Author Interviews

Hilary Davidson is the bestselling author of One Small Sacrifice and the winner of two Anthony Awards. Her novels include the Lily Moore series and the standalone thriller Blood Always Tells. A Toronto-born travel journalist who’s lived in New York City since October 2001, she’s also the author of eighteen nonfiction books.

It begins with the characters

“For me, the story always starts with the characters, and issues in the book spiral out from there. I don’t think I’m making an argument, exactly, but there are subjects that interest me—usually ones with no easy answers—and I like to explore those. Something that’s on my mind a lot is the issue of justice and how unequally distributed it is in our society. I also think a lot about how race and gender and wealth affect that distribution of justice. Don’t Look Down revolves around the murder of a man who was blackmailing a woman; early on, the reader learns that the woman, Jo Greaver, was trafficked as a teenager. Jo is a tough character, and at the beginning of the book, the reader encounters her bringing a gun to a meeting with her blackmailer. But even if the reader doesn’t like Jo, it’s hard not to sympathize with what she’s been through.

“There are also subtle ways the questions about justice come up. For example, there’s a scene in Don’t Look Down in which Jo’s lawyer tells her to plead guilty, telling her that there’s no other way out of jail. In reality, there are so many people who’ve been forced to do this, and suspects who maintain their innocence sometimes end up waiting in jail for more than a year for trial.”

Hilary also said she’s interested in exploring issues involving law enforcement. For this book, Hilary brought back NYPD Detective Sheryn Sterling from last year’s One Small Sacrifice. “Sterling is an incredibly brave, dedicated cop, but she’s also an African American woman and a mom of two, and her teenaged son gets into trouble with the police for a nonviolent political protest he joins. It’s painful for Sterling, because she trusts her lieutenant and police partner and others she works with on the NYPD, but she’s also aware that some cops have a very different outlook.”

And then things get complicated

For Don’t Look Down, Hilary started with the idea of a young entrepreneur who’s being blackmailed, and how perfect her life might look on the outside—and on social media—while she’s dealing with turmoil. “I’m fascinated by the distance social media has actually created between people. There’s this strange pressure to make your life look perfect for strangers, when we all know that’s not how things are. There used to be a kind of charm in dealing with difficult situations with aplomb, whereas now, we’re supposed to pretend those difficult circumstances don’t exist. It’s a kind of scrutiny that celebrities and royals had in the past, that normal people are choosing to put themselves through.

“I was also thinking about people who come out of really painful, difficult, heartbreaking situations and choose to do good in the world. But that dark past can be a kind of prison, especially if you can’t tell the truth about it to other people, because you need to keep up your perfect façade. I started thinking, what if a character had had to commit a crime to get herself out of a terrible situation, and she’s still paying for that years later? And that was how Jo Greaver was born.”

Journalism — a solid foundation for good writing

“I started out as a journalist, and that training and work still influences everything I write. Even though I’m writing fiction, I like it to be grounded in reality as much as possible. You can’t be 100% factual — for example, blood-alcohol tests take months to complete, and no one wants to wait that long for results in a novel — but overall, I like to stick to the real world. The characters and the plot are invented, but the settings I write about are generally places you could visit, and I like to work real-life details into my books as much as possible.

Hilary often writes about women who have experienced trauma. She believes part of the reason for doing this is because of a tragic incident on her first job out of college. “The short version of the story is that I was a victim in a workplace violence incident in which a man tried to kill everyone in my office. I wasn’t physically injured, but I suffered from PTSD afterwards. I found it very hard to talk about. Everyone knew about what had happened, because it was on the news, but I didn’t want to talk about how I felt afterwards—how I would be on the subway and think someone reaching into a bag was reaching for a gun—because it made me feel weak. It was incredibly isolating. It took me a long time to get to a place where I could talk about it, and write about it.”

You want me to do what?

“I have done so many wild things in the name of research, but the craziest one was writing a feature about scuba diving for a science magazine. It started with me pitching a story about astronaut training—of which scuba diving is a part, since it’s as close to weightlessness as you can get on Earth—but when the editor found out that I hated swimming and was afraid of the water, he assigned me a feature story about learning to dive. I was completely terrified, but I went for it. I ended up getting certified and diving shipwrecks in the St. Lawrence River. It was a crazy way to conquer that fear. Everything I’ve done since then — from shooting at a gun range to hanging out in a morgue — has seemed tame by comparison!”

Visit Hilary Davidson online at hilarydavidson.com.

Kelly Brakenhoff is an American Sign Language Interpreter and the author of the Cassandra Sato Mystery series. As an interpreter, Kelly often sees misunderstandings and miscommunications between people who don’t share the same language and culture. Because it’s her job to help that flow of communication happen as smoothly as possible, she felt strongly about making that issue part of her latest book. Here’s the story behind Dead Week, the second Cassandra Sato Mystery.

Even simple things can cause big problems

After the release of Death by Dissertation, Kelly started hearing from readers about how much they enjoyed learning what life is like for deaf college students on campus. “I thought Dead Week was a perfect opportunity to help people understand the world from their viewpoint a little more.”

While there is empathy for the Deaf Community and the challenges they face, Kelly said that’s not always the case. “Occasionally, I see communications between people go awry. Sometimes it’s hilarious, and sometimes it’s sad or even oppressive to witness the things people do to others.”

An important current issue within the Deaf Community right now is complete access to information in real time. “For example, during catastrophic weather events like hurricanes or floods, Deaf people want access in ASL to the alerts and updates at the same time as people who can hear are receiving them, without having to rely on family or neighbors to get the latest information. Another problem for the Deaf Community is limited access to the entertaining and educational videos made by professionals and amateurs alike. Many producers don’t take the time to caption their videos before uploading, rendering them useless to an entire group of people who can’t hear the sound.”

Kelly’s List

“I don’t know why I do this to myself, but I did the same approach for the first book in the series. I threw a bunch of topics I’m interested in onto a list of Stuff I Want in This Book, and then figured out how I could include all the elements together into a murder plot. I also wanted to spend time getting to know the characters at Morton College and the town of Carson more deeply. For Dead Week, I researched adoption, text-based emergency management systems, and Vietnam protests. As the mother of four grown children, I may have had some personal experience with Helicopter Moms, but I refuse to name names. I can tell you that every Helicopter Mom scenario is taken from real life experiences I’ve seen or heard about at the college where I work.”

On the personal side

“I began running about seven years ago when a work Wellness Program challenged me to register for a Couch-to-5K event. I’ve participated in many sports but hated running because it made my side ache and I’m short, therefore I’m slow. To my surprise, I found I could run long distances without dying. Now I run 10K races and half-marathons. The training runs give me plenty of time to think about my books and how to plot the next murder. Bonus, I can eat chocolate cake without the guilt.”

Kelly also said that while many authors are introverts, she’s exactly the opposite. She said she’s been pleasantly surprised by receiving photos of readers enjoying my book while lounging at the beach or watching their child’s softball games. “I love getting messages about what readers’ favorite scenes were, or how they couldn’t put the book down. Some send me recommendations about books I might like to read or authors who are similar to me. Please feel free to follow me on Goodreads, Facebook, BookBub or wherever you like to go to chat about books. I really enjoy getting to know my readers.”

Once again, truth is stranger than fiction

“In my more than twenty years of experience as an ASL Interpreter, I’ve worked in college classrooms for fifteen different majors. I actually attend classes with the deaf students and overhear both the most inspiring and the most inane professors you could imagine. At faculty meetings, I’ve seen the jockeying for position that happens on a daily basis. The most jaw-dropping dialogue in my books are often exact quotes I’ve overheard people say in real life.”

For Death by Dissertation, Kelly wanted to have her stalker have a prior arrest for harassing a former girlfriend even though he didn’t cause physical harm. “I turned to Google and typed something like ‘Creepy stalker stories not murder.’ My search feed filled with very disturbing scenarios that I gingerly picked through until I found one I could read without losing my lunch. Photos of weapons and cringe-inducing stalker articles popped up on my social media feeds for weeks afterwards.”

Learn more about Kelly Brakenhoff at /kellybrakenhoff.com/.

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Charlotte Stuart has taught college courses in communication, gone commercial fishing in Alaska, and was the VP of HR and Training for a large credit union. Her latest challenge is writing lighthearted mysteries. The first book in her Cameron Chandler Mystery series is Survival Can Be Deadly.

All about relationships 

“Survival Can Be Deadly is a lighthearted mystery that I’ve grounded in relationships – with family, friends and work colleagues,” Charlotte said. “For example, when Cameron tells her two kids that she has finally landed a job, her son’s response is not surprising. He tells her ‘that’s great,’ then turns back to the television.”

As part of this emphasis on relationships, Charlotte said she wanted her protagonist to be both strong and vulnerable. “She’s as close to a ‘real’ person as possible given the circumstances she finds herself in. As in this scene:

There seemed to be a lot of trails on their property. I hoped … they didn’t patrol them during the day. If there was anyone around, they would undoubtedly hear me. Although I was trying to walk quietly, I wasn’t exactly the last of the Mohicans. My shoes found things to crunch and grind no matter how hard I tried to be quiet.

Keeping it real

Charlotte said catalyst for the book came from several sources. “I visited a commune in a remote location, had friends who were making plans to survive a disaster, and came across a small detective agency in an offbeat neighborhood near downtown Seattle. The latter started me thinking about unusual locations for detective agencies. Researching survivalists revealed a goldmine of information. And, having spent time in the San Juan Islands, one of the islands seemed like the ideal place to locate a survivalist camp. After that, the storyline followed.”

When writing, Charlotte likes to keep the actions and events grounded in reality. “None of my characters have super powers,” she said. “Things that happen could happen. And, although violence and negativity are ubiquitous in today’s world, I lean toward writing about camaraderie and situations that hopefully make the reader smile from time to time. In my mind, humor and excitement are not polar opposites but good working partners.”

Charlotte and her husband take a daily walk, during which time they often talk about her writing. “We’re often on narrow paths in the woods and don’t always hear other people coming in our direction until we’re quite close. I always wonder how much of our conversation they’ve heard about such things as ways to sabotage cars, blood splatter, floaters, and great places to murder someone. I wouldn’t be surprised to find a police officer waiting for us at our car at the end.”

Interviewing the interviewees

After developing several workshops on interviewing for HR professionals, Charlotte decided she wanted to hear stories about the process from the interviewees’ point of view. The results were quite surprising.

“I quickly discovered that everyone has at least one bad interview that haunts them. I spent almost a year collecting interviews and used them in a book I wrote to use in my consulting practice. I hoped the stories would offer solace and a few laughs to interviewees and would provide perspective for my clients.

“Sometimes people were slow to open up, but when they did, many had multiple stories to share. They may not have landed the job they were trying for. And most kicked themselves for mistakes made. But in the retelling, they saw the humor in what had happened. One of the interviewees suggested the subtitle for my book: the comic, tragic and just plain ugly.

“As I collected these stories, I also learned a lot about interviewing techniques. For instance, one person explained how to beat a polygraph. First, you need to put a tack in your shoe so that your pain registers the same on the screen for all of the questions. Second, there’s the pad that you sit on. If you bunch up your butt cheeks or move your feet, that’s a sign that you might be lying. So, put a tack in your shoe and relax those buttocks. You’ll pass your polygraph and land the job of your dreams.”

Learn more about Charlotte Stuart at www.charlottestuart.com

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