Features
If the soul of a volunteer is golden, then Karen Dionne is worth millions. Simply stated, you'd have to look hard to find a more dedicated and hardworking author who is more generous with her time.
Not everyone featured in ITW's Between the Lines interview needs to be a megastar. Karen doesn't have millions of books in print and her work has been translated into just two, and not dozens of languages. She's a charter ITW Debut Author--class of 2008-2009. But her debut status is about to change. Her second environmental thriller from Berkley, BOILING POINT, will publish in January 2011.
I met Karen in person at the first annual ITW Debut Author's party held during ThrillerFest at Pershing Square Restaurant across from Grand Central Station. Being the kindhearted volunteer she is, Karen helped set up the event. We pulled a bunch of tables together and formed a long gauntlet of hungry, lighthearted, and green authors who shared a truly memorable moment in time. Rip Gerber played the ukulele while we all sang a tribute to then Debut Author leader C.J. Lyons to the tune of "YMCA." "C-J-Ly-ons..." And yes, our singing was pretty hard on the ears, but I'm happy to say no heads of cabbage were thrown at us.
During our first year of the Debut Author's program, we'd all been sharing our experiences--the good, bad, and the ugly--inside the online forum, but seeing Karen meeting everyone in person brought a smile. Hugs were exchanged and the gathering soon had the feel of a family reunion. In many ways, we are family. Lifelong friendships were forged that night.
Karen is now managing editor of The Big Thrill, and because of that, she was reluctant to be featured in a Between the Lines interview. But I have a different take on it. She's more than earned it! As you read her interview, you'll see the depth of her commitment to the ITW organization. So thank you, Karen! You don't hear those words enough.
Seth Harwood spotlights a character from his other novel, Jack Wakes Up, in his latest, Young Junius. He talked to ITW about his new novel and how the Internet helped him with his career.
Why write and why teach writing?
Why write? I'd probably stop if I could. But I can't. Fact is, I love it and I think this is the best thing I'm geared to do. Teaching is great because it gets me out and around folks, I love my students, and it pays better than probably any other part-time job I could get. It gives me the ability to structure my own time and the schedule to write.
What sparked the idea for Young Junius?
After writing and podcasting Jack Wakes Up (Three Rivers Press, 2009), a lot of my online fans were calling for more about one of the secondary characters, Junius Ponds. I'd been falling in love madly with The Wire around that time and a lot of my fiction before Jack Wakes Up had been based in Boston and Cambridge (MA). So I got the idea to do an origin story for Junius Ponds, set in Cambridge in the late 80s, around the time I was growing up there and in a period I know well. I guess that part of my life has always interested me, as far as my fiction is concerned.
Reed Farrel Coleman didn't want to write--he had to write. "When you grow up in a household of people who scream, eventually nobody hears anything. As a kid, I searched for a voice to be heard." Through the inspiration and encouragement of Mr. Isaacs, his seventh grade teacher, Coleman found it in poetry. And that sustained him until fate, or more accurately the scheduler of night classes at Brooklyn College, intervened.
"I had a very good job working as a freight forwarder. Basically, I was a travel agent for inanimate objects," Coleman explained. "Poetry had taken me about as far as I was going to go. So, I decided to take a night class. There was one class that fit my schedule--American Detective Fiction."
That was fourteen novels ago. In October 2010, the decorated author and former executive vice president of the Mystery Writers of America, launches his fifteenth novel, Innocent Monster, which is the sixth in his Moe Prager series.
by Gary Corby
Back in 461BC, in a city called Athens, the people decided that they could do a better job of running things than any group of privileged wealthy. So they started a system where everyone got a vote. It was the world's first democracy, and at that moment, western civilization began.
There are other dates you could argue for, but it's hard to go past this one: a sovereign state with one man one vote, free speech for every citizen, written laws and equality before the law, with open courts and trial by jury.
It all sounds terribly modern, doesn't it? That's because our civilization is based on this one crucial moment in history. This is the period we know today as the Golden Age of Athens, fifty years of astounding invention.
In the 80's and 90's, Gary Alexander wrote a bunch (eight, to be exact) of successful and well-received detective novels published by top name houses like St. Martin's and Doubleday. Things change, and his protagonists Bamsan Kiet, a police chief in the fictional Southeast Asian country of Luong, and Luis Balam, a shop keeper cum tourist guide cum private investigator in Cancun, gave way to such a whole new genre, hard-boiled female PI's such as Sue Grafton's Kinsey Milhone and Sara Peretsky's V.I. Warshawsky. Short of a sex-change operation, Bamsan and Luis were out of luck.
Now Gary's back, with as improbable a protagonist as I can remember - a stand-up comedian who gets himself entangled in the just-as-improbable career of his neighbor - virtual mob hits. Now picture this, you're a mob hit man, a profession more precarious than an epileptic tight-rope walker. Pays well, but I'm guessing the health care benefits are expensive. So maybe it needs to pay better. And then there is the messy factor. Dead bodies, midnight runs to the incinerator, blood back splatter if you're standing too close. The dry-cleaning bill alone must be outrageous.
So, what does he do? He doesn't actually kill them, just offers them the chance to disappear into a new life. For a fee, of course. Sort of a witless protection program. But it works for a while, but then the dead start to rise and Ted Snowe, the non-hit man, has, in the immortal words of Desi Arnaz, some 'splainin' to do.
Medallion Press publishes Desperate Souls, the second volume in my horror thriller series "The Jake Helman Files," as a trade paperback on October 15th. The series began with Jake Helman's origin story, Personal Demons, which won the IPPY Gold Medal for Horror, and continues with Cosmic Forces in 2010 and Tortured Spirits in 2012. Audible.com recently acquired the audio book rights to both Personal Demons and Desperate Souls. I've plotted a total of six novels in the series, but hope to continue writing Jake Helman chillers for a long time to come. This project started for me two decades ago.
I'm not just a novelist, I'm also a filmmaker, best known for my 1988 cult horror film SLIME CITY, which has been released several times on VHS and DVD, and its new sequel, SLIME CITY MASSACRE, which is currently playing at horror conventions and film festivals around the country. My films and novels are very different; the films are meant to be fun and goofy, almost campy, while my novels enable me to eschew budgetary restrictions and tell big stories with large scale action sequences. Novels also allow me to get deeper into my characters' heads, so my goal is always to achieve a deeper emotional resonance.
Anthony E. Zuiker is known to millions of fans as the creator of the CSI franchise. His show and its wildly successful spin-offs, CSI Miami and CSI New York, have won six Emmys and a host of other national and international awards and have a worldwide audience estimated at more than 75 million viewers. The show has spawned a generation of imitators, revived and recast the police procedural and become a brand recognized around the world.
Anthony Zuiker recently took time to tell us about his latest endeavor, a series of thrillers he's developed with the help of veteran crime writer and ITW member Duane Swierczynski, author of the hit novels The Blonde, Severance Package, and this year's standout, Expiration Date.
The books are a new form Anthony calls digi-novels, which read like traditional novels but offer readers enhanced content such as online communities, IPhone apps and codes that can be entered online to reveal harrowing filmed episodes. The first, Level 26: Dark Origins, was an international bestseller, and the follow up, Level 26: Dark Prophecy is out October 14th from Dutton.
It's now been four years since we've shared an adventure with Tess Chaykin and Sean Reilly, but they're back for a triumphant return in The Templar Salvation, a new adventure that has been described as "every bit as nail-biting, cinematic, and thought-provoking as its predecessor."
Constantinople, 1203: As the rapacious armies of the Fourth Crusade lay siege to the city, a secretive band of Templars infiltrate the imperial library. Their target: a cache of documents that must not be allowed to fall into the hands of the Doge of Venice. They escape with three heavy chests, filled with explosive secrets that these men will not live long enough to learn.
Award-winning author Weyman Jones took a roundabout route to writing thrillers, as many of us do. After serving in the Navy, he worked in corporate communications for years. He began writing fiction for magazines and published three books for young readers, including The Edge of Two Worlds, which won the Lewis Carroll Shelf and the Western Heritage Awards and was selected as one of the best books of the year by both the School Library Journal and Book World. His thrillers include The Doublooner, Broken Glass, The Unexpected and the newly released Messages. I chatted recently with Weyman Jones about Messages and his writing process.
Tell us about Messages and why it's such an interesting read.
A thriller introduces us to interesting people doing exciting things. Messages also raises some questions about animal rights and other ethical issues. But the most important thing is what happens inside the characters' heads. If I can make you understand why a character or two behave as they do, you'll begin to care about what happens to them. Then I've got you.
Joanna Wayne's bestselling novels have been praised for being "on the cutting edge of romantic suspense" and have gained her many male as well as female readers. She has published more than 40 books since her debut novel in 1994. Born and raised in Shreveport, Louisiana, she attended her first writing class after marrying and moving to New Orleans. Joanna now lives in a small community near Houston, Texas, and has set her latest series in that part of the country. Cowboy Swagger was released in September. The second book in the series, Genuine Cowboy, comes out in December, followed by OK Cowboy next March. Joanna recently talked about her work in an interview.
Tell us about your new series.
Joanna Wayne: Cowboy Swagger introduces the 5-book Sons of Troy Ledger series. The setting is the fictional town of Mustang Run in the Texas Hill Country. The series centers around the character of Troy Ledger, a rancher wrongly convicted of killing his wife eighteen years before the series opens. In Cowboy Swagger, Troy has been released from prison on a technicality. He returns to the ranch obsessed with finding his wife's killer and hopeful of reuniting with his sons. But the years in prison have hardened Troy and made him suspicious and edgy, a man to be reckoned with. Each book will feature one of the five sons in a mystery and romance of their own, each connected and each moving Troy closer to finding the real killer of his wife.
From The International Thriller Writers:
