Paramedic Sophie Phillips is shattered when her cop husband is shot and their baby kidnapped. Detective Ella Marconi fights to discover whether the act is revenge by a bereaved father whose wife and child Sophie couldn't save, or if Sophie's husband Chris was involved with police corruption. Sophie soon makes up her mind however, and decides she will stop at nothing to save her son. Like 24 meets ER, Frantic is a race against time packed with real-life paramedic drama. Australian novelist, Katherine Howell, took time to discuss her debut novel, Frantic, as well as the second in the series, The Darkest Hour, with The Big Thrill. Here she talks about her unusual career change from paramedic to author, her writing process, authors she's inspired by, and how a real-life murderer inspired her to become a crime author.
Describe how and why you made the leap from paramedic to author? Has that hands-on experience helped your storytelling? How has it shaped your writing process?
I was one of those kids who was always scribbling down stories - first about our family pets, then more wishful ones about girls whose parents bought them a pony. Later I moved on to Stephen King "tributes." Then when I began reading crime in my late teens, I began writing it as well. At one point I tried to write a non-crime novel, but before I knew it up popped a dead body then a bad guy, and I decided that's just what I was meant to do.
My interest in writing crime fiction was further bolstered on my first day on the road as a paramedic. My very first case was a call to a cardiac arrest. My trainer and I leapt into the ambulance and roared out of the station, my heart going so hard I could hardly hear what he was saying. How do we diagnose cardiac arrest? My fevered mind produced the answers: unconscious, no pulse, gasping breaths or no breathing at all. I can do this, I thought. I've practiced CPR on plastic dummies until my knees and back were screaming. I can do this.
But of course this time it wasn't a plastic dummy, it was a real person. And she wasn't in cardiac arrest at all - she was dead.
She lay in her bed, in her pink flannel pajamas, the book she'd been reading the night before still on the bedside table, and her boyfriend sat next to her crying his eyes out. Having been all prepared to do CPR I found myself instead standing there with nothing to do but stare at the body, watch this man weep and try not to cry myself.
For every unexpected and sudden death, the police are called. They turned up to this scene and we gave brief statements about what we'd seen and done. I felt so sorry for the dead woman's boyfriend and hugged him before we left. We drove back to the station in silence, me thinking about the reality of the job I'd got myself into, realising that maybe remembering things like the ratio of breaths to compressions in CPR was not the hardest thing I was going to have to do.
A few months later my partner and I were called to Coroner's Court to testify about that case, because the police believed that the boyfriend had killed the woman with a deliberate drug overdose. I was stunned at the thought that this man who I'd felt so sorry for, who I'd hugged, could really be a murderer.
Who could do such a case and not become a crime writer?
I ended up writing three crime novels before I started Frantic, and those are all under the bed, never to see the light of day, though I learned a lot from each of them. After Frantic I wrote The Darkest Hour, which came out this year in Australia, and I now have contracts for book 3 and 4 in the series.
The job affected my story-telling in terms of what I can tell: using my experiences can bring scenes alive for the reader because I have that inside knowledge that only somebody who's done the job can have. People are so fascinated by it too! Any paramedic could tell you how they are constantly asked what it's really like to do that job, what's the worst thing they've seen, and so on.
While I was still in that job, too, I learned the importance of not trying to write or review my work while I was tired from nightshift, as that level of fatigue makes everything seem terrible.
How do you approach your writing?
I don't plan my novels too closely: I know where I'm starting and where I want to end up, and a few of the 'stepping stones' along the way. I've tried outlining, wanting to feel more secure about where I'm headed, but it just doesn't work for me. Invariably by the middle of a draft I'm floundering about, worrying that it's never going to work, but I was reassured at Harrogate recently to hear Tess Gerritsen describe her process in exactly the same way.
I write straight onto computer, as I can type (even three-fingered) faster than I can hand-write. I find that the writing flows best in the afternoons, so the mornings I tend to fill with emails, research, sometimes writing notes, but generally no actual text. I have lots of documents and notebooks where I write down thoughts, ideas for scenes and characters, possible titles and endings and so on, but there is no real order to any of it. When I feel a bit stuck I read back through them and often find the solution was something I'd already thought of then forgotten.
What writers inspire you?
Favorites are Tess Gerritsen, Michael Robotham, James Lee Burke, Dennis Lehane, George Pelecanos, Robert Crais, Leigh Redhead, Michael Connelly, Peter Temple. They all write in a clear and direct manner, their characters seem like real people, and their stories keep me engrossed right to the end.
What was your path to publication?
My agent took me on when I was still writing those novels that are now under the bed, and so she worked with me for a quite a few years before I wrote the first drafts of Frantic. At one point she said it had no suspense, and at that time I was just starting a Masters in writing, so chose suspense in fiction as my thesis subject. I researched the subject to bits, threw it all into the next drafts, and a couple of years later my agent said it was ready to submit. We also sent along a one page outline of the second book in the series, The Darkest Hour, and soon had a two book deal from Pan Macmillan. I now have a contract with them for the third and fourth books in the series, and the books are due out in Australia in 2009 and 2010.
Frantic is your first book, but your second novel, The Darkest Hour, is just coming out in Australia. How does it feel to be promoting two books at the same time? How is book promotion different as an international author?
It feels great to have two books out there! I feel fortunate that the books have met with such enthusiasm. I think it's definitely harder to promote overseas than in one's home country, as there is no local angle that the media can latch onto. For me though the paramedic background has worked fantastically as a hook, to the point that much of my interviews are about that work, and I've written articles about cases that I've done and had them published (like here http://www.dailymail.co.uk/you/article-1039199/This-Life-day-paramedic-difference.html). I was in the UK when Frantic was released in July and did some interviews, though far fewer than I'd done here in Australia. Again it's that local angle: without it it's hard to get noticed.
As a paramedic you lived a very fast-paced life in a high-energy job, how has that affected your writing? How does that differ from the life of a writer?
When I first became a paramedic I loved the fast pace of the job, the fact that we never knew what we'd go to next, and the challenge of dealing with difficult situations. As the years went by, however, like most paramedics I wanted to slow down a little, but unfortunately as a population grows so does the workload. By the time I resigned I was done with it all: I wanted the phone never to ring, and if it did I wanted the case to be something simple and straightforward, with no rushing, no lives in danger, and no tragic outcome. This was due in part to the writing. As a paramedic you need to keep a professional distance from your patients and their situations, otherwise the mental and emotional strain becomes too much. As a writer, however, you're constantly putting yourself into other people's shoes. It's not hard to see that these two positions don't mix. In the end I lost my distance, I took every case home with me. I couldn't stop imagining myself into those shoes. I think if I hadn't resigned I was probably destined for a major psychological crisis.
My life as a writer is much calmer. There is always the pressure of the deadline, and the work requires an enormous amount of self-discipline (something I'm still working on) but I am so privileged to be able to do what I love. Even the hardest day writing, when the words won't come and the story seems flat and trite, is better than any day in any other job.
What else would you like readers to know about you and your books?
The crime fiction I most love to read and which I try to write doesn't take death and crime lightly. It shows the effects of both on the victim's family and friends and also on those people involved in different ways such as the paramedics and police, and sometimes on the perpetrators too. I believe that crime thriller fiction is not always just about finding out who did it; sometimes it's about whether the police will catch the person who's to blame, or what he will do next, or simply how the survivors go on with their lives. But there must always be something significant at stake, and the story should be constructed in a way that keeps the reader wanting to know whether this 'something' will be won or lost. The reader should also care about - not necessarily like - the characters enough to want to see what will happen to them. This is what I aim for when I write.
What is your third book about? Can we get a sneak peek?
Let's just say it's the third in the series and it kicks off with Detective Ella Marconi looking into the death of a teenaged boy twenty years ago. One of the paramedics in the story, Olivia Reilly, found the body when just a school girl, and somebody's now telling the police she knows way more than she's saying.
Katherine Howell is a former paramedic. Frantic, featuring Detective Ella Marconi, is her first novel, and is published in Australia, the United Kingdom, Canada, South Africa, Germany and France, and soon to be published in Italy and Russia. Katherine's second book, The Darkest Hour, has just been released in Australia and will be published in Europe in 2009. She is currently working on her third novel.
Contributing editor Megan Kelley Hall is
freelance writer and novelist living in Massachusetts, and is a
founding partner of Kelley & Hall Book Publicity, based in
Marblehead, MA. Her debut thriller, SISTERS OF MISERY, is a YA/Adult
Suspense cross-over and is the first in a series with the second novel,
THE LOST SISTER, due out in 2009.
For every unexpected and sudden death, the police are called. They turned up to this scene and we gave brief statements about what we'd seen and done. I felt so sorry for the dead woman's boyfriend and hugged him before we left. We drove back to the station in silence, me thinking about the reality of the job I'd got myself into, realising that maybe remembering things like the ratio of breaths to compressions in CPR was not the hardest thing I was going to have to do. A few months later my partner and I were called to Coroner's Court to testify about that case, because the police believed that the boyfriend had killed the woman with a deliberate drug overdose. I was stunned at the thought that this man who I'd felt so sorry for, who I'd hugged, could really be a murderer.
Who could do such a case and not become a crime writer?
I ended up writing three crime novels before I started Frantic, and those are all under the bed, never to see the light of day, though I learned a lot from each of them. After Frantic I wrote The Darkest Hour, which came out this year in Australia, and I now have contracts for book 3 and 4 in the series.
The job affected my story-telling in terms of what I can tell: using my experiences can bring scenes alive for the reader because I have that inside knowledge that only somebody who's done the job can have. People are so fascinated by it too! Any paramedic could tell you how they are constantly asked what it's really like to do that job, what's the worst thing they've seen, and so on.
While I was still in that job, too, I learned the importance of not trying to write or review my work while I was tired from nightshift, as that level of fatigue makes everything seem terrible.
How do you approach your writing?
I don't plan my novels too closely: I know where I'm starting and where I want to end up, and a few of the 'stepping stones' along the way. I've tried outlining, wanting to feel more secure about where I'm headed, but it just doesn't work for me. Invariably by the middle of a draft I'm floundering about, worrying that it's never going to work, but I was reassured at Harrogate recently to hear Tess Gerritsen describe her process in exactly the same way.
I write straight onto computer, as I can type (even three-fingered) faster than I can hand-write. I find that the writing flows best in the afternoons, so the mornings I tend to fill with emails, research, sometimes writing notes, but generally no actual text. I have lots of documents and notebooks where I write down thoughts, ideas for scenes and characters, possible titles and endings and so on, but there is no real order to any of it. When I feel a bit stuck I read back through them and often find the solution was something I'd already thought of then forgotten.
What writers inspire you?
Favorites are Tess Gerritsen, Michael Robotham, James Lee Burke, Dennis Lehane, George Pelecanos, Robert Crais, Leigh Redhead, Michael Connelly, Peter Temple. They all write in a clear and direct manner, their characters seem like real people, and their stories keep me engrossed right to the end.
What was your path to publication?
My agent took me on when I was still writing those novels that are now under the bed, and so she worked with me for a quite a few years before I wrote the first drafts of Frantic. At one point she said it had no suspense, and at that time I was just starting a Masters in writing, so chose suspense in fiction as my thesis subject. I researched the subject to bits, threw it all into the next drafts, and a couple of years later my agent said it was ready to submit. We also sent along a one page outline of the second book in the series, The Darkest Hour, and soon had a two book deal from Pan Macmillan. I now have a contract with them for the third and fourth books in the series, and the books are due out in Australia in 2009 and 2010.
Frantic is your first book, but your second novel, The Darkest Hour, is just coming out in Australia. How does it feel to be promoting two books at the same time? How is book promotion different as an international author?
It feels great to have two books out there! I feel fortunate that the books have met with such enthusiasm. I think it's definitely harder to promote overseas than in one's home country, as there is no local angle that the media can latch onto. For me though the paramedic background has worked fantastically as a hook, to the point that much of my interviews are about that work, and I've written articles about cases that I've done and had them published (like here http://www.dailymail.co.uk/you/article-1039199/This-Life-day-paramedic-difference.html). I was in the UK when Frantic was released in July and did some interviews, though far fewer than I'd done here in Australia. Again it's that local angle: without it it's hard to get noticed.
As a paramedic you lived a very fast-paced life in a high-energy job, how has that affected your writing? How does that differ from the life of a writer?
When I first became a paramedic I loved the fast pace of the job, the fact that we never knew what we'd go to next, and the challenge of dealing with difficult situations. As the years went by, however, like most paramedics I wanted to slow down a little, but unfortunately as a population grows so does the workload. By the time I resigned I was done with it all: I wanted the phone never to ring, and if it did I wanted the case to be something simple and straightforward, with no rushing, no lives in danger, and no tragic outcome. This was due in part to the writing. As a paramedic you need to keep a professional distance from your patients and their situations, otherwise the mental and emotional strain becomes too much. As a writer, however, you're constantly putting yourself into other people's shoes. It's not hard to see that these two positions don't mix. In the end I lost my distance, I took every case home with me. I couldn't stop imagining myself into those shoes. I think if I hadn't resigned I was probably destined for a major psychological crisis.
My life as a writer is much calmer. There is always the pressure of the deadline, and the work requires an enormous amount of self-discipline (something I'm still working on) but I am so privileged to be able to do what I love. Even the hardest day writing, when the words won't come and the story seems flat and trite, is better than any day in any other job.
What else would you like readers to know about you and your books?
The crime fiction I most love to read and which I try to write doesn't take death and crime lightly. It shows the effects of both on the victim's family and friends and also on those people involved in different ways such as the paramedics and police, and sometimes on the perpetrators too. I believe that crime thriller fiction is not always just about finding out who did it; sometimes it's about whether the police will catch the person who's to blame, or what he will do next, or simply how the survivors go on with their lives. But there must always be something significant at stake, and the story should be constructed in a way that keeps the reader wanting to know whether this 'something' will be won or lost. The reader should also care about - not necessarily like - the characters enough to want to see what will happen to them. This is what I aim for when I write.
What is your third book about? Can we get a sneak peek?
Let's just say it's the third in the series and it kicks off with Detective Ella Marconi looking into the death of a teenaged boy twenty years ago. One of the paramedics in the story, Olivia Reilly, found the body when just a school girl, and somebody's now telling the police she knows way more than she's saying.
Katherine Howell is a former paramedic. Frantic, featuring Detective Ella Marconi, is her first novel, and is published in Australia, the United Kingdom, Canada, South Africa, Germany and France, and soon to be published in Italy and Russia. Katherine's second book, The Darkest Hour, has just been released in Australia and will be published in Europe in 2009. She is currently working on her third novel.
Contributing editor Megan Kelley Hall is
freelance writer and novelist living in Massachusetts, and is a
founding partner of Kelley & Hall Book Publicity, based in
Marblehead, MA. Her debut thriller, SISTERS OF MISERY, is a YA/Adult
Suspense cross-over and is the first in a series with the second novel,
THE LOST SISTER, due out in 2009. 
