Janalyn Voigt
Janalyn Voigt asked Nike N. Chillemi:

Does research into crime for your books bother you on an emotional level?

Nike N. Chillemi Janalyn, The things I most often research are technical law enforcement regulations, new equipment and how it functions in the field, etc. My eyes sometimes blur reading about handless communications devices and how they work and what might go wrong with them. I'm very aware of the criminal mind and find it upsetting. I write detective stories and am starting to get into the homeland security area of law enforcement. Fiction doesn't have to be real. Many things real criminals do are much to horrific for me to write about in true and accurate detail. Crime fiction should be realistic (not the same thing as real). It should be plausible within the context of the story. There is grit in my stories, but I don't show and tell every terrible detail. I try to emotionally show evil as it is. Try to show it as a force on the earth. The reason I do this is to juxtapose evil against God. Even though there is grit in my stories, there is also an uplifting element. My readers have never said they were depressed at the end of the book.

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