Sunday, 15 July 2012

ungerlisa_authorTry as we might, it is impossible to fit in everything discussed during an interview into a profile for Mystery Scene.

If we did, we would only have one profile in the magazine with little room for anything else.

So the blog has become invaluable in giving readers a little more insight into the authors we feature.

My interview with Lisa Unger that graces the cover of the latest issue of Mystery Scene is pretty complete.

But there was one thing we talked about that I just could not seem to fit into the interview.

And, believe me, I tried.

Like most authors, Unger says she has been inspired by other authors. The author who stands out above the others is Truman Capote.

“I have been such an avid reader all my life and have been swept away by so many different kinds of work.

"But the place where I first fell in love with the prose was Truman Capote’s short stories like Other Voices, Other Rooms and Music for Chameleons. Those are amazing collections of stories,” Unger said during our interview.

But Capote’s In Cold Blood rates even higher for Unger.

ungerlisa_heartbrokenIn Cold Blood is probably one of the most influential books for me. [That's where] I realized you could write about very dark, horrible things and do it with tremendous compassion and breathless beauty,” said Unger whose latest novel is Heartbroken. Her other novels include Fragile and Black Out.

“Capote has vivid, searing character portraits of these very disturbed individuals. He shows full pictures of those people without glorifying or condoning or exploiting who these people were.

"It really gave me permission to be who I wanted to be and to write about what I wanted to write about. “

Unger also credits Daphne du Maurier’s famous novel Rebecca with inspiration.

Rebecca was my first big, gothic thriller. It’s a very purple, big story.

"But it has a theme of the ordinary girl caught in extreme circumstances and she has to extradite herself from it. That’s a theme that runs through my books.

"That book was a big wow moment for me.”

Lisa Unger and Truman Capote
Oline Cogdill
lisa-unger-and-truman-capote

ungerlisa_authorTry as we might, it is impossible to fit in everything discussed during an interview into a profile for Mystery Scene.

If we did, we would only have one profile in the magazine with little room for anything else.

So the blog has become invaluable in giving readers a little more insight into the authors we feature.

My interview with Lisa Unger that graces the cover of the latest issue of Mystery Scene is pretty complete.

But there was one thing we talked about that I just could not seem to fit into the interview.

And, believe me, I tried.

Like most authors, Unger says she has been inspired by other authors. The author who stands out above the others is Truman Capote.

“I have been such an avid reader all my life and have been swept away by so many different kinds of work.

"But the place where I first fell in love with the prose was Truman Capote’s short stories like Other Voices, Other Rooms and Music for Chameleons. Those are amazing collections of stories,” Unger said during our interview.

But Capote’s In Cold Blood rates even higher for Unger.

ungerlisa_heartbrokenIn Cold Blood is probably one of the most influential books for me. [That's where] I realized you could write about very dark, horrible things and do it with tremendous compassion and breathless beauty,” said Unger whose latest novel is Heartbroken. Her other novels include Fragile and Black Out.

“Capote has vivid, searing character portraits of these very disturbed individuals. He shows full pictures of those people without glorifying or condoning or exploiting who these people were.

"It really gave me permission to be who I wanted to be and to write about what I wanted to write about. “

Unger also credits Daphne du Maurier’s famous novel Rebecca with inspiration.

Rebecca was my first big, gothic thriller. It’s a very purple, big story.

"But it has a theme of the ordinary girl caught in extreme circumstances and she has to extradite herself from it. That’s a theme that runs through my books.

"That book was a big wow moment for me.”

Wednesday, 11 July 2012

slaughterkarin_criminaltrain2Getting the word out about a novel has never been more important than now.

So I think it is vital that authors and publishers use as many sources as they can to bring attention to a novel.

During a recent family trip to White Plains, New York, my husband, my mother-in-law and myself took the train into New York City for one day.

Once we were seated, I noticed this advertisement for Karin Slaughter's Criminal.

In this latest novel, Slaughter combines her series characters Sara Linton and Will Trent into one novel as the author gracefully explore how some damaged people don’t just cope with adversity, but thrive. In Slaughter’s last couple of novels, Sara, a physician, and Will, a Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent, have been drawing closer, testing what it would be like to have a relationship.

That description is a direct quote from my review of Criminal. You can read the rest of the review on Mystery Scene's website. Slaughter's other novels include Fallen.

While my husband knew why I was taking this picture, the commuters around me didn't and several looked at me questioningly.

Maybe they were wondering if I was taking their photo or what was so important about this ad.

"Good book," I said to a couple of people.

How effective is this train advertising?

I noticed several people writing down the name or getting out their tablets to, I hope, order Criminal.

I know that other authors' novels have been advertised on trains.

If you think this is effective, or your novel has had this placement, tell us about it.

Karin Slaughter's Criminal on the Train
Oline Cogdill
karin-slaughters-criminal-on-the-train

slaughterkarin_criminaltrain2Getting the word out about a novel has never been more important than now.

So I think it is vital that authors and publishers use as many sources as they can to bring attention to a novel.

During a recent family trip to White Plains, New York, my husband, my mother-in-law and myself took the train into New York City for one day.

Once we were seated, I noticed this advertisement for Karin Slaughter's Criminal.

In this latest novel, Slaughter combines her series characters Sara Linton and Will Trent into one novel as the author gracefully explore how some damaged people don’t just cope with adversity, but thrive. In Slaughter’s last couple of novels, Sara, a physician, and Will, a Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent, have been drawing closer, testing what it would be like to have a relationship.

That description is a direct quote from my review of Criminal. You can read the rest of the review on Mystery Scene's website. Slaughter's other novels include Fallen.

While my husband knew why I was taking this picture, the commuters around me didn't and several looked at me questioningly.

Maybe they were wondering if I was taking their photo or what was so important about this ad.

"Good book," I said to a couple of people.

How effective is this train advertising?

I noticed several people writing down the name or getting out their tablets to, I hope, order Criminal.

I know that other authors' novels have been advertised on trains.

If you think this is effective, or your novel has had this placement, tell us about it.

Sunday, 08 July 2012

Katzenbachjohn_byBenRosenzweigJohn Katzenbach’s career as a novelist began in 1982 with In the Heat of the Summer, an edgy crime novel that looked at the cult of the celebrity, fame and media ethics.

In retrospect, In the Heat of the Summer also showed the newspaper industry at its height and, also, the beginnings of its slide. It was a business that Katzenbach knew quite well because he started for as a crime reporter for the Miami Herald and the now defunct Miami News.

Since then, Katzenbach has written 11 psychological thrillers and one non-fiction book.

Four of his novels have been filmed: The Mean Season in 1982 with Kurt Russell and Mariel Hemingway, based on In the Heat of the Summer; Just Cause in 1995 with Sean Connery; Hart’s War in 2002; and The Wrong Man released on television during 2011 in France as Faux Coupable.

Katzenbach’s new novel What Comes Next is about a university professor with degenerative dementia who thinks he may have witnessed the kidnapping of a teenage girl.

What clichés or preconceptions did you want to dispense about degenerative dementia?
I can’t say there were any preconceptions that I thought to dispel about the disease. What I wanted to do was find some truths about age and infirmity and I wanted to examine the nature of fighting back against illness. But, that said, I took some liberties with the course of the disease on my pages. I didn’t want to write a medical text. I wanted to write a thriller. As a writer you want to be accurate. But you also want to be truthful. They sometimes aren’t exactly the same things.

Why so much psychology in What Comes Next?
The science of psychology always adds to a reader’s depth of understanding not only about characters, but about plot. Readers want to be both surprised by the actions and behaviors of the people they come to know on the pages, but they also want it to make a kind of inner sense. You know, I can’t imagine not investing in the inner landscape of characters in any book I write. It ultimately is what makes the story rich for readers, it’s what involves them and it’s what makes them reach the end with a sense that they’ve been on a trip with not only the author, but his people too. Now, admittedly, sometimes that journey can be pretty dark and shadowy – and that’s what makes a thriller sophisticated. Or, at least, I hope so.

Psychology and the law often play an important part in your novels. Is this because your mother, Lydia, was a psychoanalyst, and your father, Nicholas, who recently died, was a U.S. attorney general under Lyndon B Johnson?
Well, I think in some way or another all writers are impacted by their parents. In my family, with my father’s legal prominence and my mother’s psychological acumen, growing up we roundly believed that with good emotional and legal help, anything could be accomplished. Even writing novels.

katzenbachjohn_whatcomesnextThe Wrong Man came out in 2006; why so long between novels?
I’m tempted to respond that in order to make this one so good… or perhaps vent about the frailty of the publishing world… or maybe launch into some heart-rending tale about near-fatal writer’s block… but the truth is simple. I got perhaps halfway through another book and just simply didn’t like the direction it was going and wasn’t as fond of the characters as I think a writer should be (both white hats and black hats) and didn’t find that the energy it takes to do the heavy lifting portion of novel writing was there every morning, so I put it aside. It was at this point that my friend that I mentioned above received his diagnosis. These events, feelings, suppositions coalesced at the same time and one plot got tossed and another picked up. Probably a good lesson in this for aspiring writers, that even after so many books and so many years of doing this, it’s still possible to trip and fall down the rabbit hole of a wrong idea.

How has your writing changed since your debut, In the Heat of the Summer (1982)?
At the beginning of one’s career, it’s so much seat of the pants flying. What sounds right on the page? When you get older and wiser you hope to endow characters with greater depth and to tie the knots of your stories tighter. My friend, the great writer (and barely adequate fisherman) Phil Caputo always says that there ought to be a law, or perhaps something in the Constitution, that allows authors to go back and rewrite their first novel after they’ve written five others, because then they actually know what they’re doing. Much good sense in this statement, I think.

How different is the thriller genre now as opposed to when you first started out?
You know, I think the thriller genre has changed some – but mostly in response to television and film. TV seems to have taken over the procedurals (thank you Jerry Bruckheimer and CSI Everywhere). And movies demand more depth and sophistication in thrillers because they have to appeal to a non-thirteen year old boy or girl audience. So authors place greater psychological demands on their stories. At least that’s my impression. If I’m wrong, just cancel everything I just said.

Will we see more movies from your novels?
More movies? Sure. My last book The Wrong Man was filmed for France 2 television this past year. A terrific, unsettling and very stylish job by an excellent director named Didier LePecheur. My book The Analyst keeps bubbling up both here and abroad. But I’m most optimistic that the novel I wrote in 2004 The Madman’s Tale will be filmed this year. I did the script adaptation myself for an Australian director and we’re well on the way to being funded. Now, as the Bard wrote, “there’s many a slip betwixt the lip and the cup” so one needs to be cautious. But cinematic hope springs eternal.

Have you ever wanted to write a series?
Nope. Never wanted to write a series to the immense dismay of my agent and various editors.

Your hobby is fly fishing. Will you ever write a novel with fly fishing at the center?
Curious question. Fly fishing at the center of a thriller? I thought that fly fishing was already in the center of all my novels. Just not explicitly.

What next?
What Comes Next? A little pun, there. I’m hard at work on a new book. Three women who do not know one another, a 17-year old high school student, a 34-year-old recent widow and a 51-year-old internist living alone all get the same message at the same time on the same day: “I’m coming for you.” What they do about this threat is the core of the new book.

Next With John Katzenbach
Oline Cogdill
next-with-john-katzenbach

Katzenbachjohn_byBenRosenzweigJohn Katzenbach’s career as a novelist began in 1982 with In the Heat of the Summer, an edgy crime novel that looked at the cult of the celebrity, fame and media ethics.

In retrospect, In the Heat of the Summer also showed the newspaper industry at its height and, also, the beginnings of its slide. It was a business that Katzenbach knew quite well because he started for as a crime reporter for the Miami Herald and the now defunct Miami News.

Since then, Katzenbach has written 11 psychological thrillers and one non-fiction book.

Four of his novels have been filmed: The Mean Season in 1982 with Kurt Russell and Mariel Hemingway, based on In the Heat of the Summer; Just Cause in 1995 with Sean Connery; Hart’s War in 2002; and The Wrong Man released on television during 2011 in France as Faux Coupable.

Katzenbach’s new novel What Comes Next is about a university professor with degenerative dementia who thinks he may have witnessed the kidnapping of a teenage girl.

What clichés or preconceptions did you want to dispense about degenerative dementia?
I can’t say there were any preconceptions that I thought to dispel about the disease. What I wanted to do was find some truths about age and infirmity and I wanted to examine the nature of fighting back against illness. But, that said, I took some liberties with the course of the disease on my pages. I didn’t want to write a medical text. I wanted to write a thriller. As a writer you want to be accurate. But you also want to be truthful. They sometimes aren’t exactly the same things.

Why so much psychology in What Comes Next?
The science of psychology always adds to a reader’s depth of understanding not only about characters, but about plot. Readers want to be both surprised by the actions and behaviors of the people they come to know on the pages, but they also want it to make a kind of inner sense. You know, I can’t imagine not investing in the inner landscape of characters in any book I write. It ultimately is what makes the story rich for readers, it’s what involves them and it’s what makes them reach the end with a sense that they’ve been on a trip with not only the author, but his people too. Now, admittedly, sometimes that journey can be pretty dark and shadowy – and that’s what makes a thriller sophisticated. Or, at least, I hope so.

Psychology and the law often play an important part in your novels. Is this because your mother, Lydia, was a psychoanalyst, and your father, Nicholas, who recently died, was a U.S. attorney general under Lyndon B Johnson?
Well, I think in some way or another all writers are impacted by their parents. In my family, with my father’s legal prominence and my mother’s psychological acumen, growing up we roundly believed that with good emotional and legal help, anything could be accomplished. Even writing novels.

katzenbachjohn_whatcomesnextThe Wrong Man came out in 2006; why so long between novels?
I’m tempted to respond that in order to make this one so good… or perhaps vent about the frailty of the publishing world… or maybe launch into some heart-rending tale about near-fatal writer’s block… but the truth is simple. I got perhaps halfway through another book and just simply didn’t like the direction it was going and wasn’t as fond of the characters as I think a writer should be (both white hats and black hats) and didn’t find that the energy it takes to do the heavy lifting portion of novel writing was there every morning, so I put it aside. It was at this point that my friend that I mentioned above received his diagnosis. These events, feelings, suppositions coalesced at the same time and one plot got tossed and another picked up. Probably a good lesson in this for aspiring writers, that even after so many books and so many years of doing this, it’s still possible to trip and fall down the rabbit hole of a wrong idea.

How has your writing changed since your debut, In the Heat of the Summer (1982)?
At the beginning of one’s career, it’s so much seat of the pants flying. What sounds right on the page? When you get older and wiser you hope to endow characters with greater depth and to tie the knots of your stories tighter. My friend, the great writer (and barely adequate fisherman) Phil Caputo always says that there ought to be a law, or perhaps something in the Constitution, that allows authors to go back and rewrite their first novel after they’ve written five others, because then they actually know what they’re doing. Much good sense in this statement, I think.

How different is the thriller genre now as opposed to when you first started out?
You know, I think the thriller genre has changed some – but mostly in response to television and film. TV seems to have taken over the procedurals (thank you Jerry Bruckheimer and CSI Everywhere). And movies demand more depth and sophistication in thrillers because they have to appeal to a non-thirteen year old boy or girl audience. So authors place greater psychological demands on their stories. At least that’s my impression. If I’m wrong, just cancel everything I just said.

Will we see more movies from your novels?
More movies? Sure. My last book The Wrong Man was filmed for France 2 television this past year. A terrific, unsettling and very stylish job by an excellent director named Didier LePecheur. My book The Analyst keeps bubbling up both here and abroad. But I’m most optimistic that the novel I wrote in 2004 The Madman’s Tale will be filmed this year. I did the script adaptation myself for an Australian director and we’re well on the way to being funded. Now, as the Bard wrote, “there’s many a slip betwixt the lip and the cup” so one needs to be cautious. But cinematic hope springs eternal.

Have you ever wanted to write a series?
Nope. Never wanted to write a series to the immense dismay of my agent and various editors.

Your hobby is fly fishing. Will you ever write a novel with fly fishing at the center?
Curious question. Fly fishing at the center of a thriller? I thought that fly fishing was already in the center of all my novels. Just not explicitly.

What next?
What Comes Next? A little pun, there. I’m hard at work on a new book. Three women who do not know one another, a 17-year old high school student, a 34-year-old recent widow and a 51-year-old internist living alone all get the same message at the same time on the same day: “I’m coming for you.” What they do about this threat is the core of the new book.