Friday, September 17, 2021

You've Got a Friend in Me by Sandy Manning

Jenn McKinlay: Good morning, everyone. Our good friend Sandy Manning is back to talk about her latest thriller novel, featuring Kolya Petrov, entitled Nerve Attack. Welcome, Sandy!


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S. Lee Manning: When I started writing my latest novel, Nerve Attack, I had to figure out a way to get my series protagonist, Kolya Petrov - whose agency had betrayed him, setting him up to be kidnapped and tortured - back into the spy game. After all, why would he go back to working for people who had shown such a lack of concern for his life and the life of his fiancee? Yes, he's the kind of person who would feel responsible for preventing the deaths of innocent people, but he's also pretty pissed off after the events of Trojan Horse my award winning debut novel. There would have to be a situation that required his personal involvement to prevent mass casualties, a situation that no other agent could handle. 

 

I considered various options before deciding to use Kolya's relationship with Dmitri, his childhood best friend but whom he'd put in prison ten years earlier, as the plot mechanism.  What if Dmitri, who appeared in Kolya's dreams and hallucinations in Trojan Horse, had information that could prevent a terror attack but refused to work with anyone but Kolya? 

 

That choice - using Kolya's tenuous relationship with someone who had been like a brother - made the book. Through their relationship, I could delve into the characters' backgrounds, into their conflicting loyalties, and into the nature of friendship. I'd say more - but I don't want to reveal too much.  

 

One critic, who gave Nerve Attack a five-star rating on Readers' Favorites, direct messaged me to say how after finishing the book, he couldn't stop thinking about Kolya and Dmitri - how their relationship brought both of the characters to life.

 

So how important are friendships in real life?

 

We don't talk as much about the importance of friends as we do about the importance of lovers, and of families, but friends have an enormous influence on our lives.

 

Friends are how we take our first steps away from our parents. Friends, especially when we are young, shape our values and our worldviews. I have read that soldiers who risk their lives in battle often do so more to protect the fellow soldiers in their unit than out of abstract patriotism. But as we get older, involved in careers and raising families, we sometimes have to let something go. All too often - it's friendships.

 

I know that it happened with me. Busy with children and my job as an attorney, I lost touch with so many people.

 

Now, in my post child rearing, post law career life, I am rediscovering the joys of friendship. I have looked up and reconnected with friends from my younger years. My best friend from my teen years and I talk every two weeks, and we've met a few times here in Vermont. I regularly call one of my close friends from the University of Chicago, where I earned my M.A. in English. And I've started chatting periodically with another friend from my time working as a deputy attorney general for the State of New Jersey. There is something so deeply satisfying in reestablishing a relationship with friends who knew me as a young woman.

 

But I've also made new friends, now that I'm part of the writing world. Back in pre-pandemic days, I met people at conferences who have become some of my closest friends. I have wonderful friends in Florida whom Jim and I met while volunteering on a political campaign. I've connected with people on Facebook. And, oddly, as an Encircle Publication author, one of the side benefits is that I've developed a deep bond with other Encircle writers, with whom I meet at a virtual cocktail hour once a week.

 

Maintaining friendships in the midst of a pandemic was not been as difficult as I would have thought. Through the magic of zoom, I could see my friends' faces. Telephones still worked. As did email and Facebook. In some ways, the pandemic made keeping in touch easier. People were generally home. And, the pandemic meant talking to friends had never been more important. When the stress and the isolation would start to get to me - I could touch base with friends experiencing the same thing.

 

Time is still an issue. I am a working writer, with deadlines, with marketing pressures. I have a great husband, grown kids, and a very demanding Tonkinese cat. But even so, even with time pressures, I'm not cutting out my friendships again. My friends make my life so much richer.

 

Maybe that's why friendship became such a central theme in Nerve Attack, why the friendship between Kolya and Dmitri strikes such a chord with so many people.

 

How about you? How important are your friendships?


S. Lee Manning


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

21 comments:

  1. Congratulations on your new book, Sandy . . . now I’m looking forward to seeing how the friendship between Kolya and Dmitri works out in the story . . . . .

    I agree; friends are so important . . . they understand, they listen [without judgment], they hear what we are really saying. And they’re always there . . . .

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  2. Congratulations on the new book Sandy.

    Given that I am one of those people who seem to revel in being alone, the very small circle of friends I have are important but not the be all end all of things for me either.

    In my more cynical outlook, "friends" are just people who haven't stabbed me in the back yet.

    But when I'm feeling more sociable and not quite the vicious lone wolf type of person, my friends are important. But it isn't like I have many.

    I have lots of "acquaintances" or people that I'm "friendly" with, but I wouldn't necessarily call FRIENDS. As for what would be considered REAL friends, well not that many. One of my trivia team partners, Brian, passed away recently and that was a blow for me because in the short few years we'd played together, he had become a good friend. The funny thing is that his widow, Maureen (who is also part of the trivia team) was worried that she'd be abandoned because he'd died. I had to explain to her that in my experience, I don't drop friends, they drop me. So we've gone to lunch and we've gone to trivia now that they've restarted it. Oh, and I call her once a week too.

    I had a couple of friends from my coaching days but we rarely see each other anymore. We basically text each other now about the fates and fortunes of the Boston Celtics.

    But I do have one real true friend whom I consider my best friend. And that's Ann. We met at a social gathering and we kind of just hit it off even with our differences. She's a big horror movie and Halloween fiend while I don't watch horror movies and like Halloween as pretty much just "give the candy away at the door" kind of thing. But we go to other movies together (pre-Covid), we watch Netflix shows at her house, go out to lunch or dinner and just generally hang out. We've only known each other for about 5 years but without a doubt she's my best (and pretty much only) FRIEND at the moment.

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  3. As a writer, I certainly understand the impulse for alone time. As a writer of thrillers, I love your description of "friends" as people who haven't stabbed you in the back - yet. You are correct, though, that true friends are hard to find, and we usually have layers of friends, from those we trust absolutely to those - not so much - but they're fun.

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  4. I think this is such a wise and important essay! It is so easy to lose track of people, and our lives get in the way, I have been thinking about this quite a bit, in fact, with things the horrible way they are these days.. and your weekly meetings are brilliant! What a great idea. I think your decision to have that as the core of the novel is so brilliant! And I think that’s another reason why this blog is so beloved – – we can all come here every morning and connect. So pleased to see you here!

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  5. I think friendship IS a powerful motivator, as strong as all the negatives (fear, avarice...) that we use to motivate our characters. I have a few friends from high school, and though we have almosst nothing in common and live on different coasts, when we get together it's as if I've traveled through a time warp and all the differences disappear. Having said that, when you go through a rough patch it's nice to have at least a few close friends within hugging distance.

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    1. Isn't it nice to have friends who can time travel with you back to younger days?

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  6. The pandemic has shot a cannon through my friendships and social life. My husband and I have practically become hermits, and consequently have fallen out of the habit of connecting. He has done better than I have, unless you count Facebook relationships. (We have dozens of mutual Facebook friends, Sandy.) Of the FB contacts, I'd count about 20% as actual friends I could spend time with in person, or have done.

    The last 30 years of online social platforms blurs the line of the meaning of "friendship". I still stay in contact with women I "met" online in the days of Usenet. We followed each other to Prodigy, then AOL, then kind of dropped away for a bit, until we found one another again on Facebook. I've met some of them in real life over the years, including Trish who lives in Normandy, and Kate in London. Sharon lived the closest of all for years until she moved to Arkansas, but we have yet to meet. She crocheted a darling sweater set for my grandson when he was born 16 years ago, though. I very luckily got to spend time with Olwyn Mary in New Orleans, just months before she died.

    In the times before online communication we would have called that kind of relationship "pen pals", and it would not have developed nearly as easily, depending on mail service. They are different than my meet-for-drinks friendships, but no less dear.

    The bottom line of who I consider a friend revolves around trust and honesty, on both sides. Finding out that someone has broken a confidence, or gone behind my back is crushing to me. That is a serious breach of the friendship contract.

    Congratulations on Nerve Attack, Sandy!

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    1. Thank you. I know what you mean about Facebook friends. I have well over a thousand Facebook "friends" but real friendship is rarer and harder to find. But the pandemic has done a job on everything, hasn't it?

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  7. Great topic and congratulations on the new book, Sandy. Family might be my foundation, but friends are many of the bricks in my life. My older nephew has a best friend who moved to North Carolina (we're in northern Ohio) and he's beginning to understand how I can have friends he rarely/never sees--we all live far apart, but the bonds of friendship are still strong. When we connect--in person, phone, or internet, we simply pick up where we left off.

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    1. Isn't it strange how friendships both change and stay the same through our lives?

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  8. I’m a pack animal. I tend to form a squad wherever I land. Life’s just easier for me that way. I think friendship is a brilliant motivator on many levels. Looking forward to reading about Kolya and Dimtri.

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    1. I'm one of those ambiverts, I suppose, so I love having a circle of friends, but I also love my time alone.

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  9. I've had many acquaintances over the years but only a handful of people I consider true friends. With my moving around and their moving around we really rarely connect in person anymore. But the magical thing is, when we do talk or see one another we pick up right where we left off, as if intervening years didn't happen.

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    1. Hard to find true friends, but when found, they are magical.

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  10. What a lovely essay, Sandy. Friends are very important to me and I have several that I keep up with almost daily. And of course the REDS are a wonderful on going source of community and support. During the pandemic, however, I haven't done as well keeping up with more casual friends. Need to work on that!

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    1. In some ways keeping up was easier, because I was at home all the time. In some ways, harder, because so much casual interaction was cut off. The REDS do a wonderful job in keeping everyone close.

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  11. A lovely essay, Sandy, thank you. With my increasing deafness, I was in a bad place regarding friendship. I relied more and more on the social outlets that did not require f2f communication. As artificial as these relationships were, they were so important. The members of this blog have become part of my extended friendship circle, I may not recognize you if you knocked on my door. I would let you inside in a heart beet if you knew the JRW;s secret handshake.

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  12. A heart beet is a vegetable that is heart shaped. a heart beat is something we all hope we have. dang typos.

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    1. I actually loved your typo. Will come knocking on your door with a can of heart beets.

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