Family on a Train

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN:   How are you handling time? To me, time now all runs together, things move faster than usual, or soooo muuuuch slooower….I have no idea what day it is half the time, either.

But I did just turn in a short story that takes place entirely on an overnight train trip from Chicago to Boston. And yes, I really did this once (without the drama that occurs in the short story) and it took 23 hours. It was kinda glorious.  Once.

And  today--dispatches from abroad. To make sure we remember there’s a whole world involved in  our lives. The wonderful Jennifer Alderson is remembering trains too…and and how her son’s love of trains determined her novel’s setting.

And now, let Jennifer take us..away.

Serendipitous Travel

By Jennifer S. Alderson

Researching locations is one of my favorite parts of writing. Since most of us won’t be traveling abroad anytime soon, I want to share a bit about a research trip to Bavaria I took last summer, and more specifically, how my son’s love of trains ultimately determined one of the main settings in my novel.

My soon-to-be-published novel, The Vermeer Deception, is an art history mystery about WWII-looted art that is set in Bavaria, Germany. When I told my Dutch husband that I was thinking about visiting Munich to research a few locations for my next book, I was shocked to learn that he had never been! From our home in Amsterdam, it is only a ten-hour trip by car. Since summer was fast approaching, we decided to turn my research trip into a week-long family vacation.

My eight-year-old son is obsessed with public transportation of all kinds – as most boys his age are! When we were researching places to visit along our route, he saw photos of Heidelberg’s mountain railway (the Bergbahn) and his choice was made. We added Heidelberg to our list of places to visit without really looking at what the city had to offer, and moved on.

I had already written the final chapters of the book, but wasn’t certain where the scenes should take place. During the drive to Munich, we explored several villages, castles, and cities along our route. Three we stopped at specifically because I thought they would be the perfect location for my novel’s climactic ending. It’s a good thing we did visit them because I was completely wrong!

Nassau was too spread out, Frankfurt too busy, and Walldorf too flat. On our drive home, I was beginning to feel like Goldilocks. None of the locations really worked as setting for the dramatic ending I had originally envisioned, so I resigned myself to rewriting it.

Heidelberg was our last stop before returning to Amsterdam. It is a beautiful, old university town located along the Nektar River and surrounded by thick, green forests. We spent a wonderful day exploring the Altstadt (old town) and riding the Bergbahn – definitely the highlight of the trip for my son!

For those who have not seen one, it is a railway that uses a system of cables and rack-and-pinion technology to pull the train cars straight up the mountain.

The Heidelberg railway is 1.5 kilometers long, making it the longest of its kind in Germany. It takes you from the heart of Altstadt, to the beautiful Heidelberg Castle, then up to the top of the Königstuhl – a small mountain the city is built into. On the way up, we had gorgeous views of the valley, river, castle, and town below. And from the top, it felt as if you could see all of Bavaria. It was truly breathtaking!

Best of all, I found the ideal location for the final scenes of my novel. The old city, castle, and even the Bergbahn play crucial roles in the last chapters of The Vermeer Deception.

Thanks to serendipity – or my son, depending on how you want to interpret these events – I found the perfect location for my mystery’s exciting conclusion, my husband got to see Munich, and my son was able to experience the thrill of climbing the Königstuhl by railway. It was a win-win for all of us.

I do hope readers enjoy traveling to Bavaria with me while reading The Vermeer Deception!

What about you, Reds and Readers? Do you have a fun, silly, or serendipitous travel experience to share?

HANK: And how do you feel about trains?

And doesn't this book have everything? 

What is the element that fascinates you the most?

 I wish I could win it... but YOU can!

Comment below to be entered to win 1 of 2 digital ARC copies of The Vermeer Deception! The international giveaway ends on Friday, April 3.  

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jennifer S. Alderson was born in San Francisco, raised in Seattle, and currently lives in Amsterdam. Her love of travel, art, and culture inspires her award-winning mystery series—the Zelda Richardson Mysteries and Travel Can Be Murder Cozy Mysteries—and standalone stories.

After traveling extensively around Asia, Oceania, and Central America, she moved to Darwin, Australia, before settling in the Netherlands. Her background in journalism, multimedia development, and art history enriches her novels. When not writing, she can be found in a museum, biking around Amsterdam, or enjoying a coffee along the canal while planning her next research trip.

Website: http://www.jennifersalderson.com

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/jenniferSAldersonauthor

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/JSAauthor

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/JennifeSAlderson

BookBub: https://www.bookbub.com/authors/jennifer-s-alderson

The Vermeer Deception: An Art Mystery

An art historian finds – then loses – a portrait by Johannes Vermeer in this thrilling art mystery set in Munich, Heidelberg, and Amsterdam.

When Zelda Richardson investigates a new lead about a missing portrait by Johannes Vermeer, no one expects her to actually find the painting in a retired art dealer’s home in Munich, Germany. Not her parents visiting from America; her boss, private detective Vincent de Graaf; or the rightful owner of the Nazi-looted artwork.

However, Zelda’s jubilation turns to horror when she arrives to pick up the portrait and finds the art dealer dead and several frames smoldering in his fireplace.

Was the Vermeer a fake and its ‘discovery’ a cruel joke played on a Nazi victim? The Munich police, Zelda’s family, and Vincent certainly think so.

Yet the art dealer’s best friend believes he was murdered and the real Vermeer stolen by an underground network of art looters, one established during World War II and still active today. The problem is, no one believes him – except Zelda.

Zelda soon finds herself in a dangerous game of cat-and-mouse with immoral art collectors, corrupt dealers, and an all-to-real killer who wants her to stop searching.

Can Zelda uncover the truth about the Vermeer before she is painted out of the picture permanently?

The Vermeer Deception is Book 4 in the Zelda Richardson Mystery Series. The novels in this series can be read in any order.

Available as eBook and paperback at all fine retailers on April 4, 2020. You can preorder the eBook now on Amazon: http://getbook.at/TheVermeerDeception

All By Ourselves--With A Terrific Book!

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN:  You’re home, right? Or being really careful? We love you, and are so happy to see you all here every day. Let us know you’re okay, right? And where you are?

And now, I am so pleased to introduce you to someone who is going to be one of your new favorite authors. (Full disclosure: I love this author!)   

The brilliant and authentic and incredibly talented Tessa Wegert, whose debut novel (what a hero she is!) came out in February. A debut author, who should be jet-setting around the country, appearing before adoring throngs and working her way up the charts.

But now, it’s now. But! Here we are, and how lovely to be able to introduce you to Tessa Wegert. This is a FABULOUS book.  And she is quite amazing. And, now that we are al more alone than we have ever been—well, yeah.  It’s a theme.

Isolation

By Tessa Wegert

In the midst of this horrible coronavirus outbreak, and at a time when people are practicing social distancing and quarantined in their homes, isolation is on everyone's mind. And since I'm reading more than usual these days (books really do provide both entertainment and much-needed distraction), I got to thinking about the role that isolation plays in so many mysteries and thrillers.

From Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None to Stephen King's The Shining, isolation features in countless novels. You'll often find it woven into plots to create suspense by distancing characters from civilization. There's something unnerving about a story set in a remote location, where protagonists not only face villains head-on, but all alone. When they're isolated from society, help isn't as easy to come by, and characters have to work that much harder to overcome challenges, protect others, and stay alive.

Isolation also creates opportunities to burden our characters with additional phobias, fears, and internal struggles that can trip them up during their hero journey and ultimately increase conflict. Whether a character's confined to a highway rest stop in a blizzard, like in No Exit by Taylor Adams, or stuck on a private island during a nor'easter, as in my debut mystery Death in the Family, suspicion and a sense of foreboding keep readers on tenterhooks. 

I remember the sense of vulnerability I got when reading Ruth Ware's The Turn of the Key, which is set in a smart home in the Scottish Highlands. Left to care for young children in a strange and far-flung place, Ware's character Rowan Caine was fully exposed – and that position came back to haunt her. 

Geographic separation isn't the only type of isolation that factors in thrillers. There's emotional isolation, too. When a character finds themselves deep in the woods or on a private island, for example, they're removed from the comforts of society both physically and emotionally. Cabin fever isn't limited to real life, and it can be just as psychologically crippling in fiction.

Of course, emotional isolation can also exist when a character's living in a bustling city; just take a look at Joe Goldberg from the Caroline Kepnes thriller You. Abused by his father and neglected by his mother, Joe experiences a sense of isolation that ultimately leads him to become an obsessive stalker and serial killer who systematically removes loved ones from his target's life to isolate her. 

As we try to make the best of our current situation, it can't hurt for writers to think about the value of this literary theme, and pass the time by reading books that incorporate isolation. You'll find a few more of my favorites below.

Which books featuring isolation do you love? Here are mine.  Share your picks Jungle Reds, and stay healthy! 

The Lost Man, by Jane Harper

Broken Harbor, by Tana French

Entry Island, by Peter May

The Hunting Party, by Lucy Foley

The Homecoming, by Andrew Pyper

Death on the Nile, by Agatha Christie

Scrublands, by Chris Hammer

HANK: SO many wonderful—and scary-- books. Rachel Howzell Hall’s wonderful THEY ALL FALL DOWN.  THE STAND, of course.  LORD OF THE FLIES.  And Then There Were None. What else, Reds and readers? And have you ever been stuck in a storm? And a copy of  DEATH IN THE FAMILY to one lucky winner!

Tessa Wegert is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in Forbes, The Huffington Post, Adweek, and The Economist. She grew up in Quebec and now lives with her family in Connecticut. Tessa writes mysteries set in Upstate New York while studying martial arts and dance. DEATH IN THE FAMILY is her first novel.

DEATH IN THE FAMILY

Thirteen months ago, former NYPD detective Shana Merchant barely survived being abducted by a serial killer. Hoping to leave grisly murder cases behind, she's taken a job in her fiancé's sleepy hometown in the Thousand Islands of Upstate New York. But as a nor'easter bears down on the region, Shana and fellow investigator Tim Wellington receive a call about a man missing from a private island. His family is crawling with dark secrets, and Shana's convinced one of them is a killer. As the pressure to solve the case mounts, so do the odds that they'll strike again.

The Swamp Killers? The Inside Scoop

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN:  So... today—let me introduce you to some of the most wonderful people on the planet.  One of the things we all treasure so much is the connection we have with dear pals, and fellow authors, and the delight we have in finding new and wonderful things to read.

Do you remember Night of the Flood? (See below for links.) It was—as my blurb said—Spoon River meets Our Town—or something like that—poignant, touching, and absolutely brilliant.

 

Ad now there’s more.

This month, Down & Out Books releases The Swamp Killers: A Novel in Stories—the second such project from co-editors E.A. (Ed) Aymar and Sarah M. Chen. But while their first book together, The Night of the Flood, took a more kaleidoscopic approach—each contributor crafting a standalone story about a community reacting to disaster—the new book The Swamp Killers attempts something else: sixteen contributors working within a more tightly focused plot.

But how do you get 16 writers on the same page? And what do you do when their versions of events differ or even contradict one another?

That question of “What really happened?” prompted a short interview on storytelling, perspective and point of view, and the nature of truth itself—as you’ll see below.

E.A. Aymar’s most recent thriller, The Unrepentant, was published in March of 2019 by Down and Out Books. His other thrillers include I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead and You’re As Good As Dead.

Sarah M. Chen’s short stories have appeared in a number of anthologies, including most recently Murder-A-Go-Go’s and the forthcoming The Faking of the President, and her novella Cleaning Up Finn was an Anthony Award finalist.

Your interview and moderator today is Art Taylor, author most recently of the collection The Boy Detective & The Summer of ’74 and Other Tales of Suspense and a contributor to The Swamp Killers.

Art Taylor: The novel in stories that you two recently co-edited—The Swamp Killers—offers a set of varying perspectives on the central storyline of lovers running away from a crime syndicate: not just multiple perspectives but different versions of events as part of the larger storyline. There are some pretty lofty precursors to stories where points of view collide—Faulkner’s Sound and the Fury or Kurosawa’s Rashomon, for example. What other novels or stories or films do you admire with a similar approach? And how does this novel in stories follow that tradition or twist it in some way?

Ed Aymar: Whenever I think of anthologies revolving around a central theme, I always think of Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio. Anderson’s collection, revolving around a town and the characters within it (particularly a recurring character named George Willard), and how each defines the other, has always stood out. Anderson was a mentor to both Hemingway and Fitzgerald (although his later novels lacked the momentum and craft of Winesburg, much to the private derision of his mentees in their gossipy letters), and you can see the influence of his work in their writing.

Isn’t that a smart answer? Wow. Sarah, don't steal my response.

Another movie that comes to mind is Four Rooms, a joint effort of four short films all set in the same hotel and directed by Quentin Tarantino, Robert Rodriguez, Allison Anders, and Alexandre Rockwell, with Tim Roth playing a bellhop who is the only recurring character in each work. To be honest, the film isn’t that great, although every piece has its moments, and the movie’s theme song is a delight. But the conceit of the film is top shelf, and there’s something to be said for that, even if it falls short.

I highlighted recurring characters in both of those works as an example of connective tissue, but there’s so much more that connects them—theme, similarities of approach, etc. It’s a wonderful process, similar to asking ten different painters to paint a battle on a blank white canvas, and seeing what emerges, how they work together, how their perspectives are represented. It’s beautiful and messy, and the final piece is ultimately unique.

Sarah M. Chen: I haven’t seen Four Rooms but I remember when it was released, I thought what a clever concept. I liked the idea of a recurring character in all four stories. 

The Swamp Killers also has recurring characters throughout: Olivia Duplass, Sheldon Duplass, Melody Duplass, and Timmy Milici. Some stories really dig deep into these characters while others use them more as launching points or inspiration. 

The central narrative thread throughout the collection relies on what the reader knows about these characters and the events that transpired and then twists it by forcing the reader to call everything into question. Did this really happen this way? Who is telling the story?

One book that I think does an excellent job of telling a story through multiple POVs is Alison Gaylin’s Edgar-nominated If I Die Tonight. A tragic car-jacking leaves a high school football star near death and readers try to piece together what happened that night through social media posts and multiple perspectives. What I thought was extremely effective and clever was the omission of the main suspect’s POV. I found it hard not to view him a certain way based on how events unfolded and what other characters said about him.

The Swamp Killers kind of utilizes a similar approach in that the story revolves around the two lovers, Timmy and Melody, yet we’re viewing them from a distance, with the exception of a letter Melody wrote. 

We want to talk about more than just the anthology at hand—but one more question with regard to Swamp Killers. Clearly it’s one thing for Sherwood Anderson or Alison Gaylin to construct different points of view and another thing for four directors to bring their individual styles and sensibilities to an anthology of short films or ten painters to collaborate on a single canvas—yikes! What were the challenges in orchestrating different authors in your anthology? And what were (I hope!) the benefits?

Sarah: The biggest challenge I found was structuring a central storyline around four recurring main characters with sixteen different authors. It had to be cohesive yet we wanted each author to bring something unique to the table. We weren’t sure exactly how it would work (or if it would work at all!) but by having each author construct their “truth” of what happened, we were able to illustrate the theme of the anthology as a whole as well as through each individual story.  

But what was challenging was also a benefit because we had such terrifically talented authors. We entrusted everyone to come up with their story using specific parameters while also adding new elements and surprises that really made the anthology shine. 

Ed: It was a pain in the butt, and a more complicated endeavor than our prior anthology, The Night of the Flood. That anthology took place in a single night and didn’t involve recurring characters. The Swamp Killers took place over a longer period of time, divided up by three sections, and had those four recurring characters. It also had a central narrative that each story advanced. WHY DID WE MAKE THIS SO HARD, SARAH?

But I will say, to build off something Sarah said, that working with talented writers eases a lot of concerns. Not only did the writers happily accept the challenge, but they all added their own spin, particularly (I thought) the stories by Tom Sweterlitsch, Gwen Florio, and yours (Art). I really liked the way the three of you took the concept and played with it.

Thinking about points of view and wrestling with the idea of some central “storyline”: In a bigger way, we’re living in an era where the question of “truth” has become slippery at best. Once upon a time—Faulkner, modernism, etc.—there was a belief that some “truth” existed, even if it might take many points of view to get to it. Then came the idea that maybe there was no core truth—that perspective really was everything. And now we’re… where? Post-truth? Fake news? Everyone living in their own reality? Long lead-up, short question: How might all of that change how fiction writers today write about the world?

Sarah: I’ve been feeling, especially in the past year or so, that fiction writers are more essential than ever. It’s such an exhausting world we’re living in now where we’re bombarded with news and with social media telling us how to feel and what to be afraid of. We find ourselves seeing everything through such a cynical and/or fearful lens. With fiction, we can explore what it’s like to be “the other” and to tell those stories that may otherwise be silenced or ignored. Fiction is essentially, in my view, the best way to reveal our truths and remind readers how we are all connected to one another on some level. 

Ed: We’re definitely in a period of upheaval—socially, politically, and artistically. I don’t think this current period has been identified yet but, like you said, we’re stepping past the trappings of post-modernism and moving into something else, something where authenticity and marginalized voices have an importance they never did, and I do think that will identify this next literary period (as well as this social and cultural moment). Like all movements, there’s a backlash to authority and establishment and narrative, and I think that fosters the “fake news” label. My day job is working for a media company, and I can tell you firsthand that, politically, the distrust for media isn’t exclusive to one party.

Some fiction writers will be cognitive of this, and those that aren’t will still be affected by it. I think the recent cries for authenticity in fiction (which, it should be stated, differs from and doesn’t discount the necessity of imagination and assumption other voices in fiction) will lead to a period of “new truth,” a discovery that some of our classics were shortsighted, and a reluctant widening of the canon.

If people start calling this literary period “new truth,” then I want credit, FYI.

HANK: Oh, Ed. You get credit! And you all get credit for this brilliant idea. Times have changed so much since we did this interview. Where do you all get your truth, Reds and readers? Talk about upheaval.  Do you  think we’re heading toward a new “period” ?   And check in, you wonderfuls! Where are you today, and what are you doing?

 

And a copy of  THE SWAMP KILLERS to one lucky commenter!

(oh, PS: the winner of  Samantha Bailey’s WOMAN ON THE EDGE to lucky winner Cindy C! Email me your address and I will send your book!)