This Just In: Jungle Reds Swoon over Spencer Quinn

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: We are swooning at Jungle Red today!  You may know our guest as Peter Abrahams, the internationally acclaimed and bestselling thriller writer. (Seriously, one of the best in the world.) Or as Spencer Quinn, the internationally acclaimed and bestseller author of the adorable Chet and Bernie mysteries. And many other terrific books.  (“The Edgar-winning author of 36 novels” as his bio says.)

Yes, I am absolutely unabashedly gushing. He is one of my favorite authors ever.  

And now he (as Spencer Quinn) has a new book out in two days, THE RIGHT SIDE.  It’s a different incredible...well, now I am gushing again.  

HANK:  I'm in the midst of your wonderful book right now (oops, still gushing)--so don't tell me the ending. But I'm fascinated by what you said on your website--how  sometimes a character grabs you and won’t let go. you said: "This character – a figment of your own imagination but not wholly under your power – demands to be brought to life."  So that's what happened with your main character in THE RIGHT SIDE, LeAnne? Tell us about that. who is she, and where did she come from?  

SPENCER QUINN: Publishing - what a crazy business! On the outlet end, it's more and more data and numbers driven all the time, as though the product was sheet steel. We workers back at the inlet end deal in feelings, dreams, emotions, zeitgeist. Strange things go on in that pipeline. LeAnne Hogan came to me suddenly, out of the blue. The Chet and Bernie mysteries - and Bowser and Birdie for kids - which have been occupying me for almost the past 10 years are probably essentially comic in tone. And I love writing them! But what I think happened is that things going on in the world that are not comic came barging in and couldn't be ignored.

 LeAnne lives in this dangerous, baffling, violent world which I must have been grappling with subconsciously and when she popped up in my imagination I knew had to write about her. I'm not saying she's humorless - far from it, I hope - but she's been in terrible situations that brand you forever. In THE RIGHT SIDE, she is forced to solve two mysteries, one macro, one micro.

LeAnne's highly capable of doing that, or at least she was. She's a soldier and a warrior, beloved and respected by her comrades; but then her patrol wanders into a mysterious set-up in an Afghan village, and it all comes undone.

I've explored the idea of a highly capable person forced to carry on with suddenly diminished abilities once before in OBLIVION, but this turned out quite differently. And one of the reasons for the difference is the strange dog who enters LeAnne's life when she really needs her, even if LeAnne doesn't know it at the time.

HANK: But even though you’ve written riveting standalone thrillers, and the smart and (okay, adorable) Chet and Bernie mysteries, and the Bowser and Birdie YAs (and more--I adore your Echo Falls books) --but this book is so different. It has a different tone, and a different...aura. Did it feel different to write it? 

SPENCER QUINN: Good question. That aura thing came up in a conversation with my editor. He said reading the book reminded him of the feeling of getting swept along in a piece of music by Philip Glass. I'm no expert on Philip Glass, but chose to take it as a compliment. There were a lot of technical challenges in the writing - it's part war novel, part mystery, part road book, and moves back and forth in time - but I wasn't really aware of them until I was done. Thank God! Those challenges can be intimidating. Better not to know.

 As for the feeling of writing it - well, I'm not sure. There are always surprises. For example, when I made LeAnne a high-school pole vaulting champion, I had no idea there'd be that scene in Afghanistan where she tries to teach the schoolgirls in their burqas how to pole vault. And how, much later, she tries desperately to remember their names. One thing I do know is that the writing process never gets easier. That seems unfair. After a dentist has filled 1000 cavities or so, autopilot must set in. Why can't we have that?

HANK: Well, it’s good, really, isn’t it? Because to have the joy of a new idea, or a new insight. People have said to me—“After 40 years as a reporter, don’t all stories seem the same? Like how many ways are there to cover a fire?” And that’s so—wrong. Every situation is astonishingly different. In fiction, there are even more possibilities. And having a good idea is the best thing that could ever happen.

Speaking of good ideas...this sense you have about dogs, and their place in the world, and in people’s lives. There’s a dog on the cover of THE RIGHT SIDE—did the dog appear to you when LeAnn did?  (And we won’t tell the dog’s name.)

SQ: Well, I knew from the start that I wanted a dog in the story - but not a narrating dog! THE RIGHT SIDE is all third-person close. And this dog had to have been through something bad - although we never know exactly what - and like LeAnne, bears the scar. And like her, the dog is not in a cuddly mood, at least in the present. As for the future, I hope readers see the ending as an up note.

  

HANK: there’s such a layer of melancholy and sorrow and loss at the beginning of the book. Was that difficult—more difficult than writing always is anyway—to write?

SQ: The truth is the parts of a story with heightened emotions, like the beginning of THE RIGHT SIDE, and heightened action, are easier to write, at least for me. It's the getting to them that's hard, often a slog. In this book, I tried to simply jettison most of that slogging.

HANK: Jettison the slogging! Ah. My new mantra.  Talk about that title—so multi-layered! Did the story come first, or the title?

SQ: The moment I picked the side of LeAnne's face that would be damaged, I had the title; and all the metaphoric ripples got set in motion. 

HANK: And not to bury the lede, but you have reached blurb nirvana. Stephen King said “Brilliant. Deeply felt, but totally under control. I loved it.” Not to be sappy, but okay. How did you feel when you read that? The totally under control part is so fabulous. And, yeah, brilliant is good.

SQ: I was very glad to see this blurb. The implication is so right: simply having the deep feeling is not enough. Someone (and of course it's the same dude!) who's almost stern has to be at the controls. 

HANK:  That’s such a terrific image—flying high, but under control. Have a great time with the new book! So exciting.

 So, Reds and readers, who’s your favorite dog in fiction?  

And a copy of THE RIGHT SIDE to one lucky commenter!      

  

 ****************

Peter Abrahams is the Edgar award winning author of thirty-six novels.  Among his acclaimed crime thrillers are Oblivion and The Fan (filmed starring Robert De Niro). Under the name Spencer Quinn, he writes the New York Times bestselling Chet and Bernie mysteries and the middle-grade Bowser and Birdie series. The Right Side – the story of a wounded female vet – comes out June 27, 2017.

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Diana Chambers--World Traveler

DEBORAH CROMBIE: My friend Diana Chambers is full of surprises. She's written STINGER, a

crackingly good spy novel set in Pakistan and Afghanistan in 1986. The sights and sounds and smells of the setting leap off the page, so authentic that you think the author must have been there/done that.

But that is a mystery for another day, because Diana has other stories to tell--as do her souvenirs. Who would have thought a travel bag could hold such wonderful memories?

DIANA CHAMBERS:  Sometimes in the dark of night, I wonder if I became a writer as cover for my secret passion—travel. Not that I don’t love sleeping in my own bed and hanging out with my dog, but there is a world out there that draws me.

The lure of a place has often led to a story. Research is the perfect excuse to pack my bag, although I don’t really need an excuse. Last summer, a big family birthday set me planning our travels through Europe by Train.

http://dianarchambers.blogspot.com/2014/09/revisiting-europe-by-train.html




It was a grand whirlwind that left me with a severe case of jet lag. Once I emerged from the fog, I barely left my computer. Two months later, after sending off a book to my editor, I finally cleaned my desk. Then on a hidden hook, I noticed the cross-body bag I’d worn on the trip. I reached inside. My heart began pounding when I withdrew this map of Rome, our last stop. After a lifelong relationship with France, I fell hard for Italy.




















The Bloomsbury Trail map sent me back to our first days in London, where Britain’s Literacy Trust had commissioned a series of author book benches.

One sunny day in the park, I found the Agatha Christie book bench, Hercule Poirot and the Greenshore Folly.




Quite by accident, I discovered Jules Verne’s Around the World in 80 Days in the basement of Stanfords, a treasure trove of books and maps since 1863. (Love those Victorian travelers!)




















While my Fellow Traveler husband researched “The Cafés of Europe,” my daughter and I pounded the cobblestones, exploring vintage shops, bookstores, and old libraries, including the immense Klementinum in Prague and Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.























I was also unfaithful to Paris in Amsterdam, which I found seriously captivating and arty. We went to pay homage at the Van Gogh Museum.

















In Florence, we ended our visit to the Pitti Palace and Gardens with an opulent costume exhibit, where we ran into Coco Chanel and Karl Lagerfeld.





















Our last museum was Rome’s Villa Borghese Gallery, and I still can’t get over this sumptuous Bernini sculpture.

In a zippered section of my bag, I found these pound and euro notes, some coins—oh wait, one of one of them is an Indian rupee (but that’s another story).




Great sense memories arise from the restaurant cards and matchbox (setting from an earlier book)—spicy Asian noodles in London, sublime roasted porcinis in Florence, yummy vegetarian in Prague (the owner a North Vietnamese architect). Gorgeous, plump house-made noodles at Fattoincasa, the site of our last dinner in Rome, right off the Piazza Navona.




The Navona is truly of Roman scale, breathtaking, and a lively place to hang out and enjoy a gelato after dinner. Or before. Or any time.














To finish things off, a mint—Swiss or Hungarian?








It’s funny how these odds and ends can evoke such real feelings. In French, souvenir means both memory and to remember. However much I admire minimalist design, my house is overflowing with books and travel treasures.

Dear Readers, what treasures do you have in your bags?

DEBS: I'm going with Hungarian on the mints:-)  And next time Diana goes traveling, I'm stowing away in her suitcase... 



Diana Chambers was born with a book in one hand and a passport in the other. Before long, she was wandering Paris cobblestones. Later, an Asian importing business led to Hollywood costume design, then scriptwriting—until her characters demanded their own novels. Her romantic thriller, Stinger, was recently released by Audible, with the sequel in production. 

Diana lives in a small Northern California town with her Fellow Traveler husband, arty daughter, and steadfast mutt. She is a member of the Writers Guild of America, Mystery Writers of America, and Sisters in Crime-NorCal board. Her bag is always packed. dianarchambers.com, facebook.com/DianaChambersAuthor, twitter.com/DianaRChambers.


About her novels

Stinger: When a shipment of Stinger missiles disappears near the Khyber Pass, CIA operative Nick Daley becomes entangled in an unusual triangle with a determined journalist and her former Berkeley lover, now an elusive Afghan leader with a price on his head. “A ripping good novel of page-turning suspense and plot-twisting intrigue.” — James A. Cox, Midwest Book Review.
The Company She Keeps: Back in DC, Nick recruits a new agent, Evelyn Walker—“E”—and sends her into a world of danger, from Europe’s grand boulevards to Iran’s Grand Bazaar. “A captivating and thrilling excursion.”  — Randall Masteller, spyguysandgals.com.

 

The many traumas in real life and documentary film maker Michael Burns

JAN BROGAN - I might have mentioned once or twice that I had a debilitating plane phobia for many years. I would hyperventilate during takeoff, my palms would sweat, and once I even broke down crying. I tried just about everything. Drinking - didn't even touch it. Six weeks of hypnosis at Mass General Hospital was completely useless; desensitization tapes - even more useless, and psychiatrist-prescribed drugs - totally freaked me out. Cognitive behavioral therapy helped, but only a little.

Finally, I tried a new therapy called EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing), which involved bilateral stimulation (either by eye movement or alternating tones) during treatment. As a health reporter, I'd been assigned to write about this therapy by an editor, and although I first refused, calling it "snake oil," I later learned just how extensively researched and tested this therapy really was and about its tremendous success treating returning combat veterans suffering from Post traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Somewhere in the literature it mentioned it had some success with phobias, so I decided to give it a try.

After being burdened this incredibly resistant phobia for something close to 25 years, I was completely cured in about six sessions. For me, it was a miracle. In subsequent stories I've written on this topic, I've talked to returning veterans, rape victims and child abuse survivors who have told me their own miraculous recovery stories.

So.... in what is definitely outside the box for Jungle Red, but in hopes of reaching the quarter million combat veterans who return with PTSD and other people suffering from other life traumas - whether its loss of a loved one, a divorce or even a minor car accident, I invited filmmaker Michael Burns to JR to talk about his documentary "EMDR, We either transform pain or we transmit it."

Michael is a native of Connecticut, is the producer/director of four films on American politics, Third Party, Preventive Warriors, Majority Rules, and Laban. I asked him how he got from politics to EMDR.

MichaelBurns: It was 2007 and I was completing my doctorate in film at the University of Birmingham in the UK when I had EMDR myself. I had come across it in the late David Servan-Schreiber's best-seller Healing without Freud or Prozac. When I had a breakthrough myself- and this shows you how much I sympathize with skeptics- I chalked it entirely up to coincidence. In other words, I was convinced that the EMDR I had had just activated some psychosomatic reaction on my part. I remember thinking that there's no way something so weird could have helped me. Simply out of curiosity I started to do some research on it and found out that in fact millions of people have had massively life-changing experiences with EMDR. So I ate up everything I could find on the subject, realizing that the catharsis I went through was not so unusual after all.

At about that time, a good friend suggested I make a documentary about EMDR since it still was hardly known at all in the mainstream. Completing my degree, which took a lot out of me, I didn't think I had the energy for a new project, but it kept popping up in the back of my mind as something that needed to be made. In the end, it was the daily bombardment with PTSD stories in the news that made me realize that I wanted to do whatever I could to help spread the word about this amazing therapy. There are so many people out there who believe that they're destined to live with the pain, body sensations, and nightmares that are grounded in things from their pasts. It's just not true. EMDR can help many of them, perhaps most of them.

JAN: How long did it take to produce the documentary and what was the biggest obstacle?

MICHAEL: I worked on it, pretty much with just my cameraman, James Kloter, for a little over three years.

The biggest obstacle was getting people to tell us their personal stories. A friend of mine put it very well the other day when she said that it's hard enough to go to therapy in the first place, relaying those details to yet another person is nearly impossible for most people. I think she's exactly right. What happens in EMDR sessions is both deeply personal and extremely hard to put into words. So, on a low budget, it became tough for us to find compelling, personal success stories to put in the movie. In the end though, we found three that did make it in, and they might just be the best parts of the film.

JAN: Your hopes for this film?

MICHAEL: I sincerely hope that people will watch this film and get in touch with that one person in their lives- maybe it's a husband, a sister, or a friend of a friend- whose ability to reach their full potential is being held back by something that happened in their past, and to tell them about EMDR. Next step is to go to the emdria.org website and to find a therapist nearby or to get in touch with emdrhap.org to talk about sessions they're offering. It's critical that people go see someone with proper training, certified by the main national EMDR professional organization, EMDRIA.

So helping those who are in critical mental condition is one of my key hopes. Having said that, EMDR is not just for the person we might know who's paralyzed by the past. I always say that it would be a miracle if any of us have sailed through life without anything traumatic happening to us. There are things in all of our histories that are holding us back, preventing us from living life the way we want to. Therefore all of us can use EMDR so that we can put disturbing memories to rest, breaking destructive habits we have and living the lives we dream of living.

JAN: In that vein, Michael has generously sent me one free copy of the film, the DVD, to give away to a lucky winner. It's one of the best explanations I've encountered on how the brain processes trauma, why it sticks in the head for years, and why EMDR can shake it free and is very moving.

Enter by posting a comment and/or signing up for our mailing list -- I need an email address to reach the winner. But please, enter only if know someone (and it can be you) who it can help. The winner will also be announced on JR by Tuesday.

For more information about EMDR or the film go to: http://emdrmovie.com