Lisa Brackmann--Black Swan Rising

DEBORAH CROMBIE: How very strange and disconcerting to find that the worst case scenarios you imagined for a novel are now the stuff of the nightly news. This is what happened to award-winning, multi-talented author and Jungle Red friend Lisa Brackmann with her novel BLACK SWAN RISING.  (A "black swan" is a highly unlikely event that has massive impact, and which seems predictable in hindsight.) Booklist called it "An absorbing and apocalyptic vision of American politics that leaves the reader hoping it will never come to this." It's a gripping, can't-put-it-down read, and here's Lisa to tell us how it all came about. It will give you goosebumps.

LISA BRACKMANN: At some point after I finished writing BLACK SWAN RISING, my lovely agent told me that I was not allowed to write about World War III.

I did not intend to write a book that was “ripped from the headlines” when I started work on BLACK SWAN RISING. And it was more than slightly disconcerting to see things that I’d written
as fiction repeated time and time again on the nightly news in full, awful reality. Friends started calling me “Cassandra.” And as we all know, it’s no fun being Cassandra.

So I guess my agent really has nothing to worry about. Cassandras can only predict, not change the outcome. But I think for my next book I will write something hopeful and healing, just in case.

I wrote the first chapter and a very rough outline of BSR in mid-2014. I was inspired by several things: an incredibly expensive and polarizing congressional campaign here in San Diego, in
what was at the time a swing district, the then unexamined link between misogyny and violence against women and mass shootings —“incel” was a self-characterizing term used on obscure message boards back then – and GamerGate, an organized campaign of harassment and at times violent threats against women and their allies in the gaming industry. Which, at the time, was not taken very seriously but provided a template for the Alt-Right and their online harassment and organizing. What’s even worse? That white supremacists found incel and gaming forums the perfect recruiting grounds for their racist movement.
(you can find out more about the genesis and setting of the book here)

None of that is any good in a novel if it isn’t anchored in characters and story. Writing about “issues” in fiction can all too easily become didactic and dull – the real-life stuff has to be embedded deep in the bones of the book and in individual human struggles. I hope I did that with BLACK SWAN RISING. I’m very fond of the characters – ambitious Casey Cheng, struggling to find meaning from her own tragedy, deeply damaged Sarah Price and Matt Cason, each in their own way searching for connection with others that they can’t quite make, existentially frustrated Lindsay Cason, who can’t figure out how her life went off-track and where to lay the blame. And I hope the plot is suspenseful and involving. But it’s not a story that ends with any easy answers. As I was writing the book, I kept asking myself, how do I wrap this up? How do I
solve the problems that the book posits? And I realized that I simply could not. The closure the characters sought was still a ways down the road.

A lot has happened since I wrote this book. We’ve had three and a half years of a disastrous presidency that has polarized our nation even beyond what BLACK SWAN RISING portrayed. Before, the book was a description and a prediction, my attempt to put some of the seemingly disparate pieces together to create a picture of where I thought we were heading. I think of it now as a prequel of sorts to the times we are living in today. I hope that our country has a
happier sequel in its future — I have to believe that we do.

Lisa Brackmann is the NYT best-selling author of the Ellie McEnroe trilogy (ROCK PAPER TIGER), and suspense novels GETAWAY, GO-BETWEEN and BLACK SWAN RISING. Her books have been nominated for numerous awards, including the Strand Critic’s best-first-novel and Amazon’s Top 100 Books of the Year and Top 10 Mystery/Thrillers. Her work has also appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Travel+Leisure, Salon, LARB, and CNET. She lives in San Diego with a cat, far too many books and a bass ukulele, and plays a regular bass in a local band. You can find her at www.lisabrackmann.com

https://www.amazon.com/Black-Swan-Rising-Lisa-Brackmann-ebook/dp/B089ZN4DFL/  (new ebook)

https://www.amazon.com/Black-Swan-Rising-Lisa-Brackmann/dp/0738759473   (old HC)

https://www.amazon.com/Black-Swan-Rising-Lisa-Brackmann-audiobook/dp/B07GWYFKJ9/ (audio) 

DEBS: Readers, stop in and welcome Lisa!

Life’s Playlist by Holly West

JENN McKINLAY: I love the cover of this book SO much! Yes, because I was a tween of the 80's and a total fan of the Go Go's. Heck, I wanted to be one of the Go Go's! Holly West is our guest today and she's talking about what transports us. Welcome, Holly.

Holly West: Many things have the power to transport us to other times and places. Scent, for example. One whiff of Polo by Ralph Lauren and I’m walking through my high school’s corridors, keeping an eye out for my latest crush (thankfully, Polo isn’t on trend these days so those whiffs are few and far between). 

Books and movies, too. The mere mention of Judy Blume or Laura Ingalls Wilder takes me back to my childhood bedroom, where I spent untold hours reading and re-reading books. And films like “Bob Roberts,” “Pulp Fiction,” and “The Crying Game” remind me of my twenties, when I was single and broke and spent every weekend in the bargain matinee at the Beverly Connection in Los Angeles.

But music, I’ve found, is the ultimate time machine. I’ve already dated myself, so I don’t mind telling you that I recently turned fifty. As part of the celebrations, I compiled a playlist of songs representing all of the seasons of my life. It was a long list, spanning not only the decades I’ve lived through myself but those of my grandparents and parents since their musical preferences comprised much of the soundtrack of my earliest years. I can’t listen to Johnny Cash, Patsy Cline, Loretta Lynn, or Hank Williams without thinking of my grandparents—they instilled in me an abiding love for twangy country music, as did my mother for the cheerful Broadway musicals of the 60s.

I loved music from an early age and dreamed of being a singer when I grew up (a dream I haven’t quite let go of, by the way). Friday nights were dedicated to the Donny & Marie Show, before I understood that Donny’s version of rock ‘n’ roll bore as little resemblance to the real thing as Marie’s rendition of country did. Still, I loved them. Next came the Bee Gees, Rick Springfield (oh, how I wanted to be Jessie’s girl), and Journey, all of whom I still love, followed by that vast swath of music we call “80s.”

My brother, who works in marketing and PR, told me that supermarkets play 80s music now because that’s the generation—my generation—that’s doing the shopping. And he’s right. I can’t go into Ralph’s without hearing Madonna, Duran Duran, the Go-Go’s or The Cure. There I am, standing in the checkout line, when Whitney Houston comes on the sound system singing “How Will I Know,” reminding me of my senior prom date, who, years later, came out to me at a Mexican restaurant in our hometown.

Not so long ago, supermarkets were playing Fleetwood Mac, Jackson Browne, and the Eagles—songs I knew, but were firmly classified as “before my time.” I suppose Rihanna, Lady Gaga, and Pitbull will sing the next wave of supermarket hits. Even, perhaps, cleaned up radio re-mixes by Post Malone or Cardi-B. That’s when I’ll know I’m really old.

On a side note, one of the best things about living in the digital age is having all the music we want at our fingertips. Kids today will never know the exhilaration—and sometimes, the heartbreak—of having a cassette recorder at the ready, waiting for a song to come on the radio and pressing record at just the right moment. In those days, every recording had Casey Kasem’s voice floating over the song’s opening bars (if you were quick enough to catch those opening bars at all).

Much like books, the music we embrace in our youth becomes an integral part of who we are. I keep semi-current with today’s music and enjoy much of it, but none of it will touch me the way that early music did. I’m no expert in these matters, but it seems that as we get older, we lose our tendency to internalize external things like music. We’re able to enjoy and appreciate it, but it doesn’t have the same impact. We’re older now, and mostly, wiser, with our hearts steeled against every sentimental love song.

Okay, so Lady Gaga’s and Bradley Cooper’s live performance of “Shallow” at the Grammy Awards touched me, but that’s something else entirely. Or maybe, it’s not. Maybe I’m not the hardened old lady I think I am after all.

What about you, Reds and Readers, what music transports you?

***

Holly West is the Anthony Award-nominated author of the Mistress of Fortune historical mystery series. Her debut, Mistress of Fortune, was nominated for the Left Coast Crime Rosebud Award for Best First Novel. Her short fiction has appeared online and in numerous anthologies, and her latest story, “The Best Laid Plans,” appears in Florida Happens, the 2018 Bouchercon anthology. She’s also the editor of Murder-A-Go-Go’s, a crime fiction anthology inspired by the music of the Go-Go’s. Visit hollywest.com for more info.