I was quite chuffed (as the Brits say) to be recruited by the lovely and talented thriller writer
Alexandra Sokoloff to take part in this week's edition of
The Next Big Thing blog hop, a series of brief interviews with various authors about their current book or work-in-progress.
I was even more pleased to discover the company I was in, as I'm sharing this week's theme – strong women in crime fiction – with some strong and admirable women indeed: (above, from top)
Christa Faust,
Michelle Gagnon and
Zoe Sharp.
By way of prologue, Ms. Sokoloff explains all
here. And you can read this week's entries by clicking on the links below:
Christa Faust
Michelle Gagnon
Zoe Sharp
My contribution follows:
1.) What’s the title or working title of your new/next book?
The most recent is
KINGS OF MIDNIGHT, published in April by St. Martin’s Press/Minotaur. It’s the second in my series about Crissa Stone, a professional thief and career criminal.
2) Where did the idea for the book come from?
Writing a series about a fictional thief, I wanted to connect her to a famous real-life robbery, in this case the
1978 Lufthansa heist at New York’s Kennedy Airport. A crew of local gangsters walked away with $8 million from the Lufthansa cargo terminal without firing a shot. At the time, it was the largest cash robbery ever on American soil. Most of the money was never recovered. Seemed time someone found it.
3) What genre is your book?
Crime. Hard-boiled I guess, if you go for those sort of labels.
4) What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition? Or TV series?
Writing a continuing series, I never do that because it might mess me up in writing about the characters going forward. That said, I have broken that rule a few times. I imagined Sara Cross, the single mom and sheriff’s deputy in
GONE ‘TIL NOVEMBER, as looking very much like Sarah Polley,
an actress I admire a lot. I was always impressed with her determined, slightly otherworldly quality. But when I met her briefly at a New York Film Critics Circle Awards dinner a few years back, she was actually quite cheerful and girly.
For Eddie “The Saint” Santiago in
COLD SHOT TO THE HEART, I always envisioned the late character actor Al Lettieri,
who brought an authentically edgy and dangerous quality to his roles in THE GODFATHER, THE GETAWAY and MR. MAJESTYK.
5) What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?
A female professional thief and an old-school ex-mobster team up to recover millions in stolen money from a 1978 robbery.
6) Is/will your book be self-published or traditionally published?
St. Martin’s Press has published all five of my novels to date, and I’m under contract with them for a sixth.
7) How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?
My writing process is always mixed up, with different sections being rewritten multiple times before moving on, so there’s no clean chronology of drafts. Between beginning the book and submitting it to my editor though, it was exactly one year – Aug. 1, 2010-Aug. 1, 2011.
8) What other books within the genre would you compare this story to?
9) Who or what inspired you to write this book?
I’ll combine these two questions. There have been a lot of influences on the Crissa Stone books, some of which I addressed last year on the legendary Ed Gorman’s blog. You can find that piece
here.
10) What else about the book might pique the reader's interest?
It’s the second part of proposed trilogy (or beyond). The third book, SHOOT THE WOMAN FIRST, will be published by St. Martin's next year.
*****
For my part in keeping this ongoing blog hop extravaganza going, I've tagged first-time author
Scott Adlerberg, thriller writer
Alison Gaylin, Aussie novelist
Andrew Nette and Philadelphia's own
Dennis Tafoya. Look for their entries on their respective blogs next week.
