Knitting Up a Narrative by Nancy Warren

JENN McKINLAY: One of the best parts of being a writer is the writer friends you acquire along the way. Nancy Warren is one of my long time writer pals and such an inspiration to me in writing and in life. She had me when she crafted fabulous romantic comedies, and then she hiked the Grand Canyon all by her lonesome. Wow! But she finished me off when she went to Bath to get her MFA (diploma handed to her by Jeremy Irons - yes, THE Jeremy Irons - no less). 

Truly, she's a remarkable woman who I'm honored to call my friend. I was lucky enough to get a sneak peek at the first book in her new series and the knitter, reader, and writer in me, LOVED it! But here is Nancy to tell us more about her latest project. 

Nancy, knitting in Oxford

Nancy Warren: I can’t knit, don’t live in Oxford, and I’m not undead (or not that I’m admitting, anyway) so why would I, a craft-impaired, red-blooded Canadian, undertake The Vampire Knitting Club, a series of paranormal cozy mysteries set in Oxford?

The answer, of course, is one of those What If? games writers love to play. I’m going back a few years, to when literary mash-ups were all the rage. I hate to even mention the abomination that was Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, but that’s the kind of thing I mean. 

At the time, Kate Jacobs’ The Friday Night Knitting Club was a huge hit. I was also loving the wildly successful Sookie Stackhouse series by Charlaine Harris, which became the TV series True Blood. Wait a minute, said I. Vampires! Knitting! What a mash-up! Thus was born The Vampire Knitting Club. 

I loved that title and carried it around for years until I found myself living in Oxford. I was great friends with the mystery author Elizabeth Edmondson, now sadly deceased, and we spent an evening or two at the Eagle and Child Pub (where Tolkien and C.S. Lewis used to drinkcritique.) Lizzy and I drankbrainstormed my idea as it became a cozy mystery series. 

I think there’s a good reason that so many mystery books and TV series are set and filmed in Oxford. It’s not only historic, but the atmosphere is mysterious. You slip down Magpie Lane, and you’re transported back in time, you walk into a college quad and feel some of the greatest thinkers in history walking, ghost-like, at your side. Go to the Pitt Rivers Museum and you’ll find a bizarre collection of occult items, including my favorite, a witch trapped inside a bottle. At this very moment, the witch-in-a-bottle is on loan to the Ashmolean Museum’s wonderful exhibit called Spellbound: Magic, Ritual & Witchcraft, which traces supernatural beliefs in Oxfordshire. Where else would witches and vampires go to knit? 

There are also tunnels which run beneath the city. In Medieval times this underground network connected homes in the Jewish quarter. Some of these homes had massive vaulted cellars. Later, T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) claimed he canoed the underground Trill Mill Stream beneath Oxford. What a perfect location for vampires to live and commute. In short, Oxford was the ideal setting for my cozy knitting series.

I still couldn’t knit and, even though my amateur sleuth, Lucy, can’t knit either, she does inherit Cardinal Woolsey’s knitting shop with its colorful undead knitting circle. I felt I should at least learn the basics. Fortunately, there’s an absolutely charming knitting shop, The Oxford Yarn Store in North Parade. Serendipity struck. The owner, Karen, had lived in Vancouver and we knew some of the same people. She invited me to a knitting circle in her shop, where the lovely, experienced knitters helped me in my frequent knitting emergencies. I even discovered a knitting circle set in pubs. The Oxford Drunken Knitwits are my kind of knitters.

Nancy and shop asst James (I love his sweater!)

Inspiration comes in surprising ways, even though the history of how this series came to be is as tangled as my fledgling knitting projects. 

What about you, Reds and Readers, are you a knitter? Have you been to Oxford? What writing mashups are your favorites?

At a crossroads between a cringe-worthy past (Todd the Toad) and an uncertain future (she's not exactly homeless, but it's close), Lucy Swift travels to Oxford to visit her grandmother. With Gran's undying love to count on and Cardinal Woolsey's, Gran's knitting shop, to keep her busy, Lucy can catch her breath and figure out what she's going to do. 

Except it turns out that Gran is the undying. Or at least, the undead. But there's a death certificate. And a will, leaving the knitting shop to Lucy. And a lot of people going in and out who never use the door—including Gran, who is just as loving as ever, and prone to knitting sweaters at warp speed, late at night. What exactly is going on? 

When Lucy discovers that Gran did not die peacefully in her sleep, but was murdered, she has to bring the killer to justice without tipping off the law that there's no body in the grave. Between a hot 600-year-old vampire and a dishy detective inspector, both of whom always seem to be there for her, Lucy finds her life getting more complicated than a triple cable cardigan. 
The only one who seems to know what's going on is her cat ... or is it ... her familiar? 

First in a new series of paranormal cozy mysteries with bite! 

ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE--IN YOUR FRONT YARD

DEBORAH CROMBIE: I'm the first to admit I fall on the downside of Martha Stewart on the holiday decor. My idea of autumn/Halloween/Thanksgiving festivity is a pumpkin and a pot of mums on the front porch and my autumn-leaf wreath on the front door. I'm sure I put my neighbors to shame, but really, when did decorating your house for Halloween get to be as big--if not bigger--than Christmas?

People spend hundreds, perhaps thousands, of dollars and countless hours arranging displays of orange and purple lights, ghoulies, ghosties, cobwebs, spiders, black cats (quite unfairly discriminated against, in my opinion) and all manner of things that go bump in the night.  Not to mention the requisite zombie.

Halloween stores pop up everywhere, their displays magically replaced on November 1st by Christmas decor.

 Is this burst of enthusiasm for making the most of All Hallow's Eve a reflection of the current cultural fascination with vampires, zombies, and witches? Or vice versa?

Or is it just us puny humans finding another way to thumb our noses at the coming of dark days, as we have since time immemorial? 

Whatever the reason, it's certainly an outlet for creativity, and although you may have seen this alien crash scene floating around on Facebook, I'm including it because it gets my top marks for whimsey.

So what about you, REDS and readers? Do you embrace the zombie apocalypse?

(This year I may have to at least put up a cobweb...)     

A DISCOVERY OF WITCHES--DEBORAH HARKNESS

DEBORAH CROMBIE: If you've been in a bookstore since February, looked at books online or read reviews, it will come as no surprise that Deborah Harkness's A DISCOVERY OF WITCHES is one of the publishing sensations of the year, if not the decade. It debuted at #2 on the New York Times list--a buzz indeed for a first novel. And now both A Discovery of Witches and its upcoming sequel have been optioned by Warner Brothers for films.

The surprise? Deborah Harkness is an academic, an historian who teaches European history and the history of science at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. Her previous books were non-fiction and include John Dee’s Conversations with Angels: Cabala, Alchemy, and the End of Nature (Cambridge University Press, 1999) and The Jewel House: Elizabethan London and the Scientific Revolution. She also writes a popular wine blog, Good Wine Under $2o.

I read A Discovery of Witches on the recommendation of my editor, and was . . . bewitched. The heroine, Diana Bishop, is a scholar, an American on an extended stay in Oxford studying ancient manuscripts on the history of science. She is also a witch, descended from one of the preeminent families of Salem witches, who has refused to use her powers. But her life takes an unexpected twist when she encounters an enchanted manuscript in the Bodleian Library, along with the interest of a very sexy vampire named Matthew Clairmont who also happens to be a geneticist.

PEOPLE MAGAZINE calls A Discovery of Witches ". . . a wonderfully imaginative grown-up fantasy with all the magic of Harry Potter or Twilight. . . An irresistible tale of wizardry, science and forbidden love, Discovery will leave you longing for the sequel. . . . A first novel that casts a singular spell.”

As indeed it does. Magic, science, Oxford, France, enchanted books, a gripping love story, and the highest stakes--the balance of the world as we know it. I barely put the book down from beginning to end, and when I finished it I picked it up and started over. Deborah Harkness--DEB from this point on--has created literary magic, a world the reader won't want to leave.

DEBS (DEBORAH CROMBIE): I had the oddest feeling of parallelism when I read A Discovery of Witches. (And the parallel names were a nice touch, too. For consistency's sake we're using the British version of my nickname and the American version of Deb's, although we both answer to either.)

It was as if you'd taken all the books and places and things that I most loved, and stirred them into something entirely new and unique. Oxford was my Mecca for a good twenty years of my formative imaginative life. I wanted to be an Inkling, drinking pints and having fascinating conversations in The Bird and Baby (officially The Eagle and Child) in Oxford with Tolkien, Lewis, and the poet Charles Williams. The souvenir I brought home from my very first trip to England, and to Oxford? A poster of the Radcliffe Camera (home to the additional reading rooms of the Bodleian Library.) It still hangs in my office.

Who did you read that sparked your imagination?

DEB (DEBORAH HARKNESS): I think I bought the same poster--but it's long gone now!

It's so hard to isolate a single source of inspiration for the book. The immediate spark was being in an airport bookstore, where I was struck by how our modern interest in vampires, ghosts, daemons, and witches seemed so similar to the interest my research subjects had in these subjects--way back in 1558. But there was certainly an element of pulling together ingredients from many areas of my life into a kind of stew: places like Oxford or upstate New York that I loved, activities I engage in like yoga or research, passions like wine, and the history and mythology that has made my imagination hum since I was a child.

And, as a teacher, I am fascinated with the way women struggle with their own power. I see it in my classroom all the time, but less so in popular culture (except in ugly caricatures).

Because I'm a professional non-fiction reader, my last extended forays into fiction were in the late 1980s. If I had to pick the two novels that probably influenced A Discovery of Witches the most they would be A. S. Byatt's Possession and Anne Rice's The Witching Hour. Both were published in 1990, just as began my dissertation research. I still remember staying up all night to read them.


DEBS: Ah, Possession. I should have known. That book is on my lifetime Top Ten list. . . Then there is tea . . . You discovered an interest in wine (which I also share) when you were living in northern California and teaching at Davis, but what prompted your passion for tea? Was it spending time teaching and studying in England?

DEB: My passion for tea has childhood roots. My mother is British, so there was always tea in the house and wonderful teapots. I love the ritual of afternoon tea, too (and morning tea, and evening tea...)

DEBS: And rowing! My latest book, out in February, is set in Henley-on-Thames and revolves around rowing. This was an entirely new thing for me--I'd never been near a scull until I started the research for this book, but I found it beautiful, brutal, and addictive. I loved the fact that your heroine, Diana, is a rower--are you?

DEB: I'm looking forward to reading the latest Gemma and Duncan adventure even more if there's rowing in it! I *was* a rower. My roommate at Mt. Holyoke College was a serious athlete and member of the crew team, and she introduced me to the Concept 2 rowing machine and the basic aspects of the stroke, but I never had the commitment or time to do the sport there. At Oxford, however, I became a member of the Keble College Boat Club and rowed and coached for several happy years while doing dissertation research at the Bodleian. I guess books and boats go together for me. I'm a terrible sculler, though. I like the big boats!

DEBS: You've constructed a very logical world in which the supernatural may have scientific, and particularly genetic, grounding. I'm a biologist by education and have for years been fascinated by Darwin and his theories. You've said that the first glimmer of the idea for A Discovery of Witches was wondering "If there were vampires,what did they do for a living?" What led you to the idea that genetics might be involved in the differentiation between the witches,vampires, daemons, and humans in your story?

DEB: As a historian of science, I study how people build up plausible accounts of the world and how it works. I know the kinds of questions scientists have asked about nature over the past several thousand years, and the various avenues they've taken to answer those questions. It was a logical process for me to start with a straightforward proposition (there ARE supernatural creatures living alongside humans) then proceed to questions about habitat (where they'd live and what they'd do), then dig deeper into questions of similarity and difference. The next step is to wonder if these differences result from nature or nurture? Plus, I should point out that I started writing the book in the fall of 2008, which is when historians of science began to gear up for the Darwin anniversary, so my mailbox was stuffed with conference invitations and other information about evolution. There's another spark of inspiration for the story.

DEBS: There are writers who set out to write best sellers, drawn by the idea of fame and fortune. But there's very little of either for most of us--not to mention the fact that writing is bloody hard work. Most writers put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard, in their equivalent of JK Rowling's Edinburgh coffee house, because they have the germ of an idea for a story and they want to see if they can tell it. Was this true for you, and were you at all prepared for the success of A Discovery of Witches?

DEB: I was not prepared for it AT ALL--either for the writing process or the success that came after. Who could be--least of all a middle-aged college professor? I never dreamed I'd do such a thing. With respect to the writing, the last creative writing I did before A Discovery of Witches was in 10th-grade English. Though I've published two books of academic non-fiction, writing fiction turned out to be very different. It was at once more exhilarating and more exhausting. When the manuscript went out to publishers for consideration, I just hoped someone would agree to publish it. That way, I could justify continuing to write fiction while returning to my long-planned academic book on the culture of experiment in the early Royal Society! And contrary to popular opinion, the fact that there was a vampire in the book did NOT make it easier to find a publisher. There were editors who said "no more vampires," and that was that.

As for the success itself, thinking about it can be overwhelming and more than a little surreal. I prefer instead to focus on the happy reader who writes a note on Twitter to say "I loved your book, I'm planning a vacation to Oxford, and learning more about wine." That's a measure of success I can grasp. While there is a lot of advice out there to keep people writing through difficult times, there isn't a lot of guidance for those of us lucky enough to be published. Thankfully I had excellent support from my editor and her colleagues at Viking, who steered me through what can be a complicated and mysterious process. I've also been so grateful when established authors have reached out and offered me the wisdom of their experience and a shoulder to lean on--whether its been about how to pack for a book tour or how hard it is to write a second novel. (Answers: as much black knit clothing as you can fit into a suitcase and much harder than the first!)

DEBS: I have to agree on both the answers. I've never learned to pack properly, and, now working on book #15 (yikes!), I have to say they have never gotten easier. But I hope that won't deter you, as I can't wait for the next book!

End of week thoughts

It's been a strange week--an unsettling week with Libya, Japan, nuclear fallout and Elizabeth Taylor's death. It's funny how one can be affected by the death of someone one didn't know, but she was the last mega star. I'm currently attending Left Coast Crime in Santa Fe, (with blogsister Rosemary) and a group of us discussed Elizabeth Taylor and the fact that we are all getting older..and most of us lamented that we hadn't lived enough. We still have seven husbands to catch up on!
Tonight there was a fabulous opening reception with a group of native American dancers from a nearby Pueblo. I wish I'd thought to bring my camera. Rosemary did so maybes she can share a picture with you. But the youngest member of the group was eighteen months old. She had the complete costume, absolutely adorable, and stood solemnly watching while the bigger kids and grown ups did a wonderfully energetic buffalo dance, full of intricate steps.It was a great way to have a blessing bestowed on our convention.
Tomorrow I have a panel with Laurie King, Rebecca Cantrell and a couple of guys on 20th century sleuths. It seems funny to refer to the 20th century as history now, doesn't it? And tomorrow night is the banquet. I'll have John take pix and try to post them.
Between panels there was a little time for shopping. We now own two lovely Indian baskets and may go back for a rug tomorrow....
I was tempted by some snakeskin boots until I found they were $750. Now I'm telling myself they would have pinched my toes.

And I wanted to share some amusing snippets to give you an end-of-week chuckle. you know when you Google something, Google paid ads appear beside it. Well, last year when I was writing Royal Blood and wanted to make sure I got all my vampire facts correct, I googled vampires. And the first ad that came up said, "Want to meet other vampire singles?"
Well, this week I was researching cyanide. I typed it in and up came the ads, Potassium cyanide, we offer best prices.... cyanide, best buys...

I ask you--has the world gone crazy?

Trendspotting

ROBERTA: If anyone is worse than me at spotting trends early--fashion or otherwise--I'd like to know her. Even if I see a fashion trend coming, the wagon will have left the station by the time I considering piling on. Let's take leggings for example; I've waited so long to embrace this trend that I think it may be coming around for the third or fourth time before I ever try a pair on. Facebook? I protested this as a useless time sink for years before I finally signed up--one of the last holdouts I suspect. Trends in publishing? Don't I wish I'd thought of writing about vampires in the early days along with Charlaine Harris. Or at least piled on while the idea was still catching fire. But no, I study my daily Publishers Marketplace emails, in awe of all the high concepts that wouldn't have occurred to me in a million years.

So what's the secret to spotting trends Jungle Red Writers? Are you good at it? Can you give me some tips? If not, tell us a story about what you missed!

HALLIE: Don't ask me! Three years ago I was telling people to forget about writing vampire mysteries. It would be so passe a few years hence. Not.

RHYS: I think some people are born with the trend gene. My daughter was one step ahead of fashion all the way through high school. When I was in London in the swinging sixties (doesn't that date me?) I was right up there with Mary Quant--dress up to my thighs like a British flag and white plastic boots with windows in the side. Since I left the entertainment biz and got married I've never tried to keep up and frankly I don't miss it. I know what suits me and am content. Funnily enough my daughters look at pictures of me and can't believe that I threw away clothes that are now fashionable again!

ROBERTA: OH man, Rhys, wish we could have seen you in the British flag and those boots!

HANK: Pleeeze. In 1980, I got a phone call from a guy who was working on a start up company. At the time,I was the anchor of the weekend news for the NBC affiliate and thought I was hot stuff. This guy showed me the new offices, and told me he wanted me to be the Los Angeles bureau chief of this new news organization they were putting together. But I was truly a trendspotter,so I knew it was doomed to failure.
No thanks,I said. Miss Know It All.
Afterwards I said to a pal--can you imagine? They think they can show news for 24 hours a day? No way. They're nuts.
Yup, CNN.

ROBERTA: Ouch, that one hurts, Hank. But just think, maybe you wouldn't have met Jonathan, nor would you know all of us:).

HANK: Oh, exactly! NO regrets. More hilarious, I had a news director who came into the office in 1975 with a yellow plastic thing. I said--what's that? He said--"It's called a 'videocassette.' They say videotape is going to replace film. But don't worry. It'll never last."

JAN: I actually think I'm a pretty good trend spotter. I picked up that Financial News was going to become big, back in late 1970s. So I jumped in. The bad news was that I got bored and jumped out in 1986 (Okay to have a baby) just when financial news really took off.

I find that a lot. I spot a trend, but too early. And then if you want to jump back in, it's too late.

But I think all of us spot a trend from time to time, just not ALL the TIME, or the EXACT right trend that would profit us best at the moment.

RO: Clueless when it comes to trends, especially clothing. If I'm wearing something that's in fashion it's probably an accident. I realized in the fourth grade that I'd never be fast enough to keep up with them so I took a pass. I see pictures of myself from high school or my twenties and think...I would still wear that - and sometimes do! That doesn't keep me from buying InStyle magazine, my favorite guilty pleasure airport magazine to which I now subscribe. I like knowing what the trends are but rarely want to wear them myself.

My notable non-fashion, clueless moment was when my former boss told me he'd forged a relationship with the WWF, the World Wrestling Federation, to distribute their videos. I thought, jeez, wrestling? That'll last a year and he'll be stuck with videos of Hillbilly Jim and Junkyard Dog. He made a ton of dough, wrestling is still going strong, and Hillbilly Jim was one of the nicest guys I met in the video business. What do I know?

ROBERTA: Okay Jungle Red readers, do you have the trend-spotting gene? And what have you missed?

Don't forget to come back often this week--we'll have three visitors: a comic strip artist/writer, the author of TRUE CONFECTIONS, and advice for empowering creativity. And we'll be talking books, books, books...

Nancy Drew and...?

HALLIE: There it is on the best seller list: "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies." It begins: “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains.”

Brilliant blasphemy! If only I'd thought of it. Listening to author Seth Grahame-Smith on the radio, I was not surprised to learn that the book was his editor's brain child– he’d been noodling around with lists of classic book titles and, I assume, creatures, until BINGO: P&P and Zombies.

Trying to recreate his process, here's my list of titles (and some main characters) and creatures, and I started tyring to pair them up and realized this is not as easy as it looks. Nancy Drew and...Oompaloompas? How would you pair these up--or come up with your own title/creature pairing...(look down...can't seem to get rid of this big fat space below here)

TITLES 1984 Cherry Ames David Copperfield Don Quixote Ellery Queen Hercule Poirot Gone with the Wind The Great Gatsby The Hardy Boys Huckleberry Finn Sherlock Holmes Jane Eyre Little Women Nancy Drew Madame Bovary The Maltese Falcon Miss Marple Moby Dick Moll Flanders Nero Wolfe The Odyssey Oliver Twist Rebecca Robinson Crusoe The Scarlet Letter The Three Musketeers To Kill a Mockingbird Wuthering Heights The Valley of the Dolls War and Peace (Your choice)

CREATURES Anacondas Death eaters Demons Devils Dragons Fairies Ghosts The Jabberwock Jugglers Leprechauns Monsters Mutants Mummies Ninjas Oompaloompas Pirates Poltergeists Robots Samurai Sneetches Shape shifters Space aliens Succubi Trolls Tribbles Triffids Vampires Velocaraptors Werewolves Witches (Your choice)

Do you love it? Hate it? What would you pair up? Best pairing wins a prize!

On Charlie's Angels--On Steroids

Rarely does an author make such an impact in such a short span of time."
~Romantic Times Magazine

HANK: Charlie's Angels on steroids.

Can't you instantly picture it? And now you can read all about them in Jordan Dane's brand new book in her brand new SWEET JUSTICE series--EVIL WITHOUT A FACE.

You all know the scoop on Jordan: her three "No One" debut suspense novels came out back to back in 2008. They're suspenseful, gritty, intriguing--and darkly humorous. If you like Allison Brennan, and Carla Neggers, and Lisa Gardner (and who doesn't...?), Dane's books are right up your(dark and dangerous) alley.

But for all of her wild success, Jordan's ascent to bestsellerdom was not quick. Not easy. And she still seems a little--amazed by it all. Which is part of her charm.

She doesn't make a plot outline. She used to work in the oil and gas field. (Ask her what her motto was.) She and I both adore the very generous Sharon Sala. Jordan wrote her first book in--well, you won't believe how long it took her.

***And here are the magic words: Three winners! Jordan has graciously offered to give away three copies of EVIL WITHOUT A FACE to be chosen at random from those who leave a comment! Thanks, Jordan.

HANK: So, Jordan. Can you believe it?

JD: Hell, no. I feel like that kid who crawled under the tent at the circus to get in. Someone is going to find me and kick me out. This whole thing has been surreal like it’s happening to someone else. There were so many roads not taken too. I had turned down the first agent offer because it didn’t “feel” right. And I also turned down the first book offer that would have split up my first debut series. Very strange how things happen. That’s why I feel it’s so important for an author to follow their gut and believe in their voice.

HANK: Your books are so fast-paced, such page-turners, so tension-filled and exciting. I picture you at your desk, typing as fast as humanly possible, the stories and dialogue pouring out. Is that how it happens?

JD: Yes, that’s exactly how it happens. NOT! In reality I’m a nit picky editor of my own work (some might say compulsive) and I painstakingly choose each word as if my life depended on it. And with each new book I learn more about craft and about myself. Some parts of any book seem to flow easily while others are like giving birth to a bowling ball. Ouch! I wrote my debut book – NO ONE HEARD HER SCREAM – in six weeks while I was on medical leave after major surgery.

During my medical leave from my work in the energy industry, I was whizzing through three fully edited chapters a week, but I had time to think through the story and knew where I wanted to go, even though there were two complex plots woven into this story. (Since I don’t plot, this was a challenge, but I like challenges. Bring it on, sista!) I now write full time and retired early from my energy job, but the writing process doesn’t get any easier. I find that my mind never shuts off. I’m always working.

HANK: When people say wow, overnight success! Do you howl with laughter? Or just howl?

JD: I’m prone to howling in general, but yes.

The phrase—overnight success—usually induces a chuckle or two. I first got the idea to write a book in 2003 after being an avid reader for years. Writing had been a passion since I was a kid too. And for three and a half years—until I sold in June 2006—I wrote every night for three hours and longer on weekends, doing two jobs at one time. (My debut book was actually only the second suspense book I had written and my fourth manuscript.)

I joined writers’ groups, both online and local. And I attended writers’ conferences, submitted proposals to agents and publishing houses, and I entered national writing contests. I worked my writing like a business, a very serious endeavor.

I had gotten to the point of telling myself that if I never sold, I would still write because I had to. It had become a part of who I was and improved my quality of life so much. I had tapped into a creative side of my life that I had forgotten, but now didn’t want to let go. I wrote because I had to. Thank God Avon made an honest woman out of me.

HANK: So--tell all about the Sweet Justice series!

JD: I abso-friggin-lutely love this new thriller series – Sweet Justice. The initial idea came from my fascination with the way criminals have gotten smarter in how they perpetrate crimes. They’ve taken to online criminal acts and gone more anonymous and thus have become harder to prosecute when their crimes overlap law enforcement jurisdictions. I thought I could empower the reader to wield sweet justice through the lives of the three women in my new thriller series.

And the idea behind these three women came from a conversation I had with my editor who mentioned Charlie’s Angels. I told her I couldn’t see me doing Charlie’s Angels unless I did it my way. Charlie’s Angels on STEROIDS! I also liked the idea of writing a series about three very different women.

Jessie Beckett is my bounty hunter who operates a little outside the law. Her childhood friend and voice of conscience is Sam Cooper who is an ambitious vice cop. And Alexa Marlowe is my international operative with a mysterious past who lives life on the edge. Alexa will eventually tempt Jessie with the idea of wielding justice her own way, by utilizing the vast resources of her employer, the Sentinels. Their covert organization is comprised of wealthy and powerful vigilantes who aren’t restricted by international borders or by the law. Jessie, Sam, and Alexa will give Lady Justice a whole new reason to wear blinders. And their brand of justice will be anything but sweet.

HANK: I can just hear the announcer saying that! Thanks, Jordan.

Now: Jordan takes the Jungle Red Quiz:

Miss Marple or Hercule Poirot?
I’d take Miss Marple for shots of tequila and see if she’d jump on the bar and put the ugly back in Coyote.

Sex or violence?Always sex. Except for Dirty Harry, who would pick violence?

Pizza or chocolate?
Although these are both food groups for me, I’d have to go with chocolate because you don’t have to wait 30 minutes or less.

Daniel Craig or Pierce Brosnan?You’re killing me here. Pierce for his humor and the wicked twinkle in his eye, but Daniel for his speedo.

Facebook or MySpace?
Oh, man. People are going to kill me here. I’d choose Facebook for fun. Myspace has all my crazy fringe dwellers there, but the code is complicated sometimes.

Katharine Hepburn or Audrey Hepburn?
Katharine, definitely.

Your favorite non-mystery book?
Stephen King’s Gunslinger series, his earlier books that he wrote in college.

Favorite book as a kid?I was thinking about this just the other day. I can’t remember the name but it was a fantasy with a flying horse. I was really into westerns too. Anything with a horse in it.

Making dinner or making reservations?Reservations, definitely. I would have reservations about cooking. Are you kidding me?

And now, the Jungle Red Big Lie. Tell us four things about you that no one knows. Only three can be true. We'll guess which one is false!

I rode in a school bus onto the frozen Bering Sea, above the Arctic Circle.

I was a volleyball coach for a Junior Olympics team in California during the 80s.

I have a tattoo.

I have the complete video collection for Adrian Paul’s Highlander TV series.

Don't forget to say hello (or guess the quiz Big Lie answer)for **your chance at a free book!

Thanks, Jordan!

(And anyone remember the book wth the flying horse?)

Friday: queries about query letters? Wendy Burt-Thomas explains it all to us. And will answer your questions!