Sneak Peek

The UK edition of the fifth Jonathan Stride novel, THE BURYING PLACE, arrives in stores on September 3.  This is great news for fans overseas, but usually causes a fair amount of consternation here at home, where U.S. readers have to wait until next April.  Just don't shoot the messenger, or in this case, the writer.  For more information on the UK edition, click here.

I'm trying to make one lucky U.S. fan a little happier, though.  On September 4, I'm going to conduct a drawing among fans on my official Facebook fan page, and I'll be giving away a signed copy of the UK edition of THE BURYING PLACE to the winner.

To become a fan, click here to go to my Facebook fan page.

Don't confuse my Facebook FRIEND page with my FAN page.  They're different.  I'll be doing the drawing from my FAN page.  Why?  Well, for purely selfish reasons, I'm afraid.  Facebook fan pages provide writers with a lot of free publicity, because they pop up on highlights pages automatically.  The more fans you have, the more people see your page.  So I'm trying to encourage people who are already on my FRIEND page to become FANS.  As time goes on, I'll be posting exclusive content on my fan page, too, so it's worth joining my other readers there.

Don't forget to become a fan before September 4!  Good luck in the drawing!

Door County

I just got back from a week in Door County, Wisconsin, where I was scouting locales for book six.  If you've been to any of my reader events, you'll know that I try to choose scenes for the chapters much like a film director would.  I outline in such a way that I know how each chapter advances the story or the characters -- but I leave the setting open so that I can find locales that enrich the drama.  I do that by visiting the area, finding dramatic places that reinforce each scene, and taking voice notes and photographs.

Why Door County?  I wanted a setting in the Upper Midwest -- like the Stride novels -- but one with a more rural flavor, where there's tension between natives and outsiders.  Door County, which is like Cape Cod dropped into the Midwest, fits the bill perfectly.  It's a beautiful area, filled with lighthouses, deserted dirt roads, and quaint little shops -- but there's also an inherent discomfort between long-time residents and wealthy arrivals from Chicago.  That anxiety is part of the plot of book six.  I'm really excited about the story and characters and can't wait to share them with you.

While I was there, I also visited the lovely Novel Ideas bookstore in Baileys Harbor, which is run by Michelle, an alumna of Anderson's bookstore in Naperville, Illinois.  (Yes, another of those former Chicagoans!)  I'll be calling into Michelle's book club in October, when they read IMMORAL.

Meanwhile, UK fans are counting down toward the release of the fifth Stride novel, THE BURYING PLACE, in September.  (I know, I know, it's a long wait until the US release in April.)  One clever reader managed to get her hands on an advance reader copy from the UK and wrote to tell me it was the best book yet.  That's what I like to hear.

Captive Audience

On Thursday I had the opportunity to speak to more than two dozen inmates in the prison library at the Minnesota Correctional Facility in Shakopee, which is an all-women facility (and the only state prison for women in Minnesota). Eagled-eyed readers will remember that Serena visits an inmate at the Shakopee facility in STALKED, before her terrifying drive back to Duluth.

It’s a prison that doesn’t look like a prison at all. There is no fence. No barbed wire. From the outside, it looks more like a series of college dormitories. It’s not until you go inside that you find the guards, the metal detectors, the bullet-proof glass, and the locked doors. Even so, the facility feels more like a community than it does a traditional prison, and that’s deliberate. There’s even a parenting building in the complex in which children sometimes spend the night with their mothers under certain conditions.

Are there violent offenders at Shakopee? I’m sure. Was I talking to any of them? I don’t have a clue. I will say that listening to the women, I was reminded of the philosophy behind my psychological suspense novels – that the heroes are not all good and the villains are not all bad. I want the reader to understand the backgrounds of the characters so they can recognize the influences that led them across difficult lines and into some bad choices. I think that message resonated at the prison. I hope so.

These were ordinary women of various ages and ethnicity. I confess I found myself looking at many of them wondering: What are you doing here? How did you get here? But that again is the writer looking for the story. They asked great questions – in many cases, better than many reporters and book clubs with whom I’ve chatted in the past. As the librarian noted to me, these are women looking for the emotional makeup of the characters, and so their questions got to the heart of how you put a character together on the page.

The lightest moment was during the introduction. The librarian mentioned that one of the inmates at the facility had introduced her to my books and was a huge fan. She’d been released a month before the event. The librarian said it was almost a shame, because she knew this woman would have loved to meet me.

“I suspect she’s still happier anyway,” I said. They all laughed.