HOT OFF THE PRESSES

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN:  Hurray! You know how much we love debut authors here on Jungle Red, and we are so thrilled to give a standing ovation to the fabulous Christina Estes, an intrepid experienced reporter who finally, after years, took the big step into fiction.

 

I can tell you, Reds and readers, her debut novel OFF THE AIR is a must read--and a perfect beginning for a series. A winner in every way! (And all of you who wonder: do I need to start at the beginning of the series? Christina makes it easy, because this is book 1!) The iconic and revered JA Jance says “it's a tale that demonstrates how behind the smiling faces of TV anchors, covering the big story is a dog eat dog world.”

 

And today, Christina gives us the inside scoop. And breaking news: a copy of OFF THE AIR  to one very lucky reader! Enter once here with a comment, and you can get a second entry by coming to the Reds and Readers Facebook page and commenting on the post there, too!

 

HANK: Have you always wanted to be a mystery writer? How and why did that start? 

 

CHRISTINA ESTES: I remember being young and some adult asking, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

 

Since I devoured books, I would answer, “An author.”

 

But I never met an author and didn’t know anyone who pursued writing as a career. My love of reading included magazines and newspapers and I was exposed to reporters on TV and the radio, and that led me to study journalism.

 

J.A. Jance’s Ali Reynolds series, about a former L.A. newscaster who moves back home to northern Arizona, planted the seed for my writing. Hank’s Jane Ryland series about a Boston reporter helped it grow. Or at least helped me contemplate the idea of writing a series featuring a Phoenix TV reporter. It would be many years before I became serious about writing.

 

HANK: When did you decide that you were really and truly going to seriously write a novel? It’s such a big step – – what made you take it? 

 

CHRISTINA: In 2009, I said, “I’m going to write a book.” And, fifteen years later, I’m being published. Fifteen years!

 

I naively thought that because I’m a reporter and write every day that I could write a novel. Big mistake. There’s a huge difference between writing a thirty-second or three-minute broadcast story and a 300- page novel.

 

There was a lot of writing, rejection, stopping. More writing, rejection, stopping. You get the picture. I went years without writing. That’s not how you get published.

 

When I finally accepted that I didn’t know how to write a novel, I focused on learning (and I’m still learning) and got serious. I started saying ‘No’ to a lot of things in order to prioritize writing. It will not take 15 years to get published again! 

 

HANK Makes sense! And of course. But—what happened to make you finish this time?

 

CHRISTINA: There was no ‘aha’ moment that I recall. I just felt more committed. I wanted to see it through and figured I would give it my all one more time. Fortunately, perseverance paid off because Off the Air was selected for the Tony Hillerman Prize and I received a publishing contract through Minotaur Books.

 

HANK: What idea sparked this particular novel? The ONE thing you wanted to write about?

 

CHRISTINA: Besides taking readers behind the scenes of local news, I wanted to showcase Phoenix. I remember reading J.A. Jance’s first Ali Reynolds novel years ago and practically squealing with delight at the local references. There are so many great series set in cities like Boston, New York, Minneapolis, Chicago and Los Angeles, and I want to read more set in the city I call home.

 

The theme that kept swirling as I wrote centered on recognition. We all need it. People leave jobs and relationships when they don't feel valued. In the case of Jolene, my main character, she gets the acknowledgment she craves by breaking stories. Part of her desire for recognition comes from her upbringing, which she doesn’t yet realize or chooses not to accept.

 

HANK: So—do you blend fact and fiction in this novel? Do you use your real-life reporting experiences as a basis for your story?

 

CHRISTINA: I include references to two stories I covered as a reporter. The first involved residents who gathered to celebrate the demolition of an abandoned restaurant that had become an eyesore and attracted criminal activity. I changed the restaurant’s name but kept the party details – neighbors really did bring balloons and sparkling grape juice to cheer the demolition.

 

The other story relates to my personal experience being nominated for an Emmy for reporting about a fish going to the dentist. It lost to a story about bubble wrap. Yes, bubble wrap! In the book, it is Jolene’s loss. It’s interesting to hear reactions to that vignette. Some readers relate to Jolene’s disappointment, while others laugh.

 

HANK:  A fish going to the dentist? You must tell us about this in the comments.  How did the book change from how it was when you began? How did it become different—darker, bigger, scarier, more thought-provoking, deeper?  What did you learn?

 

CHRISTINA: My main character initially had a different name and backstory. I was writing about the 29-year-old TV reporter that I wish I had been. I needed a character with some rough edges, a character that I cared about and could root for.

 

I created Jolene’s backstory based on my experience as a former foster parent. It was uncomfortable because I didn’t want to cause pain for anyone who had experience in the child welfare system. It’s a big reason why I included a content advisory in the book. I love Jolene. I know some people will say, “She’s a character, not a person” and they would be right. But Jolene feels real to me.

 

HANK: One of the most difficult things in having a new novel is that you need the elevator pitch! So here we go… Tell us about this book!

 

CHRISTINA: I’m glad you asked because I need to practice for Good Morning America. Off the Air will be their Buzz Pick on March 30 and I get to pitch via video. Here’s what I’m thinking:

 

Off the Air introduces Jolene Garcia, a local TV reporter in Phoenix trying to cover real issues in a society that seems more interested in clicks and reels.

 

When a controversial radio talk show host dies on air, Jolene’s managers are ecstatic because she conducted his last interview. They’ve got the advantage – but not for long. National media descend on Arizona with bigger budgets and better scoops. Jolene is determined to solve this murder. It’s an investigation that could make or break her career—if it doesn’t break her first.

 

HANK: YAY! Massive congratulations on GMA. I absolutely love this book, it was surprising and wise and knowledgeable and fast paced and fun to read. How do you hope  people will feel at the end of it? 

 

CHRISTINA: Thank you, Hank. I hope readers feel entertained and are curious about what’s next for Jolene personally and professionally. A sequel is in the works!

 

HANK: Hurray!  And cannot wait to hear about all of your adventures. SUCH a joy to have a debut novel, and we are cheering you from the reds room!  So, Reds and readers, let’s talk TV.  Do you have a favorite television reporter? Past or present, fictional or real?

 

And a copy of the hot-off-the-presses OFF THE AIR  to one lucky commenter!

Remember, you get another entry by commenting on the Reds and Readers page!

 

 

 

 

 

Emmy award-winning reporter Christina Estes received the Tony Hillerman Prize for Best First Mystery Set in the Southwest. Off the Air is the first in a series featuring a local TV reporter. Having worked for several local TV stations, Christina now reports for the NPR member station in Phoenix.

www.christinaestes.com

https://www.facebook.com/ChristinaEstesAuthor/

@reporterestes on Instagram, X/Twitter, Threads

You will SWOON. Hurray for Anne Oman

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN:  You know how Jungle Red goes when we introduce you to a new author. There's an intro, and a tiny bio, and then the author writes something, and then at the end there's the book synopsis and more bio. And then we chat.

And that works fine, it really does.

But today, I'm going to set this up differently. Because two things. 

One, Anne Oman wrote MANGO RAINS, her first novel, when she was  79.

So there's that.

And now, read the description of MANGO RAINS.

 “Before the monsoon came the mango rains, which were short, hard downpours that forced the mango trees to surrender their just-ripe fruits and tantalized the city’s inhabitants with a hint of the release the monsoon rains would soon bring. 

Julia Galbraith, a newly arrived Foreign Service Officer just short of her 23rd birthday, stood on the terrace of her ground-floor apartment on the rue Pasteur and watched the rain fall. She was not beautiful, or even pretty, but she was tall and slender and blonde, which almost made up for the lack. Though a little shy, she exuded the freshness and vulnerability of a woman on the brink of life….”

Mango Rains is a story of love, loss and political intrigue in Southeast Asia during the turbulent 1960s. While war rages next door in Viet Nam, expats in the sleepy, peaceful Cambodian capital fall in and out love and dance to the tune of the famously mercurial Prince Sihanouk. As the gentle mango rains give way to the tumultuous monsoon, world events—the assassinations of JFK and South Viet Nam’s Ngo Dinh Diem—precipitate a crisis that scatters the characters to the far corners of the globe.

HANK: Are you swooning? Or what?  And now, more from the amazing Anne Oman.

CONFESSIONS OF A FAILED MYSTERY WRITER

by Anne Oman

I once tried to write a mystery novel – it was harder than I thought.

I set it in Kauai. There was a female food writer, a Colombo-like cop, a poet who posted his works (which were really clues) on telephone poles, drug smugglers, and a backpacker pushed to his death from the treacherous trail that winds atop the Na Pali coast. I figured I could take a few “research” trips to Kauai and claim the expenses on my tax return.

But when I reread the unfinished story, I came to a sobering realization: there wasn’t any mystery. Even the thickest reader would be able to identify the culprit. I needed a plot twist. I stuck the manuscript in a drawer – and I can’t remember which drawer.

So, I have great respect for people who can write mystery novels, which I read voraciously. My all-time favorites are Ross MacDonald, whose hard–boiled detective Lew Archer solves noir crimes in 1940s LA, and Agatha Christie, queen of the English country-house mystery. Alas, both are dead, and I’ve read all their books. Among the living whose works I wait for impatiently: Sarah Paretsky, Michael Connolly, Peter Robinson, Deborah Crombie and Elizabeth George. And I love finding other exciting mystery authors, and look forward to reading the books of the Jungle Red writers I haven’t discovered yet.

When I finally published my first fiction, a novella entitled Mango Rains, it was not a mystery but so-called literary fiction, a pretentious catchall term for anything that doesn’t fit neatly into any other genre box. But I did include some nefarious activity: opium smoking, espionage – are murder.

Some background: the book begins in Phnom Penh, the sleepy capital of Cambodia, in 1963. Like the book’s principal character, Julia, I was a newly minted 22-year-old Foreign Service Officer assigned there. People at Foreign Service posts tell a lot of stories, especially to newcomers. The idea is to make the newbie understand that “Before you come, things here were more exciting/scarier/more dangerous/more fun/better/worse.” You had to take the tales with a healthy dose of skepticism. One story I heard from several sources was about the killing of a young American boy by a group of cyclo-pousse drivers.

A cyclo-pousse is a carriage propelled from behind – or pushed – by a man on a bicycle. This was the main form of public transportation in the city. The drivers all knew rudimentary French, and you could direct them by saying “a la droite,” “a la gauche,” etc. 

 When you arrived at your destination, the driver would name a price, and you could pay it – or haggle. But the boy in the story, the son of an American aid official, would take long rides, refuse to pay the fare – and run. 

 Eventually, a group of drivers, having received only a shrug from the police, took matters into their own hands: one of the kid’s joy rides ended on a lonely road where a group of drivers ambushed him and stabbed him (sort of like the ritual stabbing in Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express). His body, with multiple stab wounds, was found several days later in a rice paddy.

Was the story true? I took cyclos all the time, and found the drivers reliable and courteous. But then again, I always paid the fare. And who knows what impoverished, disenfranchised people will do if they have no other recourse? Anyway, I was writing fiction, so I decided to use the story.

I introduced it in the second chapter, at a dinner party in the home of an American economic attaché, when a Cambodian journalist asks: “What will your Embassy do about the murder of the American boy by the cyclo drivers?”

The host, a seasoned, cynical and hard-drinking diplomat named Bill Harper, tells the reporter that the Ambassador has taken the matter up with Cambodia’s head of state, the famously mercurial Prince Sihanouk, who has piously promised to investigate. But, his tongue loosened by drink, he explains that the Prince is simply telling the Ambassador what he wants to hear but that “he doesn’t really expect the Ambassador to believe it.”

The problem, he adds, is that “the Ambassador doesn’t know the rules of the game here --he takes it all literally… He has no grasp of Asia.”

It’s dangerous to make sweeping pronouncements about a whole people, but it’s generally true that in Asia, face is all-important. You may know the façade isn’t quite real, but you at least have to pretend to believe it -- as long as you don’t fool yourself.

The never-to-be-solved murder comes up again at a vernissage –the opening of an exhibit of paintings at the American Library. The same Bill Harper, cocktail-fueled, tells his young protegėe: “…All the art exhibits, all the perfumes of Arabia, none of it matters a damn…. “I’m not sure any of these people matter either… Look outside, at the man sweeping the street, or the guy pedaling the cyclo. Do we have any inkling of what they’re thinking? Maybe someday they’ll tell us, and I’ll bet it won’t be pretty. Maybe we got just a hint of that in the murder of the American boy.”

This is a 20/20 hindsight allusion to the Pol Pot holocaust, the time of the brutal killing fields of the Khmer Rouge. In fact, I had absolutely no premonition of these horrors to come, and had trouble taking them in when they occurred. (The best book on that subject is Elizabeth Becker’s When the War Was Over: Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge Revolution.)

In the last chapter of Part I of Mango Rains, many of the Americans, including Julia, are leaving Cambodia in the wake of the diplomatic breakup. At the airport, Julia sees the family of the murdered boy: “The Air Lao plane to Vientiane was called, and the family of the child killed by the cyclo drivers started to board. The father had been transferred to Laos, and the wife carried a brass box that held the boy’s ashes.”

If this were a Christie novel, Hercule Poirot would have called all the cyclo-pousse drivers in Phnom Penh into the library and given us all the benefit of his little gray cells and revealed exactly which ones stuck their knives into the boy. The obliging Inspector Japp would have carried the culprits off to justice, and the rest of us would have raised a toast with our glasses of sherry.

But, alas, this is the mysterious East, where mysteries don’t get solved that easily. Or at all.

Namaste.

HANK: Okay, Reds and Readers. Do we want to be Anne Oman, or what?  Tell us what you think when you read this...and congratulate a wonderful new author. 

(And Anne, my Dad was a cultural affairs officer for USIA from 1960 or so until he retired. And his wife was also in USIA. I wonder if you'd crossed paths. Seoul, Cebu, Bangkok, Hamburg, London?)



Anne H. Oman began her career as a Foreign Service Officer for the now defunct US Information Agency, which was charged with “winning the hearts and minds of the people.” She served in Cambodia and Indonesia and was expelled from both countries, for political, not personal, reasons.

Since that time, she has worked principally as a journalist. Her articles have appeared in the Washington Post, The Washington Star, The Baltimore Sun, The Washington Times, Washington Woman, Family Circle, Sailing, National Geographic World, Senior Scholastic and many other publications. Currently, she is Reporter At Large for the Fernandina Observer in Fernandina Beach, Florida. She has also published four non-fiction books. Mango Rains is her first work of fiction.

New England Gothic

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Two things today. No, three.

One.  My dad was the music critic for the old Chicago Daily News. As a result, he got to see many productions before the rest of the world.

One was Kismet. (I mean—the musical, Kismet.) Another was West Side Story. Yup. West Side Story. In press previews.

Many years later, I asked him: did you know, when you heard it? When you heard This is My Beloved? Or Tonight?  Did you know they were special?

Yes, he told me. I did.

Two. And it’s the same for books. I get asked to blurb a lot of books. A lot. And often, I say no. I truly do not have time. And I do not want to give a book short shrift.

But sometimes, I say yes.  And then—when the book is fabulous, I feel as if I—like my dad—I have been privy to something special. Something that the rest of the world will soon discover.

Doug at launching Mysterious Books

Three. Meet Doug Burgess. And his (Publishers Weekly starred reviewed!) Fogland Point.

And a copy of his debut novel to one lucky commenter! My name is on the cover. With Nick Petrie, and Michael Koryta. See? Fabulous.

What is Fogland Point about? Please welcome Doug Burgess to tell you.

New England Gothic: 

Mystery and Memory in a Rhode Island Village

When I was a kid, my Uncle George figured large in our dinner conversations. There were stories of his war exploits, his travels around the world, the time he met film star Peggy Hopkins Joyce on the Fall River Line ferry to New London and proposed (unsuccessfully) somewhere in Long Island Sound. Finally I brought up the nerve to ask why this remarkable person was never invited to our house.

“Because he died in 1939,” my father answered.

Growing up in a damp and ancient house deep in Swamp Yankee country, the dead were everywhere around me. Our once-large Rhode Island family had dwindled down through the generations until the only remnants were my grandparents, parents, brother and myself. Yet both my elementary and high schools were named after relatives, as was the posh university across the street. The many branches of the family tree lent their names to half the streets of Providence and Newport. 

My father liked to pull the car into random cemeteries, point to a weathered piece of granite and announce brightly, “There’s your Great-Aunt Lydia!”

All this could make a child morbid, or worse. In my case it gave me a curious sense of time. My grandparents, both near-centenarians at their death, had been born when ice was delivered in horse carts and there was still an Austro-Hungarian Empire. 

But when they spoke of the past it did not seem so long ago: the people they described were as real to me as my friends. Vignettes from their lives were offered like a basket of rolls at every holiday dinner: Grandpa Butler gifting his wife with peaches at Christmas because he fancied peach jam, Cousin Betty feeding Alka-Seltzer tablets to the despised seagulls that terrorized her Chihuahua, Uncle Walter in his fisherman’s sou’wester paying for a Steinway piano with a scaly roll of hundred-dollar bills. 

Soon I, too, began telling their stories—eventually, as my grandmother’s mind declined, I told them back to her.

The places, likewise, did not seem impossibly distant, but that was because they were still there. Like much of New England, Rhode Island never changes. The main street of my parent’s town looks much like it did when John Quincy Adams passed through on his way to Washington; the town library where I borrowed my first Agatha Christie was once a congressional hall that voted down the U.S. Constitution in 1790. 

Even the furnishings of my house unmoored me: in school there were Game Boys and Backstreet Boys, yet each evening I wrote my calculus homework on a table brought back from Burma in 1850 and slept in a bed that had birthed three generations of ancestors.

When I came to write Fogland Point, history, memory and place were much in my mind. The story of a young man who returns to the small Rhode Island village of his childhood to take care of a grandmother now coping with dementia, only to discover a body in the house next door, there is much beyond the mystery that is both personal and autobiographical. 

What few people realize is that dementia is not just about what one forgets, but remembers.

As it progressed in my Nana’s mind, she began to move through time at random. One moment she would be a little girl describing the fixtures of her parents’ house in Riverside; next she would begin a conversation with her friend Florence who died in the ‘80’s. 

Once in our car she became convinced that my dad, her son, was abducting her from school and said angrily, “My father is going to be so mad with you!” But then she turned and saw me in the back seat and immediately asked how my studies were getting on. It was as if she had finally transcended the fragile bonds of past and present that I had brushed against my entire life.

Dementia brings the concept of the unreliable narrator to a new level, and this, too, I wanted to explore. Were my grandmother’s memories to be believed? Were her confessions to be trusted? Was my Great-Uncle Bob Daniels really a pedophile, as she suddenly and startlingly claimed? Secrets came pouring out of her, but each left more questions than answers. Much of this translated into the novel.

 Nevertheless I was surprised when a friend read an early draft and said, “Well, you certainly brought Southern Gothic to Southern New England.” So surprised, in fact, that I looked up Southern Gothic on Wikipedia. 

And there it was: “deeply flawed, disturbing or eccentric characters who may be involved in hoodoo, ambivalent gender roles, decayed or derelict settings, grotesque situations, and other sinister events…”

Substitute hoodoo with the Congregational Church and this could have been on the dust jacket for Fogland Point. The world of a dementia sufferer—and those around them—is indeed a kind of gothic landscape where the veneer of the familiar overlays horrors, real and imagined, beneath.

There is a line in the book that strikes particularly close to home: “The house looks just the same as it always has…like nobody has told it the bad news. All my grandmother’s things are waiting for her to come back.” The backdrop remains both homey and comforting, even as the story becomes increasingly bizarre. This was my experience with my own grandmother, and I expect for many others as well.

That porous barrier between real and imagined takes on an increasingly desperate dimension as the disease progresses. We want to hold onto the memories before they are gone for good. A plot device that frames much of the novel—a series of stories told into a tape recorder by multiple narrators—came from one such reel I discovered myself in the family library.

 On it was my father’s youthful voice, and my great-grandfather’s, which I had never heard. Dad asks Grandpa about life during the Depression. “What Depression?” Grandpa wonders. Already the confusion has begun to claim him, as it would his daughter. Sometimes I think I wrote Fogland Point out of fear—that I, too, must tell my stories before it is too late.

I certainly did not set out to write a New England Gothic mystery; on the contrary, in their speech, mannerisms, histories and lives, each of the characters is as real and down-to-earth as I could make them. But the phlegmatic New England Way is a mask we all wear. Anything ugly, unsightly or not-quite-right is shunted behind the house, hidden in the garden shed, so that we can present a pleasant face to company.

In that sense, Rhode Islanders make the best murder suspects anywhere—we conceal everything. The exquisite distress that family and friends experienced as my Nana began voicing her truth is mirrored by the characters in Fogland Point; as Aunt Constance says in the novel, “You shouldn’t pay too much mind to the things she says. She can’t keep stuff inside anymore.”

New England also lends its atmospheric presence to gothic mystery: no craggy moor or swampy fen was ever so desolate as Easton’s Beach on a blustery November afternoon. I chose the town of Little Compton partly because of family connections, but mainly because of its rugged beauty and curiously isolated location, a peninsula jutting out into the North Atlantic without even a bay to protect it. 

The place names were so evocative that I sometimes feared to include them, lest the novel seem garish: Quicksand Pond, Despair Island, even Fogland Point itself. In rendering them I tried to remain as true to the landscape as possible (although my father experienced a moment of panic when he realized, after consulting the map, that Fogland lay just over the town border in Tiverton. Oh, well).
If Fogland Point is gothic, it is only because Rhode Island is equally so: a place where the dead are never truly gone and the past seems forever present. Gothic mystery doesn’t need rotting plantation houses or Spanish moss. A whitewashed Colonial, a neatly trimmed yard and a secret that can’t stay hidden will do just as well.

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Whoa. Fabulous. And this is a terrific book. SO—do you love Gothic novels? What does that mean to you? And what do you think about what Doug says?

And a copy of FOGLAND POINT to one very very lucky commenter!

"Elegant prose, a veritable Chinese box of puzzles, and authentic, well-rounded characters make this a standout." Publishers Weekly starred review

Preorder HERE.

Doug Burgess was born in Connecticut. After moving to Rhode Island, where his paternal family has lived for over three hundred years, he received his first education from the Quaker Friends at ses Brown School. Burgess received a BA  from McGill,   a JD from Cornell,  , an LLM from the University of British Columbia and a PhD from Brown University . He now teaches at Yeshiva College.

In 2003, Burgess wrote a dissertation arguing for the legal linkages between piracy and terrorism, and for the possible use of piracy law as a foundation for defining international terrorist organizations. This concept was later articulated in articles for Legal Affairs Magazine,  the National Security Law Report, the New York Times  and other publications. It appeared in book form as "The World For Ransom" (2010). Burgess continues to lecture around the world on counter-terrorism and the law.

Burgess has authored numerous articles for trade and scholarly journals, and one novel, FOGLAND POINT —a mystery set in Little Compton, Rhode Island.

He is a featured blogger for The Huffington Post.  

Who Lived in THE DOLLHOUSE?

"Davis’s impeccably structured debut is equal parts mystery, tribute to midcentury New York City, and classic love story. . . .
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: I didn’t plan to make this rites of passage week, but it’s turning out that way. Yesterday, our pre-teens. Today, coming of age. Maybe. Do you remember the first place you lived all on your own?

I was 20, and, post-college, lived in a cute house (two bedrooms, LR, DR, bath, kitchen, driveway) on Illinois St. in Indianapolis. It was adorable, and such fun to share with my roommate (and still pal) Sharon. Our rent was $100. Total. A month. We scrimped and shared food and painted it ourselves and worked 7 days a week (I had two jobs, as a radio reporter and on weekends as an art galley helper, and Sharon sold real estate) and wow, we were on our own.

But you know the Barbizon? Of course you do. Think how many women were on their own for the first time there? And the brilliant Fiona Davis took that iconic apartment building in NYC and turned it into an acclaimed novel.

Here’s a bit about THE DOLLHOUSE—and I dare you not to gasp with, well, either mad desire to read it, or mad envy for not having thought of it. 

“Fiona Davis's stunning debut novel pulls readers into the lush world of New York City's glamorous Barbizon Hotel for Women, where in the 1950s a generation of aspiring models, secretaries, and editors lived side by side while attempting to claw their way to fairy-tale success, and where a present-day journalist becomes consumed with uncovering a dark secret buried deep within the Barbizon's glitzy past.” 

Okay, love it, right?

Fiona and I shared an event with Amy Poeppel (Small Admissions) and  Rachel Hulin (Hey Harry Hey Matilda) in Providence with Robin Kall Homonoff---here we are. (And in real life, we actually were in focus.)  It was great fun, and I’m so pleased to introduce her to you all.

(And we’re giving away a copy of THE DOLLHOUSE to a lucky commenter)
 

HANK: So, Fiona. How did you come up with this brilliant idea?

FIONA DAVIS: I stumbled on it.  A few years ago, I was apartment hunting in New York City and my broker took me to the Barbizon 63 condo, in what used to be the Barbizon Hotel for Women. While I didn’t take the apartment, the building had great bones and an intriguing history – the perfect setting for a work of historical fiction. Built in 1927, the Barbizon Hotel was the go-to place for cultured young women to live in while they worked or studied in New York City, the place where icons like Grace Kelly, Lauren Bacall, Joan Didion and Eudora Welty got their start

HANK: Whoa. Yes, it’s so incredibly intriguing—when you think of all the women who lived there, and the changes that unfolded over the years. And why it existed in the first place! How’d you tackle the approach you’d take?

FIONA: I’d been working as a journalist for many years, but the thought of turning a story idea into fiction was a new one. So I approached it the same way I would an article: do the research, figure out the main characters, make an outline and off you go. “How hard could it be?” I thought to myself.  

HANK: Famous last words. I have said them myself. And so?

FIONA: But as I researched and plotted, my ambition got way ahead of me. Perhaps if I’d stuck to the historical fiction genre, I might have gotten off easy. But I had the insane idea to write about two time periods – the 1950s and today – and not only that, I simply had to add a mystery element into the plot.

HANK: Two timelines, two sets of characters, tons of research to make sure the period details are right, AND make it a mystery?

FIONA: Anyone with good sense might have stopped right there. But I adored the work of paragons like Agatha Christie, Laura Lippman, and Elizabeth George, so it was crucial to me to have a question that was answered at the end of the book, in a way that my readers least suspected.

I’ve never been a fan of books that meander along, examining the minutiae of a person’s soul. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but as a reader, I crave mysteries because they engage not only my imagination, but my powers of reasoning. You know what I’m talking about - that running commentary in your mind as you turn the pages: Was that a red herring? Or a clue? If the author is overtly pointing my attention to this character as the murderer, who else might have done it? So weaving a mystery element in to THE DOLLHOUSE was non-negotiable.

HANK: We’re all with you on that. But back to that setting. Who’d you talk to?

FIONA:  As part of my research, I interviewed ex-guests who’d stayed there in the 1950s and 60s and was surprised to learn there was a lot of talk of ghosts and suicides among the guests, because every so often a distraught young girl would throw herself off the balcony, and that this was often hushed up in the press.

There was my angle. In my book, a heartsick journalist moves into what’s now the Barbizon condo and starts investigating a tragedy that occurred to her downstairs neighbor – an elderly woman with a terrible scar and a dark secret.

HANK: And then what?

FIONA:  Over multiple drafts, the story grew to encompass a number of themes, from women’s roles at work and at home to the challenges of aging, but what kept me sitting at my desk was the fun of revealing the unknown: what really happened back then?

HANK: Well it certainly worked! Here’s the rest of that PW starred review! “Darby and Rose, in alternating chapters, weave intricate threads into twists and turns that ultimately bring them together; the result is good old-fashioned suspense." 

Hurray!

I don’t think anything as glamorous and suspenseful happened in my first place alone—does cutthroat Charades count? But I treasure that time.  How about you, Reds? The first time you lived on our own—not school—where was it?

And we’ll give away a copy of THE DOLLHOUSE to one lucky commenter!

  

Fiona can be found on her website, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.  

Fiona Davis

Fiona was born in Canada and raised in New Jersey, Utah and Texas. She began her career in New York City as an actress, where she worked on Broadway, off-Broadway and in regional theater. After 10 years, she changed careers, working as an editor and writer and specializing in health, fitness, nutrition, dance and theater. 

She’s a graduate of the College of William and Mary and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and is based in New York City. She loves nothing better than hitting farmer’s markets on weekends in search of the perfect tomato, and traveling to foreign cities steeped in history, like London and Cartagena. THE DOLLHOUSE is her first novel.

THE DOLLHOUSE

When she arrives at the famed Barbizon Hotel in 1952, secretarial school enrollment in hand, Darby McLaughlin is everything her modeling agency hall mates aren't: plain, self-conscious, homesick, and utterly convinced she doesn't belong—a notion the models do nothing to disabuse. Yet when Darby befriends Esme, a Barbizon maid, she's introduced to an entirely new side of New York City: seedy downtown jazz clubs where the music is as addictive as the heroin that's used there, the startling sounds of bebop, and even the possibility of romance.
 
Over half a century later, the Barbizon's gone condo and most of its long-ago guests are forgotten. But rumors of Darby's involvement in a deadly skirmish with a hotel maid back in 1952 haunt the halls of the building as surely as the melancholy music that floats from the elderly woman's rent-controlled apartment. It's a combination too intoxicating for journalist Rose Lewin, Darby's upstairs neighbor, to resist—not to mention the perfect distraction from her own imploding personal life. Yet as Rose's obsession deepens, the ethics of her investigation become increasingly murky, and neither woman will remain unchanged when the shocking truth is finally revealed.