Fogotten is one you won't soon forget
New York Times bestselling author Mariah Stewart's newest thriller, Forgotten (Ballantine, September 2008), focuses on an investigation of old child homicides that quickly escalates into a hunt for a new killer. Contributing editor, CJ Lyons, takes us behind the scenes with Mariah as she discusses Forgotten.Many authors shy away from deeply charged emotional subjects such as child homicide, but you seem drawn to these topics. How do you balance good story telling without tipping over into sensationalism?
I think the balance is achieved by focusing on the emotional impact of the violent act, rather than on the act itself, and playing that out through two very different points of view: that of the victim's family and loved ones, and that of the law enforcement agents who are charged with solving the case.
So you have the juxtaposition of sheer emotion (on the part of the loved ones) and the logic and skill necessary to bring the villain to justice. Unfortunately, in real life, even the most Herculean efforts often do not result in a satisfying conclusion. In my books, the bad guy always gets what he deserves.
Do you feel an emotional connection to the victims in your novels?
Yes, I do feel an emotional connection with my victims and their families. For example, in Forgotten, the book opens in the point of view of the mother of a boy who was murdered twelve years ago. I think it will be obvious to the reader that this woman still grieves terribly for her lost boy. The reader knows what happened to this child without me having to show them all the terrible details on the page. It's the pain and the grief that is the focus these many years later.
Was Forgotten based on any real life cases?
No, it's not based on any real case I've ever heard of. Actually, the story grew out of my rereading Voices Carry, which was published in 2001. When I realized I'd left the killer - Sheldon Woods, who'd murdered many young boys - in prison serving life sentences, I had to know why he hadn't been given the death penalty. Once I figured that out, the plot for Forgotten was very clear.
How is your own life/family influenced by the stories you chose to write?
Ha! My daughters will tell you that I all but ruined their social lives in high school - when they were out, they had to check in twice during the evening: once when they arrived at their destination, and once when they were leaving to come home. I knew how long it took to get from just about every one of their friend's homes, so if they weren't in the house by a certain time, they knew I'd be convinced that something dire had happened to them and I'd be calling the police!
I was constantly reminding them not to go out alone at night, where to park in the malls, what to say when they called 911 to find out whether that car behind them with the flashing lights was in fact a cop...basically, I warned them about every scenario I ever read about. And yes, sometimes there was a quiz.
Have you ever found yourself learning "too much" about subjects most parents would prefer to possess an ignorance of?
Yes. The number of kids who are abused, abducted, and murdered every year is appalling. For horror stories, nothing is worse than real life - what you see on the local news on any given night (for example, look up Danieal Kelly - a sweet young girl who'd been in the Philadelphia foster care system - her story is more tragic than anything I could make up).
Tell us about your switch from romance to suspense/thrillers. How did your audience respond?
The switch was made so long ago - back in 2000, with Brown-Eyed Girl - that many of my current readers aren't aware that I previously wrote contemporary romances. Since the reissue of the Enright series last year, I've gotten a lot of mail asking when I'm going to write another book like Moon Dance, or if I'm ever going to set another book in Devlin's Light. The feed back from readers when I made the switch was positive, though - I think because the violent acts are off the page, and because the books are concerned more with exploring the consequences of the violence than the violence itself.
Tell us about your next project.
Next up is Goodbye Again - the second book in the new Mercy Street series. There will actually be three mass market books out in this series in 2009. The first book, Mercy Street, will be released in paperback in March (I think), followed by Goodbye Again in May (as it stands now), and I think the third one, Hello Darkness, will be out in July (tentative). Goodbye Again will focus on a new case for the Mercy Street Foundation, while at the same time following Robert Magellan's search for his missing wife and son.
Forgotten will be the last in my FBI series for a while (Forgotten is book #14 in the series) though I will probably borrow some of the characters occasionally, as their skills and expertise are needed, and have them lend a hand to the Mercy Street Foundation.
Mariah Stewart is the NYT bestselling author of twenty-four novels and three novellas. A former teacher and insurance company v.p., she has no regrets over having left her day job to work at home, alone, in her office overlooking a wooded hill and a horse farm. She lives amidst the rolling hills of Chester County, PA, with her husband, the occasional daughter, two golden retrievers, and a Jack Russell Terrorizer. Sometimes a puggle joins the pack to make life just a little more interesting.
As a pediatric ER doctor, CJ Lyons has lived the life she writes about in her cutting edge suspense novels. Her debut, LIFELINES (Berkley, March 2008), became a national bestseller and Publishers Weekly proclaimed it a "breathtakingly fast-paced medical thriller." The second in the series, WARNING SIGNS, is due out January, 2009.
No, it's not based on any real case I've ever heard of. Actually, the story grew out of my rereading Voices Carry, which was published in 2001. When I realized I'd left the killer - Sheldon Woods, who'd murdered many young boys - in prison serving life sentences, I had to know why he hadn't been given the death penalty. Once I figured that out, the plot for Forgotten was very clear.
How is your own life/family influenced by the stories you chose to write?Ha! My daughters will tell you that I all but ruined their social lives in high school - when they were out, they had to check in twice during the evening: once when they arrived at their destination, and once when they were leaving to come home. I knew how long it took to get from just about every one of their friend's homes, so if they weren't in the house by a certain time, they knew I'd be convinced that something dire had happened to them and I'd be calling the police!
I was constantly reminding them not to go out alone at night, where to park in the malls, what to say when they called 911 to find out whether that car behind them with the flashing lights was in fact a cop...basically, I warned them about every scenario I ever read about. And yes, sometimes there was a quiz.
Have you ever found yourself learning "too much" about subjects most parents would prefer to possess an ignorance of?
Yes. The number of kids who are abused, abducted, and murdered every year is appalling. For horror stories, nothing is worse than real life - what you see on the local news on any given night (for example, look up Danieal Kelly - a sweet young girl who'd been in the Philadelphia foster care system - her story is more tragic than anything I could make up).
Tell us about your switch from romance to suspense/thrillers. How did your audience respond?
The switch was made so long ago - back in 2000, with Brown-Eyed Girl - that many of my current readers aren't aware that I previously wrote contemporary romances. Since the reissue of the Enright series last year, I've gotten a lot of mail asking when I'm going to write another book like Moon Dance, or if I'm ever going to set another book in Devlin's Light. The feed back from readers when I made the switch was positive, though - I think because the violent acts are off the page, and because the books are concerned more with exploring the consequences of the violence than the violence itself.
Tell us about your next project.
Next up is Goodbye Again - the second book in the new Mercy Street series. There will actually be three mass market books out in this series in 2009. The first book, Mercy Street, will be released in paperback in March (I think), followed by Goodbye Again in May (as it stands now), and I think the third one, Hello Darkness, will be out in July (tentative). Goodbye Again will focus on a new case for the Mercy Street Foundation, while at the same time following Robert Magellan's search for his missing wife and son.
Forgotten will be the last in my FBI series for a while (Forgotten is book #14 in the series) though I will probably borrow some of the characters occasionally, as their skills and expertise are needed, and have them lend a hand to the Mercy Street Foundation.
Mariah Stewart is the NYT bestselling author of twenty-four novels and three novellas. A former teacher and insurance company v.p., she has no regrets over having left her day job to work at home, alone, in her office overlooking a wooded hill and a horse farm. She lives amidst the rolling hills of Chester County, PA, with her husband, the occasional daughter, two golden retrievers, and a Jack Russell Terrorizer. Sometimes a puggle joins the pack to make life just a little more interesting.
As a pediatric ER doctor, CJ Lyons has lived the life she writes about in her cutting edge suspense novels. Her debut, LIFELINES (Berkley, March 2008), became a national bestseller and Publishers Weekly proclaimed it a "breathtakingly fast-paced medical thriller." The second in the series, WARNING SIGNS, is due out January, 2009.ThrillerFest
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