Author R&R with D. Anton Stelzig

D. Anton Stelzig worked as biochemist, studying—among things—the fungus that caused the 19th century Irish potato famine, before he retired to open an art gallery in Morgantown. That kickstarted his writing hobby into high gear, resulting in his debut novel, Brotherhood, a political thriller set against the backdrop of power, secrecy, and betrayal at the highest levels of government.

Brotherhood follows Joe Angotti, who built a following by exposing the truth on his political blog. But when he announces the existence of a shadowy terrorist cell calling itself Brotherhood, he becomes the story. Kidnapped, tortured to discover how he learned about Brotherhood, and nearly killed by his captors, Joe escapes—only to find himself on the run from ruthless extremists,who want him dead and from a bumbling cop, who wants to send him to prison for crimes he didn't commit.

With his memory shattered, his name smeared, and people he loves in the crosshairs, Joe must piece together the truth before the clock runs out, because Brotherhood thugs aren't just hunting him; they're planning something far more sinister. And the closer Joe gets to the truth, the more dangerous it becomes.

Joe's troubles become complicated when the terrorists snatch both his girlfriend and a rookie FBI agent he has befriended, who they vow to kill unless Joe surrenders to them. Innocent citizens have died because of Joe's carelessness. Adding two more to his conscience is not an option, especially when the two are people most dear to him. But he has no idea how to find the terrorists, let alone what to do if he did—and he has less than twenty-four hours to come up with a plan.

D. Anton Stelzig stops by In Reference to Murder to take some Author R&R about researching and writing the novel:

I don’t particularly enjoy writing.

That may be an odd admission from someone who has just published a novel, but I’ve never been one of those authors who says he writes because he has to. I write because I can. For me, writing is a lot like assembling a jigsaw puzzle. It’s a lot of work, but the finished product can be pleasing. And once in a while, while rewriting my rewrites, I come up with a phrase or a sentence, on a really good day an entire scene, that pleases me.

That’s enough to keep me going.

For most of my professional life, the writing I did was scientific. I was a biochemist at West Virginia University, and much of my research involved plants and plant disease. I wrote papers for scientific journals, and the people reading them didn’t give a damn about my life or the lives of my graduate students. They wanted to know what we did, what happened, and what the evidence showed.

I suspect some of that followed me into fiction.

My chapters tend to be short. I like action. I want the plot to move. I spend time developing characters, of course, but probably less than a lot of writers do. If something happens, I want to know what happens because of it. And then what happens next.

That way of thinking came in handy when I wrote Brotherhood.

The novel begins when a young political blogger, Joe Angotti, gets an anonymous tip about a terrorist organization called Brotherhood operating in Washington, D.C. Joe publishes what he knows. Brotherhood wants his source. Unfortunately for Joe, he doesn’t have one.

They kidnap him anyway.

Joe eventually escapes, but he’s been tortured, shot, and nearly frozen to death. He wakes in a hospital with no idea who he is or what happened to him. Then the police start finding evidence that makes him look less like a victim and more like a criminal.

That’s where the puzzle really begins.

Except when you write a novel, you have to make the puzzle pieces before you can put them together.

A scientist deals with something similar. You collect information. Some of it turns out to be important. Some doesn’t. Sometimes a small detail becomes much more important later. And sometimes what you find tells you that what you thought was happening couldn’t possibly be right.

In Brotherhood, Joe is found shot, handcuffed, barefoot, and almost frozen to death. Then there’s a damaged Mercedes. Blood. A gun. Fingerprints. Stolen license plates. The police draw conclusions from what they find. Some are right. Others aren’t.

I enjoyed putting all that together.

Not the torture, terrorism, and people shooting one another, obviously. The problem solving.

My years in science taught me to pay attention to evidence. If you think something happened one way and the evidence says otherwise, you’d better reconsider what you think happened. You don’t get to change the evidence because it’s inconvenient.

A thriller writer shouldn’t either.

I knew where I wanted Brotherhood to go, but I still had to get everyone there in a way that made sense. If Joe does one thing, there has to be a reasonable consequence. If the police find a piece of evidence, they have to react to what they know at that moment, not what I know as the guy writing the book.

My background helped in some more obvious ways too. Chemistry gave me a foundation for some of the forensic and technical details. And after a tour in the Navy, I know my way around a ship well enough to keep the maritime portions of the story grounded in reality.

But I think the biggest influence of my earlier life is simpler than that.

I spent a lot of years asking questions, looking at results, and trying to figure out what they meant. Now I make up the questions, the results, and usually a few people trying very hard to keep anyone from figuring out what they mean.

I’m not sure that makes writing less tedious.

But it does make for a pretty good puzzle.

And every once in a while, when all the pieces finally fit, I have to admit that I enjoy it.

 
You can learn more about D. Anton Stelzig and his writing via his website and follow him on Facebook and Goodreads. Brotherhood is now available via Amazon.

Author R&R with Lauren Johnson

Lauren Johnson is an American author who believes that life begins at menopause — not conception. Setting out to create a narrative to help women stop judging and start loving themselves, Lauren is releasing the first cozy mystery in The Lizi Cleverly Midlife Badass Detective Series this week. A debut as light and delicious as soufflé, The Soufflé Also Rises follows Lizi Cleverly, an American divorcée d’un certain âge, on her quest to find her inner midlife badass in Paris, amid jewel heists, mob bosses, and lots of pastry. Lauren lives in Oak Park, Illinois with her three kitties: Bob Dylan, Jimmy Page, and Johnny Winter. The Soufflé Also Rises is her first novel.

It’s 2008 and Lizi Cleverly just can’t catch a break. On the heels of a nasty divorce and a paltry settlement agreement—barely enough to reload her Starbucks card—Lizi is laid off from her job during the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. Flat broke, Lizi takes a job at Whole Foods where she meets Frankie, a twenty-seven-year-old artist half her age whose overly simplistic worldview is exactly what Lizi needs to get on with her life. 

But after an unfortunate incident involving her ex-husband, his pregnant girlfriend, and a carton of cage-free eggs, Lizi finds herself, once again, out of a job. So what does a fifty-four-year-old woman with no money, no job, and no prospects do? She sells all her possessions and goes to Paris in search of her long-lost dream: to write her first novel. But when the airline loses her luggage and offers her a meal voucher for the famed Hotel Jolie, Lizi pounces on the opportunity while unwittingly setting off a chain of events which land her at the center of the notorious Harry Winston jewel heist. And when her young partner-in-crime joins her in Paris, the two must outrun the Serbian mafia while trying not to trip over the dead bodies left in their wake.

Lauren Johnson stops by In Reference to Murder to take some Author R&R about researching and writing the book:

Writing What You Know

When I began writing The Soufflé Also Rises, the first of my Lizi Cleverly Midlife Badass Detective Series, I assumed research would be the easiest part. It was lighthearted fiction, after all, written in first-person present, and Lizi and Frankie were inspired by my twenty-seven and fifty-four-year-old selves—hardly two women requiring extensive exploration. Lizi’s just trying to muddle her way through her second act—while Frankie’s still trying to figure out her first.

So, aside from the expected factual research, what more did I need to know? After all, I’d dated assholes like Lizi’s ex, been betrayed by a best friend, been fired, divorced, and generally screwed over. I had a lot of material to work with.

Easy peasy, right?

Emotional Research

But here’s the kicker: I believed I was writing what I knew. Turns out, however, I didn’t know what I thought I knew nearly as well as I thought I did. Yes, I knew my stories. I’ve told them a thousand times. But there’s a difference between remembering and reliving.

I expected the factual research. Every good novelist understands that. What surprised me, though, was how much I had to research myself.

Take Frankie, for example. Now I’m the first to admit that I still have a lot of Frankie left in me, so some of the things that come flying out of her mouth wouldn’t be unusual coming from my own mouth today. Still, I’m not twenty-seven anymore. And that’s where the research comes in. Emotional research.

In order to get myself into Frankie’s head, I had to remember what it was like being twenty-seven, not what it was like to be twenty-seven. I didn’t need to remember the facts. I needed to remember the feeling.

So, I journaled through the eyes of my younger self. Not to recount the stories of my youth, but to remember what was behind them. I started by asking myself: What kinds of things were going on in my life at twenty-seven? Who were my friends? What were my hangups? How did I view the world? By asking myself these questions and taking the time to look beyond the facts, I was able to summon feelings I’d long since forgotten—which ultimately served as the foundation for Frankie’s character.

And while I didn’t have to reach quite so far into the past for Lizi as I did Frankie, I still had to ask questions in order to better understand who Lizi is. Just because we’re both muddling through menopause doesn’t mean I can write about her experiences with emotional authority. For example, if I wanted to turn “Lauren’s hot flash story” into “Lizi’s hot flash story”, I could simply tell the same story I’ve told for years, only from Lizi’s perspective: One sub-zero winter day, after hours of drenching hot flashes, I threw on my winter coat and headed to Walgreens in search of relief: Black Cohosh. I wasn’t in the store more than two minutes before another hot flash nearly took me down. I quickly peeled off my heavy wool coat and, much to my mortification, looked down to find my white tank top plastered to my breasts, summoning long-forgotten memories of spring break in Fort Lauderdale.

While “Lauren’s hot flash story” has always been a reliable party story, simply recounting it from Lizi’s perspective wouldn’t have been enough. I had to understand what was happening beneath the mortification. It wasn’t just about the absurdly cinematic and inconvenient hot flash. It was also about vulnerability, embarrassment, and the powerlessness I felt over my own body. Those are the feelings I want my readers to recognize in themselves.

Mark Twain was right when he said to write what you know. What I didn’t realize was that knowing my own stories wasn’t enough. I had to understand the emotions beneath them. That turned out to be the hardest research of all.

You can learn more about Lauren Johnson via her publisher site. The Soufflé Also Rises is now available via Rising Action Publishing and all major booksellers.

 

Author R&R with Duncan Ritchie

Duncan Ritchie grew up on a plantation in North Borneo. After graduating from the University of Western Australia, he spent thirty years advising governments and companies on energy and infrastructure transactions and policy. He has also written persuasive non-fiction for multilateral agencies (including ADB and UNEP), advocating for policy changes and investment to address climate change (evidently, not persuasive enough). Duncan lives in Tasmania with his Malinois pup, Aletheia (Alé), who thinks he’s slightly mad. 

Concerned by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (again) and the rise of right-wing extremism, Duncan began scribbling down what-if scenarios in 2022—at the time, many seemed outlandish. At the core were the questions: if someone wanted to bring America to her knees and disturb the world order, how would they go about it? And what could be done to counter that? Those what-ifs became the foundation of his debut novel, The Truth Chamber, initially intended as a warning of the rise of fascism in America.

In an election year marred by violence, Mack Leach—the Red Caesar—rises in the polls. His rival, Democratic presidential candidate Anna Hoffman, warns a divided country that under the Red Caesar, America will devolve into an authoritarian state: a Russia 2.0. Admiral Liam Driscall, struggling with the devastating loss of his family, lives in isolation until a confrontation with a book burner jolts him into action. He sets aside his grief and joins Anna’s campaign. Liam’s team enlists the help of a Stanford PhD student developing an AI technology—the Truth Chamber—to figure out who is behind the escalating domestic chaos. This is no longer just an American election; it is a global stratagem to topple the last bastion of the old world order. Anna’s team soon learns that the truth has become political…and dangerous. And to save democracy, they may be forced to leave muddy footprints on the Constitution. The only thing they know for certain is that if the Red Caesar becomes president, it’ll be the end of the republic.

Duncan Ritchie stops by In Reference to Murder to talk about writing the book:

My aim with The Truth Chamber was to imagine a plausible speculative future for America rooted in its pre-2015 history. I wanted to hold up a mirror, then tilt it forward slightly—with the warning: “This is where you could be heading.”

The Truth Chamber challenges comfortable myths about America’s founding and explores how aspects of that founding continue to cast long shadows over the country’s politics, institutions, and progress. As an Australian writing about the United States, I knew my criticism would have to withstand scrutiny. My best defence would be meticulous research. 

I read around fifty books on fascism, propaganda, political deception, constitutional law, the Supreme Court, and the role of money and religion in American politics. I sought out unvarnished, uncomfortable histories of the United States and its founding. I wanted to understand and authentically portray the forces that ail America, and how those forces could give rise to a fascist leader: the Red Caesar.

But books alone wouldn’t be enough. In October 2024, I spent six weeks travelling through nine US states, Washington, DC, and Canada, visiting key locations from the novel. The trip coincided with the presidential election, allowing me to volunteer for a campaign in Atlanta and knock on doors. That not only gave me direct experience of a campaign, albeit on the periphery, but also invaluable conversations with voters—a real-time temperature check on the American electorate in the days before the election.

Another factor impacting the book was the ever-changing US political landscape. I finished the first draft of The Truth Chamber in July 2024, the day after Joe Biden withdrew from the 2024 presidential race. The subsequent upheaval—and the election result—forced me to rethink and rewrite significant parts of the novel, moving the point of divergence from America’s real history further back, distancing the story from an increasingly turbulent reality and strengthening its internal logic.

Research, of course, is never finished. The best I could hope for was to get as close as possible to what I call “commercial perfection”, before moving from creation to editing and publishing. I made that transition at the end of 2025 and set myself a series of hard targets to enable a September 2026 release ahead of the US midterm elections.

Kirkus Reviews described The Truth Chamber as “eerily prescient”, calling it “A gut punch to the soul of America and a must-read for all those who value their freedom and future.”

When I began writing The Truth Chamber, I had hoped its darker themes would remain in the realm of fiction for much longer.

The world, it seems, had other plans.

 
You can learn more about Duncan Ritchie via his website and follow him on Instagram, Substack, BlueSky, LinkedIn, and Goodreads. The Truth Chamber is now available via all major booksellers.