Mark Rubinstein's Blog, page 23
October 6, 2014
"The Golem of Hollywood" A Talk with Jonathan & Jesse Kellerman
Jonathan Kellerman has written 43 books. Thirty seven of them have been novels; all have been bestsellers. Twenty nine of the novels have featured Alex Delaware, a child psychologist who is a consultant to the LAPD.
Jesse Kellerman, Jonathan’s son, has written five novels. Two of them have been international bestsellers. He is also an award-winning playwright. Jonathan and Jesse have co-authored The Golem of Hollywood, a crime novel with elements of myth and the supernatural.
In The Golem of Hollywood, burned-out LAPD detective Jacob Lev, for reasons having nothing to do with his detection skills, is assigned a gruesome case. A severed head is found in an abandoned house high in the Hollywood Hills. There is no body, no blood, and the Hebrew word for “Justice” has been burned into a kitchen countertop. As Jacob investigates this bizarre case, mysterious occurrences abound, and the novel combines chillingly fantastic events—past and present—with up-to-the-minute details of forensic crime investigation.
What prompted the co-authorship of The Golem of Hollywood?
Jonathan: I visited Prague and was taken by how pervasive the golem myth is on the culture. I wanted to write about it, and knew it had a preponderance of supernatural elements. But, I’m basically a crime novelist and was swamped with two other novels I was writing. One day, Jesse came over to the house and I asked him if he would like to write this one with me. He agreed.
It’s been a wonderful experience, and I think sometimes the best books derive from ventures that seem like they’ll be great fun. Then of course, the serious work begins: outlining, discussions, the crafting of the novel. It took a long time to get this book structured because there’s so much going on. Jesse, is that accurate?
Jesse: It’s accurate. When my dad shared the premise with me, it wasn’t originally for the sake of bringing me on. It was to share this cool idea he had while he was in Prague. My father’s enthusiasm is very infectious. I encouraged him to write the novel, but the conversation drifted toward the idea of collaborating. At first, I think we looked at it as a lark. It was the Kellerman adult equivalent of going into the garage and building a go-cart. We were also motivated to do this because we enjoy each other’s company. I had some trepidation about working with someone else, especially a family member. You don’t want work to affect your personal relationship. But, it was a seamless process. We were both able to subjugate our egos and create something better than the sum of its parts.
Jonathan: I must say, I couldn’t have suggested this to Jesse had he not had tremendous success as a writer with some internationally bestselling novels. I knew he was a fine writer, but wondered what collaboration would be like. I expected there might be a few dust-ups. I guess there would be more drama if I could say arguments happened, but they didn’t. We each have a good work ethic. We get in the office, and write.
How did you go about the mechanics of co-writing this novel?
Jonathan: It involved my doing a draft; sending it to Jesse; he would make revisions and send it back. We’d keep sending it back and forth. The only experience I’d had with collaborating was with Faye. Earlier on in our careers, we collaborated on two novellas. Even though we were both working from home, Faye and I chose not to meet face-to-face to discuss the work. Instead, we e-mailed everything back and forth. When I write my own novels, I’m very proprietary about them. They’re almost like my children, and I get really protective about them. When collaborating, you have to have a different mind-set. I’m not typically a collaborative writer, but writing with Jesse was great fun.
Jesse: I had some experience writing collaboratively when I wrote for the theater. But what made this collaboration so effortless was that I’d seen how my parents write; and their work ethic is all about getting your butt in the chair every day and writing. It was also striking how Dad and I often anticipated each other’s changes as we went along. The more we worked on it, the more we came into alignment. It’s something like marriage: you have to pick your partner wisely.
Does the novel reflect one or the other of your writing styles?
Jesse: I think it’s a true synthesis of our styles. When I was writing, I had my dad’s voice in my head. All writers start out mimicking other writers. I’ve never relinquished that. I have a good ear for speech and writing patterns. I was able to sit there with my dad in my head, and ask myself how he would write this. My dad’s style is a little more staccato, while mine is a little more grandiloquent. We tugged each other slightly toward one another. We ended up with this interesting hybrid.
Jonathan: Because I’d never done a book with supernatural elements, I called Stephen King and asked him if he could find the time to read the novel and give me his thoughts. Steve is a great guy, and is very supportive of fellow writers. Three days later, I heard from him. He said, ‘I know your work and I know Jesse’s work, and this is truly a synthesis.’
I like working with people, despite my having a solitary profession as a writer. For years, I worked as a psychologist with a team of professionals at a hospital and enjoyed being a harmonious leader. In this case, I wasn’t a leader; I was a partner.
Jesse, as a playwright and novelist, will you talk about the differences between writing novels and stage plays?
The most significant difference between the two is when you’re writing plays, you’re collaborating. The final product in a play is not just the written word. It’s the production, the performance. The script is, of course, a very important piece; but it’s only one element. Ultimately, yours is one of several voices. People can change your work in a play for better or worse. I’ve been fortunate because most of my scripts have been elevated by other people: actors, directors and so forth.
When you’re writing a novel, there’s no safety net. You are the director. You are the lighting technician, the set designer. You are everything. There’s both freedom and responsibility that comes with that. From a technical standpoint, with a play, you have much less to work with—you only have dialogue. It’s the director’s responsibility to create the picture, the visual elements in a play. As a novelist, I get to tell the reader what the city of Prague looks like. And most significantly, in a novel, the characters have an internal life, whereas in a play, the characters don’t, at least not one that’s readily available. To me, writing a novel is one-hundred times harder than writing a play. You’re juggling so many more things in a novel than in a play.
Jonathan, will you talk a bit about writing dialogue?
Dialogue is something I didn’t think I was that good at when I first started writing. It took me a long time to get published as a novelist. I felt dialogue was a weakness of mine, so I really paid attention to it. The key with dialogue is not to write the way people actually speak, because it’s boring. There are many pauses and repetitions. The key is to create this fiction that resembles what readers sense people sound like when they talk. I look at some of the best writers of dialogue—Elmore Leonard and others—and my wife, Faye. From her very first novel, she was able to nail dialogue. She’s a great mimic. She could have gone on stage and been the female Rich Little. She can imitate; she has perfect pitch and has a golden ear for dialogue. I really paid attention and learned from her. As a psychologist, I got to do a lot of listening, which helped me pick up the nuances of speech. But you know, there’s a lot of rewriting. From early on in my career, dialogue is something I’ve really worked on.
Many members of your family are writers. Is it nature, nurture, or both?
Jonathan: It’s always an interaction of both. At the age of three, Jesse would say, ‘I have a story I want to tell you. Write it down’ His first novel was Apple of Danger. I wrote it down and read it back to him. And he changed some of the words. The sequel was Pear of Danger. He was just a toddler. Part of what was fascinating to me was that neither Faye nor I was writing at the time. So, I think there’s a strong genetic component. Jesse’s sisters are fine writers, as well. It’s the same situation with Stephen King. His wife’s a great writer and both his sons are fine writers. These things are not coincidental. The nurture part in our family is the kids grew up seeing both parents writing.
What has surprised each of you about writing fiction?
Jonathan: The surprise to me is that I’ve been able to make a living at it. I was trained in psychology and was heavily into academic medicine, and saw my identity as such. But I loved to write. But I never saw it as a way to make a living. But When the Bough Breaks became a bestseller, it changed everything. Now, I’ve been writing professionally for thirty five years, far longer than my involvement in psychology. I think it’s the greatest job in the world. People sometimes like to think of the ‘tortured writer,” but that’s not the case with me. I’ve never been depressed in my life. I’ve been very lucky not to have the mood issues some creative people can have.
Jesse: Very little about the business of writing has surprised me because I grew up from age six or seven, witnessing what the actual business of writing entailed. From a craft perspective, I’ve been really surprised that writing gets harder as you go on. You would think it should get easier because you get more practice. But, you’re trying desperately not to repeat yourself, even though most writers really write one book and write the same thing over and over again. It’s just a question of how well they disguise it. You end up wondering, Have I made that analogy before? Have I said this before? When I describe an emotion, am I always looking at it through the same lens?
The other thing that’s surprising is that if you’re serious about your craft, you’re always trying to improve. And the better you get at writing, the better able you are to see your flaws and shortcomings. So, the growing challenge of writing has been a surprise to me. But, I must say, that’s part of the pleasure of writing, because it never gets boring.
Jonathan: I agree completely. The more books you write, the tougher it gets. With every book, I do the same thing I did with the first one: I sit down and try to write the best book possible. That does make it tougher. I have to have enough in the book that people are comfortable with because it’s the same character, but I want to be original all over again.
What do you love about being a writer?
Jonathan: It beats honest labor (Group laughter). My life as a psychologist was very structured. As a writer, I have the freedom to make my own day and create something.
Jesse: I love that every day is a surprise.
If you could have dinner with any four or five people, writers or historical figures, living or dead, who would they be?
Jonathan: I think King Solomon is a very interesting guy. I would love to meet Freud. I’d want to have dinner with anyone who changed the world in a landmark way. Lord Byron’s daughter would be a guest. She invented the computer back in the 1800s. She was a brilliant mathematician, but because she was a woman, she really wasn’t heard from. I spent a little time with Gorbachev, who was very interesting. I’d like to spend more time with him.
Jesse: Darwin would be on that list for me. Rabbi Akiva would be there. I think they’d have an interesting conversation. Nabokov, though he’d be extremely grumpy. Magic Johnson would be there. And, no kidding, my dad would be there.
I understand The Golem of Paris is coming next. Will it feature Detective Jacob Lev in another case?
Jesse: Yes, this is a series about Jacob and the Lev family.
Congratulations on penning The Golem of Hollywood, a collaborative novel that transcends genres and was a fascinating read from start to finish.
Jesse Kellerman, Jonathan’s son, has written five novels. Two of them have been international bestsellers. He is also an award-winning playwright. Jonathan and Jesse have co-authored The Golem of Hollywood, a crime novel with elements of myth and the supernatural.
In The Golem of Hollywood, burned-out LAPD detective Jacob Lev, for reasons having nothing to do with his detection skills, is assigned a gruesome case. A severed head is found in an abandoned house high in the Hollywood Hills. There is no body, no blood, and the Hebrew word for “Justice” has been burned into a kitchen countertop. As Jacob investigates this bizarre case, mysterious occurrences abound, and the novel combines chillingly fantastic events—past and present—with up-to-the-minute details of forensic crime investigation.
What prompted the co-authorship of The Golem of Hollywood?
Jonathan: I visited Prague and was taken by how pervasive the golem myth is on the culture. I wanted to write about it, and knew it had a preponderance of supernatural elements. But, I’m basically a crime novelist and was swamped with two other novels I was writing. One day, Jesse came over to the house and I asked him if he would like to write this one with me. He agreed.
It’s been a wonderful experience, and I think sometimes the best books derive from ventures that seem like they’ll be great fun. Then of course, the serious work begins: outlining, discussions, the crafting of the novel. It took a long time to get this book structured because there’s so much going on. Jesse, is that accurate?
Jesse: It’s accurate. When my dad shared the premise with me, it wasn’t originally for the sake of bringing me on. It was to share this cool idea he had while he was in Prague. My father’s enthusiasm is very infectious. I encouraged him to write the novel, but the conversation drifted toward the idea of collaborating. At first, I think we looked at it as a lark. It was the Kellerman adult equivalent of going into the garage and building a go-cart. We were also motivated to do this because we enjoy each other’s company. I had some trepidation about working with someone else, especially a family member. You don’t want work to affect your personal relationship. But, it was a seamless process. We were both able to subjugate our egos and create something better than the sum of its parts.
Jonathan: I must say, I couldn’t have suggested this to Jesse had he not had tremendous success as a writer with some internationally bestselling novels. I knew he was a fine writer, but wondered what collaboration would be like. I expected there might be a few dust-ups. I guess there would be more drama if I could say arguments happened, but they didn’t. We each have a good work ethic. We get in the office, and write.
How did you go about the mechanics of co-writing this novel?
Jonathan: It involved my doing a draft; sending it to Jesse; he would make revisions and send it back. We’d keep sending it back and forth. The only experience I’d had with collaborating was with Faye. Earlier on in our careers, we collaborated on two novellas. Even though we were both working from home, Faye and I chose not to meet face-to-face to discuss the work. Instead, we e-mailed everything back and forth. When I write my own novels, I’m very proprietary about them. They’re almost like my children, and I get really protective about them. When collaborating, you have to have a different mind-set. I’m not typically a collaborative writer, but writing with Jesse was great fun.
Jesse: I had some experience writing collaboratively when I wrote for the theater. But what made this collaboration so effortless was that I’d seen how my parents write; and their work ethic is all about getting your butt in the chair every day and writing. It was also striking how Dad and I often anticipated each other’s changes as we went along. The more we worked on it, the more we came into alignment. It’s something like marriage: you have to pick your partner wisely.
Does the novel reflect one or the other of your writing styles?
Jesse: I think it’s a true synthesis of our styles. When I was writing, I had my dad’s voice in my head. All writers start out mimicking other writers. I’ve never relinquished that. I have a good ear for speech and writing patterns. I was able to sit there with my dad in my head, and ask myself how he would write this. My dad’s style is a little more staccato, while mine is a little more grandiloquent. We tugged each other slightly toward one another. We ended up with this interesting hybrid.
Jonathan: Because I’d never done a book with supernatural elements, I called Stephen King and asked him if he could find the time to read the novel and give me his thoughts. Steve is a great guy, and is very supportive of fellow writers. Three days later, I heard from him. He said, ‘I know your work and I know Jesse’s work, and this is truly a synthesis.’
I like working with people, despite my having a solitary profession as a writer. For years, I worked as a psychologist with a team of professionals at a hospital and enjoyed being a harmonious leader. In this case, I wasn’t a leader; I was a partner.
Jesse, as a playwright and novelist, will you talk about the differences between writing novels and stage plays?
The most significant difference between the two is when you’re writing plays, you’re collaborating. The final product in a play is not just the written word. It’s the production, the performance. The script is, of course, a very important piece; but it’s only one element. Ultimately, yours is one of several voices. People can change your work in a play for better or worse. I’ve been fortunate because most of my scripts have been elevated by other people: actors, directors and so forth.
When you’re writing a novel, there’s no safety net. You are the director. You are the lighting technician, the set designer. You are everything. There’s both freedom and responsibility that comes with that. From a technical standpoint, with a play, you have much less to work with—you only have dialogue. It’s the director’s responsibility to create the picture, the visual elements in a play. As a novelist, I get to tell the reader what the city of Prague looks like. And most significantly, in a novel, the characters have an internal life, whereas in a play, the characters don’t, at least not one that’s readily available. To me, writing a novel is one-hundred times harder than writing a play. You’re juggling so many more things in a novel than in a play.
Jonathan, will you talk a bit about writing dialogue?
Dialogue is something I didn’t think I was that good at when I first started writing. It took me a long time to get published as a novelist. I felt dialogue was a weakness of mine, so I really paid attention to it. The key with dialogue is not to write the way people actually speak, because it’s boring. There are many pauses and repetitions. The key is to create this fiction that resembles what readers sense people sound like when they talk. I look at some of the best writers of dialogue—Elmore Leonard and others—and my wife, Faye. From her very first novel, she was able to nail dialogue. She’s a great mimic. She could have gone on stage and been the female Rich Little. She can imitate; she has perfect pitch and has a golden ear for dialogue. I really paid attention and learned from her. As a psychologist, I got to do a lot of listening, which helped me pick up the nuances of speech. But you know, there’s a lot of rewriting. From early on in my career, dialogue is something I’ve really worked on.
Many members of your family are writers. Is it nature, nurture, or both?
Jonathan: It’s always an interaction of both. At the age of three, Jesse would say, ‘I have a story I want to tell you. Write it down’ His first novel was Apple of Danger. I wrote it down and read it back to him. And he changed some of the words. The sequel was Pear of Danger. He was just a toddler. Part of what was fascinating to me was that neither Faye nor I was writing at the time. So, I think there’s a strong genetic component. Jesse’s sisters are fine writers, as well. It’s the same situation with Stephen King. His wife’s a great writer and both his sons are fine writers. These things are not coincidental. The nurture part in our family is the kids grew up seeing both parents writing.
What has surprised each of you about writing fiction?
Jonathan: The surprise to me is that I’ve been able to make a living at it. I was trained in psychology and was heavily into academic medicine, and saw my identity as such. But I loved to write. But I never saw it as a way to make a living. But When the Bough Breaks became a bestseller, it changed everything. Now, I’ve been writing professionally for thirty five years, far longer than my involvement in psychology. I think it’s the greatest job in the world. People sometimes like to think of the ‘tortured writer,” but that’s not the case with me. I’ve never been depressed in my life. I’ve been very lucky not to have the mood issues some creative people can have.
Jesse: Very little about the business of writing has surprised me because I grew up from age six or seven, witnessing what the actual business of writing entailed. From a craft perspective, I’ve been really surprised that writing gets harder as you go on. You would think it should get easier because you get more practice. But, you’re trying desperately not to repeat yourself, even though most writers really write one book and write the same thing over and over again. It’s just a question of how well they disguise it. You end up wondering, Have I made that analogy before? Have I said this before? When I describe an emotion, am I always looking at it through the same lens?
The other thing that’s surprising is that if you’re serious about your craft, you’re always trying to improve. And the better you get at writing, the better able you are to see your flaws and shortcomings. So, the growing challenge of writing has been a surprise to me. But, I must say, that’s part of the pleasure of writing, because it never gets boring.
Jonathan: I agree completely. The more books you write, the tougher it gets. With every book, I do the same thing I did with the first one: I sit down and try to write the best book possible. That does make it tougher. I have to have enough in the book that people are comfortable with because it’s the same character, but I want to be original all over again.
What do you love about being a writer?
Jonathan: It beats honest labor (Group laughter). My life as a psychologist was very structured. As a writer, I have the freedom to make my own day and create something.
Jesse: I love that every day is a surprise.
If you could have dinner with any four or five people, writers or historical figures, living or dead, who would they be?
Jonathan: I think King Solomon is a very interesting guy. I would love to meet Freud. I’d want to have dinner with anyone who changed the world in a landmark way. Lord Byron’s daughter would be a guest. She invented the computer back in the 1800s. She was a brilliant mathematician, but because she was a woman, she really wasn’t heard from. I spent a little time with Gorbachev, who was very interesting. I’d like to spend more time with him.
Jesse: Darwin would be on that list for me. Rabbi Akiva would be there. I think they’d have an interesting conversation. Nabokov, though he’d be extremely grumpy. Magic Johnson would be there. And, no kidding, my dad would be there.
I understand The Golem of Paris is coming next. Will it feature Detective Jacob Lev in another case?
Jesse: Yes, this is a series about Jacob and the Lev family.
Congratulations on penning The Golem of Hollywood, a collaborative novel that transcends genres and was a fascinating read from start to finish.
October 5, 2014
The Providence Journal: Review of Mad Dog Justice
Mark Rubinstein didn’t invent the cat-and-mouse game, but he might as well have based on his blisteringly entertaining “Mad Dog Justice” (Thunder Lake Press, $12.99, 315 pages). Rubinstein firmly plants himself in the hallowed ground of Lisa Gardner and Harlan Coben, fashioning a nightmare out of normalcy. That’s what happens to Roddy Dolan and Danny Burns, an ordinary surgeon and accountant, respectively, who find themselves prey in a postmodern version of “A Most Dangerous Game.” Turns out they’re pretty good players themselves, as is Rubinstein in one of the toughest games of all — publishing. This second in his Mad Dog series moves at light speed toward a stirring climax that turns the tables in marvelously appropriate fashion.
October 2, 2014
CBS Loved the Cover of “Love Gone Mad”
It’s clear that CBS loved the cover of my novel “LOVE GONE MAD.” They copied it for the logo of their new series, “Stalker.” Take a look and decide for yourself. My novel was publshed in 2013,while “Stalker” only premiered the week of October 1st, 2014.
September 29, 2014
‘Strong Darkness” A Talk with Jon Land
Jon Land is the prolific author of 30 novels. He is well-known for his Blaine McCracken series among others, as well as nine standalone novels. His latest series involves Texas Ranger, Caitlin Strong. Her courage and tenacity repeatedly land her, along with her paramour Cort Wesley Masters, on perilous terrain.
In Strong Darkness, the sixth in the series, Caitlin pursues a serial killer whose bizarre method is eerily similar to that of the killer tracked by her great-grandfather and Judge Roy...
"Strong Darkness" A Talk with John Land
Jon Land is the prolific author of 30 novels. He is well-known for his Blaine McCracken series among others, as well as nine standalone novels. His latest series involves Texas Ranger, Caitlin Strong. Her courage and tenacity repeatedly land her, along with her paramour Cort Wesley Masters, on perilous terrain.
In Strong Darkness, the sixth in the series, Caitlin pursues a serial killer whose bizarre method is eerily similar to that of the killer tracked by her great-grandfather and Judge Roy Bean, 130 years earlier. But there’s much more going on. Her boyfriend’s son is beaten half to death at Brown University. The investigation leads Caitlin back to Texas and to a high-tech company whose founder, Li Zhen, has been awarded a contract to build the U.S.’s 5G network. Zhen is associated with the Triads, the powerful and deadly Chinese mob. An immense conspiracy is underway—one with mass murder and economic disaster as its goals. The pernicious plot could cause the deaths of millions of Americans, and bring about China’s total domination of the United States.
I’ve read a number of your novels and they’ve all tied the protagonist’s present investigation to events years earlier. Tell us about these connections of past and present.
I’ve always believed what William Faulkner said, ‘The past is never dead. It’s not even past.’ In this future-obsessed culture, we forget how vital the past is. In the Caitlin Strong series, I use the past to highlight the tradition of the Texas Rangers in Caitlin’s family. We see how crimes were solved in 1883, in the 1930s, and at this time. It shows that no matter how things may change, they really stay the same. If it were possible for Caitlin, her father, and her grandfather, to team up today with Judge Roy Bean, you would probably have the same result.
These historical sub-plots also allow me to pick wonderful snippets from history and present them in a way that integrates past and present. In Strong Darkness, I touch on the railroad tradition of the old West and Texas. The railroads were crucial in American history because people became mobile, which ended the era of the Wild West and lone gunfighters. Gunmen became Pinkerton men or contract killers. I love relying on history as part of telling a story. History can fuel a plot that spills over into the present. It makes the past completely relevant. And the past has helped Caitlin understand who she is and the tradition from which she came.
Caitlin Strong’s surname is perfect: she’s strong-willed and a very tough Texas Ranger. Was it difficult to create a woman who is both alluring and heroic in an action-oriented sense?
No, because her character came to me so quickly. She’s evolved naturally. You can’t impose yourself on the character’s nature. That would be like swimming upstream. I don’t do the work; the characters do. They dictate who they want to be, and who they are. I write totally from my imagination, my subconscious. I don’t outline a single thing.
I may know the general plotline of a novel, but as the Grateful Dead’s Jerry Garcia said, ‘It’s not the destination, it’s the journey.’ I may know the final destination of a novel fairly well, but I don’t know the journey that will take me there. Nor do I know Caitlin Strong’s journey—the one that turns her into the character she is, or will become.
Actually, Caitlin was created at a marketing meeting with my publisher. Some of the best creative decisions writers make are either forced upon us or chosen for business reasons. At this meeting, the head of mass market sales said, ‘Eighty percent of books are bought by women, and the most popular genre is the thriller. Are there any female action thriller heroes?’ There are a couple of exceptions, but popular female heroes aren’t like Jack Reacher. We began brainstorming and I said, ‘How about a female Texas Ranger?’
But, whether Caitlin was a creative inspiration, or was devised at a sales meeting, the manner of her birth doesn’t matter. What matters is how she was raised—how she became the character she now is.
Here’s the difference between a good series character and a great one: a good character becomes; a great character never stops becoming. A great series character evolves. Caitlin Strong changes over time, but doesn’t become less of a gunfighter. Her evolution allows us to see the rationale for what gets her to go for her guns. She’s emotional, and the reader gets a sense of her personal being. In a sense, she’s forever becoming, but she remains a prisoner of her nature and past.
The action scenes in Strong Darkness are among the most vivid and intense I’ve ever read. Is there a method you employ in creating them?
Action scenes need to be two things. They need to be visual, and they need to be visceral—come right from the gut. With the visual, I recall something my editor taught me: when writing a scene, always know where the light is coming from. All my action scenes are written through the eyes of one character, not through some omniscient third person narrator.
As for the visceral, I want the reader to smell the gunpowder; to feel the gun’s heat in the hand; and to hear the sound of an automatic weapon’s expended shells clacking against a tile floor.
But, for the action to be compelling, I want to force the reader to have a vested stake in the hero’s plight and her quest. A hero like Caitlin Strong represents all we would want to be. We want to be the person who confronts any situation and comes away victorious. And we can’t forget that heroes represent our projections of who we would want to guard us to keep the monsters away. We learned from 9/11 and ISIS that there really are things that go bump in the night. And the action in the Caitlin Strong series is good because Caitlin Strong bumps back.
Two characters in Strong Darkness—Guillermo Paz and Cort Wesley Masters—have visions or talk to a dead person. You seem comfortable in stretching genre boundaries.
What you’re really getting at is that characters like Guillermo Paz and Cort Wesley Masters are larger than life. They embrace the fact that the universe is far bigger and broader than we realize. Part of what makes Guillermo Paz indestructible is his level of consciousness which renders him fearless. If you don’t fear death, you’re an indestructible warrior. As for Cort Wesley Masters, he talks to Leroy Epps, his former prison cellmate. Leroy Epps is really there. He’s not a vision or an illusion. He’s a spiritual entity for Cort Wesley. What people love about science fiction and fantasy, in Star Wars, for example, is that people don’t die. They return in spirit, and we love wondering if there’s something else out there.
These characters—Paz and Cort Wesley Masters—have embraced the notion that there’s something more. It makes them more fearsome, more deadly; but makes them far more human, as well. I didn’t invent this. Joseph Campbell explored this in The Power of Myth. The bottom line is: just because you can’t see something doesn’t mean it’s not there.
Strong Darkness is a thriller with elements of a mystery novel. Talk about the differences between a thriller and a mystery.
A thriller is about a hero trying to prevent something terrible from happening. A mystery, on the other hand, tries to figure out what has already happened and who did it. In a mystery, the hero’s life is seldom threatened. But, in a thriller, the hero’s life is always at stake. The differences boil down to stakes and danger. In a thriller, there’s usually a more abbreviated time frame. There’s a ticking clock in a thriller as opposed to there being none in a mystery.
There are intersecting story lines in Strong Darkness. They all coalesce. I know you don’t use an outline, so how do you keep the novel’s narrative drive integrated?
Much of it is instinct. If you do something enough, you come to trust your ability to pull it off. The beginning of the book is always easy because the connections don’t have to be made. I can just throw spaghetti on the wall. So how do I connect the disparate elements of the plot?
First, I use short chapters. That not only makes it much easier for readers to follow the plot, but also for me to follow the book’s arc as I’m writing it. If I’m shifting viewpoints every five pages, short chapters allow me to remember where I left off.
As for keeping the story integrated, I don’t know what’s going to happen next. And if I don’t know, the reader can’t possibly know. As I said, the beginning is easy; the end of the book is the climax where it all gets tied up. In those two hundred pages in between, all the connections must be made. It can be very difficult to do. When I was nearing the end of Strong Darkness, I was up against a wall. I was stuck and couldn’t tie the threads together. One of the people I rely upon to read early drafts made a suggestion, and there it was. The whole book fell into place. It demonstrates that no writer exists in a vacuum. I have people who read my early drafts and a brilliant editor who does much more than go over the lines. We work on a conceptual level. A few other people read the nearly finalized draft, so I can take the book to its publish-ready level. I rely on the advice of others.
The other thing helping me to keep the narrative unified is writing my books over a short timeframe. Generally, the first draft is done in about eight weeks. I don’t spend so much time on that draft that I forget where I’ve been. If you forget where you’ve been, you can’t find where you’re going.
One other thing: I’m a better re-writer than I am a writer. I’m very good at tearing things apart and putting them back together in better shape. When a novel has disparate elements that don’t work, you allow yourself to change things on the fly. You invent connections—connective tissue. The difference between the successful novel and the unsuccessful one doesn’t lie so much in the plotting. It doesn’t lie in the bones, the skeleton. It lies in the tissue. How it connects everything else. I probably do five re-writes of each novel. What it really comes down to is tying in the structural elements of the novel with the protagonist’s character, his or her very being.
You’ve published thirty novels. What about writing has surprised you most over the years?
Two things. I was surprised by how hard it is for a writer to succeed. How hard it is to be recognized. How hard it is to get what you feel you deserve in the publishing world, and not let that get you down.
On a more positive note, I’ve been surprised at how easily the story comes to me, and how much I love telling it. That’s really the biggest surprise for me. I love writing Caitlin Strong books. I’m just amazed I can still do it—that I can find that place in my head.
For me, writing isn’t just what I do. It’s who I am.
Congratulations on having written Strong Darkness, a wide-ranging thriller with suspenseful sub-plots and some of the most vivid action scenes I’ve ever read.
In Strong Darkness, the sixth in the series, Caitlin pursues a serial killer whose bizarre method is eerily similar to that of the killer tracked by her great-grandfather and Judge Roy Bean, 130 years earlier. But there’s much more going on. Her boyfriend’s son is beaten half to death at Brown University. The investigation leads Caitlin back to Texas and to a high-tech company whose founder, Li Zhen, has been awarded a contract to build the U.S.’s 5G network. Zhen is associated with the Triads, the powerful and deadly Chinese mob. An immense conspiracy is underway—one with mass murder and economic disaster as its goals. The pernicious plot could cause the deaths of millions of Americans, and bring about China’s total domination of the United States.
I’ve read a number of your novels and they’ve all tied the protagonist’s present investigation to events years earlier. Tell us about these connections of past and present.
I’ve always believed what William Faulkner said, ‘The past is never dead. It’s not even past.’ In this future-obsessed culture, we forget how vital the past is. In the Caitlin Strong series, I use the past to highlight the tradition of the Texas Rangers in Caitlin’s family. We see how crimes were solved in 1883, in the 1930s, and at this time. It shows that no matter how things may change, they really stay the same. If it were possible for Caitlin, her father, and her grandfather, to team up today with Judge Roy Bean, you would probably have the same result.
These historical sub-plots also allow me to pick wonderful snippets from history and present them in a way that integrates past and present. In Strong Darkness, I touch on the railroad tradition of the old West and Texas. The railroads were crucial in American history because people became mobile, which ended the era of the Wild West and lone gunfighters. Gunmen became Pinkerton men or contract killers. I love relying on history as part of telling a story. History can fuel a plot that spills over into the present. It makes the past completely relevant. And the past has helped Caitlin understand who she is and the tradition from which she came.
Caitlin Strong’s surname is perfect: she’s strong-willed and a very tough Texas Ranger. Was it difficult to create a woman who is both alluring and heroic in an action-oriented sense?
No, because her character came to me so quickly. She’s evolved naturally. You can’t impose yourself on the character’s nature. That would be like swimming upstream. I don’t do the work; the characters do. They dictate who they want to be, and who they are. I write totally from my imagination, my subconscious. I don’t outline a single thing.
I may know the general plotline of a novel, but as the Grateful Dead’s Jerry Garcia said, ‘It’s not the destination, it’s the journey.’ I may know the final destination of a novel fairly well, but I don’t know the journey that will take me there. Nor do I know Caitlin Strong’s journey—the one that turns her into the character she is, or will become.
Actually, Caitlin was created at a marketing meeting with my publisher. Some of the best creative decisions writers make are either forced upon us or chosen for business reasons. At this meeting, the head of mass market sales said, ‘Eighty percent of books are bought by women, and the most popular genre is the thriller. Are there any female action thriller heroes?’ There are a couple of exceptions, but popular female heroes aren’t like Jack Reacher. We began brainstorming and I said, ‘How about a female Texas Ranger?’
But, whether Caitlin was a creative inspiration, or was devised at a sales meeting, the manner of her birth doesn’t matter. What matters is how she was raised—how she became the character she now is.
Here’s the difference between a good series character and a great one: a good character becomes; a great character never stops becoming. A great series character evolves. Caitlin Strong changes over time, but doesn’t become less of a gunfighter. Her evolution allows us to see the rationale for what gets her to go for her guns. She’s emotional, and the reader gets a sense of her personal being. In a sense, she’s forever becoming, but she remains a prisoner of her nature and past.
The action scenes in Strong Darkness are among the most vivid and intense I’ve ever read. Is there a method you employ in creating them?
Action scenes need to be two things. They need to be visual, and they need to be visceral—come right from the gut. With the visual, I recall something my editor taught me: when writing a scene, always know where the light is coming from. All my action scenes are written through the eyes of one character, not through some omniscient third person narrator.
As for the visceral, I want the reader to smell the gunpowder; to feel the gun’s heat in the hand; and to hear the sound of an automatic weapon’s expended shells clacking against a tile floor.
But, for the action to be compelling, I want to force the reader to have a vested stake in the hero’s plight and her quest. A hero like Caitlin Strong represents all we would want to be. We want to be the person who confronts any situation and comes away victorious. And we can’t forget that heroes represent our projections of who we would want to guard us to keep the monsters away. We learned from 9/11 and ISIS that there really are things that go bump in the night. And the action in the Caitlin Strong series is good because Caitlin Strong bumps back.
Two characters in Strong Darkness—Guillermo Paz and Cort Wesley Masters—have visions or talk to a dead person. You seem comfortable in stretching genre boundaries.
What you’re really getting at is that characters like Guillermo Paz and Cort Wesley Masters are larger than life. They embrace the fact that the universe is far bigger and broader than we realize. Part of what makes Guillermo Paz indestructible is his level of consciousness which renders him fearless. If you don’t fear death, you’re an indestructible warrior. As for Cort Wesley Masters, he talks to Leroy Epps, his former prison cellmate. Leroy Epps is really there. He’s not a vision or an illusion. He’s a spiritual entity for Cort Wesley. What people love about science fiction and fantasy, in Star Wars, for example, is that people don’t die. They return in spirit, and we love wondering if there’s something else out there.
These characters—Paz and Cort Wesley Masters—have embraced the notion that there’s something more. It makes them more fearsome, more deadly; but makes them far more human, as well. I didn’t invent this. Joseph Campbell explored this in The Power of Myth. The bottom line is: just because you can’t see something doesn’t mean it’s not there.
Strong Darkness is a thriller with elements of a mystery novel. Talk about the differences between a thriller and a mystery.
A thriller is about a hero trying to prevent something terrible from happening. A mystery, on the other hand, tries to figure out what has already happened and who did it. In a mystery, the hero’s life is seldom threatened. But, in a thriller, the hero’s life is always at stake. The differences boil down to stakes and danger. In a thriller, there’s usually a more abbreviated time frame. There’s a ticking clock in a thriller as opposed to there being none in a mystery.
There are intersecting story lines in Strong Darkness. They all coalesce. I know you don’t use an outline, so how do you keep the novel’s narrative drive integrated?
Much of it is instinct. If you do something enough, you come to trust your ability to pull it off. The beginning of the book is always easy because the connections don’t have to be made. I can just throw spaghetti on the wall. So how do I connect the disparate elements of the plot?
First, I use short chapters. That not only makes it much easier for readers to follow the plot, but also for me to follow the book’s arc as I’m writing it. If I’m shifting viewpoints every five pages, short chapters allow me to remember where I left off.
As for keeping the story integrated, I don’t know what’s going to happen next. And if I don’t know, the reader can’t possibly know. As I said, the beginning is easy; the end of the book is the climax where it all gets tied up. In those two hundred pages in between, all the connections must be made. It can be very difficult to do. When I was nearing the end of Strong Darkness, I was up against a wall. I was stuck and couldn’t tie the threads together. One of the people I rely upon to read early drafts made a suggestion, and there it was. The whole book fell into place. It demonstrates that no writer exists in a vacuum. I have people who read my early drafts and a brilliant editor who does much more than go over the lines. We work on a conceptual level. A few other people read the nearly finalized draft, so I can take the book to its publish-ready level. I rely on the advice of others.
The other thing helping me to keep the narrative unified is writing my books over a short timeframe. Generally, the first draft is done in about eight weeks. I don’t spend so much time on that draft that I forget where I’ve been. If you forget where you’ve been, you can’t find where you’re going.
One other thing: I’m a better re-writer than I am a writer. I’m very good at tearing things apart and putting them back together in better shape. When a novel has disparate elements that don’t work, you allow yourself to change things on the fly. You invent connections—connective tissue. The difference between the successful novel and the unsuccessful one doesn’t lie so much in the plotting. It doesn’t lie in the bones, the skeleton. It lies in the tissue. How it connects everything else. I probably do five re-writes of each novel. What it really comes down to is tying in the structural elements of the novel with the protagonist’s character, his or her very being.
You’ve published thirty novels. What about writing has surprised you most over the years?
Two things. I was surprised by how hard it is for a writer to succeed. How hard it is to be recognized. How hard it is to get what you feel you deserve in the publishing world, and not let that get you down.
On a more positive note, I’ve been surprised at how easily the story comes to me, and how much I love telling it. That’s really the biggest surprise for me. I love writing Caitlin Strong books. I’m just amazed I can still do it—that I can find that place in my head.
For me, writing isn’t just what I do. It’s who I am.
Congratulations on having written Strong Darkness, a wide-ranging thriller with suspenseful sub-plots and some of the most vivid action scenes I’ve ever read.
September 24, 2014
Murder 101: A Talk with Faye Kellerman
Faye Kellerman is the bestselling author of twenty-six novels, twenty-two of which feature the husband and wife team of Peter Decker and Rina Lazarus. Faye and her husband, Jonathan Kellerman, are the only married couple ever to appear on the New York Times bestseller list simultaneously for two different novels.[image error]
Murder101 is the twenty-second Decker-Lazarus novel. Peter is now retired from the LAPD. He and Rina have moved to a small town in upstate New York, to be closer to their four adult c...
Murder 101: A Talk with Faye Kellerman
Faye Kellerman is the bestselling author of twenty-six novels, twenty-two of which feature the husband and wife team of Peter Decker and Rina Lazarus. Faye and her husband, Jonathan Kellerman, are the only married couple ever to appear on the New York Times bestseller list simultaneously for two different novels.
Murder 101 is the twenty-second Decker-Lazarus novel. Peter is now retired from the LAPD. He and Rina have moved to a small town in upstate New York, to be closer to their four adult children and foster son. Peter works for the Greenbury Police Department, which usually involves little more than dealing with college-town problems. A possible break-in at the local cemetery where a mausoleum’s Tiffany panels have been stolen and replaced by forgeries, leads to drastic consequences, including two brutal murders. As a former LAPD detective, Decker is called on to investigate a case that has far-reaching implications.
You have a degree in mathematics and received a Doctorate of Dental Surgery. At the age of thirty-four, your first novel, The Ritual Bath, was published. As a mathematician and dentist, how did you discover the writer within you?
I was always a kid with a vivid imagination. I made up stories in my head and played them out. I would walk around talking to myself to the point where my grandmother asked my mother, ‘Is this child normal?’ And my mother said, ‘She’s just playing her games.’ I had all these little stories, and was also very good at math. I went into math because I had a hard time learning to read. I was phonetically dyslexic. I was a math major and became a dentist. After graduating from dental school, I took time off before going into dentistry to be with my son, Jesse. At that point, all the stories began coming back, because for the first time in 25 years, I didn’t have to use my brain to advance my education. The imagination never goes away.
At that time, Jonathan and I were married for six years. He was always an avid writer. I said to myself, ‘He’s doing the same thing I’m doing, making up stories, except he’s writing them down.’ It took many years—seven or eight years—before I had something worth publishing. Jonathan’s success encouraged me, and he himself encouraged me. I felt somewhat embarrassed about it, feeling I was making up stories when I should be drilling teeth. Eventually, I got published. Once that happened, there was no turning back. I knew from my husband’s experience that you don’t write to become a bestselling novelist. It’s a fluke if it happens. A fluke has happened to me.
It’s clear from reading Murder 101 that you write very detailed detective fiction. What kind of research do you do?
Over the years, I’ve done a great deal of research. I love doing research. It often revolves around art. I used to go in the stacks. Now, of course, we have the Internet. Even with the Internet, you still have to read books to get the details you want. When I write a novel, I try to write something that’s coherent and entertaining. I spend the most time on building characters. You hope to write something with richness, but above all, the reader remembers the characters—people that seem to jump off the page. I just love doing research. I’ve visited police stations. I read science and books on forensics. I look things up and try to make the novel as accurate as possible. As for bodies, as a dental student, we had gross anatomy, so I know a body from the inside out. I do take a bit of literary license. If I don’t know certain exact details, I’ll make an approximation for the novel.
Your physical descriptions of characters are quite elaborate. How do you balance creating that richness while maintaining a novel’s narrative drive?
I think of a character’s description as something akin to scene-setting or stage-setting. It’s not there for the sake of simply providing details. We’re not Sherlock Holmes. We don’t need to know about the dangling button. I want to give the reader an idea of where a scene is taking place; who the main characters are; and what they look like. I like to leave a little bit to the reader’s imagination. But if you set the scene, what follows is not distracting. Once the scene is there, the characters take over with their dialogue, but they are placed in position for the reader.
As the Deckers have grown older, are you concerned they might no longer appeal to younger readers?
I try to make the characters as universal as possible. That was a consideration in Murder 101. I moved them to a small college town to keep it fresh and young. The introduction of a younger police detective who doesn’t know the ropes was done to infuse the story with some youth. You want your books to appeal to as many people as possible. If my main characters are in an older age group, I try to balance it with someone younger.
Over twenty-eight years the, Deckers’ lives have evolved. Writers often borrow from their own lives. Are there parallels between the Deckers and the Kellermans?
I’m sure there are, but not on a one-to-one ratio. As we grow and experience things, so do the Deckers. As we have experiences, they do, too. In my personal life, I have children and grandchildren, so I’m forced—in order to keep up with them in conversation—to be exposed to their interests and activities. You have to learn to use whatever resources are around you, and it keeps you fresh and young.
As a writing couple, what is a typical day like in your household? Are you and Jonathan on different schedules? Write in different places?
Dentistry and mathematics taught me the necessity of being focused and organized. Things are easier now because the kids are out of the house. We wake up when we want to as opposed to when we had children at home. We begin writing at about 9:30 or 10:00. We write at roughly the same time, most often in the mornings because we both feel fresher at that time. We spend about two to three hours writing, and then comes all the business of running your life. There’s a lot of juggling with the books: promotion, writing, dealing with the business of writing. At first, I found it stressful, but now I have fun with it. After about 5:00 in the afternoon, I try not going to my computer. I want to relax, read a book, go out for dinner, or see a movie.
You and Jonathan collaborated on Double Homicide and Capital Crimes. How did that go?
It went really well. We e-mailed chapters back and forth. We did that with everything, beginning with the outline. I would write something; then, he would embellish it. Then I would embellish his embellishment. And finally, we had an outline. For each novel, one of us wrote the first draft. We’d go back-and-forth with that. It was really wonderful. You know, sometimes in my own work, I’d hit a wall. With the collaboration, if I wasn’t quite sure how to end a scene, I’d send it to Jonathan, and he’d do it. I think the main thing was not to take a proprietary interest in the writing. It’s a shared project and you have to leave your ego at the door.
Dentists usually have manual dexterity, and their hobbies often involve using their hands. How about you?
I’ve done a lot of sewing. I crochet. I really love gardening. If I have any spare time, I love to prune and plant. I love the aesthetic, and it’s so rewarding. I sometimes play the mandolin and the guitar; so yes, I enjoy using my hands.
As a successful novelist since 1986, what has surprised you most about writing?
The biggest surprise is, it doesn’t get easier. With most tasks, the more you perform them, the more rote they become. With writing, you can never, ever, sit back and have it come easily. It’s always a struggle. It’s a joy, but you’re always thinking. It always gives me a headache. (Laughter). The more you write, the harder it gets because you’ve used up plots; you’ve used up characters; you’ve used up words. You wonder how you’re going to keep this book fresh and new—especially in a series. You know, with genre novels, there’s an expectation. You don’t want your fans to lose that sense of anticipation. You want each book to be satisfying to you and you want it to be fresh. That’s one of the major reasons why I moved the Deckers from LA to Greenbury. I wanted them to be in a new place with a different atmosphere, and I wanted them to face new challenges.
What do you love about being a writer?
I love the ability to let my mind explore whatever it wants. When you write it down, it has to be informed and make sense. But if you have an imagination, you can go everywhere. I love that—the inception—having a germ of an idea and building upon it. You can do whatever you want with it. Many writers would say you can play God.
If you could have dinner with any five people, living or dead, who would they be?
One of them would be Moses. I’d have a lot of questions for him. I’d love to have my literary idols there. Ross MacDonald would be at the table, along with Raymond Chandler, James M. Cain, Billy Wilder, and Chaim Potok. I’ve been rereading Jane Austin and realize she basically wrote Downton Abbey. I’d love to have her join us. F. Scott Fitzgerald would be another guest. And of course, there’s Abe Lincoln. I’m really interested in people who did something revolutionary. I’d really want to have a huge banquet with all these people.
What’s coming next from Faye Kellerman?
The Deckers are still in Greenbury and there will be more college mayhem.
Congratulations on penning your twenty-second Decker-Lazarus novel, a read that held me from start to finish.
Murder 101 is the twenty-second Decker-Lazarus novel. Peter is now retired from the LAPD. He and Rina have moved to a small town in upstate New York, to be closer to their four adult children and foster son. Peter works for the Greenbury Police Department, which usually involves little more than dealing with college-town problems. A possible break-in at the local cemetery where a mausoleum’s Tiffany panels have been stolen and replaced by forgeries, leads to drastic consequences, including two brutal murders. As a former LAPD detective, Decker is called on to investigate a case that has far-reaching implications.
You have a degree in mathematics and received a Doctorate of Dental Surgery. At the age of thirty-four, your first novel, The Ritual Bath, was published. As a mathematician and dentist, how did you discover the writer within you?
I was always a kid with a vivid imagination. I made up stories in my head and played them out. I would walk around talking to myself to the point where my grandmother asked my mother, ‘Is this child normal?’ And my mother said, ‘She’s just playing her games.’ I had all these little stories, and was also very good at math. I went into math because I had a hard time learning to read. I was phonetically dyslexic. I was a math major and became a dentist. After graduating from dental school, I took time off before going into dentistry to be with my son, Jesse. At that point, all the stories began coming back, because for the first time in 25 years, I didn’t have to use my brain to advance my education. The imagination never goes away.
At that time, Jonathan and I were married for six years. He was always an avid writer. I said to myself, ‘He’s doing the same thing I’m doing, making up stories, except he’s writing them down.’ It took many years—seven or eight years—before I had something worth publishing. Jonathan’s success encouraged me, and he himself encouraged me. I felt somewhat embarrassed about it, feeling I was making up stories when I should be drilling teeth. Eventually, I got published. Once that happened, there was no turning back. I knew from my husband’s experience that you don’t write to become a bestselling novelist. It’s a fluke if it happens. A fluke has happened to me.
It’s clear from reading Murder 101 that you write very detailed detective fiction. What kind of research do you do?
Over the years, I’ve done a great deal of research. I love doing research. It often revolves around art. I used to go in the stacks. Now, of course, we have the Internet. Even with the Internet, you still have to read books to get the details you want. When I write a novel, I try to write something that’s coherent and entertaining. I spend the most time on building characters. You hope to write something with richness, but above all, the reader remembers the characters—people that seem to jump off the page. I just love doing research. I’ve visited police stations. I read science and books on forensics. I look things up and try to make the novel as accurate as possible. As for bodies, as a dental student, we had gross anatomy, so I know a body from the inside out. I do take a bit of literary license. If I don’t know certain exact details, I’ll make an approximation for the novel.
Your physical descriptions of characters are quite elaborate. How do you balance creating that richness while maintaining a novel’s narrative drive?
I think of a character’s description as something akin to scene-setting or stage-setting. It’s not there for the sake of simply providing details. We’re not Sherlock Holmes. We don’t need to know about the dangling button. I want to give the reader an idea of where a scene is taking place; who the main characters are; and what they look like. I like to leave a little bit to the reader’s imagination. But if you set the scene, what follows is not distracting. Once the scene is there, the characters take over with their dialogue, but they are placed in position for the reader.
As the Deckers have grown older, are you concerned they might no longer appeal to younger readers?
I try to make the characters as universal as possible. That was a consideration in Murder 101. I moved them to a small college town to keep it fresh and young. The introduction of a younger police detective who doesn’t know the ropes was done to infuse the story with some youth. You want your books to appeal to as many people as possible. If my main characters are in an older age group, I try to balance it with someone younger.
Over twenty-eight years the, Deckers’ lives have evolved. Writers often borrow from their own lives. Are there parallels between the Deckers and the Kellermans?
I’m sure there are, but not on a one-to-one ratio. As we grow and experience things, so do the Deckers. As we have experiences, they do, too. In my personal life, I have children and grandchildren, so I’m forced—in order to keep up with them in conversation—to be exposed to their interests and activities. You have to learn to use whatever resources are around you, and it keeps you fresh and young.
As a writing couple, what is a typical day like in your household? Are you and Jonathan on different schedules? Write in different places?
Dentistry and mathematics taught me the necessity of being focused and organized. Things are easier now because the kids are out of the house. We wake up when we want to as opposed to when we had children at home. We begin writing at about 9:30 or 10:00. We write at roughly the same time, most often in the mornings because we both feel fresher at that time. We spend about two to three hours writing, and then comes all the business of running your life. There’s a lot of juggling with the books: promotion, writing, dealing with the business of writing. At first, I found it stressful, but now I have fun with it. After about 5:00 in the afternoon, I try not going to my computer. I want to relax, read a book, go out for dinner, or see a movie.
You and Jonathan collaborated on Double Homicide and Capital Crimes. How did that go?
It went really well. We e-mailed chapters back and forth. We did that with everything, beginning with the outline. I would write something; then, he would embellish it. Then I would embellish his embellishment. And finally, we had an outline. For each novel, one of us wrote the first draft. We’d go back-and-forth with that. It was really wonderful. You know, sometimes in my own work, I’d hit a wall. With the collaboration, if I wasn’t quite sure how to end a scene, I’d send it to Jonathan, and he’d do it. I think the main thing was not to take a proprietary interest in the writing. It’s a shared project and you have to leave your ego at the door.
Dentists usually have manual dexterity, and their hobbies often involve using their hands. How about you?
I’ve done a lot of sewing. I crochet. I really love gardening. If I have any spare time, I love to prune and plant. I love the aesthetic, and it’s so rewarding. I sometimes play the mandolin and the guitar; so yes, I enjoy using my hands.
As a successful novelist since 1986, what has surprised you most about writing?
The biggest surprise is, it doesn’t get easier. With most tasks, the more you perform them, the more rote they become. With writing, you can never, ever, sit back and have it come easily. It’s always a struggle. It’s a joy, but you’re always thinking. It always gives me a headache. (Laughter). The more you write, the harder it gets because you’ve used up plots; you’ve used up characters; you’ve used up words. You wonder how you’re going to keep this book fresh and new—especially in a series. You know, with genre novels, there’s an expectation. You don’t want your fans to lose that sense of anticipation. You want each book to be satisfying to you and you want it to be fresh. That’s one of the major reasons why I moved the Deckers from LA to Greenbury. I wanted them to be in a new place with a different atmosphere, and I wanted them to face new challenges.
What do you love about being a writer?
I love the ability to let my mind explore whatever it wants. When you write it down, it has to be informed and make sense. But if you have an imagination, you can go everywhere. I love that—the inception—having a germ of an idea and building upon it. You can do whatever you want with it. Many writers would say you can play God.
If you could have dinner with any five people, living or dead, who would they be?
One of them would be Moses. I’d have a lot of questions for him. I’d love to have my literary idols there. Ross MacDonald would be at the table, along with Raymond Chandler, James M. Cain, Billy Wilder, and Chaim Potok. I’ve been rereading Jane Austin and realize she basically wrote Downton Abbey. I’d love to have her join us. F. Scott Fitzgerald would be another guest. And of course, there’s Abe Lincoln. I’m really interested in people who did something revolutionary. I’d really want to have a huge banquet with all these people.
What’s coming next from Faye Kellerman?
The Deckers are still in Greenbury and there will be more college mayhem.
Congratulations on penning your twenty-second Decker-Lazarus novel, a read that held me from start to finish.
September 17, 2014
Edge of Eternity: A Talk with Ken Follett
Ken Follett’s books have sold over 150 million copies worldwide. The Century Trilogy opened with Fall of Giants in 2010, followed by Winter of the World in 2012.
Edge of Eternity, the concluding novel in this trilogy, follows the fortunes of five intertwined families—A[image error]merican, German, Russian, English, and Welsh—negotiating the upheavals of the twentieth century. Each book in the tril
ogy follows the next generation, and each can be read as a stand-alone novel. Edge of Eternity covers the time...
September 10, 2014
MAD DOG HOUSE is on Sale!
During September, “Mad Dog House,” the first in the “Mad Dog” series, is on sale as an e-book for 99 cents. You can grab it now on the Amazon or Barnes & Noble website. NINETY-NINE CENTS. Here is a direct link to Amazon. Just copy & paste theurl into your browser’s address bar. http://tinyurl.com/oom3mhz
"MAD DOG HOUSE" is now 99 cents as an e-book
Hi everyone. "MAD DOG HOUSE" the first in the "Mad Dog" series, is now available for a limited time for 99 cents as an e-book. You can grab it now on the Amazon or Barnes & Noble website.
Here's a direct link
http://tinyurl.com/oom3mhz
Here's a direct link
http://tinyurl.com/oom3mhz
