Bestselling author Tess Gerritsen says she is learning to read Egyptian hieroglyphs. No, it's not in preparation for an Ancient Egyptian edition of one of her novels, it's in preparation for a fall trip to Egypt. It is also a spin-off from her latest novel, The Keepsake, the seventh Jane Rizzoli novel.Gerritsen says, "I've long been interested in archaeology, and was an anthropology major in college. Like almost everyone else I know, I'm fascinated by Egyptian mummies, and had been corresponding with an Egyptologist who arranges CT scans on mummies. I thought: what if one of those scans reveals a shocking surprise? This story allowed me to explore some of the creepiest preservation rituals known to archaeologists, from mummies to shrunken heads to bog bodies."
In The Keepsake, a Boston museum discovers a long forgotten Egyptian mummy in their basement and they decide to study it with a CT scan. Gerritsen says, "To everyone's horror, a bullet is found in the leg, evidence that the 'ancient' mummy is, in fact, a modern murder victim. And she's not the only victim who's been hidden in the museum. For years a killer has been collecting women and preserving them using ancient techniques that indicate may be an archaeologist. And he's started a gruesome collection all his own."
Gerritsen's writing history has taken a number of twists and turns. She started writing category romance novels and shifted later into medical thrillers, a natural offshoot from her training as a physician. In recent years her work has moved away from the flat-out medical thrillers toward police and forensic procedurals. Gerritsen says, "I simply write the books I want to write. Although my books lately have been crime thrillers, there's a great deal of medicine and forensics in them. So I haven't wandered too far from the medical thriller ranch."Gerritsen says she prefers to "wing it," not working from an outline. She writes her first drafts using pen and paper and aims at four pages a day. "This could take me a few hours ... or all day long. As my deadline approaches, I start to put in longer and longer days, and toward the end, I may be working 16-hour days, editing and revising." She notes, however, that because she doesn't outline, sometimes the first drafts are a mess, "which is why my first drafts are complete disasters that require months of work to clean up."
Her publisher is sending her on her twelfth national tour and there will be print and online ads and she's commissioned some young filmmakers in the Maine town where she lives and works to produce a short video trailer, "just because it seemed like fun." Gerritsen confesses that she's not sure which promotional tools work the best. "I think that hitting bestseller lists are all about name recognition, a great cover design, publisher support-and a huge helping of luck."
When not writing or traveling to promote her books, Gerritsen likes to garden, play Celtic music on the fiddle and travel to countries with archaeological sites--hence her attempt to learn Egyptian hieroglyphs. Ultimately, Gerritsen says, "I'm enormously fortunate to have a loyal readership."
Contributing editor Mark Terry is the
author of the Derek Stillwater thriller series. His newest thriller,
THE SERPENT'S KISS, is available in stores and online.
