The sister duo of P.J. Parrish (Kristy Montee and Kelly Nichols) have written nine books, most featuring the character of former police officer Louis Kincaid.  Their seventh novel, An Unquiet Grave, won the Thriller Award for Best Paperback Original of 2006 and the Shamus Award from the Private Eye Writers of America. Their follow-up, A Thousand Bones, has been nominated for a Thriller Award in the Best Paperback Original of 2007 category.  Their new novel, South of Hell, continues their amazing string of successes.

How did you both end up collaborating?

To make a long sad story shorter and sweeter: Kris had four books published in the Eighties in women's fiction (i.e. long, heartfelt family saga kind of things) but got let go as part of a coup d'etat at her publishing house. She decided to take an agent's advice and try writing mysteries instead. But her first effort was really bad (nobody dead in the first 200 pages. The agent advised her to read some P.D. James and try again). Kelly, coincidently, had been working in a Mississippi casino while trying to write her own novel about a young biracial cop who becomes entangled in a twenty-year-old lynching case. Kris's husband suggested they team up and thus was born Louis Kincaid.

How do you write together?

It has become so easy that we now wonder how anyone can write alone. We live in separate states so we rely on almost daily phone conversations with an annual in-the-flesh meeting (usually two to three weeks) where we sprint to the finish line together. We write equally -- roughly every other chapter -- but only after lengthy discussions of plot, motive, etc. We don't outline but we try to work from a template of about four chapters at a time. Writing for us is like traveling down a road at night; we know our destination but we can only see ahead as far as our headlights go. After we agree on a template, we take "assignments" based on who has the better feel for the scene, write our chapters and then exchange them over AOL for massaging and input as needed. We've developed many tricks over the decade we've been working together, such as: keeping detailed plot chronologies, location photos, and character boards (photos we cut from magazines so we agree on what characters look like. The Florida Department of Corrections website is a great source as are society magazines, oddly enough). We also have a system of plotting using Post-It notes, on which we write the basic details of each scene or chapter and then put them on a large board. They are color-coded: Yellow for basic "case" plot, blue for backstory, and pink for "personal" scenes. If we have a multiple POV story, we add colors for the various POVs. This makes it easy to move various scenes around as needed and keep a balance between action scenes and scenes that dwell more on character. It also helps us keep POVs in balance so one is not too dominant. This might sound anal, but seeing your story broken down this way -- much like story-boarding in movies -- allows us to keep a tighter rein on the story's arc, its pacing and its suspense quotient.

"Write what you know." -- Ridley Pearson

Ridley Pearson certainly knows how to write top notch thrillers.  No stranger to best seller lists, Ridley Pearson is the author of more than twenty novels, including the Lou Boldt series.  But with his most recent thriller, Killer View, Pearson shows us that he can write what he knows too.  In Killer View, Pearson takes us back to his adopted hometown of Sun Valley Idaho in this follow-up to last year's best-seller, Killer Weekend.

"Write what you know.  I have lived, full or part time in the Sun Valley area for over twenty years.  When I looked for a setting for a new series, my agent, Amy Berkhower, happened to be reading about a lavish business conference that takes place each year in Sun Valley, and she proposed it as a story idea.  It dawned on both of us how Sun Valley has changed, how policing it has changed, and that it was a rich backdrop for, of all things, a crime series.  What's fun for me: I know all the players (many of the characters are based on real life individuals I've known for twenty years) and I know the crimes that have happened there over the years."

Authors have it drilled into our heads from the moment we begin our writing careers to "write what you know." Since some of the best thrillers have come from those with backgrounds in law enforcement and the legal system, it's no surprise that debut author Raffi Yessayan's first novel, Eight in the Box, is expected to be a big success.

A promotion from district court prosecutor to the District Attorney's Gang Unit after two years is something to crow about. But to spend another nine years as a prosecutor on the Gang Unit, including four years as its chief, is credential enough for Yessayan to write the stories of Assistant District Attorney Connie Darget, Homicide Detective Angel Alves and his hard-driving boss, Sergeant Wayne Mooney, as they track a killer dubbed the "Blood Bath Killer," who is terrorizing Boston. The French Connection's author, Robin Moore, who sadly passed away recently, wasn't shy about his praise. "Eight in the Box is an awesome, sometimes chilling legal thriller . . . Yessayan may be the best prosecutor-turned-crime-writer to hit the streets since George V. Higgins and Scott Turow."

International bestselling author Brad Thor writes blazing hot thrillers in the Robert Ludlum tradition. So you might not guess that his literary pedigree includes one T. C. Boyle and the creative writing program at the University of Southern California.

"Tom is a terrific teacher who taught me the mechanics and intricacies of storytelling," Thor explains. "He is not only very talented and extremely bright he's also one hell of a great guy.  He's exactly the kind of person you want teaching you creative writing. As students, we created voluminous amounts of fiction in his classes that we work-shopped every week.  It was the ideal environment in which to perfect the craft of writing."

How, then, did Thor find himself pursuing the thriller genre?

"It happened after I graduated from USC," he says. "I had moved to Paris, where I studied abroad my junior year, and decided to begin work on a thriller. I got about five chapters into it before packing my laptop up and sending it home.  Years later, I realized I had done that because I was afraid of failing.  What if I take all this time to write a novel and it doesn't get published or no one likes it?"

Reflecting on that decision now, Thor calls that fear "ridiculous. I've learned that which we are most afraid of pursuing is usually that which we were destined to pursue."

Thor went on to other things, but on his honeymoon his wife asked him what he would regret on his deathbed if he didn't try it.

"I didn't even have to think about it," says Thor. "It was writing a novel and getting it published."

Kelli Stanley's background as a classicist helps her bring ancient Londinium to vivid life in her debut novel Nox Dormienda (A Long Night for Sleeping). Arcturus, hard boiled private investigator and doctor to the governor, rips through the seamy side of Londinium as his investigation unfolds at a pace that reminds Ken Bruen of "a gladiator on speed." Welcome to the new world of Roman Noir.

Tell us about the dames and dangers that Arcturus spars with in your debut novel Nox Dormienda.

Well, let's see. There's a giant, one-eyed proprietor of a whorehouse. An irritating imbecile in charge of Londinium's vigiles (a kind of police force). A bearded Druid who loves to fight. A blonde woman so beautiful that he loses his breath just thinking about her, who may or may not be as much trouble as she seems. A well-bred Roman, recently demoted in class status. An insecure and uncertain governor. An Egyptian prostitute. A jealous slave. And a fat, dead Syrian spy, found on an altar in an underground temple with his throat slit open. Plus others - it's a big cast.

J.A. Konrath burst onto the thriller scene in 2004 with his novel, Whiskey Sour, the first in a Chicago-based series featuring Chicago homicide cop, Lieutenant Jacquelyn "Jack" Daniels. Konrath's edgy, violent, but raucously funny novels carved out a niche in the thriller landscape, and Konrath quickly became known in the writing community for his humor, generosity and seemingly boundless marketing energies. J.A. recently pulled up a chair, poured a drink, and let The Big Thrill be the straight man in a comedy routine, talking about his new novel, Fuzzy Navel and what's going on in his life.

Tell us about Fuzzy Navel.

It all takes place during an 8-hour period, in real time. A maniac from Jack's past breaks into her house to take some bloody revenge. Meanwhile, Jack is working on a sniper case, and she's followed home by three rifle-wielding psychos. Jack and everyone she holds dear are soon trapped inside her house with a serial killer, but they can't escape because they're surrounded by rifle-wielding crackpots. Action ensues.

Also, there's a ship captain who is obsessed with killing a white whale. The twist is, the whale turns out to be his father. Okay, I'm lying about the last part. The whale actually turns out to be his second cousin.

Any particular story behind how you came up with this idea?

I thought it would be fun to put Jack in a terrible situation without the ability to escape. Sort of kick the tension up a notch, and not give the readers a chance to catch their breath. In many ways, it's much different from the previous Jack books, focusing more on action and suspense, but hopefully it still retains the humor and character relationships that my readers seem to enjoy.

Plus, it's printed on acid-free paper which, when burned, provides a cost-effective alternative to fossil fuels. I encourage everyone to buy multiple copies as a way to combat the rising cost of foreign oil. And my publisher is having a special promotion. If you buy a copy at full price, you can get a second copy at full price.

Also, the book cures cancer. Look, just by the damn thing. My family needs to eat.

ITW Debut Author Julie Kramer's thriller, Stalking Susan, has been receiving rave reviews from Publishers Weekly, Booklist, and Kirkus.  

In preparation for Stalking Susan's release, Julie took time from her hectic life producing TV news to talk with The Big Thrill.

You work as a free-lance producer for NBC News.  What exactly is a producer?

A producer is a off air journalist. Some producers work in the newsroom coordinating action or writing copy. Most of my time is spent in the field. I land guests. I conduct interviews. I feed tape. I gather facts. I coordinate live shots. I try to be first with whatever I'm chasing. I was the first journalist to get the Larry Craig audio tape. I was the first journalist to get a live interview with one of the children on the bus after the Minneapolis bridge collapse. I was the first journalist to get the flight school emails from Zacarias Moussaoui after the September 11th attacks.

What's your typical day like?

As a freelance television news producer, most days I'm not working. And that's fine because right now, fiction has my attention. But some days the phone rings and the news desk wants to know if I can go to the airport NOW.  Because I live in Minnesota, I'm geographically central, so there are places I can get to faster than the rest of the media pack.  We work out my availability before I even know what the story is--whether I've gotten myself into a school shooting or a flood. My job is not glamorous. Generally I go to spots the folks in New York don't want to go. Sometimes with just the clothes on my back. And that often means buying clean socks and underwear at gas stations in remote parts of the country and asking motel clerks if anyone's left a cell phone charger behind that's compatible with mine.

It can be exhausting and unpredictable. The days can start early and go late. And every night I pray this book might be my ticket out. But at same time, television news is good for material, and I like to live my research, so I don't think I'd give it up altogether.

Contributed to THE BIG THRILL by Albert T. Longden

Sax Rohmer...a name to conjure when evoking literary icon's of the last century. Creator of one of the most enduring, if not endearing characters of all time, the first true "super-villain", Dr. Fu Manchu. Some Holmesian adherents might argue that Dr. Moriarty occupies that niche, but Moriarty for all his genius never created an "elixir of life" or genetically altered spiders and fungi. This one creation, the insidious Dr. Fu Manchu, has influenced a myriad of writers and characters over the years. We can easily see the parallels between "Fu" and Ian Fleming's Dr. No or the wonderful Ming the Merciless from Flash Gordon. Indeed, Earl Derr Biggers created Charlie Chan, in part because of the fame of the "Devil Doctor" Biggers, feeling there needed to be an Asian hero to counterbalance Rohmer's creation.

Contributed to THE BIG THRILL by Simon Wood

Certain people, events and occurrences stick with me and no matter what I do, I can't forget about them.  The death of three men in Bristol, England is something I've never forgotten.  They died a few months apart some time in the late eighties.  They weren't murdered and it wasn't accidental.  All three committed suicide.
 
What drew my attention to these men was the circumstances of their deaths.  All three died in the same city, and they were all working on the same government project.  The first man walked into the sea.  The second hanged himself from the Clifton Suspension Bridge.  The third tied a rope around a tree trunk then around his neck, got into his car and drove away as fast as he could until he ran out of rope.  Needless to say, the deaths made the news, albeit not on a national scale.  The obvious questions were raised.  Why did these men kill themselves?  And did it have anything to do with their work?  The questions went unanswered.  The story sunk below the surface as swiftly as the first victim. 

The Garden of Evil, your sixth Nic Costa book, is coming out this month.  Give us a sneak preview.

One of the ways I try to keep this series fresh is by approaching every book as something completely different. Some are ensemble pieces. This is a tragic story told very much from Nic's point of view. A bleak, mysterious crime has occurred in the vicinity of a painting that appears to be an unknown erotic canvas by Caravaggio. Very soon the hunt for the killer becomes personal, and takes Nic deep into the history of Rome and Caravaggio, the artist and the man. It's a story about coming to terms with grief in many ways.

How has Nic grown as a person since A Season for the Dead, the first in the series?

He's got older, tougher and a little less naive, but there's still a part of him that doesn't understand why we can't all just get along. He's also increasingly having an effect on those around him, making sure they don't stray back to their old, lazy ways. Nic's become the moral fulcrum for these books, which means he's not always easy to be around, or makes good decisions for himself.

Do you think the stakes go up for you, the author, with each book in the series?

This was the sixth in the series and a warning bell was ringing somewhere saying that, if I was going to get sick of Nic and Rome, it would start to happen now. Instead, I loved writing the book more than any of its predecessors, and the seventh and eighth in the series are now complete and just waiting to be published. As I said earlier, I approach each of these books as an entirely fresh project, changing the nature of the story constantly, looking for something new. So to answer your question: no, I don't think the stakes go up, they stay just the same - a little out of reach.