Her Accidental Thriller

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN:

Well, wow. Sometimes things just work, don’t they? When we least expect it.

Lyn Liao Butler went to Hawaii  with her family to escape Covid. Good idea!

She decided to write a book there.

Good idea.

She wrote and wrote. And turned out, the book did not develop into her usual (extremely successful) upmarket fiction or rom-com.

Turned out, this one was a thriller.

What? Good idea?

Yup.

So she wrote it anyway.

REALLY REALLY GOOD IDEA.

Now Publishers Weekly says:

“Well-developed characters and plenty of local color add to the slowly simmering plot, which builds to a strong and unexpected climax. Alfred Hitchcock fans will be satisfied.”

And her "accidental thriller" reached NUMBER ONE in domestic thrillers on Amazon!

YAAY!

And here's how it happened.

 

How I Accidentally Wrote a Thriller

By Lyn Liao Butler

It was January 2021, and I’d gotten the harebrained idea to go live on Kauai with my husband and then eight-year-old son that winter, to escape the cold of New York and the pandemic. There was no COVID on the island because they weren’t letting people in. I’d been struggling to write my third book (set in Kauai), which I was supposed to turn in as my option to my editor. I needed to go for research so on a whim, we went for it. It was the best decision we made during the pandemic.


Not only were we out of the cold, we were living on a beautiful island where our son got to play with the local kids. Creative juices stirred and the words flowed. But I was in a dark mood, mostly due to pandemic homeschooling (which made me consider day drinking starting at 10:26am every morning). I started killing people off in the book. Then there was a stalker who followed the MC all the way from New York to Kauai, then an accidental murder from the past, and then an intentional murder from the past. 

One day, I was standing on the banks of the Wailua River, about to go paddle boarding with my family, when I suddenly asked the guy renting us the paddle boards, “If there was a really bad storm, could someone get swept away out into the ocean?”

He said yes, enthusiastically. It has happened, to his father in fact who survived, because he was a strong swimmer. I then asked, “So, if someone can’t swim, they could potentially drown?” He nodded, telling me all about the surge from up the mountains and how in a second, it could sweep anything along the banks away. My face must have lit up with glee as I said, “Perfect! That’s how she’s going to die then.”

He looked at me, cocked his head, and took a few steps back from the river. I then had to convince him I wasn’t plotting a murder. I was writing a book. But it didn’t feel like my first two books, which have been described as upmarket book club fiction. It wasn’t until I told some writer friends about the book that they said to me, “Lyn. That’s not a family drama. You wrote a thriller.”

Huh. I didn’t know how to write a thriller. I love them, but never attempted to write one. When I showed my agent, she said the same thing. I had accidentally written a thriller.

We fine-tuned the concept, and then she sold that book, Someone Else’s Life, in two weeks on only three chapters and a synopsis. And suddenly, I was now a thriller author. The ideas started to flow out of me. Every time something in real life happened, my thriller brain would start spinning it into a new story. I started researching ways people could die (like, how many seconds do you have to hold a pillow over someone face), and other subjects that I’m sure has put me on some national watch list. Every time I ask questions like that, I have to preface it with, “I’m not a serial killer or plotting a kidnapping.”

It’s been fun getting into the heads of twisted people, but I might have to write a romcom next, to counterbalance all that murder. After all, I read across genres, so why not write them? How many of you would read an author who has crossed genres?

HANK: Lyn, you are in good company here! The Reds and readers are all eager to read any book in any genre–and yup, as a result of research, we are ALL on some watchlist somewhere! And I can imagine your face lighting up as you discovered a good way to kill someone–and again, here you are in like company. Welcome–and congratulations on your wild success.

Reds and readers, has it ever crossed your mind to tell an author: “Stay in your lane!” ? Not me!

(And PS. It's not public yet :-), but: Lyn will join me in THE BACK ROOM on March 5–live with Adele Parks, Eli Cranor and Shelby Van Pelt. Really really really good idea!

Lyn Liao Butler, author of upmarket fiction, thrillers and rom-coms, was born in Taiwan and moved to the States when she was seven. Before becoming an author, she was a professional ballet and modern dancer, and is still a personal trainer, fitness instructor and yoga instructor. She is an avid animal lover and fosters dogs, as well as volunteers with rescues.

When she is not torturing clients or talking to imaginary characters, Lyn enjoys spending time with her FDNY husband, their son (the happiest little boy in the world), their three stubborn dachshunds (Lokie, Mochi, Cash and Pinot in heaven), sewing for her Etsy shop, and trying crazy yoga poses on a stand-up paddleboard. So far, she has not fallen into the water yet.

SOMEONE ELSE’S LIFE

A new life in paradise should have healed her wounds. But for a woman struggling to hold on
to her family and her sanity, one stormy night could change everything.

Blow by blow, Annie Lin’s life crumbles. Her dance studio goes bankrupt. Her mother and beloved dog are gone the same year. Then a terrible accident leaves her young son traumatized.

It’s time for a change.

Palm trees, mai tais, peace and quiet―Annie should be at ease, safe in her new Kauai home with her husband and son. She hopes proximity to her family can provide them all with a sense of belonging and calm. But soon items from her past start turning up―her dog’s collar, a bracelet that disappeared years ago―and she has the unnerving sensation she’s being watched. Reality begins to fracture, and Annie’s panic attacks return. When, during a brewing storm, a woman appears on her doorstep looking for shelter, Annie is relieved to have the company and feels an unexplainable bond with her visitor.

As the night progresses, Annie realizes the woman is no stranger. Their lives are inextricably intertwined―and Annie might just lose everything.

Why I Love the Wild West

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN:  Let me put it this way. The wild west may have saved my marriage.  That’s because whenever there is a western on TV, I can rely on the reality that Jonathan will be lost in it, absolutely lost in it, and I will be able to get in a few hours writing  and he will NEVER know that I am gone. 

Which I why when I saw the title of the fabulous Ryan Steck’s essay for today, I burst into  laughter.   (Even funnier because when Ryan’s book FIELDS OF FIRE arrived here the other day, Jonathan grabbed it, and now he’s lost in THAT!)

I will carefully tentatively say that “westerns” are kinda not my genre of choice.  They are—and I know this might sound silly—too sad. Know what I mean? But that’s just me.  And ”off the grid” to me means, um, well, where am I gonna plug stuff in? But that’s just me.

Anyway! We are so delighted to have Ryan here today—you all know him of course, from being the founder and editor in chief of the irresistible The Real Book Spy, the place to go for all things thriller! And more on that in a minute.

But first, hurray! We are celebrating Ryan’s debut novel. And, no matter if you are an aficionado of the wild West or more a city type, you’ll adore it.

So read on—-And I’ll give a copy of FIELDS OF FIRE to one lucky commenter! (But it won’t arrive by Pony Express.)

Why I Love the Wild West

by Ryan Steck

As The Real Book Spy, I have spent the last decade of my life covering the thriller genre, from authors to their characters, and thousands of new releases. I’ve had the pleasure of reading just about everything. Then again, most of that reading is for “work” rather than pleasure. Don’t get me wrong, I love what I do, but even I need a break from the daily routine sometimes, and when I need that escape, there’s always one place I head for—the wild West. 

When it comes to the modern-day western, authors like C. J. Box and Craig Johnson have long been the gold standard. Now, though, we’re seeing a resurgence in such stories from Hollywood too, with shows like Yellowstone and 1883 dominating ratings charts, not to mention award shows. 

And as the western comes roaring back, fast becoming a mainstay in today’s pop culture fabric, I think it’s worth looking at why that is, and what it is about the West that people love so much. 

I can only speak for myself, but I think in today’s high-tech world of gadgets and electronics (I mean, we now have refrigerators that can provide weather forecasts and automobiles that can self-diagnose issues and order their own parts), one of the most appealing things about out West, or at least our perception of it, is that it provides a simpler way of living.

 In a world where most people can’t go two minutes without checking their iPhone or uploading pictures of their dinner plates to Instagram, there’s something so appealing about living off the land, disconnected from technology, where streetlights and skyscrapers don’t obscure the starry night sky. Peace and quiet, too—that’s something else most of us crave after being overly stimulated by the sights and sounds of city living. Is that part of the appeal? 

Then there’s the creative side of things. When I was preparing to transition from literary critic to author, I knew I needed a story and setting unlike anything I’d ever covered. So I chose to set Fields of Fire, my debut novel, in a small town smack-dab in the middle of Montana. All the reasons outlined above played into in that decision, but more important was the reality that those factors can create the perfect storm for plotting. 

For example, out West, backup doesn’t always exist, and if it does, the response time can be hours, not minutes. Likewise, tension can be heightened by the fact that when a character is out on their own, the stakes are raised considerably. A non-life-threatening injury becomes far more concerning when alone in the vastness that is the wild West. For me, the opportunity to take advantage of those things was a no-brainer. 

The allure of living off grid is a tantalizing one, and as the world continues to chug onward into the digital age, it makes sense that storytellers would look to the wild West, one of the only places that is both a slice of familiarity and a great unknown with limitless potential. And that is why I love it so much. 

What about you?  

HANK: Exactly, Reds and readers! How about you?  And hey, tell us what your favorite off-the-grid wide-open-spaces book or movie is. That would be fun to know!

And remember, a copy of the wonderful debut  FIELDS OF FIRE to one lucky commenter!

(And don't forget to check out The Real Book Spy!)

Ryan Steck is an editor, an author, and the founder and editor in chief of The Real Book Spy. Ryan has been named an "Online Influencer" by Amazon and is a regular columnist at CrimeReads. TheRealBookSpy.com has been endorsed by #1 New York Times bestselling authors Mark Greaney, C. J. Box, Kyle Mills, Daniel Silva, Brad Thor, and many others. A resident of Michigan, along with his wife and their six kids, Steck cheers on his beloved Detroit Tigers and Lions during the rare moments when he's not reading or talking about books on social media. 

Fields of Fire

A Matthew Redd Thriller

by Ryan Steck

“You know Ryan Steck as the Real Book Spy. Now, get to know him as the author of Fields of Fire, his debut thriller featuring Marine Raider Matthew Redd in a battle that will leave you speechless and begging for more. Lock and load!” —Jack Carr, Navy SEAL Sniper and #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Devil’s Hand

Waiting to be deployed on a critical mission, elite Marine Raider Matthew Redd stops to help a stranger and wakes up hours later to learn his team was wiped out in an ambush. Unable to remember anything, Redd can’t deny the possibility that he’s somehow responsible for the information leak that led to the massacre. He’s given a deal to avoid a charge of treason, but it means walking away from the Corps and the life he loved.

As he faces his loss, Matty gets a cryptic message from his adoptive father, J. B.: “Trouble’s come knocking. . . . Might need your help.” He points his truck home to rural Montana, only to discover that J. B. is dead and the explanation for his death is far from satisfying. Determined to dig up the truth, Redd uncovers a dark global conspiracy with his hometown at the center and no team at his back—except one he might find among past friends, old enemies, and new allies, if he can figure out who to trust.

Get your copy here!

The Long and Winding Road to UNSAFE HAVEN @LucyBurdette

RHYS BOWEN: Since it's my week to host I am honored to have the chance to introduce Lucy's new venture. It's breathtaking--absolutely true. It takes your breath away as you read it.

It's a tense, taught thriller, so different from the cozy lives of the characters in the Key West books that you might wonder how one writer can create such diverse books. 

Needless to say we are all very proud of her and hope she sells a gazillion copies!

 LUCY BURDETTE: Thank you so much Rhys! All of you Reds have been amazingly supportive and for that I am very, very grateful.

Today’s the day that my one and only thriller, UNSAFE HAVEN, is available to the world in hardcover, audio, and ebook versions. Hooray! I’m so pleased because my gosh it’s been a long haul figuring out how to make this book work. What was the nugget of the story? Who were the important characters? How do I get the right pacing? Today I’ll share a little bit of the (lengthy, interminable, agonizing) process…

As early as 2008, I was thinking about the question of why public figures take enormous personal, career-threatening risks:

The type of people we tend to elect to public office also are the type to take risks — big risks, says Frank Farley, professor of educational psychology at Temple University in Philadelphia. "They believe they control their fate," he says. "It's the thrill of it." If Spitzer had simply wanted to have an affair, "he could have done it in a less risky way."

Hmmm, somehow I had to work that into the story. I found notes from my earliest (very rough and sometimes ridiculous) brainstorming in 2009:

A woman finds a baby in the subway and no one claims the child. The police aren’t taking the case as seriously as they should.

(Homeless women are kidnapped or offered shelter while they carry a baby for wealthy couples who can’t conceive-a doctor is involved who is implanting pre-fertilized eggs (only in young homeless women who have no STDs), so no DNA from the women will ever be discovered.)

One of the homeless women escaped and left her baby in the subway where the protagonist found her. She goes undercover and interviews homeless women, gang members and others to find out the truth of how the baby came to be abandoned.

But the wealthy wanna-be parents aren’t about to let her uncover their secrets without trying to murder her to hide the truth, and they have some corrupt cops on their side.

Since these girls are runaways, no one reports them missing, and once they’ve delivered the child, they can easily be murdered with a drug overdose and no one questions one more homeless OD.

No, no, no! This was a mess of unruly ideas! No one in her right mind would read this...At that point, I took a few classes. Here were some questions from Bob Mayer’s class in 2010, focused on essential blurbs:

ME: What if a teenage runaway gives birth to her baby alone in a New York subway station. She presses the infant into the arms of a newly jilted bride who soon learns that the child could be the offspring of a well-known public figure and that the girl’s life—and her own—are now in danger. 

BOB: Big problem is your plot runs on coincidence. Jilted bride just happens to be there? It can work, but has to be well done. In danger how? The Pelican Brief Syndrome is when the bad guy does something worse than the original bad thing to cover it up. It’s an incident. I’m not seeing the whole story. Why does the bride care? Why doesn’t she turn the kid over to child services? 

ME: Oh brother, how will I ever write this??

There was a significant lull while I was writing the first seven Key West mysteries. Then, when the series was dropped by Penguin, I turned back to the “homeless baby thriller,” as the poor thing was called for the longest time. Here’s part of an editorial letter with suggestions from my agent:

PAIGE: My last string of comments brings me to another issue that readers may have, which is the timing or pacing of the novel. Pacing was both your greatest strength and your greatest weakness in the story. While the opening chapters achieved an excellent momentum that kept readers frantically turning pages, the middle lagged. This is because too much of the plot has readers watching Elizabeth unravel mysteries that we already know the answers to.

And then some very smart feedback from my pal Susan Hubbard in 2017:

SUSAN: I would start with Addy on the subway. All we should know is that she’s running away from someone called Georgia, whom she fears, and running toward someone named Rafe, who is supposedly going to help her. The reader should be concerned that Addy might not know who’s really got her best interests at heart.

Now I had plenty of good suggestions, but Crooked Lane had bought the continuation of the Key West series, so I had a lot of writing to do. The next thing I knew, last February, my clever agent had sold the book to an editor at Severn House. Here's what the editor said:

I’ve now had a chance to read UNSAFE HAVEN, which I found a darkly compelling and original read, involving a sympathetic and engaging young heroine, a well-paced plot and an emotionally powerful denouement. 

 The upshot is that we would be delighted to make you an offer!

Phew! Except I’d made so many false starts I wasn’t confident I had the story just right. Luckily, the editor at Severn House was fantastic and helped me figure out ways to tie up loose ends and tighten plot and character. 

Now it's flown the nest where it fledged for YEARS and I hope you'll give it a try! 

Have you ever worked on a project that took forever? How did you stick with it? I have one hardcover copy to give away to one commenter...

You can read chapter one here.

Ways to order your copy of UNSAFE HAVEN:

Book depository 

Indiebound 

Barnes and Noble 

Amazon 

Plus signed copies at Key West Island Bookstore and Books and Books

"In a major departure from her lighthearted Key West mysteries, Burdette invites readers into the world of a chilling thriller. (Unsafe Haven is) a page- turner highlighting the problem of exploited runaways."

—Kirkus Reviews

“Lucy Burdette shows us that she can write dark as well as light. Brilliantly plotted with characters we come to care about."

—Rhys Bowen, NYT bestselling author of the Venice Sketchbook and the Royal Spyness and Molly Murphy mysteries

"Lucy Burdette's Unsafe Haven is a gripping rollercoaster of suspense—you will root for her characters through every twist and turn of this beautifully plotted novel."

—Deborah Crombie, NYT bestselling author of A Bitter Feast

"Devastating, heartbreaking and completely immersive. This riveting story of fear and redemption, motherhood and second chances, and our responsibility to strangers is a powerful thriller proving one split-second decision can change our lives forever. Unsafe Haven has Hollywood written all over it!" 

—Hank Phillippi Ryan, USA Today bestselling author of Her Perfect Life

RHYS: so lets all give a mighty round of applause and do tell your friends and helpful librarians about Lucy's new book!

Pivoting to the Dark Side: Unsafe Haven @LucyBurdette

LUCY BURDETTE: As you, my Jungle Red family, are well aware, I’m mostly known in the mystery world for my series featuring a food critic living in quirky Key West. Over the years, darker ideas have come to me that would not have fit in that genre. I filed away snippets of characters and plots that seemed too gritty or dark for a cozy mystery even though I recognized them as elements of a good story. For example, what if a terrified young girl handed you a newborn—and then vanished?

That's the question that lies behind the new book, Unsafe Haven which is out in ebook form today. I do not exaggerate when I say that writing this book has taken FOREVER. I think this was the first time I mentioned it on our blog.

But I have notes and emails and photos going back to 2009, including opinions from classes I took and my trusted writing pals. The one thing I knew all along was that the driving force behind the story would be teenager Addy Carl, who gives birth alone in a New York subway, and hands off the baby to an unknown woman. I'd begun to save headlines from the news that might explain Addy's actions. These were stories about young women who abandoned hours-old infants in astonishing places. (I'm not even counting Julia's character from IN THE BLEAK MIDWINTER.) One newborn was left in a restroom in the Hilton Hotel in Key West. Another headline told the story about a teenager attending a dance who went to the ladies’ room because of cramps. Not realizing that she was pregnant, she delivered her baby right there, left it in the trash, and returned to the dance. Another baby was stashed in a nativity scene outside a church. What kind of girl or woman would abandon a newborn this way? These stories haunted me—I wanted to understand how a new mother might make this seemingly impossible choice. 

As I thought about writing Addy’s story, I did not picture her as a young woman who didn't care about her child. I imagined this book to be about a girl who was desperate and scared about something; so desperate that giving birth alone and pushing the new baby into a stranger’s arms felt like the best decision—the only decision—she could make in that moment. I hoped that readers would come to understand and share the agony of her choice and the fear that was driving it. 

I had also begun thinking about this second woman, Elizabeth, whose life had hit a major turning point. She’d planned a fancy New Year’s Eve wedding to her college boyfriend, but he’d shocked her by calling it off three days before the event. Everything she thought she knew about her future was suddenly turned upside down. 

As Addison, the new mother, emerges from the bathroom in a New York City subway station with her newborn, her eyes meet those of Elizabeth, the jilted bride. Addy thrusts the baby into Elizabeth’s arms and bolts. One minute later, another train, those women’s paths would never would have crossed. 

Exactly as my characters had, my writing reached a turning point. My writer brain understood that these characters and this story would not fit into the framework of a cozy culinary mystery. The challenge became whether I could tell Addison’s story in a different voice—dark, compelling, emotional, relatable—with a gritty city as the backdrop. The result is Unsafe Haven. 

I hope you’ll give it a try. You can read chapter one here.

If you read primarily in one genre or subgenre, what does it take for you to decide to veer off course and try something new?

Ways to order your copy of UNSAFE HAVEN:

Book depository 

Indiebound 

NOOK book at Barnes and Noble 

Kindle ebook at Amazon 

"In a major departure from her lighthearted Key West mysteries, Burdette invites readers into the world of a chilling thriller. (Unsafe Haven is) a page- turner highlighting the problem of exploited runaways."

—Kirkus Reviews

“Lucy Burdette shows us that she can write dark as well as light. Brilliantly plotted with characters we come to care about."

—Rhys Bowen, NYT bestselling author of the Venice Sketchbook and the Royal Spyness and Molly Murphy mysteries

"Lucy Burdette's Unsafe Haven is a gripping rollercoaster of suspense—you will root for her characters through every twist and turn of this beautifully plotted novel."

—Deborah Crombie, NYT bestselling author of A Bitter Feast

"Devastating, heartbreaking and completely immersive. This riveting story of fear and redemption, motherhood and second chances, and our responsibility to strangers is a powerful thriller proving one split-second decision can change our lives forever. Unsafe Haven has Hollywood written all over it!" 

—Hank Phillippi Ryan, USA Today bestselling author of Her Perfect Life

Lucy is Ready for her Close-up @LucyBurdette

LUCY BURDETTE: I can't say that I'm writing much of anything other than press releases, to-do lists, and emails. Though I did turn in the first draft of A DISH TO DIE FOR on September 1st, and I've been catching up on life since then. I have another book to write in the Key West series, but I have no title and no plot. I do have some idea fragments about what will be going on in Miss Gloria's life (involving the scone sisters from A SCONE OF CONTENTION.) And those ideas make me rub my hands in anticipation.

Other than that, I am super excited about the upcoming launch of UNSAFE HAVEN. Severn House is a new-to-me publisher that mainly targets the library market in both the UK and the US. (Though I am hoping many fans of the Key West mysteries will consider giving it a try.) This was a bonus book that I had about given up on when my agent sold it. The publisher designed a wonderful cover, and the book tells a great story (she said modestly.) Here’s what our Hank had to say about it: 

Devastating, heartbreaking and completely immersive. This riveting story of fear and redemption, motherhood and second chances, and our responsibility to strangers is a powerful thriller proving one split-second decision can change our lives forever.  UNSAFE HAVEN has Hollywood written all over it!   Hank Phillippi Ryan, USA Today bestselling author of HER PERFECT LIFE 

And that started me thinking: What if it really was made into a TV show or a movie? Of all the books I've written, Unsafe Haven is probably the story most suited for that. I thought I might post a bit of what Kirkus said about Unsafe Haven and then see if you’d help me brainstorm. 

Kirkus said: In a major departure from her lighthearted Key West mysteries, Burdette invites readers into the world of a chilling thriller. A page-turner highlighting the problem of exploited runaways.

New York City medical student Elizabeth Brown was jilted by her fiancé a few days before their wedding, and she's taking the subway to visit a friend who'll commiserate when a frantic-looking girl hands her a bundle that turns out to be a newborn baby. After phoning the police, she makes the mistake of calling a number she finds in the coat wrapping the baby. This call immerses her in a dangerous cat-and-mouse game with people she naïvely believes want to help. The baby’s mother, 16-year-old Addison, is running for her life from a woman who took her in as a young runaway and turned her into a prostitute. Unable to forget the baby after turning her over to the police, Elizabeth, herself adopted, gives an interview to a reporter that only exposes her to more danger….Only quick thinking and grit will save their lives.

Here's how I picture the logline: After a teenage runaway gives birth in a subway and thrusts the baby into the arms of a newly jilted bride, all three must run to escape danger. (Hmmm, or should I end that sentence with Kirkus's last line above?)

In addition to a little word-smithing above, these are the questions I’d love to get opinions on…Is there an actress who comes to mind to play Addy and/or Elizabeth? Addy is a teenager, small and fragile-looking and dark-haired. Elizabeth is more stocky, in her twenties, with blonde curls and blue eyes. Another character who might be fun to cast is Detective Jack Meigs (originally from the advice column mysteries.) He’s in his fifties, with reddish curls tinged with gray. He’s gruff and intimidating on the outside, but tender underneath, reeling from his own kind of pain. (My husband suggested Michael Kitchen from Foyle's War--who might be a bit too old, but is otherwise perfect.)

And while you’re thinking of characters, can you identify a TV show or movie that sounds somewhat similar? Even if none of this goes anywhere, it’s fun to think about.

Ways to pre-order your copy of UNSAFE HAVEN:

Book depository 

Indiebound 

Barnes and Noble 

Amazon 

Severn House 

And if this is not in your budget (which I totally get,) you can invite your local library to order a copy!

You've Got a Friend in Me by Sandy Manning

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

BUY NOW

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

So how important are friendships in real life?

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

How about you? How important are your friendships?

S. Lee Manning

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Linda L. Richards ENDINGS is (fortunately) only the beginning

HALLIE EPHRON: A few months ago I had the great good luck to be asked to consider blurbing Linda L. Richards's thriller, ENDINGS. I said I would try to get to it. Which I did. And then something that rarely happened did--I couldn't put it down. Really. I could not.

The blurb practically wrote itself:

"Brilliant. Terrifying. Compulsively readable."

Linda is the author of 15 books and the founder and publisher of JANUARY MAGAZINE. I'm thrilled to have her as a guest today on Jungle Red, pondering her main character, a woman unlike any I've encountered previously in crime fiction.

Take it away, Linda...

LINDA L. RICHARDS: Recently I’ve been thinking a lot about the nature of good and evil.

That sounds so trite, so predictable. But hear me out. It’s worth considering.

The narrating character in my most recent book, ENDINGS, is a hit woman, a contract killer. She kills people for money. That isn’t the sum of who she is or even anywhere near the totality of the story she stars in, but it’s an easy way for us to begin to understand her.

She is not a bad person. I mean, she should be, right? She kills people; takes their lives. What kind of good person does stuff like that? But, like all of us, she has been forged by the situations that brought her to the point in her life when we meet her.

While writing Endings I researched these things: good and evil. Do they even exist as forces in the world? While I researched, a political vortex composed of both of these things seemed to shift around my feet, like so much sand. For a while over the last couple of years, it would seem as though evil was reflected every day on the evening news. I still emerged from the experience as I went into it: we are -- all of us -- the sum of our parts. We are created not only by DNA, but also by circumstance.

People have asked me how I managed to make the protagonist in Endings relatable. I think it’s because I didn’t try. She exists in the world on her own steam, as it were. Her world. Like all of us, she was forged by her circumstance.

So: relatable. The protagonist in Endings reacts to things in a human way. Early in Endings, she loses her child, and ultimately her husband, in a freak accident. And these things alter her.

In fact with the second book complete and while I’m heading into a third, I find she is still reeling from those events. Not in an obvious way. But they have changed her in ways she doesn’t understand. In ways, honestly, maybe even I don’t fully understand on a conscious level. But readers are getting it.

I was astonished when, on release day, the narrator of the audiobook version of Endings encapsulated perfectly what had been in my heart. But I would have been hard-pressed to find words for some of what I poured into the book. Human things. Things that had nothing to do with taking lives, but everything to do with living them.

So on release day, narrator Jennifer Wren Warren tweeted that, in addition to being a thriller, Endings was “a meditation on loss and redemption and the media, and it made me cry!” Her words made me cry, too, because certainly those things were on my mind as I wrote the book. They were never top of mind -- if they had been, it would not be enjoyable fiction. But criticism of the media’s handling of hard news was one of the things I was chewing on as I wrote. And the twinned themes of loss and redemption figure starkly in the whole work.

And, of course, Endings is a thriller. One is not to lose sight of that. It is intended to make you catch your breath, and there are certainly whole chunks of the book when the reader is meant to be perched on the edge of her seat. So it is meant to be all of that, and also more.

Many years ago I interviewed a very famous crime fictionist for January Magazine who told me about a super fancy German photographer who was taking her picture for a big deal magazine. He instructed her to stand erect and then pull her leg up behind her, by the heel. She told him it hurt. “Of course it hurts,” he said, or something very like that. “That’s the point. It must hurt. There is no art without pain.”

I’m not entirely certain I believe all of those words: that there is no art without pain, but I certainly believe in what they represent. To be satisfied with art -- a book, a movie, a painting, whatever -- there must be more than what can be seen on the surface. There must be layers. Depths. Did I reach those depths and layers with Endings? I hope so. If you read it, maybe you will let me know.

HALLIE: This got me thinking, is pain an essential ingredient for a really good crime novel? For the author? For the character? And what about for the reader?

And while you're thinking about that, make room on your TBR list for ENDINGS.

Killer Kids: The New Paradigm by Lisa Black

 LUCY BURDETTE: Please welcome Lisa Black to Jungle Red Writers today. She has a new thriller out, SUFFER THE CHILDREN, and she's written a difficult but important essay about the research behind the new book...

LISA BLACK: In my recent release, Suffer the Children, my protagonists investigate a series of deaths at a juvenile detention facility for violent or traumatized children. As I don’t have children of my own this particular book required a great deal of research, all of which fascinated me.

        

    These days, school shootings have become de rigueur. Children in school today now have ‘active shooter’ drills the way kids in the fifties used to duck and cover. They never remember a time when school shootings weren’t a thing, and truthfully, neither do most of us—not since Charles Whitman climbed the tower at the University of Texas in 1966. Up until then, school shootings would more likely be called workplace killings, the results of arguments, estrangements, or revenge. Beefs were personal. Whitman was the first to kill complete strangers for no apparent reason. (Fifty years later, there is still no standard profile of a school shooter, except for two things: they plan their attacks [they don’t ‘snap’] and they are always boys.)

    

        Fast forward to 1999 and the one that forever remains as horrific as it is confusing: Littleton, Colorado, where Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killed thirteen and wounded twenty-one. Then, as now, we have one question: why? And then, as now, not even the hint of an answer presents itself.

            Eric Harris was the son of an Air Force transport pilot. Dylan Klebold’s father was a geophysicist. Each kid had a stay-at-home mom and a brother with whom they got along fine. They lived in nice neighborhoods in quite comfortable homes. These were teenage boys and yet had nothing but good things to say about their families, even in private to each other (in their ‘basement tapes’ and diaries). Obviously the source of their angst was not a miserable home life.

At school, they got good grades. Teachers liked them. They were bullied by the jocks the way nerdy kids are always bullied by the jocks, but apparently it didn’t rise above the standard hallway shoving and derisive comments—nothing like the suicide-inducing, pervasive social media campaigns waged by kids today. And Eric and Dylan had other nerdy kids as friends who understood, friends they hung out with, made amateur movies with, went to the prom with. They had a general list of people at school who, on the day of the shooting, they did not want to harm. They were not isolated.

Basically these were kids who didn’t have a single damn thing to complain about. But in private, that’s all they did. In private, the world was a horrible place, determined to crush them under its asinine rule.

They had one relatively minor run-in with the police, and impressed the officers so much that their probation was cut short. Their written apologies were sincerely eloquent, and complete lies. In private, they weren’t remotely sorry.

So while we might criticize parents who provided a son in (temporary) court-ordered anger management classes and already on antidepressants with a supply of firearms, we can perhaps believe that they were simply fooled by him in the way that the teachers, the cops, the therapists were. Eric and Dylan fooled everyone. They were very good at it.

They planned the massacre for some time and in great detail. People believe Eric was the ringleader, the one with the military background, the gun nut, the one who had no roots in the community, and Dylan the follower. But I believe Dylan was the loonier of the two. He seemed to be clinically depressed and viewed the world as hellish. Both of them veered between feeling like scum and feeling like ‘gods.’

So, why? I have no idea. But I think if they had never met each other then maybe, maybe, they would have gotten through life without actually killing anyone. Their personalities entwined in all the wrong ways and encouraged all the worst parts of each, until they spiraled into a well of violence from which no one could escape.

In the nearly 20 years since this tragedy, do you think schoolkids are better prepared to stay safe in the event of a school shooting?

(And a follow-up question from Lucy: How can we better tackle this horrific problem as a concerned society?)

About Suffer the Children: Maggie Gardiner, forensics expert for the Cleveland police department, and Jack Renner, a homicide detective with a killer secret, return in bestselling author Lisa Black’s new thriller as they confront the darkest threat yet to their careers—and their lives.

The body of fifteen-year-old Rachael Donahue—abandoned by society, raised in foster homes, and violently unapproachable—has been discovered at the bottom of a stairwell at Firebird, the secure facility for juvenile offenders in Cleveland. 

But Rachael’s not the only resident at the center to come to a dead end. Firebird’s ten-year-old “wild child” has overdosed in the infirmary—back-to-back tragedies that appear to be terrible accidents. As a forensic investigator, Maggie knows appearances can be deceiving. And Jack knows all about deceit. That’s why they both suspect a cold-blooded murderer is carrying out a deadly agenda.

As Maggie’s ex-husband gets nearer to uncovering the secrets that Maggie and Jack must hide, it becomes increasingly harder for them to protect a new and vulnerable victim from a killer with unfathomable demons.

   

     Lisa Black spent the five happiest years of her life in a morgue. As a forensic scientist at the Cuyahoga County Coroner’s Office she analyzed many forms of trace evidence as well as crime scenes. Now she’s a certified latent print examiner and CSI in Florida and is the author of thirteen traditionally published novels. Some of which have been translated into six other languages, one has been optioned for film and one reached the NYT bestseller’s list. The latest is Suffer the Children, which involves forensic scientist Maggie Gardiner and homicide detective Jack Renner in a series of deaths inside a center for violent children.