A Special Visit from Laurie King!

 RHYS BOWEN: Jungle Reds are so excited today to celebrate the launch of Laurie King's new book,

BACK TO THE GARDEN! And she's here today to visit us and give us insights into this new venture.

I'm sure, like me, you're all big fans of Laurie's work. I'm addicted to Mary Russell. 

Well--exciting news, everyone. This book is so different from Holmes and Russell. It's a thriller/suspense novel set in two time periods--the San Francisco area in the 1970s and the present. So 1970s now counts as historical, right?  The book introduces a new protagonist--Inspector Rachel Laing, a tough broad!

So without further ado:

RHYS: This book is quite a departure for those who love Mary Russell. What was your motivation to write a tense, more contemporary thriller?

LAURIE: I like to change things out regularly, when it comes to writing. If I don’t, I find that I’m doing increasingly awful things to my series characters. (Whether this is due to writerly instincts or some unconscious and pathological urge to hurt the people I love, I couldn’t say.)

A lot of writers are happy to work with the same characters year in, year out. Others of us—like you, Rhys—need to explore different settings, voices, and moods. We have stories to tell that don’t fit within the limitations of a given series. Writing about Mary Russell and her mentor-turned-partner Sherlock Holmes gives me wide scope when it comes to where they go and what issues they face, but there is always an underlying degree of whimsy that would strain a tense and realistic plot to the breaking point.

Plus that, writing a book such as Lockdown (2017) or Back to the Garden lets me return to Russell & Holmes with added enthusiasm. And less of an urge to hurt them….

RHYS: This story is clearly set in an area you know and love in Northern California (therefore delightful for me to read as I too know it well ). The Gardener estate—is it based on a real house? Heart Castle?

LAURIE: The Gardener Estate is very very roughly based on Filoli, a historic house and garden 25 miles south of San Francisco. My fictional estate is in more or less the same place, and it has a vaguely similar history, architecture, and grounds, but I didn’t want to be limited by the real thing. (In another life, I might have been an architect…if I’d had any math and geometry skills at all.) And you’re right, the Gardener Estate is indeed similar to Hearst Castle in its era and in the ambitions of an owner aiming to build a power base.

RHYS: Tell us about Raquel Laing, where she came from. Is this designed to be a stand-alone or may we see Inspector Laing in more adventures?

LAURIE: As I wrote Inspector Laing, I was surprised, and amused, to find strong elements of Sherlock Holmes settling into her bones, from an extraordinary ability to spot and analyze key elements in an investigation to a nature that might generously be called “aloof.” Yet she’s also a cop, and the police only function as a communal enterprise.  That pull creates some interesting tensions, in her and in her work.

Back to the Garden is definitely the first in a new series. I admit that when I first started writing the story, I thought of it as standing alone, only to realize how much more I wanted to know about the characters. Fortunately, my publisher agrees!

RHYS: Real life serial killers—there certainly were a lot of them in the 1970s in our part of California.  To what do you ascribe that? Are there really cold cases, serial killers still never caught?

LAURIE: So bizarre, isn’t it, to think of peaceable “Surf City, USA” Santa Cruz (my home town) as a place infected with murders? But it was, back in the 70s, with one spree killer and two serial killers all within the same period. It was that time that changed how the FBI investigated deaths that seemed to be unrelated, leading to nation-wide forensics units, a data base of criminal information such as fingerprints and DNA, and an encouragement of inter-agency communications, all of which together catch killers.

Estimates of how many serial killers are working today vary hugely, from a tiny handful to a couple thousand. And those who simply stop, such as Dennis Rader (“the BTK killer”) and Joseph DeAngelo (who gave rise to three separate nicknames), are the hardest to identify—DeAngelo’s crimes ran from 1976 to 1986, but he was only caught in 2018, in part because he was a cop and knew how to avoid detection. Others, as you say, will probably never be caught, or only identified after they are dead.

RHYS: What strikes me after reading this book is how multi-layered it is. As well as the mystery/thriller aspect we have underlying themes of wealth, corruption, the Vietnam war, etc. What was your aim in writing the story?

LAURIE: One of the joys of crime fiction is that it can be about anything, so long as the story moves forward exploring the crime. And like a lot of mystery writers, I revel in the possibilities for being subversive, slipping in ideas, facts, or episodes from the past that linger in the reader’s mind.

The best mystery novels—the best novels, period—open a door into an unexplored world of riches. On the one hand, my only aim is to entertain, creating interesting people and sending them off on a satisfying adventure. But if the reader closes the book reluctantly, suspecting that there might have been more on the pages than what they saw, well, I’ve done my job.

RHYS: did you write this planning that the garden would be a symbol? For healing? Beauty? Secrets?

LAURIE: The idea of “garden” does get a lot of play in this story, doesn’t it? The family name, the actual garden, the way changes in the estate’s identity are reflected in its garden—from a formal stage for a family out to establish a political dynasty in the 30s to a 70s commune’s joyous celebration of organic vegetables to a modern setting for tourists and wedding parties. There is also the theme of the garden of Eden, a place of innocence with a serpent in the background—Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel are glimpsed throughout. And of course, the title itself, evoking Joni Mitchell and the Woodstock era.

A person might almost think the author enjoyed gardening.

RHYS: Did you find it a challenge to write in two time periods?

LAURIE: Any cold case story has to choose how to weave together its then-and-now timelines. What you want—as a reader and as a writer—is two stories that come together as one, even if they’re separated by many decades. 

I also wanted the reader to see events as they happened, from the point of view of the people experiencing them at the time, with details that might be peripheral to the actual investigation.  Weaving “THEN” and “NOW” together, so that the reader learns things more or less simultaneously with the investigator, allowed me to give the cops the facts that they need to know, while filling in the wider picture for the reader’s deeper understanding. 

Which was, as you say, was a challenge.

RHYS: I've just read the book and I can say you are in for a treat!  Big thanks to Laurie and wishing her all the best for this new venture.

The People Next Door

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: When I was…oh, I guess sixteen, I was out on a sort-of “date.” Those  were few and far between and I remember nothing about it except: When I called at 10 to see if I could stay out later, my mother said: “Come home right now, the barn is on fire.”

When we arrived, there was a conflagration, and firefighters everywhere, and the ladies auxiliary had set up a picnic table in our front yard with hot dogs and lemonade. Weird, huh?

Anyway, turned out, we began to hear, the kid next door, a very strange 10 year old, had set the fire. The family soon left town.  

Yeesh.

These days--I realize—I know who lives right next door to us on both sides. And they are not pre-adolescent arsonists.  But the next houses? NO idea.

The wonderful Nancy Cole Silverman has her own “house next door” story.

Family Secrets and Urban Legends

By Nancy Cole Silverman

When I was a little girl, my family and I used to visit my grandmother’s home in Seattle. She had lived there since she had been a young bride and had many stories to tell about the neighborhood and times past.  

One of the more curious tales concerned a mysterious house next door, a turn of the century Craftsman with a large front porch and a view of Puget Sound.  Gramma said the house had once been the prettiest on the block with hanging fuchsias and Boston ferns, but that the lady who lived inside, hadn’t been seen in years.

Rumor was there had been a murder in the house. Some suspected the woman had killed her husband, other suspected something far more sinister.  

Whatever it was, my grandmother didn’t tell me. Only that it was something, a young girl didn’t need to worry herself about.  Grandma was like that.  If you didn’t have something nice to say, she didn’t say it.  

All I knew for certain was that the cops had come, the cops had left, and nobody – particularly the women in the neighborhood – were talking about it.  It was my first experience hearing about an unsolved crime and a recluse, and I was determined to see if I might spot her. 

I don’t know what I expected, probably something very Hitchcockian. Maybe a little, old gray-haired lady, dressed in black mourning clothes and carrying around a candle while peering out laced-draped windows.  Despite my staying up way past my bedtime and sitting by the guest bedroom window and straining my young eyes to see if I might catch a glimpse of her, I never did.  But my memory of my nighttime posts, and later some of the urban legends about reclusive old ladies and serial killers was seared in my mind. For years when I’d visit my grandmother, I couldn’t help but flash back to the memory of the strange house next door and wonder about its occupant. 

But time and distance faded those memories, and I hadn’t thought of that incident again until I started research for Room For Doubt, book four of the Carol Childs Mysteries.  About that time, there were a couple of stories  in the paper; one about a group of bad cops on the take and another where two sweet looking little old ladies had been accused of multiple murders. The story was slugged, Black Widow Murders: Two elderly women found guilty of conspiring to kill homeless men.

The story reminded me of Joseph Kesselring’s Arsenic and Old Lace. 

Kesselring based his light-hearted mystery on the serial killings of Amy Archer-Gilligan, who was believed to have killed between 20 and 100 people, including several of her husbands.  Kesselring turned what was a horrendous news story into a popular piece of light-hearted fiction. 

The story triggered memories of the mysterious house next to my grandmother and its even more mysterious occupant.  Why hadn’t anyone followed up on the idea that she might have been a serial killer, and why hadn’t the police arrested her or at least conducted a more thorough investigation?  I couldn’t help but wonder, was there a reason why nobody dared speak of whatever happened inside that house?

Imagination, it’s a wonderful thing.  It got me researching all kinds of urban legends.  One of which was the basis for my new book Room For Doubt. 

How about you? Any childhood memories or urban legends influence the theme of your work?

HANK: And let me ask you this, Reds and readers—do you know who lives next door?

ROOM FOR DOUBT

Yes, showing it again, why not? xx Hank

When radio reporter Carol Childs is called to a crime scene in the Hollywood Hills at five thirty in the morning, she’s convinced it must be a publicity stunt to promote a new movie. That is, until she sees the body hanging from the center of the Hollywood sign. The police are quick to rule it a suicide, but something doesn’t add up for Carol. Particularly after a mysterious caller named Mustang Sally confesses to the murder on the air and threatens to kill again.

With the help of an incorrigible PI, her best friend, and a kooky psychic, Carol is drawn into the world of contract killers and women scorned. As she races to find the real killer, she finds herself faced with a decision that will challenge everything she thought she knew.

• NANCY COLE SILVERMAN
• Nancy Cole Silverman enjoyed a long and very successful career in radio before turning to print journalism and later, to fiction.
  As a graduate of Arizona State University with a degree in Mass Communications, Nancy was one of the first female on-air television reporters in her hometown of Phoenix. After moving to Los Angeles in the late 1970’s she turned to the business side of broadcasting, becoming one of the top advertising sales executives in the market. After stints at KNX, KFWB, KABC and KXTA radio, she was appointed General Manager at KMPC, making her one of only two female managers in America’s second-largest radio market.
  But in her heart of hearts, Nancy thought first of herself as a writer. In 2001 she left the radio business to found and edit The Equestrian News, a monthly publication for equine enthusiasts. “That’s when I really began to write,” said Silverman, “toggling between writing articles for the News and fiction I’d been thinking about for years.”
  Today Nancy is a full-time author. Her new series, The Carol Childs Mysteries, with Henery Press, is available in bookstores and online.

Thrills and Chills! Meg Gardiner and UNSUB

INGRID THOFT

When the planets align, and you find a fantastic book written by a wonderful author and person, that is a day worth celebrating.  That's what we're doing today, on the release day of Meg Gardiner's heart pounding page-turner, UNSUB.

Meg is an Edgar Award-winning author of international bestselling thrillers that have been translated into twenty languages.  She's a graduate of Stanford Law, a three-time Jeopardy champion, and her books have been lauded by USA Today, O, the Oprah Magazine, Kirkus Reviews, and the Guardian to name just a few.  Stephen King said about Meg's Evan Delaney series “simply put, the finest crime-suspense series I’ve come across in the last twenty years.”  And if that weren't enough, she is hilarious, gracious, and generous.

Meg was kind enough to send me an advance copy of UNSUB, and it's a nail biter.  I couldn't put it down!  I'm so thrilled she's stopping by JRW today.

INGRID THOFT: Tell us about UNSUB, the first installment in your new series.

MEG GARDINER: UNSUB is a psychological thriller about a young cop hunting a legendary killer. The UNSUB—an unknown subject in a criminal investigation—begins killing again after a twenty-year break, and Detective Caitlin Hendrix must decipher his coded plan before he wreaks more havoc. 

The novel was sparked by the Zodiac killings. That unsolved case has haunted California for decades, and me since childhood. The Zodiac killed and injured seven people in the San Francisco Bay Area, and taunted the police and press with dozens of messages, including cryptograms that have never been broken. The killer has never been caught.

In UNSUB, Caitlin Hendrix is drawn into the chilling world of the Prophet, who marked his victims’ bodies with the ancient sign for Mercury. The Prophet is Caitlin’s living nightmare. Her father, Mack, was the lead detective on the original case. The investigation shattered Mack emotionally and tore his family apart.

The Prophet is a master of mind games. To stop him, Caitlin must do what her father couldn’t. She must decipher both the Prophet’s old, taunting messages and his strange new rhymes. What does the Mercury sign mean? What’s the Prophet’s end game?


IPT: The main character, Caitlin Hendrix, is cop, as was her dad, and their relationship is pivotal to the story.  What made you tackle a father/daughter relationship?

MG: The action in the novel unfolds over ten days. But the case spans twenty-five years, and affects two generations. I wanted to tell it from the perspective of the cops working the case—who thread the line between relentless pursuit and dangerous obsession. The most affecting way to do that was to make those cops father and daughter.

Mack knows the case better than anyone, but is a broken man. Caitlin desperately needs his help, but knows that drawing him back into the world of the Prophet could endanger them all.
I’m a sucker for family stories. What can I say?

 IPT: UNSUB is so suspenseful that, at one point, I was curled on the couch practically in the fetal position while reading it.  How do you get the rhythm and pacing right?

I plan. I rewrite. Then I add a countdown clock. I want my novels to be fast-paced. Action and accelerating momentum help put the thrill in thriller. But the action can’t be unrelenting.

In UNSUB, Caitlin runs 5K with friends, plays My Little Pony with a four-year-old, and gets a night of romance. I love it when readers tell me they find my books suspenseful. That’s not just because the pace is quick, or because the action is nonstop. The books can seem relentless because, even when the action stops, unanswered questions lurk in the background. The pace might let up, but the suspense never does.  

Each of the novel’s lighter scenes feed into the main plot. While Caitlin runs 5K, she talks about psychopathology. The My Little Pony playdate is interrupted when the Prophet delivers a video to a TV station. Caitlin’s night of romance starts out with a discussion of bomb making techniques. (Caitlin’s boyfriend, Sean, is an ATF Certified Explosives Specialist.) These scenes let the characters enjoy a moment of Zen, or ecstasy, or tequila. But unsettled issues continue to churn. Mysteries remain unsolved. Clocks tick down. The bad guy schemes, and sharpens his knives.


 IPT; Anyone who knows you, knows that you are a kind, thoughtful, funny (you have to follow Meg on twitter at @meggardiner1) person, but UNSUB has some dark, disturbing images in it.  How do you keep that stuff from seeping into your otherwise sunny personality?  Or is the sunny personality a ruse?!

MG: Aww, thanks. It’s a balancing act. I write about what scares me, because I figure it will also scare readers. But I keep emotional distance from what’s happening on the page. At some point, I have to throw myself fully into the scene—to feel what the characters are feeling, so I can express that—but I do compartmentalize. As a writer, I take what frightens me and turn it into gripping fiction. I put my demons on the page, and turn them loose for readers to experience in the most exciting and suspenseful ways I can create.

And we all have a shadow side. I follow Stephen King’s advice: “Go down to the basement.” Haul everything up. How else are you going to find depth?

IPT: You clearly know your stuff when it comes to law enforcement.  Whether it’s tactical strategy, explosives, or how various agencies interact with one another, it all rings true.  Do you do a lot of research? 

MG: I do. I love research. To write UNSUB, I delved into the digitized files from the Zodiac case. I read books by former FBI agents on criminal profiling. I rode along on patrol with the Austin Police Department. If I couldn’t learn something first hand, I watched videos. (Want to breach a building with a tactical team? Find training videos online.) Whenever possible, I talk to the people who do the job I’m writing about. There’s no better way to get things right, and—as important—to get a feel for what their lives are like.


IPT: CBS is developing UNSUB into a TV series, and you’re going to be a producer.  Can you tell us about that process?

MG: I’ll be involved behind the scenes. CBS and the production company, Timberman-Beverly (which also produced "Justified," and produces "Elementary") are putting things together. More details to come!

So readers, what really scares you?  Do serial killers make the list?  Meg is giving away a copy of UNSUB.  Just comment to enter!

UNSUB
Caitlin Hendrix has been a Narcotics detective for six months when the killer at the heart of all her childhood nightmares reemerges: the Prophet. An UNSUB—what the FBI calls an unknown subject—the Prophet terrorized the Bay Area in the 1990s and nearly destroyed her father, the lead investigator on the case.

The Prophet’s cryptic messages and mind games drove Detective Mack Hendrix to the brink of madness, and Mack’s failure to solve the series of ritualized murders—eleven seemingly unconnected victims left with the ancient sign for Mercury etched into their flesh—was the final nail in the coffin for a once promising career.

Twenty years later, two bodies are found bearing the haunting signature of the Prophet. Caitlin Hendrix has never escaped the shadow of her father’s failure to protect their city. But now the ruthless madman is killing again and has set his sights on her, threatening to undermine the fragile barrier she rigidly maintains for her own protection, between relentless pursuit and dangerous obsession.

Determined to decipher his twisted messages and stop the carnage, Caitlin ignores her father’s warnings as she draws closer to the killer with each new gruesome murder. Is it a copycat, or can this really be the same Prophet who haunted her childhood? Will Caitlin avoid repeating her father’s mistakes and redeem her family name, or will chasing the Prophet drag her and everyone she loves into the depths of the abyss?

Edgar-winning novelist Meg Gardiner writes thrillers. Fast-paced and full of twists, her books have been called “Hitchcockian” (USA Today) and “nailbiting and moving” (Guardian). They have been bestsellers in the U.S. and internationally and have been translated into more than 20 languages.

The Evan Delaney novels feature a feisty freelance journalist from Santa Barbara, California. Stephen King calls them “simply put, the finest crime-suspense series I’ve come across in the last twenty years.” China Lake won the 2009 Edgar Award for Best Paperback Original. Later it was a finalist for NPR’s 100 Best Thrillers Ever. The Jo Beckett series features a San Francisco forensic psychiatrist. It includes The Liar’s Lullaby, The Memory Collector, and The Dirty Secrets Club, which was chosen one of the Top Ten thrillers of 2008 by Amazon and won the Romantic Times Reviewers’ Choice Award for Best Procedural Novel of the year.

The Nightmare Thief, featuring both Jo Beckett and Evan Delaney, won the 2012 Audie Award for Thriller/Suspense audiobook of the year. Meg’s stand alone novel The Shadow Tracer was named one of Kirkus Reviews’ Best Books of 2013. Her current title, Phantom Instinct, was chosen one of “The Best Books of Summer” by O, the Oprah magazine.

Meg was born in Oklahoma City and raised in Santa Barbara, California. She graduated from Stanford University, where she lettered in varsity cross country and earned a B.A. in Economics. She went on to graduate from Stanford Law School. She practiced law in Los Angeles and taught in the Writing Program at the University of California Santa Barbara. Later she moved with her husband and three young children to London. There she began writing mysteries set in the California she loves. She hasn’t stopped. Writing thrillers is job she’s immensely lucky to have.

In addition to her twelve novels, Meg has published short stories in American and British magazines. She’s contributed essays to anthologies including Now, Write! Mysteries, The Mystery Writers of America Cookbook, and the Anthony Award winning Books to Die For.

Beyond writing, Meg is a three time Jeopardy! champion and a citizen of the Chickasaw Nation. She lives in Austin, Texas.

That's Entertainment! Or is it?

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN:   So here’s an easy question. And I say that because it isn’t.  First, let me preface by saying my new book, SAY NO MORE, tackles, as one of the story threads, campus sexual assault. And to the end of my days, I will be thrilled that Publishers Weekly calls it not only thrilling and gratifying, but “Unflinching.”

And I have told many audiences, if I can write a great story—one that allows you to see the world in a new way , through a new point of view, and think about an intensely important social issue—then hurray, that’s a good thing. But—and here’s where the debate is about to begin—I think my first task is to wrap that in entertainment.

But there’s another way—an opposite but equally compelling way—to tackle that balance.

Alex Sokoloff is one of the heroes of my life. An inspiration and a joy. If you know her, or have read (and studied) her books,  or have heard her teach, you understand why. If you don’t know her—hurray.  I am delighted to make the introduction.

And now—how Alex answers the question:

Is Crime Fiction Entertainment?

ByAlexandra Sokoloff

BITTER MOON, Book 4 of my Huntress Moon thrillers, is out this week, so thanks to the Reds for hosting this episode of my blog tour!

Here’s my discussion question for the day.

Is Crime Fiction entertainment?

I belong to several online readers groups and it’s a question that has been coming up frequently, lately.

A thorny issue, right? But I’m glad to see it being discussed. For me – no. I DON’T read crime fiction for entertainment. When I pick up a crime novel as a reader, I want to see intelligent treatment of societal evils that focuses on bringing awareness to problems and proposing activist solutions.

That’s my goal as an author, too.

My Huntress Moon series is intense, page-turning psychological and procedural suspense.  I worked as a Hollywood screenwriter for ten years before I wrote my first novel. I’m well aware that I need to deliver a satisfying genre experience to my readers. If they’re not biting their nails and staying up way past their bedtimes, I’m not doing my job.

But within the context of a ripping thriller, I am writing about issues I care passionately about and want to eradicate for good – meaning the good of everyone on the planet. Violence against women. Child sexual abuse. Human trafficking.

The last thing I want to do is show these scenes in a way that anyone could get pleasure out of. The few times I show anything on the page, it’s very brief and absolutely not there for entertainment. And I am very suspicious of any book that starts with a beautiful woman obviously being set up to be raped and tortured. Sexualizing rape and torture is not solving any problem – it’s actually contributing to the atrocity of sexual abuse.  Personally I won’t support any book or author, film or filmmaker, that sexualizes scenes of abuse.

But I used to teach in the Los Angeles County prison system. I want to explore the roots of crime, not soft-pedal it. For better or worse, my core theme as a writer is “What can good people do about the evil in the world?”

So my choice is to confront the issue head on.

The fact is, one reason crime novels and film and TV so often depict women as victims is because it’s reality. Since the beginning of time, women haven’t been the predators – we’re the prey. Personally, I’m not going to pretend otherwise.

But after all those years (centuries, millennia) of women being victims of the most heinous crimes out there… wouldn’t you think that someone would finally say – “Enough”? 

And maybe even strike back?

Well, that’s a story, isn’t it?

So my Huntress Moon series is about just that.

The books take the reader on an interstate manhunt with a haunted FBI agent on the track of what he thinks may be that most rare of criminals – a female serial killer.

And here’s what’s really interesting. Arguably there’s never been any such thing as a female serial killer in real life. The women that the media holds up as serial killers operate from a completely different psychology from the men who commit what the FBI calls “sexual homicide”. 

So what’s that about? Why do men do it and women don’t? Women rarely kill, compared to men — but when it happens, what does make a woman kill?

Because another pet peeve I have about crime fiction is the way so many authors presents serial killers for entertainment. So many authors seem to have no clue what a serial killer actually does. What we see on the page and on screen is criminal masterminds who stage their murders like artistic masterpieces or leave poetic clues in a cat-and-mouse game they're playing with the cops or FBI.

Well, bullshit. What serial killers do is rape, torture and kill for their own gratification. They are not masterminds. There is no art or poetry to their sadism.

Yes, two of my favorite books are Thomas Harris's Red Dragon and The Silence of the Lambs, both of which deal with mythic versions of serial killers. But Harris was writing horror novels in which he created mythological monsters within the frame of very accurate police procedurals. And authors who don't really understand the complexity of what he did have been ripping him off - almost always badly - ever since.

Silence and Red Dragon are entertaining, no doubt. But they're also brilliant, passionate explorations of the nature of evil and the quest of good people to fight evil.

As an author, you can settle for writing entertainment, and make a living at it. But is that really all we're here for?

I hope not.

Within the context of my Huntress series I can explore those psychological and sociological questions, and invite my readers to ask – Why? I can realistically bring light to crimes that I consider pretty much the essence of evil – and turn the tables on the perpetrators.

And I’ve created a female character who breaks the mold – but in a way that makes psychological sense for the overwhelming majority of people who read the books.

Whoever she is, whatever she is, the Huntress is like no killer Agent Roarke – or the reader – has ever seen before. And you may find yourself as conflicted about her as Roarke is.

Because as one of the profilers says in the book: “I’ve always wondered why we don’t see more women acting out this way. God knows enough of them have reason.”

So what do you think?

Readers, do you read crime fiction for entertainment? Are you looking for something that goes farther and examines the root of crime, and maybe even solutions? Are you concerned about scenes of violence against women being presented as sexualized entertainment?

Authors/writers: is this an issue you grapple with? Have you found ways of exploring real-life issues of violence against women and children that both fulfill the conventions of the thriller genre and avoid brutalization for entertainment?

I’m always interesting in hearing!

-       Alex

     

     HANK: Told you she was fabulous! So--what do you all think? And see below--you can get a huge bargain, and maybe a FREE BOOK!

Alex says: 

"I strongly recommend that you read the Huntress/FBI thrillers in order. So…"

SALE ALERT: The first three books in the HUNTRESS series are currently on sale on Amazon US for just $1.99 each (and Amazon Prime members can currently read Book 1, HUNTRESS MOON, for free!  http://hyperurl.co/xtajck)

BITTER MOON, book 4, is now out in paperback, ebook and audiobook: http://hyperurl.co/fkh61x

  

 Alexandra Sokoloff is the Thriller Award-winning and Bram Stoker, Anthony, and Black Quill Award-nominated author of the supernatural thrillers The Harrowing, The Price, The Unseen, Book of Shadows, The Shifters, and The Space Between; The Keepers paranormal series, and the Thriller Award-nominated, Amazon bestselling Huntress/FBI Thrillers series (Huntress Moon, Blood Moon, Cold Moon), which has been optioned for television. She has also written three non-fiction workbooks: Stealing Hollywood, Screenwriting Tricks for Authors, and Writing Love, based on her internationally acclaimed workshops and blog (www.ScreenwritingTricks.com), and has served on the Board of Directors of the WGA, West (the screenwriters union) and the board of the Mystery Writers of America.

Alex is a California native and a graduate of U.C. Berkeley, where she majored in theater and minored in everything Berkeley has a reputation for. She lives in Los Angeles and in Scotland, with Scottish crime author Craig Robertson. www.Alexandrasokoloff.com

Blog URL:  http://www.screenwritingtricks.com

Facebook URL: http://www.facebook.com/alexandra.sokoloff

Twitter: http://twitter.com/AlexSokoloff

Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/AlexandraSokoloff

Pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/axsokoloff/

Amazon: The FBI Thriller Series: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B011M9AOBM?keywords=huntress%20moon&qid=1451693113&ref_=sr_1_1_ha&s=digital-text&sr=1-1