New York Times bestselling author Allison Brennan is about to bring out her ninth novel, Playing Dead, the final book in what she calls her Prison Break Trilogy. Brennan notes that she writes trilogies differently than most authors. "They all stand alone-meaning, they have a unique hero and heroine, a complete story and resolution, and readers don't have to read them in order to enjoy the book. However, I do use recurring characters within my world."An example is Mitch Bianchi, the hero of Playing Dead. He was a secondary character in the previous novel in the Prison Break Trilogy, Tempting Evil. "So I early on set him up to be a cop who bends-and breaks-rules, though for the right reasons. In Playing Dead he's dealing with the consequences of his decisions in book two. The Prison Break trilogy is probably the most connected of my trilogies, because each book stems from an earthquake at San Quentin that is the first chapter of Killing Fear and Tom O'Brien's story is hinted at."
Tom O'Brien is one of three primary characters in Playing Dead. He has spent fifteen years on death row for crimes he didn't commit, the murder of his wife and her lover. Brennan says, "During an earthquake, Tom escapes with the goal of tracking down a law student who claimed he had evidence that Tom was framed. When he can't easily contact the kid, he confronts his daughter, Claire, who had testified against him with the new theory. An insurance fraud investigator who believes everyone lies, Claire doesn't believe him, but her curiosity had her investigating Tom's claims."
Meanwhile, Bianchi has befriended Claire under false pretenses, expecting Tom to link up with her. While these three are loosely involved in trying to discover the truth about the murder, a psychopath begins stalking Claire. Brennan says, "What I love about this book is that my characters are flawed and driven. This isn't the story of Ken and Barbie solving a crime; Mitch lies to Claire from the beginning; Tom's past problems with his temper helped convict him; and Claire has struggled from the time she was fourteen with her mother dead and her father on death row. They make mistakes, but all three want the truth and are willing to risk their careers and their lives to find it."Brennan is an adamant improviser when it comes to her writing, not using an outline. She has written humorously on the Murderati blog about having to go back to her publisher with the news that her manuscript bears little resemblance to the synopsis she submitted. She starts with a premise and a main character and goes from there. "I see a scene unfold, and if the premise needs a lot of extra research, I've already poured through my reference books and probably ten new ones that I skimmed. But really, it's just putting myself in my characters' shoes and seeing what they see."
She insists, however, that she always gets stuck at the beginning of the second act. "I never know where the story is going, and either I just panic, or my characters won't budge because I was forcing them. At this point I go back to the beginning and re-read, tweak, and within a week (usually) I break through that barrier."
Sometimes there are disasters. She notes that she was 160 pages into Sudden Death when she got stuck. Eventually she deleted everything but the first chapter and started from scratching, writing the entire book in three weeks. "Ironically, the books that have the most extensive revisions are the ones I labored over for months; the books I write fast are the ones that have minimal revisions. Go figure."
Brennan's pace of three novels a year is fairly dazzling on it's own, made even more impressive by the fact she is the mother of five children, the youngest who is four-years-old. She reports she's up at six in the morning, she and her husband split chauffeuring the kids to school, then she "drives to Starbucks for my quad latte, then go home to my new office. (I used to write at Starbucks.) I fool around with email and blogs for an hour or so, and by 10:30 I'm working on my wip. It's slow going until after lunch, about one, when I'm on a roll and then ... wham! It's three in the afternoon and I'm late picking up the kids." Once the family issues calm down, say, about ten o'clock at night, she'll write some more and goes to bed between midnight and two a.m.
After Playing Dead, Brennan's working on what she calls the Sacramento FBI Trilogy, which will be released in March, May, and July of 2009, and she's also sold a supernatural thriller series based on the seven deadly sins that will launch in the spring of 2010. When asked if she's still having fun, Brennan says, "Yes! I'm sometimes surprised that I get paid to do something I absolutely love. Though more sleep would be nice."
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.
