Heather Graham launches The Flynn Brothers Trilogy
This Halloween, I was lucky enough to interview New York Times bestselling author Heather Graham and discuss her frightening new trilogy available in stores this fall. The Flynn Brothers Trilogy (Deadly Night, Deadly Harvest, and Deadly Gift) are the latest offerings from this incredibly prolific author. Writing across various genres, Graham has penned over one hundred books (she also writes under the name Shannon Drake). This latest trilogy may be her most thrilling yet!
What's your favorite thing about being a writer?
My favorite thing about being a writer is meeting other authors--and discovering the different paths authors take to get to where they are--and where they're going.
Describe your path to publication.
I majored in theater in USF, got out of school, got some commercial work, did a lot of bar tending, worked children's theater, and then dinner theater at a club owned by local entertainers. When I was lucky, I could make an extra ten dollars a day for singing back-up on their albums. Usually, I worked about a million hours a day, and, since Miami was non-union, made about seventy-five dollars a week.
By the time I was having my third child, I literally couldn't afford to go to work anymore. I was missing my kids because of the hours, and though our parents and families were great, it was still horribly expensive. I stayed home, and became the absolute world's worst housekeeper. I loved reading, I had taken a fair amount of play writing, and wanted to write a book. Dennis (my husband) brought home a typewriter that his place of business was going to chuck, and I started out--it was missing the "E" key. I would fill in the Es by hand. I bought Writer's Digest, Writer's Market and started sending out to Black Cat, Twilight Zone Magazine, and the Miami News.
Then I found that there had been an explosion in category romance, so I tried my hand at that. I went through the long process of mail and rejection. I sold stories, but sadly, like my theater career, I made about fifteen dollars a story. When I sold the first book, I was ecstatic. This is probably fairly insane, but I didn't actually realize how important genre was--I was just writing. I learned. I'll never forget selling the first book, though. No email back then, and no cell phones. (Not in the mainstream!) When I didn't hear back from the editor for several weeks, my family was convinced that someone had played a trick on me. I finally got up the nerve to call the editor, and she said they'd been at sales convention and the contract was coming. I was majorly relieved!
What's your favorite thing about being a writer?My favorite thing about being a writer is meeting other authors--and discovering the different paths authors take to get to where they are--and where they're going.
Describe your path to publication.
I majored in theater in USF, got out of school, got some commercial work, did a lot of bar tending, worked children's theater, and then dinner theater at a club owned by local entertainers. When I was lucky, I could make an extra ten dollars a day for singing back-up on their albums. Usually, I worked about a million hours a day, and, since Miami was non-union, made about seventy-five dollars a week.
By the time I was having my third child, I literally couldn't afford to go to work anymore. I was missing my kids because of the hours, and though our parents and families were great, it was still horribly expensive. I stayed home, and became the absolute world's worst housekeeper. I loved reading, I had taken a fair amount of play writing, and wanted to write a book. Dennis (my husband) brought home a typewriter that his place of business was going to chuck, and I started out--it was missing the "E" key. I would fill in the Es by hand. I bought Writer's Digest, Writer's Market and started sending out to Black Cat, Twilight Zone Magazine, and the Miami News.
Then I found that there had been an explosion in category romance, so I tried my hand at that. I went through the long process of mail and rejection. I sold stories, but sadly, like my theater career, I made about fifteen dollars a story. When I sold the first book, I was ecstatic. This is probably fairly insane, but I didn't actually realize how important genre was--I was just writing. I learned. I'll never forget selling the first book, though. No email back then, and no cell phones. (Not in the mainstream!) When I didn't hear back from the editor for several weeks, my family was convinced that someone had played a trick on me. I finally got up the nerve to call the editor, and she said they'd been at sales convention and the contract was coming. I was majorly relieved!
What's your favorite genre?
I always read everything. I still do. I love suspense, mystery, romance, paranormal, fiction, non-fiction. And I always tell those who want to start writing to write what they love to read. So switching around for me is fairly easy because I honestly love so many genres of fiction.
I've always loved old Hammer films, vampire stories, Poe and writers of his type, creating the eerie and unreal with a wonderful use of language. I'm the world's worst chicken, but I think that helps me find situations that can be turned into the dangerous and deadly. I don't have a genre I love best; Shannon Drake continues with historical romance--sometimes historical suspense--and I wouldn't want to give up the fun of historical research ever.
What advice would you give to other authors (both aspiring and published)?
Advice to those looking for publication or to change genres is to be careful with names! One of the strangest problems I've had lately is with my alter-ego. I started vampire books under the Shannon Drake name because it was early in the game and it seemed safest to the powers that be to go with the pseudonym. Then, it was decided that the vampires were contemporary with only vignettes of the past, so midstream, I changed names with them. That's something the general public doesn't always realize, so think carefully with pseudonyms. Nora Roberts did it brilliantly with her known name, and then creating the J.D. Robb for her edgier series.
What inspires your writing?
What people have really done over time is more amazing that anything in my imagination. Some favorite places for the truly absurd are New Orleans and Key West. But wherever you go, there is great history with both the honor and cruelty of man involved, so I find that traveling gives me an awful lot of what I used. I just went on a paranormal swamp expedition, and that was certainly gist for all kinds of things! Being out in bayou country at night was amazing. Mist rising off the water, stars--and nothing else for miles and miles. The trees seem to move. And, of course, you have to watch out for the Yeti-like swamp monster.
Tell me a little bit about your latest series, The Flynn Brothers Trilogy.
The trio of books out now--Deadly Night, Deadly Harvest, and Deadly Gift--are based around three brothers who worked in law enforcement of some kind, and because of personal or work-related incidents decided to leave. Close-knit, they open their own investigations agency. I loved working the three into Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas.
The first, Deadly Night, takes place in New Orleans where, right when they discover they've inherited a terribly dilapidated plantation, Aidan Flynn also starts to discover bones popping out of the ground. Old ghosts and legends combine with the reign of a contemporary serial killer.
In Deadly Harvest, Jeremy Flynn heads to Salem to help his ex-police dive partner when it's assumed he's done away with his wife while on a make-up vacation--she simply disappeared while they were in a local cemetery. Soon, it's discovered that "scarecrows" in a cornfield are created from the corpses of murdered women, and the killer seems to have a fixation on an ancient area legend about the Harvest Man. Flynn is aided by Rowenna Cavanaugh, a woman born and bred in the region, with whom he's been doing a radio series on logic versus the occult to aid children's charities in New Orleans. Naturally, if she can't use her knowledge of local lore and the occult and he can't use true investigation techniques in time, there's a chance that she could wind up being the most important sacrifice to the Harvest Man.
Deadly Night changes pace just a little bit; the youngest brother, Zach, heads to Ireland to bring home an old friend who had been on a trip back to his homeland. The daughter is convinced her father's new trophy wife is trying to murder him. Meanwhile, back home, his partner in his charter business has gone missing. When he returns from Ireland, he returns with far more than he ever bargained for--Caer, his friend's supposed nurse isn't what she seems on the surface. There's a gift involved, and once again, they're fighting time, desperate to find the truth before Christmas day when all members of the family may find they're not waking up for the celebration.
Thanks so much for taking time to answer my questions for The Big Thrill!
For more information on Heather Graham, visit her website at http://www.theoriginalheathergraham.com.
Here is a sneak peak at the new Flynn Brothers Trilogy
The Flynn brothers have inherited more than a New Orleans plantation.
They've inherited a ghostly presence . . . and a long-kept secret.
DEADLY NIGHT | October 2008 | MIRA Books | ISBN-13: 978-0-7783-2585-7
Aidan Flynn, a private investigator and eldest of the Flynn brothers, scoffs at the haunted-house rumors--especially since Kendall Montgomery, a tarot card reader who has been living in the mansion, is the one to tell him the tale of a woman in white. But when he finds a human bone on the grounds and another by the river, Aidan delves into the dark history of the Flynn plantation.
Forced together to uncover the truth, Aidan and Kendall realize that a serial killer whose victims seem to vanish into thin air has long been at work...and that their own fates are about to be sealed forever unless they believe in the unbelievable.
"Bestseller Graham spices up a spooky post-Katrina mystery in this solid trilogy opener...Dream messages and premonitions, ghostly sightings, capable detective work and fascinating characters blend to make a satisfying chiller!" -- Publishers Weekly
DEADLY HARVEST | November 2008 | MIRA Books | ISBN-13: 978-0-7783-2560-4
When a young woman is found dead in a field, dressed up as a scarecrow with a slashed grin and a broken neck, the residents of Salem, Massachusetts, begin to fear that the infamous Harvest Man is more than just a rumor. But out-of-town cop Jeremy Flynn doesn't have time for ghost stories. He's in town on another investigation, looking for a friend's wife, who mysteriously vanished in a cemetery.
Complicating his efforts is local occult expert Rowenna Cavanaugh, who launches her own investigation, convinced that a horror from the past has crept into the present and is seducing women to their deaths. Jeremy uses logic and solid police work. Rowenna depends on intuition. But they both have the same goal: to stop the abductions and locate the missing women before Rowenna herself falls prey to the Harvest Man's dark seduction.
DEADLY GIFT | December 2008 | MIRA Books | ISBN-13: 978-0-7783-2527-7
Zachary Flynn is off to Ireland to escort an old friend, Sean O'Riley, home to Rhode Island after a bout of illness in the land of his birth. Zach has no idea he'll be coming home with far more than old friends. While Zach doubts that murder was intended, he must accept the possibility, since Sean's business partner has gone missing. Caer, a woman with an agency in Ireland, knows that Sean's life is in danger, and she takes on the role of Sean's nurse to stay close to him. Zach doesn't trust her anymore than he trusts the third partner in the sailing and charter business, his wife, the cops, or the man in the moon.
But if Sean is to make another Christmas, especially after receiving a strange gift in the mail, he knows he has to find the truth behind the mist that comes in the night, and the strange whispers of ancient Ireland that tease him in the darkness.
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.
I always read everything. I still do. I love suspense, mystery, romance, paranormal, fiction, non-fiction. And I always tell those who want to start writing to write what they love to read. So switching around for me is fairly easy because I honestly love so many genres of fiction.
I've always loved old Hammer films, vampire stories, Poe and writers of his type, creating the eerie and unreal with a wonderful use of language. I'm the world's worst chicken, but I think that helps me find situations that can be turned into the dangerous and deadly. I don't have a genre I love best; Shannon Drake continues with historical romance--sometimes historical suspense--and I wouldn't want to give up the fun of historical research ever.
What advice would you give to other authors (both aspiring and published)?
Advice to those looking for publication or to change genres is to be careful with names! One of the strangest problems I've had lately is with my alter-ego. I started vampire books under the Shannon Drake name because it was early in the game and it seemed safest to the powers that be to go with the pseudonym. Then, it was decided that the vampires were contemporary with only vignettes of the past, so midstream, I changed names with them. That's something the general public doesn't always realize, so think carefully with pseudonyms. Nora Roberts did it brilliantly with her known name, and then creating the J.D. Robb for her edgier series.
What inspires your writing?
What people have really done over time is more amazing that anything in my imagination. Some favorite places for the truly absurd are New Orleans and Key West. But wherever you go, there is great history with both the honor and cruelty of man involved, so I find that traveling gives me an awful lot of what I used. I just went on a paranormal swamp expedition, and that was certainly gist for all kinds of things! Being out in bayou country at night was amazing. Mist rising off the water, stars--and nothing else for miles and miles. The trees seem to move. And, of course, you have to watch out for the Yeti-like swamp monster.
Tell me a little bit about your latest series, The Flynn Brothers Trilogy.
The trio of books out now--Deadly Night, Deadly Harvest, and Deadly Gift--are based around three brothers who worked in law enforcement of some kind, and because of personal or work-related incidents decided to leave. Close-knit, they open their own investigations agency. I loved working the three into Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas.
The first, Deadly Night, takes place in New Orleans where, right when they discover they've inherited a terribly dilapidated plantation, Aidan Flynn also starts to discover bones popping out of the ground. Old ghosts and legends combine with the reign of a contemporary serial killer.
In Deadly Harvest, Jeremy Flynn heads to Salem to help his ex-police dive partner when it's assumed he's done away with his wife while on a make-up vacation--she simply disappeared while they were in a local cemetery. Soon, it's discovered that "scarecrows" in a cornfield are created from the corpses of murdered women, and the killer seems to have a fixation on an ancient area legend about the Harvest Man. Flynn is aided by Rowenna Cavanaugh, a woman born and bred in the region, with whom he's been doing a radio series on logic versus the occult to aid children's charities in New Orleans. Naturally, if she can't use her knowledge of local lore and the occult and he can't use true investigation techniques in time, there's a chance that she could wind up being the most important sacrifice to the Harvest Man.
Deadly Night changes pace just a little bit; the youngest brother, Zach, heads to Ireland to bring home an old friend who had been on a trip back to his homeland. The daughter is convinced her father's new trophy wife is trying to murder him. Meanwhile, back home, his partner in his charter business has gone missing. When he returns from Ireland, he returns with far more than he ever bargained for--Caer, his friend's supposed nurse isn't what she seems on the surface. There's a gift involved, and once again, they're fighting time, desperate to find the truth before Christmas day when all members of the family may find they're not waking up for the celebration.
Thanks so much for taking time to answer my questions for The Big Thrill!
For more information on Heather Graham, visit her website at http://www.theoriginalheathergraham.com.
Here is a sneak peak at the new Flynn Brothers Trilogy
The Flynn brothers have inherited more than a New Orleans plantation.
They've inherited a ghostly presence . . . and a long-kept secret.
DEADLY NIGHT | October 2008 | MIRA Books | ISBN-13: 978-0-7783-2585-7Aidan Flynn, a private investigator and eldest of the Flynn brothers, scoffs at the haunted-house rumors--especially since Kendall Montgomery, a tarot card reader who has been living in the mansion, is the one to tell him the tale of a woman in white. But when he finds a human bone on the grounds and another by the river, Aidan delves into the dark history of the Flynn plantation.
Forced together to uncover the truth, Aidan and Kendall realize that a serial killer whose victims seem to vanish into thin air has long been at work...and that their own fates are about to be sealed forever unless they believe in the unbelievable.
"Bestseller Graham spices up a spooky post-Katrina mystery in this solid trilogy opener...Dream messages and premonitions, ghostly sightings, capable detective work and fascinating characters blend to make a satisfying chiller!" -- Publishers Weekly
DEADLY HARVEST | November 2008 | MIRA Books | ISBN-13: 978-0-7783-2560-4When a young woman is found dead in a field, dressed up as a scarecrow with a slashed grin and a broken neck, the residents of Salem, Massachusetts, begin to fear that the infamous Harvest Man is more than just a rumor. But out-of-town cop Jeremy Flynn doesn't have time for ghost stories. He's in town on another investigation, looking for a friend's wife, who mysteriously vanished in a cemetery.
Complicating his efforts is local occult expert Rowenna Cavanaugh, who launches her own investigation, convinced that a horror from the past has crept into the present and is seducing women to their deaths. Jeremy uses logic and solid police work. Rowenna depends on intuition. But they both have the same goal: to stop the abductions and locate the missing women before Rowenna herself falls prey to the Harvest Man's dark seduction.
DEADLY GIFT | December 2008 | MIRA Books | ISBN-13: 978-0-7783-2527-7Zachary Flynn is off to Ireland to escort an old friend, Sean O'Riley, home to Rhode Island after a bout of illness in the land of his birth. Zach has no idea he'll be coming home with far more than old friends. While Zach doubts that murder was intended, he must accept the possibility, since Sean's business partner has gone missing. Caer, a woman with an agency in Ireland, knows that Sean's life is in danger, and she takes on the role of Sean's nurse to stay close to him. Zach doesn't trust her anymore than he trusts the third partner in the sailing and charter business, his wife, the cops, or the man in the moon.
But if Sean is to make another Christmas, especially after receiving a strange gift in the mail, he knows he has to find the truth behind the mist that comes in the night, and the strange whispers of ancient Ireland that tease him in the darkness.
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.ThrillerFest
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