Crime Cafe Podcast and a Giveaway!

Posted on by - Legal fiction

Seven Shadows

In celebration of my upcoming new release, Seven Shadows, I’m giving away seven copies of my first Dana Hargrove novel, Thursday’s List. To enter, click here for details!

Thursday’s List is where it all started for Dana. The novel takes place in 1988, when Dana was a mere fledgling, 26 years old, with a promising legal career ahead of her. Each standalone novel in the series skips several years, finding Dana at distinct stages of her personal life and career. Seven Shadows takes place in 2015. Dana is 53, a respected trial judge and now, more than ever, controversial cases throw the judge into dilemmas of conscience, and people from her past reappear, threatening Dana and her family.

After writing five novels featuring this dynamic woman, I am fully immersed in her life and have grown close to her family members, friends, and colleagues. My alternate reality!

Readers of mystery, suspense, thriller, and crime fiction will love author Debbi Mack‘s podcast, Crime Cafe. She has interviewed dozens of authors, and chances are, your favorites are among them. You can find links on her website. I enjoyed talking with Debbi recently about the Dana Hargrove novels and my experience in the law. Debbi and I have much in common, as fellow attorneys who write legal thrillers. Click here to listen to the podcast!

The Contest: Book Review and Conversation with Kate Robinson

Posted on by - Fiction Favorites & Awesome Authors, Literary fiction

I recently made an exciting discovery I’d like to share with you, a story collection by authors new to me, Joe DiBuduo and Kate Robinson.

 

The Contest and Other Stories is exceptional in every respect: concept, writing quality, and pure entertainment value. The nineteen stories in this volume could stand alone as an exquisite collection of short fiction, but the authors have added so much more, framing them, uniquely and imaginatively, in the context of an engaging novella about a struggling art magazine in the 1960s. The magazine holds a monthly short fiction contest, challenging writers to submit tales inspired by classic oil paintings. The nineteen winners of the contest, with the artworks that inspired them, alternate with chapters of the novella.

The short stories run the spectrum from the delightful and fanciful to the macabre and horrific. A few of my favorites: A bone-chilling alternate history of Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo’s demise while exploring Santa Catalina Island in 1542. A look inside the mind of a hallucinating, mad artist, Vincent Van Gogh, negotiating with his muse. A seemingly sweet, romantic nineteenth century tale aboard a passenger ship that surprisingly creeps into a nightmare on the power of memory. A slowly unfolding mystery about the significance of an artifact from the time of Napoleon. A heartwarming paranormal story of reincarnation and transformation, from dead-of-winter tragedy to a sunny future of hope and life.

After each story, I thoroughly enjoyed the ensuing chapter of the novella, eager to learn what would befall the art magazine and its engaging cast of characters, eager to learn, after that, which artwork the editors would choose for the contest and to read the next “contest winner,” assured that it would be something entirely new and outstanding. The novella itself ends in a surprising twist. In short, this was a page-turner, and even better than that, a testament to the value and necessity of art and creativity.

The Contest is for anyone who loves great storytelling, a unique and different reading experience, and thought-provoking themes that honor your intelligence and spur your imagination. I’m thrilled that Kate Robinson, one half of the writing team, has graciously agreed to answer my burning questions about this unique, creative project.

Welcome to VBlog, Kate! Tell us a little about your background and that of your co-author Joe DiBuduo.

We like to say that Joe has the vivid imagination and I have the word-whacking toolbox, as stated in the book bio. Of course, in reality we both have the imaginative and editorial sides of author mind, though we often see things differently. That presents some challenges in collaboration, but it also brings many strengths—the ability to see characters and plots from various angles is helpful.

Joe and Kate

I began writing poetry in childhood and didn’t become interested in writing fiction until my forties, and my initial immersion in poetry fostered a lyrical aspect to my prose, or so I’m told. Joe began writing fiction in his sixties and later adopted poetry into his daily writing routine after he had a good feel for the mechanics of story. He’s developed a style he calls “poetic flash fiction”—he’s partial to telling stories within the confines of many of his poems.

I’m more an anything goes type of writer—I’m game for whatever my subconscious channels at any particular time, and my body of work is smaller than Joe’s but more diverse in that I experiment with many different styles.

How did you and Joe develop the concept for The Contest?

Joe is an artist who works in many media—glasswork, sculpture, and painting. So he has a natural bent for art and a strong interest in art history. He has a great love of coffee table art books and visiting art galleries and museums, and his walls at home are filled with paintings and his front yard is filled with his massive sculptures.

As Joe was learning to write fiction, he chose to use artwork as story prompts. While he worked with these stories inspired by paintings, he envisioned a connected collection of historical stories linked with a more contemporary story about a young man struggling to find his way in the world. And so, The Contest and Other Stories was born.

When I began crafting story, I used my dream journal entries rather than visual art as prompts.

I’m also a museum aficionado, but I lean more toward appreciation of the historical and anthropological aspects of museum collections. I have a BA in Anthropology with emphasis in Museum Studies and a big interest in indigenous peoples’ cultural stories and in their modern fiction.

So we each brought our unique interests and talents into this quirky collection of stories.

Tell us a little about how your collaboration worked.

Joe began presenting the artwork prompted stories to the critique group we both belonged to in the early ‘00s. I felt these stories were his best work at the time (and I still feel that’s true today). I was thoroughly intrigued with the stories and greatly enjoyed critiquing them. Eventually, Joe had a rough draft consisting of the connecting novella and nearly three dozen stories in various stages of completion. He felt bogged down with the enormity of fleshing out the incomplete stories and paring the collection down to a manageable size, and knowing I loved the stories, he invited me to share his vision as a co-editor and co-author. By this time (early 2011), he still lived in north-central Arizona and I had landed in California after a year of working on a Master’s degree in Wales. So the collaboration became one done via lots and lots of emails forwarded back and forth over the next several years.

In retrospect, Joe had the initial vision and the initial go at writing the collection draft, and I followed up with my two cents. In some cases, I simply line edited nearly finished stories, and in other cases, I did substantial research and writing to complete them. I also designed the book interior and did some marketing in the form of submitting stories to journals and anthologies to drum up interest in the collection. We had a half-dozen stories published in advance of the book.

Each story in this collection is unique. Do you have particular favorites?

I’m partial to the stories in which the artists appear, especially those in the context of magical realism or alternate history—or both. “Night Café” is my personal favorite. “Masterpiece” and “A Life in Flowers” are two others I enjoy reading time and time again.

Joe is also particularly proud of “Night Café” because he’s particularly fond of the work of Vincent van Gogh, and because the story won a quarterly New Short Fiction Award at a music website, Jerry Jazz Musician, in 2012.

Kate, thank you for this insight into your collaboration!

Dear Short Story Lovers,

I highly recommend The Contest! Get it here.

Stay tuned for more short story news, coming your way soon! I have three new stories, to be published this year in a magazine and anthologies. And…wish me luck. My latest collection, Your Pick: Selected Stories, is currently a finalist for the 2019 Montaigne Medal. The award, named for French philosopher Michel de Montaigne, is for “the most thought-provoking books. . .that either illuminate, progress, or redirect thought.”

Your Pick is a 5-star Readers’ Favorite and “recommended without reservation” by Book Viral.

The Blue: Book Review and Conversation with Nancy Bilyeau

Posted on by - Fiction Favorites & Awesome Authors

For this installment of Fiction Favorites and Awesome Authors, I welcome author Nancy Bilyeau to VBlog.

Nancy’s recent release, The Blue, is a novel of suspense set in the rivalrous art and porcelain worlds of 18th century Europe. The protagonist, Genevieve Planché, is an English-born descendant of Huguenot refugees, a young artist who resorts to extreme measures in her quest to follow her dream. Her journey follows an unpredictable path of intrigue, danger, crime, and romance. The characters we meet along the way have their own personal agendas, whether political, commercial, scientific, artistic, or romantic.

“We see blue everywhere in the natural world, in the sky and the sea and the lakes…but what do we really see? It’s ephemeral. A reflection of something else.” So explains the chemist who feverishly works to capture the most desirable shade of blue and successfully apply it to the decoration of porcelain. In the midst of the Seven Years’ War, England and France are in a race to develop this elusive formula for their lucrative porcelain industries.

The Blue is meticulously researched, bursting with colorful details that draw you into the story, from the wild boar hairs in Genevieve’s paint brushes to the dangers of mining cobalt ore deep in the mountains of Saxony. In the month since its release, much has been written about The Blue (see blog tour links, below). It was the Goodreads’ Recommended Choice for Historical Novel in December 2018 and a BookBub Editors’ Choice for New Releases.

No spoilers here! I will simply say that if you enjoy historical fiction, crime and suspense, romance, plot twists, interesting characters, or just a great story, The Blue is for you! And now, to give us some fascinating details behind the scenes, Nancy has graciously agreed to answer some of my burning questions.

Welcome to VBlog Nancy! I understand that you drew on your own Huguenot background in writing The Blue and named a character, Pierre Billiou, after an ancestor. Tell us a bit about your ancestry and the part it played in your inspiration for this work.

I named a character, Pierre Billiou, after my own ancestor, though it is not his life I am describing. I wanted to pay homage to my Huguenot background by using his name. The Pierre in my novel fled France for England as a young child after Louis XIV took action against the Protestants in his kingdom in 1685—it’s called the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Basically, the King was canceling the measures of tolerance for Protestants. He wanted France to be One King, One Faith. Pierre and his family settled in Spitalfields, in London. My book takes place in England and France, so I needed to make these changes.

Now the real Pierre Billiou, not the one in my book but the one I am descended from, left Europe even earlier. France was not too welcoming to Protestants even before Louis XIV took such an action, and there were a great many Huguenot immigrants coming to America. They gathered in New York, South Carolina, and Virginia.  Pierre immigrated to New Amsterdam (now New York City) in 1661. One of his children was born on the boat crossing the Atlantic—I am actually descended from that son. I have two kids, and I can’t imagine giving birth on a boat crossing the Atlantic in the 1660s! I’m very curious about what life was like in all ways for him. What I know is that he built a stone house on Staten Island—it’s still standing today and is on the National Register—and he was involved in colonial government. But when the English sailed into the harbor, they took over. Changed the name of the city and demoted the Dutch and the Huguenots who were running things.

I was able to research Huguenot lives, beliefs, and values—which I was already interested in—while working on this novel, which gave it an extra level for me.

Some writers begin with the creation of character, letting the characters guide them to the story, other writers begin with the creation of plot. How would you describe your writing process for this novel?

I didn’t come up with my main character, Genevieve Planché, and then create a story for her. I came up with the idea of a spy story set in the porcelain world of the 18th century and then I figured out some specifics that led me to the characters. First, where is the story going to take place? I decided to make it about the rivalry between France and England that was so intense during the entire century (and longer!), extending into the porcelain business, so the story would begin in England. What kind of spy did I want to write about? Once I read that Huguenots and their creativity and artistry were essential in several English porcelain factories, Genevieve took shape in my mind. As for Sir Gabriel Courtenay, the “master spy,” he is based on research I did about espionage of the time—can’t say more because of spoilers. But espionage during this time is fascinating—and largely undiscovered country to readers today. I find with historical fiction you can’t come up with fully developed characters until you know your period well, otherwise they might not be grounded in reality. For me to say, I’ll write a brilliant police detective in the 1750s, pretty quickly I would run into the fact that the Bow Street Runners, the forerunners of the British police force, were in very early stages then. You have to avoid a modern mindset in character creation.

The Blue has wonderful passages about the creation and importance of art, and you’ve dedicated the novel to your father, “who loved art so very much.” Tell us about the place of art in your life.

My father from a young age loved art and wanted to paint. He came from the opposite of an artistic family. My grandfather moved his family from Tennessee to Detroit, Michigan, in desperation for work during the Depression. He got a job at Henry Ford that he was proud of. He thought the fact that my father wanted to be an artist meant he wasn’t manly and he was abusive about it. My father enlisted in the US Navy in World War II in its final months as soon as he turned 18. When he returned to Detroit, he went to art school on the GI Bill. He worked as a commercial artist in Illinois and Michigan to support his family, but he had an art studio in our basement and I have many memories of his painting watercolor landscapes down there. He sold his watercolors at art fairs, principally the Ann Arbor Art Fair, and a few Midwest galleries. I used to help out during the Ann Arbor Art Fair; he had a booth on Main Street. Those were long days! But it was a happy exhaustion. So for me, art was the heart and soul of my father, and I was part of that through watching him and helping him a bit. I understood that it was a calling for him that he almost couldn’t control. He always wanted to create. I absorbed the struggle to succeed as an artist and the intense competition and classism. A Michigan factory worker’s son is not going to have an easy path into the art world.

I am not an artist myself, but I am an avid museum goer; I love to look at great art.

In reading the novel, I felt Genevieve’s pain and frustration at the roadblocks to her aspirations as an artist. In your research of 18th century female artists, did the story of any single artist serve as inspiration for your character Genevieve?

I probably drew on some of my own frustration over roadblocks in success as a writer as well as watching my father struggle. He wanted to be acknowledged as a fine artist but he wasn’t treated as one or reviewed as one in his lifetime. His work did sell fairly well, and is still selling on eBay. I read an interesting analysis of his technique online that went with one of these paintings that I think would have made him happy.

I researched a few women artists who had to overcome the disapproval of their being artists in the 18th century because of their gender.  I found the life of  Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun enlightening in several ways. She was successful in the late 18th century and is famous for her portraits of Marie Antoinette. When she was in her teen years, she was painting professionally in France and her studio was actually seized for her practicing without a license! After that she married a painter and he helped her; that was a way for women to surmount the obstacles. She made use of family connections too. Once Marie Antoinette decided to give her commissions, she was obviously set. But what is interesting is that I went to an exhibit of Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and while admiring her body of work I thought some of the faces lacked expressiveness. Here’s the problem: In the 18th century, to be a great artist you needed talent and drive but you also had to have intense training. In my novel, Genevieve realizes she needs to work as an apprentice; she is clear-eyed about the technique she must master to reach a desired level. Her inability to find someone to teach her is what sets her on a certain risky path.

Masterfully woven into your story of riveting suspense are several thematic elements relevant to mid-18th century Europe, including political intrigue, industry and the economy, the roles of gender and social class, and the interplay of art and science. Did you set out to incorporate all these elements into your story?

I didn’t explicitly do that, no. But by being drawn to spying and politics and art and science when they were at this exciting juncture in the 18th century, these other issues naturally come out of that. And I am always drawn to social class in my novels, I think. After four books, I clearly can’t stay away!

I’m very heartened by the readers who like the fact that my novel delves into these areas. I’ve been criticized for it in the past. One industry professional said, “You’d have a much easier time if you’d write romances about dukes and pirates.”

Well, Nancy, I’d say that The Blue has far more to give than a romance about dukes and pirates! I so enjoyed it and look forward to reading whatever you have in store for us next.

I’m with Nancy and writer friends at Mystery Writers of America, NY chapter, holiday party

Dear Readers,

Historical Fiction Virtual Blog Tours is hosting a Giveaway of The Blue. Click here to enter by January 18. Visit the blogs on the tour schedule, listed below.

Nancy is also the author of three, very well-received novels in a Tudor mystery series, The Crown, The Chalice, and The Tapestry. Discover all her books on Goodreads and Amazon.

Blog Tour Schedule

Wednesday, January 9
Review at A Bookish Affair

Thursday, January 10
Review at 100 Pages a Day

Friday, January 11
Review at Passages to the Past

Saturday, January 12
Interview at Passages to the Past

Sunday, January 13
Interview at V.S. Kemanis

Monday, January 14
Review at Let Them Read Books

Tuesday, January 15
Review at Historical Fiction with Spirit

Wednesday, January 16
Excerpt at Umut Reviews

Thursday, January 17
Review at Reading the Past

Friday, January 18
Review at Tar Heel Reader

Legal Eagles, Attorneys Writing Fiction (4): Kevin Egan

Posted on by - Book review, Legal Eagles

Midnight by Kevin Egan

I’m pleased to welcome author Kevin Egan to VBlog for this installment of Legal Eagles. I first met Kevin a few years ago at a meeting of the Mystery Writers of America, New York chapter. We soon discovered a few things we have in common. Not only are we attorneys who write crime fiction, we also have years of experience working for New York courts and judges. We know what it’s like to juggle a demanding legal career with a passion for fiction writing, squeezing the current work-in-progress into the cracks at either end of the workday and on weekends.

In our careers, we’ve both held positions as judicial law clerks. Don’t be fooled by the word “clerk.” This position is held by an attorney who works closely with a judge in a confidential capacity. While the degree of authority delegated to the law clerk varies from judge to judge, many law clerks exert considerable influence over the court’s decisions.

When Kevin explained the premise for his novel Midnight, I had to read it! The unique plot is built around the relationship between a law clerk and his judge in a setting I know very well, the courthouses in lower Manhattan. Unlike many crime novels, Midnight opens not with a murder but with the judge’s death from natural causes, which serves as the catalyst for a series of progressively serious crimes.

You won’t anticipate the many twists and turns in the domino spiral, set in motion by the slowly unfolding secrets of the characters and their conflicting motivations. Tom, the judge’s law clerk, is in debt to a loan shark and feels no serious ethical qualms in rewriting the judge’s opinions to buy his way out of trouble. Carol, the judge’s secretary, carries the financial and emotional weight of caring for her son and her mother while harboring secrets of past sexual affairs. A couple of court officers are anxiously awaiting the judge’s decision in a lawsuit that could abolish their overtime pay. Add to these characters the loan shark’s collection thug, a corrupt union boss, and a brutal mobster, and the resulting web of criminal intrigue spins out of control.

Fans of noir and legal thriller will thoroughly enjoy this compulsively readable tale of desperation and consequence. Legal details are deftly woven into the plot in a way that is easily understood without sacrificing accuracy. Midnight was a Kirkus Best Book of 2013 and is the first of three novels to feature the character Foxx, one of the court officers in the tale. You bet, I’ve put the next two novels on my “to-read” list! They are The Missing Piece (2015), and A Shattered Circle (2017), which received the coveted starred review from Publishers Weekly.

Welcome to VBlog, Kevin! I really enjoyed Midnight. How did you come up with your idea for this novel?

A law clerk and confidential secretary—the standard judicial staff in New York state courts—are personal appointments, which gives the judge free rein to hire and fire without an agency like the EEOC stepping in. However, if a judge dies or retires mid-term, an actual law—Judiciary Law § 36—determines the employment fate of the judge’s staff. It may be an oversimplification, but in dramatic terms, if the judge dies or retires, the staff keep their jobs until the end of that calendar year. So Midnight starts with a premise—what is the worst day of the year for a judge to die? Answer: New Year’s Eve. Tom and Carol’s plan to save their jobs for another year is simple enough: remove the judge’s body from chambers, place him in his bed in his apartment, then begin to “worry” about his failure to return to work until mid-day on January 2. But the plan turns out to be anything but simple.

Do you tend to write an outline first or just take the idea and run with it?

I have published 8 novels, and 7 of them have been written in the “take the idea and run with it” method. The lone exception is Midnight. Midnight first appeared as a short story in the January 2010 issue of Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. By that point, I was already working on expanding the premise into a novel. It was the only time I created a full outline, which I then followed with only minor deviations. The structure was rigid. It was to cover a period of four days, from December 31 to January 3. Each day presented a problem that Tom and Carol seemingly overcame by nightfall, only to have a more serious problem arise the next day.

Tell us a bit about works by K.J. Egan and Conor Daly. What went into your decision to use pseudonyms? Do you have any advice for writers on this subject?

My first book was a science fiction novel called The Perseus Breed. I started writing a sequel, but then switched to writing what would become a three-book golf mystery series. My agent insisted that I needed a pen name for the mysteries because, in her words, bookstores don’t want the same author on different shelves. And so Conor Daly was born. Having a pen name seemed problematic at the time, though I can’t recall any specifics other than a reader who persisted in writing letters to me as Conan Doyle.

Twelve years intervened between the last Conor Daly book and Where It Lies. By then, I decided to nudge my pen name closer to my real name. There also was a strategy. Since Where It Lies featured a first-person female narrator, I wanted a gender-neutral name on the cover. Using my initials filled that bill.

As for advice, I’ve come to believe that a pen name is a necessary evil. Publishers are much less patient with poor sales, and sales figures now hang onto an author like Jacob Marley’s chains. A pen name can offer a fresh start.

What’s next for you? Is another novel in the works?

I also write short stories. “The Movie Lover,” appearing in the July/August issue of AHMM will be my 26th published short story. I started this year on a short story tear, writing three in the month of January. As for novels, remember that science fiction novel I put down to become Conor Daly? I’ve returned to it.

Thank you for joining me on VBlog, Kevin!

Dear Reader, do you love legal thrillers? Pick up one of Kevin Egan’s books! Also, check out the other entries in the Legal Eagles series on VBlog to learn more about these attorneys who write crime fiction: Manuel Ramos, Allison Leotta, Allen Eskens, Adam Mitzner, Jerri Blair, Brian Clary, and of course, Yours Truly.