which had been a vice hot spot since the Civil War. But buildings and streets are just a start. What was life like? I read a number of books about Newport in those days. One that I remember is Razzle Dazzle, which described the lives of people back then and how the legal operations were used to mask the illegal ones. Razzle Dazzle was a dice game where the player often appeared about to make a big win and somehow they never did. I was lucky to have an acquaintance whose father had been quite the gambler. He played cards regularly with a character named Sleep Out Louie, who got his nickname because he would sleep out a few hands in his chair while the game went on around me. The shared stories were invaluable. For instance Louie and my friend’s father would play gin for stakes so high that major league baseball players who were in town would come by to watch the action. They would keep score but would not play. And one of my brothers in law had an ancestor who was a member of “the mob” in Newport. The real life touches of those “true” stories helped give feeling to those chapters of the book and helped define the characters and their interactions.

On my second and third books which were actually published I was not so well placed geographically. Ebola Island (2019) takes place largely in Madagascar and Dragon’s Eye (2022) takes place in New Zealand and Vanuatu. Not only does my budget not allow travel to far away places like that , when I was writing Dragon’s Eye New Zealand was not admitting visitors due to COVID. So I had to come up with other methods to develop the background for my stories.

Ebola Island is a pandemic novel and as you have likely guessed the island reference is to Madagascar. The conditions of the people the island in my novel are wholly a product of my imagination: the physical attributes of the island itself I gleaned or tried to from Google Earth and online research. What routes would my characters travel? What is the terrain like? What landmarks would they see or cross? How far could they be expected to travel in a day/how many days would an overland journey take? What were the flora and fauna like? What creatures inhabit those lands? How available is water? What does the countryside look like if viewed from a mountain’s edge? These are all items I want to represent as accurately as possible. From Google Earth I could travel visually across the island from one identifiable place to another and the terrain changed as the journey went on just like it would if we were really traversing the island. Flora, fauna, creatures and water were all subject to research. Before I started writing I purchased several books on Madagascar , read them and went back to them for reference while writing. In that fashion the big issues were largely correctly represented and hopefully realistic with some specific areas crafted to fit the story. This is fiction after all.

The locale for Dragon’s Eye was predetermined at the end of Ebola Island when Jack announced that after he and Maddy married they were going to New Zealand. In 2019 I was hoping to go to New Zealand, research locations and specifics and then start writing. And I planned to do a little sightseeing and some fly fishing while there.

That didn’t exactly work out. Ebola Island is a pandemic novel published just weeks before we heard of COVID for the first time. And I am proud to say I got a number of things right in that scenario. And some not, for instance I did not anticipate face masks. And I definitely did not anticipate New Zealand being essentially closed to visitors. So here using Google Earth again I visited Nelson, New Zealand remotely and I was able to identify Jack and Maddy’s house, the school their children would attend and walking routes to get there as well as many other physical attributes that played into my novel. I find the satellite view most helpful.

Other facts needed research. For instance, how long does it take to fly a small plane from Tauranga, New Zealand to Port Vila, Vanuatu,? Is there an airport there? What is the name of the airfield in Port Vila and what is its condition? What are the politics, economy, population of Vanuatu? What nations are they friendly with? Are there any ongoing international issues? For issues like that I prefer to start with the CIA World Factbook or just World Factbook sites for each country. These sites are very comprehensive and are attributed to the CIA. They are readily accessible online. By way of example the World Factbook site for New Zealand has twelve sections identified covering such things as Geography, People and Society, Energy, Military and Security. It is often a good place to start to get to know a new and remote area. And it can even spark additional issues or twists and turns for your novel or perhaps just accurate historical references to give your work more gravitas. That type of site will give you ideas on what to explore in more detail. It can help you spell place names correctly and alert you to historic and cultural issues. And best of all, it fits right in our budget.

 

You can learn more about Greg and his writing via his website and follow him on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. You can find the ebook version of Dragon's Eye via Amazon's Kindle Unlimited, with print versions available via most major booksellers.

Author R&R with Penny Goetjen

Award-winning author Penny Goetjen writes murder mysteries where the milieus play as prominent a role as the engaging characters. A self-proclaimed eccentric known for writing late into the night, transfixed by the allure of flickering candlelight, Goetjen embraces the writing process, unaware what will confront her at the next turn. Fascinated with the paranormal, she usually weaves a subtle, unexpected twist into her stories. After writing a three book mystery series set on the coast of Maine and two books set in the Caribbean islands, her latest crime novel, The Woman Underwater, is set in her home state of Connecticut.

The Woman Underwater centers on Victoria Sands, whose husband disappeared without a trace seven years ago. In the years since, no witnesses have stepped forward and no credible evidence has been collected, not even his car. The few tenuous leads the police had are now ice cold. He simply vanished on a field trip with the private boarding school where he taught behind stone walls, the same school their son now attends. But someone has to know what happened. And that someone may be closer to Victoria than she realizes.

Penny stops by In Reference to Murder to talk about writing and researching her books:

 

What goes on before a writer sets pen to paper or fingertips to a keyboard?

Research is a malleable term. Writers each have their own definition of what that means to them in their work.

Honestly, I don’t spend a lot of time researching my novels before I sit down at my laptop to launch into a new manuscript. I write about locations I know intimately and have already fallen in love with, so there’s not much to research about the setting. But situations come up as I delve into each story that do require further investigation.

My most recent release, The Woman Underwater, a contemporary suspense set in New England, features a tension-filled helicopter scene. I didn’t know much about whirlybirds before I got to that development in the story, so I Googled certain parts of the craft and what the inside of helicopters looks like. Fortunately, I was writing from a laywoman’s perspective so she didn’t have to know technical terms, but I needed an understanding of what she would be seeing and experiencing. Once I was finished writing the chapter I ran it by a friend of mine, an airline pilot and former helicopter pilot, to test its validity. With only a single word tweaked, it sailed through with his nod.

In the second book in my Olivia Benning Series, Over the Edge ~ Murder Returns to the Caribbean, I needed to understand how the currents ran along Peterborg Peninsula on St. Thomas in the U.S.V.I.—particularly if “something” was dropped into the water on the bayside versus the oceanside of the peninsula. So, I reached out to a friend who is a seasoned captain there. He was very helpful, providing maps and regaling stories about how dangerous it can be on the point and the fate of the unfortunate who have stood in the wrong spot on the rocks at the wrong time.

In the third book of my coastal Maine mysteries, Murder Returns to the Precipice, I needed to get into the background of a certain coin that plays a key role in the story. What is referred to as the 1933 Double Eagle had an abbreviated stint in circulation when President Franklin D. Roosevelt recalled all gold, in an attempt to end the bank crisis of the 1930s. The few coins that were not returned soared in value but were deemed illegal to possess. I found it fascinating digging into this unique coin’s history, often uncovering varying versions of the story.

So for me, research isn’t visiting the local library or reading tombs of historical or technical information before I start a rough draft. Most of what I use is what I’ve experienced living or visiting in colorful locales. As the story develops, however, and as the need arises, I turn to Google or an expert in a particular field.

You can learn more about Penny Goetjen and her books via her website and also follow her on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Goodreads. The Woman Underwater is now available via all major booksellers.

Author R&R with Lisa Sherman

Lisa Sherman's love of words led her to pursue a BA in English Literature as an undergraduate. Her interest in jurisprudence led her to law school, where she attained her Juris Doctor degree. Later, Lisa rounded out her love of writing by obtaining an MFA in Writing Popular Fiction at Seton Hill University and became a book reviewer for Windy City Reviews through the Chicago Writers Association. Her debut novel, Forget Me, was released in August.

Forget Me follows Wandy Dellas, who feels void of an identity after she was robbed of her memory in a mysterious accident. But things change when Wanda learns about a missing woman who looks all too familiar. She can't help but wonder if this case might hold answers to her past. The closer she gets to the truth, the closer danger gets to her and her young daughter, leaving her to question whether some memories are best left forgotten.

Lisa stops by In Reference to Murder to discuss writing the book:

 

THE ROMANCE NOVEL THAT WANTED TO BE A THRILLER...

When I first began drafting what would become my debut novel, Forget Me, I set out to write a romance novel. I sat in front of my computer screen as thoughts of "meet cutes" and happily ever after endings buzzed through my mind. And just like the title of the classic song by Dorothy Fields and Jimmy McHugh, I was "in the mood for love." Romance would be my guide.  

Regardless of the type of book an author is writing, all novels have certain elements that lead them to fall into a particular genre. Essentially, every genre comes with things readers want to see happen in the novels they choose to read. This is also known as reader expectations. For example, readers who choose a historical fiction novel are looking for a story in which the characters are living in an earlier time period. These readers are hoping to immerse themselves in the details that make up the flavor of that era. Details like the fashions of the day, the popular cuisine, and the inherent battles of that century. Given those expectations, a reader would likely feel dissatisfied if they discovered the book they thought was traditional historical fiction took place in outer space.

While keeping the parameters of genre expectations in mind, I pecked away at my computer keyboard for months, trying to add the elements of a romance novel to my story. I knew exactly how I wanted the narrative to play out: who would fall in love with whom, and how, and why, as well as what obstacles my heroine and hero would face on their way to true love. Their journeys were tattooed upon my heart.

But as I worked my way through the draft, strange things started to happen. My beloved characters tapped me on the shoulder and instead of whispering sweet nothings in my ear, they spoke to me of crime and mayhem. I dismissed their musings, pushed those plot threads out of my mind, and reassured myself there was an easy explanation for these shenanigans. I’m an attorney. Of course I’m going to view things through a legal lens. Satisfied with this explanation, I forged ahead on a path to at least a "happy for now" ending to my story.

But my characters were not satisfied. They voiced their complaints louder. Much to my shock and dismay, one of them even tossed around the idea of murder! It was time for me to listen.

So, I saved my work in progress and created a fresh, new document on my computer. I began writing a book with twists and turns, mind teasers, a puzzle, a mystery…and murder. By the time I finished my first draft, I knew my desire to write a romance novel was destined to go unrequited. And in the same way romance novels often play out, the one" I thought was "meant to be" wasn’t the one at all. Instead, my story met the elements of a novel I hadn’t planned on writing. Yet it landed in a genre I’ve fallen in love with nonetheless…a psychological thriller.

 
You can learn more about Lisa Sherman and her writing via her website and also follow her on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Forget Me is available through the publisher, Speaking Volumes, and via all major booksellers.

Author R&R with J.L. Abramo

One might say that J. L. Abramo's crime-writing career began the day he was born in Brooklyn on Raymond Chandler’s fifty-ninth birthday. Abramo later earned a BA in Sociology at the City College of New York and a Masters Degree in Social Psychology at the University of Cincinnati and is a long-time educator, arts journalist, film and stage actor, and theater director. He is the author of Catching Water in a Net, a winner of the St. Martin’s Press/Private Eye Writers of America Award for Best First Private Eye Novel, and the subsequent Jake Diamond private eye mysteries Clutching at Straws, Counting to Infinity, and Circling the Runway. The latter won the Shamus Award for Best Original Paperback Novel of 2015 by the Private Eye Writers of America. 

 

His first full-length work of nonfiction is Homeland Insecurity: The Birth of an Era of Unrest in America. The book takes a look at the post-World War II American experience leading up to three murders in 1957, and the profound changes to come after the hits and misses of the law enforcement agencies and legal institutions which—over the course of nearly five decades—eventually stumbled upon justice.

 

Abramo stops by In Reference to Murder today to talk about researching and writing this true-crime tale:

 

On January 30, 2003, an article in a daily newspaper caught my eye. The piece reported the arrest of a 69-year-old man at his home just miles from where I lived at the time in Columbia, South Carolina. Ten years earlier, in a box of used books purchased at a yard sale, I came across a book by a prison inmate—written while he awaited execution. Those two discoveries stimulated my interest and imagination, and subsequent investigations have led me here.

Homeland Insecurity tells the story of two men accused of taking the lives of three fellow human beings:  a fifteen-year-old schoolgirl in Mahwah, New Jersey, and two young police officers in El Segundo, California. Two killers born 8 days apart in 1934; two men who died 57 days apart in 2017; crimes committed 140 days apart in 1957 at a time when Americans were beginning to feel less and less confident about the safety of their families. One convicted murderer spent nearly fifteen years on death row at New Jersey State Prison in Trenton—where he continually professed his innocence. The other perpetrator escaped identification for more than 45 years.

At the same time, Homeland Insecurity is an account of the hits and misses of the law enforcement agencies and legal institutions which—over the course of nearly five decades—eventually stumbled upon justice. Finally, it is a look at the post-World War II American experience leading up to the murders in 1957, and the profound changes to come after. When rock & roll, Rebel Without a Cause, and Catcher in the Rye burst upon the American scene. When the fear of nuclear annihilation and real-life scary monsters crept into the national consciousness. And when those three murders in 1957, and a growing sense of national insecurity, may have had mutual effect.

 

 

 

In researching the murder of Victoria Zielinski in March of 1957, I ran into a number of roadblocks. My interest was originally stimulated by the 1968 book, Brief Against Death, written by eleventh-year death row inmate, Edgar Smith. The book described the crime, his arrest, arraignment, indictment, trial, and conviction—posing questions about the jury’s guilty verdict—and gained Smith a powerful advocate, William F. Buckley Jr.

 

 

Research on the crime and its immediate aftermath relied heavily on Smith’s accounts (taken with a grain of salt and held up to scrutiny by other sources), media and police reports from the time of the murder, and on trial transcripts.

It wasn’t until after Smith’s discharge from prison after nearly fifteen years that he wrote a follow-up book, Getting Out, describing subsequent events—and the many appeals to state and federal courts, and to the Supreme Court—which ultimately led to his freedom in 1972. It took me quite some time to locate a copy of Getting Out, and much longer to learn of Smith’s fate after his release.

I navigated around that roadblock by writing to William F. Buckley in 1995. Buckley graciously responded to my inquiry with a somewhat shocking update on Edgar Smith—he was back in prison, this time in California.

 

 

It was another five years until I discovered the whereabouts of Edgar Smith, with the help of an attorney acquaintance in California.  I wrote Smith a letter in 2000. He kindly replied—but apologized for not agreeing to meet me for an interview.

 

 

After his numerous appeals for parole were denied, Edgar Smith passed away in 1971 at the age of 83—after spending all but four of his final 60 years behind prison walls.

 

You can catch a book trailer for Homeland Security here, learn more about J.L. Abramo and his books via his website, and follow him on Facebook and Twitter. Homeland Insecurity is now available via Down & Out Books and can be ordered from all major bookstores.

Author R&R with Brian Lebeau

Brian Lebeau was born in Fall River, Massachusetts, home of the infamous Lizzie Borden. After being awarded an "A" in high school English once and denied a career in music for "lack of talent" repeatedly, he taught economics at several colleges and universities in Massachusetts and Rhode Island before moving to Fauquier County, Virginia, to work as a defense contractor for two decades. In his debut psychological thriller, A Disturbing Nature, Mr. Lebeau merges three key interests: a keen fascination with everything World War II, a morbid curiosity surrounding the motivations and mayhem of notorious serial killers, and a lifelong obsession with the Red Sox. 

A Disturbing Nature is set in the summer of 1975, when FBI investigator Francis Palmer believes that after the Vietnam War ended, so did his troubles. But the serial killer who strikes a southern New England town is like nothing he's ever seen. Mo Lumen—a young man perpetually stuck with the mental and emotional capacity of an 11-year-old due to a childhood accident—is the main suspect. Abandoned by the Great Society and sheltered from the counter-cultural revolution, he'd been forced to leave Virginia under the shadow of secrets and accusations. But as Palmer digs deeper, their intertwining lives blur the lines between fact and conjecture, truth and justice, man and monster. In war, you can identify your enemy. At home, it could be anyone.

Sitting down with In Reference to Murder for a little Author R&R (Reference and Research), Brian discusses the challenges and unique aspects of conducting research for a psychological thriller about a fictional serial killer from nearly fifty years ago.

 

My novel, A Disturbing Nature, is a psychological thriller in the strictest sense—with questions swirling around, and inside the minds of, a mysterious young man who arrives in Rhode Island just before the killing begins, raising suspicion that he may be the predator lurking in the woods, and an equally enigmatic FBI Chief Investigator tasked with hunting the monster down. While the primary storyline concerns a serial killer, and many significant serial killers from that time (called mass murderers before 1980) are referenced, the mystery unfolds with reduced emphasis on graphic violence and explicit sex, relying more on the resultant trauma. Yes, the story involves sexual themes, and, yes, there are violent crimes committed, but these unfold in such a way as to explore the psychological impact on the chief investigator and the newly arrived young man as they are drawn irresistibly together, though neither fully understands why.

The central theme concerns the thin line between man and monster, so I focused primarily on the psychological profiles of the hunter and hunted and the evolution of their thought processes as they react to distractions and disturbances. In addition to a long-time interest in true-crime documentaries, I leveraged heart-to-heart discussions with family and friends throughout my years as a professor of economics, a defense contractor, and CEO of a mid-sized firm. I also spent a great deal of time researching psychological profiling from the early-to-mid 1970s, as well as modern psychological studies. Combining all this with deep introspection into the darkest recesses of my own mind, I was able to develop a cast of fictional characters that couldn't be further apart intellectually, socially, or professionally. This afforded me an opportunity to explore the human psyche at the extremes and all the space in between. The result is a mystery with very realistic characters—individuals that could be living next door in your rural community, urban high rise, or even college townhouse. Compelling the audience to witness the transformation of a character's thoughts is intentional, evoking empathy and inviting the reader to speculate how similar circumstances in their past might have altered their mindset and motivations—the hallmark of a psychological thriller—because the scariest monsters usually hide in our own closets. 

Historical accuracy is paramount in a period piece. Having A Disturbing Nature unfold in late summer and early fall 1975 created several challenges, including: weaving in significant social, political and cultural events, infamous serial killer investigations, accurate weather, and sports-related history. Fortunately, gathering historical information today is much easier than back in 1975, so my team and I allocated countless hours to online research, scouring websites like farmersalmanac.com, baseball-reference.com, and vault.fbi.gov, among many others. There's no doubt that online information is an author's first source of data, though the information can vary a great deal, so verifying through multiple sources, when possible, is required. 

But online information only provides statistics and landmark references. It does not provide the ambience, flavor or authenticity associated with actually experiencing the locations and extrapolating backwards to the past either through experience or second-hand knowledge. I was eleven when the Red Sox and Reds battled in the 1975 World Series and saw the world through the eyes of an idealistic youth teetering on the edge of puberty. Raised in Fall River, where Massachusetts nestles along the Rhode Island border, I lived in several locations between my hometown and Worcester, Massachusetts while attending graduate school in my mid-twenties, so I'm very familiar with the geography, even back to that time. Additionally, I taught at Bryant College, now Bryant University, in Smithfield, Rhode Island—a key setting in A Disturbing Nature. Using old family photographs and a historical postcard collection of the area allowed me to put together a strong overall picture of central Rhode Island and southeastern Massachusetts at that time. 

In the novel, A primary location for flashbacks and memories is Fauquier County, Virginia, where I lived for a dozen years while working in the D.C. area. During that time, I engaged in the small, rural community by managing youth baseball, coaching grade school basketball and joining civic organizations. I got to know the people—their joys, sorrows, and fears—and I visited the places—from the beauty of the countryside vistas to the hardship of natural disasters—experiencing perfect summer days and blessed fall foliage, along with historic snowstorms and a flood of biblical proportions. Along the way, I uncovered some of the past in the hallowed battlefields, haunted meadows, and historic town centers, finding, as with any community, if you scratch the surface, you'll unearth dirt (maybe red clay) as anywhere else. In truth, Fauquier County is a wonderful place to live and raise a family, an almost idyllic environment that compels one to wonder what well-kept secrets are masked in the landscape and what proverbial sins are washed away by the waters of the Rappahannock River.

Armed with history, geography, and first-hand experience, I dusted off a shoebox full of memories and self-medicated with an appropriate dose of cynicism before finally sitting down to write A Disturbing Nature. After selling my interest in a company to enjoy an early, if premature, retirement, I assembled a small team under the label "Tangent Inspired Stories" to assist with story layout, research, and editing. Now, a little more than four years later, we have nearly a dozen novels in the works, and we expect to release two per year starting in 2023. Our four-person Tangent team has been together from the company's inception, and has made a number of research trips for A Disturbing Nature, its sequels, and future novels. Destinations have included: China, Australia, Belize, Guatemala, much of New England, Virginia, Seattle, Salt Lake City, Philadelphia, and New Orleans.

While the countless hours of online research and extensive travel are crucial to make a story accurate and plausible, nothing enables a writer to transport the reader quite like personal experience. Specifically, for A Disturbing Nature, I found tapping into childhood memories and emotions through the disenchanted eyes of an adult proved both challenging and cathartic. But writing in the psychological thriller genre demands a heightened awareness of one's own psyche via extensive internalized research and introspection. For, only when we become familiar with the beast inside ourselves, do we have less to fear from the demons that haunt us.

 

To find out more about Brian Lebeau, you can visit his website and follow him on Facebook, Instagram, and Goodreads. A Disturbing Nature is available via Books Fluent and can be purchased through Amazon in print, eBook, and audio formats, or directly from brianlebeauwriter.com.

Author R&R with Charles Salzberg

Charles Salzberg has been a Visiting Professor at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University, and has taught writing at Sarah Lawrence College, Hunter College, the Writer's Voice, and the New York Writers Workshop, where he is a Founding Member. His freelance work has appeared in such publications as Esquire, New York Magazine, GQ, Elle, Redbook, Ladies Home Journal, The New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times Book Review. He's also the author of the Henry Swann detective series: Swann Dives In; Swann's Last Song, which was nominated for a Shamus Award for Best First PI Novel; and Swann's Lake of Despair.

In his latest book, Canary in the Coal Mine, PI Pete Fortunato works out of a friend’s real estate office after spending a mysteriously short, forgettable stint as a cop in a small upstate New York town. He lives from paycheck to paycheck, so when a beautiful woman wants to hire him to find her husband, he doesn’t hesitate to say yes.

Within a day, Fortunato finds the husband in the apartment of his client’s young, stud lover—shot once in the head, case closed. But when his client’s check bounces and Albanian gangsters kidnap him in hopes he’ll lead them to a large sum of money the dead man allegedly stole, he begins to realize he’s been set up to take the fall for the murder and theft. In an attempt to get himself out of a jam, Fortunato winds up on a wild ride that takes him down to Texas where he searches for his client’s lover who he suspects has the money and holds the key to solving the murder.

Charles Salzberg stopped by In Reference to Murder to take some Author R&R about researching and writing the book:

 

Researching: My Dirty, Little Secret

Years ago, I became friends with a guy I met when we worked the two lowest jobs at New York magazine. I was in the mailroom; he worked the photostat machine. Both aspiring writers, we quickly bonded and formed a writer’s group. A year or two later, his first novel was picked up by a prestigious publisher and he was, understandably, over-the-moon.

In his novel, which takes place in Alabama where he grew up in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s, he mentions blue mailboxes. One day, he gets a call from the copyeditor informing him that during that era all mailboxes around Mobile were grey. They asked him to change it.

It seemed silly to me at the time. It’s fiction, right? So, what difference does it make if the mailboxes in his novel are blue or grey or polka-dot?

Over the years, as I began to get my own novels published, I realized it wasn’t silly at all. Facts do matter, even in fiction and there’s a practical reason why they do. What writer hasn’t received an email from a reader that goes something like, “I read your book and loved it, but on page 137 you said that 88^th Street runs east but it really runs west...”

That’s not the only reason accuracy is important. If readers can’t rely on the author to get facts right, it renders the whole work suspect.

Case in point. Bob Dylan’s memoir, Chronicles. On the first page, Dylan writes, “…then down to Jack Dempsey’s restaurant on 58^th and Broadway…” Only Dempsey’s wasn’t on 58^th Street, it was on Broadway between 49^th and 50^th streets (I used to pass it every day one summer when I worked as a messenger in the Garment District). If Dylan and his editors can’t get this fact right, how can we trust anything Dylan writes?

This is one reason why doing research, even when it comes to fiction, is essential.

Back when I was making a living as a magazine journalist, I developed my own approach to research. The temptation, especially when starting out, is to research the heck out of everything. But I soon learned there’s a risk with over-researching. The result can be that you get so bogged down in research that when it comes time to write the article, you’re overwhelmed to the point of freezing up, not knowing how you’re going to squeeze everything into your 2,000-word limit. So, you quickly learn to limit the amount of research you do.

I found the less research I did the better interviewer I became. If I knew too much about a subject going into the interview, I ran the risk of not asking the right questions, because I already knew the answers. Instead, I’d keep asking questions until I reached the point where I could successfully channel that information into prose my readers could understand.

I have friends who do just the opposite. They’re more comfortable doing heavy research. Their argument, and it’s a valid one, is that the more they know the less likely they’ll “miss” something important to ask. There’s no right or wrong, but rather it’s a matter of style.

When it comes to fiction, the goal is to create a world that makes sense, while at the same time keeping readers turning pages to find out what’s going to happen next. The last thing you want is readers getting stuck on that “fact” that’s not true, like where Jack Dempsey’s restaurant really was.

And so, if you’re wise, you’re obliged to get the facts right. In Canary in the Coal Mine, for instance, Pete Fortunato, a down and out PI, runs afoul of the mob. I needed to find a group that was especially violent and ruthless. The only way to do that was to research, which ultimately led me to the Albanian mob, a group so violent and unpredictable that even the Mafia won’t deal with them.

Fortunato suffers from anger management issues and insomnia (not a good combination). So, I had to research anger management groups to see the kinds of exercises he would have been put through. I also quizzed friends who suffer from insomnia to find out what that’s like.

For me, research often has to do with geography. I like writing about places I’ve never been—so Wikipedia, Google and Google maps come in very handy. My first crime novel, Swann’s Last Song, was written before the Internet was around. I wanted parts of the novel to take place in Los Angeles, the wilds of Mexico and Berlin. Only trouble was, I’d never been to any of those places. So, I interviewed friends who’d been there. I pored over maps. I read magazine articles. And then I sat down and plunked Swann into those places.

My best friend, who’d actually been to L.A. read the manuscript and asked, “When were you in L.A.?” “Never,” I replied. “Then how did you capture it so well?” Easy. Research. And after the book came out, I was invited to a small book club. One of the women, who was from Mexico, said to me, “you really got the Mexico part so well. When were you there?” She was surprised when my answer was, “Never.” And I can thank the research I did for that.

Oh, in case you’re wondering, I did absolutely no research for this essay.

 

You can learn more about Charles Salzberg at his website and follow him on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Canary in the Coal Mine is now available via Down & Out Books and is available in digital and paperback formats in all major online and brick-and-mortar bookstores.

Author R&R with Kim Hays

Kim Hays is a dual citizen (Swiss/American) who has made her home in Bern since she married a Swiss. Before that she lived in San Juan, Vancouver, and Stockholm, as well as the US, her birthplace. Since the age of seventeen she has worked at a wide variety of jobs, from factory forewoman to director of a small nonprofit and, in Switzerland, from sociology lecturer to cross-cultural trainer. She began writing mysteries when her son left for college. Pesticide, the first book in the Polizei Bern series, was shortlisted for the 2020 Debut Dagger award by the Crime Writers’ Association. Hays has a BA in English history and literature from Harvard and a PhD in cultural sociology from UC-Berkeley.

Pesticide is set in Bern, Switzerland, known for its narrow cobblestone streets, decorative fountains, and striking towers—until a rave on a hot summer night erupts into violent riots, and a young man is found the next morning bludgeoned to death with a policeman’s club. If that wasn't problem enough, the same day, an elderly organic farmer turns up dead and drenched with pesticide. When an unexpected discovery ties the two victims into a single case, seasoned detective, Giuliana Linder, has to work with her distractingly attractive colleague, Renzo Donatelli. But if Giuliana wants to prevent another murder, she’ll have to put her life on the line—and her principles.

Kim stops by In Reference to Murder to talk about researching and writing the book:

It goes without saying that some of my research for Pesticide had to do with crime: I wanted to find out how the Canton of Bern police respond to riots and investigate murders and to make sure I knew which wholesale dealers in the city handle marijuana and which, heroin. I also needed to check locations, which meant visiting Bern’s alternative culture center, an enormous, graffiti-covered former riding school next to the main train station, and driving around the Three-Lakes region northeast of the city, scouting out a model for Haldiz, the book’s imaginary farming village. The most fun I had, though, was exploring the topic of organic farming.

I already had a romantic view of farming, passed on by my father, who spent the happiest summers of his childhood on his great-aunt and -uncle’s small farm in rural Louisiana. But I’m not the only one who glorifies the agricultural life—most Swiss have an idyllic picture of farming as well, delighting in Alpine meadows dotted with cows, sunny hillsides lined with grapevines, and spring fields full of yellow rapeseed. The reality is grimmer, since the number of farms in Switzerland has been shrinking for decades. Today there are fewer than 50,000 of them, with an average size of 50 acres. Swiss farmers receive the equivalent of three billion dollars per year in subsidies; in return for its generosity, the government regulates their farming methods. There are rules about what farmers must do to increase biodiversity; improve the welfare of livestock; reduce the use of poisons on crops, antibiotics in animals, and fertilizer on fields; and, in general, look after the land and water under their care. The rules for organic farms—which make up about 16% of the acreage used for agriculture—are the strictest. All Swiss farms are checked regularly, and, if they are organic, they have to pass very thorough annual inspections in order to be recertified year after year.

For Pesticide’s plot to make sense, I needed to understand what makes a farm “organic” (or bio in Swiss-German) and how an annual farm inspection works. So, before I started writing, I visited small organic farms in Bern and talked to farmers. I spent time at the offices of Bio Suisse, which manages the guidelines of the organic label, and I interviewed several farm inspectors, one of whom was an organic farmer herself.  She told me something that went straight into my book:

Don’t think of us as a kind of police force; it’s not like that at all. Most farmers like our visits. All year long they protect the soil and the water and keep their crops and animals healthy, and no one really knows how difficult that is or how many setbacks they suffer. But we inspectors know, and we make that clear to them—at least, I do.

Another issue I thought a lot about during the writing of Pesticide was how much standard German and Bernese dialect to use. While a little bit of unintelligible language provides local color, I had to keep reminding myself that too much of it becomes confusing and distracting. Still, a few words turned out to be hard to translate into English. One of these was the police role called “Fahnder.” Literally, the word means “searcher”—we’d translate it as “investigator.” Within the Canton of Bern police department, it’s a plain-clothes job involving a lot of research—both on the computer and in the field, and the different tasks are usually assigned by detectives looking into serious crimes. One of the two main characters in Pesticide, Giuliana Linder, is a homicide detective, and the other, Renzo Donatelli, is an investigator of this kind—he’s junior to Giuliana in rank and age and often works with her on her cases. In the end, I decided to call him a Fahnder, even in an English-language book. I’m not sure the same job exists in the American police force.

I consider research not only an important part of writing but a quintessential one.  Sometimes I gather more information than I end up needing for a particular book, but I find that the process of researching helps me figure out what I want to say in my novel. I’m sure this is true for most writers, not just me. I suppose I’m also influenced by my mother having been a reference librarian whose job was to find things out for people. It was work that she loved.

Google has changed the nature of that pursuit—but not its importance.

 

You can learn more about Kim Hays and her books on her website, and follow her on Facebook and Twitter. Pesticide is now available in ebook and paperback via Seventh Street Books at all major book retailers.

Author R&R with Michael Landweber

Michael Landweber has worked as a copy editor at the Japan Times, as an editorial assistant at the Associated Press, and worked for the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy and for the State Department. He also served as Associate Director for a non-profit called Partnership for a Secure America, which promotes bipartisanship in foreign policy and national security. His short stories have appeared in literary magazines such as Gargoyle, Fourteen Hills, Fugue, Barrelhouse, and American Literary Review. He is an Associate Editor at Potomac Review and a contributor for the Washington Independent Review of Books.

His new novel from Crooked Lane Books is The Damage Done, set in an Earth where violence has suddenly and inexplicably become a thing of the past. Fists can’t hit, guns don’t kill, and bombs can’t destroy. The U.S. president must find a new way to wage war. The Pope ponders whether the Commandment “Thou Shalt Not Kill” is still relevant. A dictator takes his own life after realizing that the violence he used to control his people is no longer an option.

In the first days after the change, seven people from different walks of life—who have all experienced violence—struggle to adapt to this radical new paradigm. As their fates intertwine, the promise and perils of this new world begin to take shape. Although violence is no longer possible, that doesn’t mean that some among us won’t keep trying. Mindless cruelty is still alive and well, and those bent on destruction will seek the most devious means to achieve it.

Michael Landweber stopped by In Reference to Murder to take some Author R&R about researching and writing the book:

My approach to research is low key and ad hoc. Of course, I think research is important. If you are writing a novel about 16^th century France, you better study up. You weren’t there. Similarly, if your book is a military thriller that mainly takes place on a submarine, you’re going to need to learn a little something about submarines. But those are not the novels I write. So, in my own work, I believe research is important when necessary. The key is knowing when you don’t know what you need to know.

I often describe my books as literary fiction with a Twilight Zone twist. I start with a what-if question. What if you got trapped inside the brain of your younger self? What if time stopped and you were the only one not frozen? What if teleportation was a commercial means of transportation? And my most recent novel, The Damage Done, presents a world where violence is no longer possible. As you can see, most of my work hinges on ideas that are not particularly researchable.

Take my last book, The In Between, in which a couple loses their son while teleporting to Japan. When I started the book, I was very curious about whether anyone thought teleportation was even possible. (I would also note that good research is only successful if you are actually curious about the topic you are researching.) Turns out that subatomic particles may be able to teleport in quantum computing. That’s cool. But not that helpful for my story of losing a child somewhere between Omaha and Tokyo. So that was a research rabbit hole I didn’t go that far down.

And that maybe is my main thought about research. The assumption is that every effort is a deep dive. But for me research can be quite limited and still valid. The goal for me is not to become the expert in every aspect of every thing I write about. Most of what I need to research does not require an extensive bibliography or interview schedule. My goal is to immerse the reader in the story I’m telling. So for me, research tends to be a series of targeted jobs. In and out, find out what I need, no fuss.

That doesn’t mean I’m not obsessive about what I’m writing. I spend countless hours making sure that the rules I’ve created for my worlds are airtight. In The Damage Done that meant creating a mental catalogue of all the ways people commit violence against each other and countering each with a creative way to thwart it. The time that I might have been reading reference books or chatting up experts is instead wiled away in an internal debate over things like whether bumping into someone purposefully on a subway platform constitutes a minor act of violence. There was research to be done, things I needed to know like how to make a Molotov cocktail or where people cross the Rio Grande. But each time I discover one of those factual stumbling blocks, I find what I need with as much efficiency as I can muster. I don’t linger.

So maybe that’s my true mantra on research. No loitering.

But who knows? Maybe I’ve got a historical novel or a submarine thriller in me somewhere that will require a more methodical style of research. For now though, I’m sticking with my need to know approach.

 

You can learn more about Michael and The Damage Done via his website and follow him on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. The Damage Done is available from Penguin Random House via all major booksellers in ebook, print, and audiobook formats.