Author R&R with Lis Wiehl

 

Lis Wiehl earned her Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School and her Master of Arts in Literature from the University of Queensland and has forged a career in both tracks. As an attorney, she served as a Federal Prosecutor in the United States Attorney’s office, was a legal analyst and reporter for NBC News, NPR’s All Things Considered, and Fox News, and is a Professor of Law at New York Law School. On the literary side, she has published a series featuring Seattle prosecutor Mia Quinn and homicide detective Charlie Carlson, although her latest legal thriller is The Newsmakers.

The Newsmakers centers on TV reporter Erica Sparks, who is detemined to success in the cutthroat world of big-time broadcasting, even if it means leaving her eight-year-old daughter in the custody of her ex-husband. Erica lands her dream job at Global News Network in New York, but on her very first assignment, Erica inadvertently witnesses — and films — a horrific tragedy, scooping all the other networks. Mere weeks later, another tragedy strikes — again, right in front of Erica and her cameras. But when she becomes a superstar overnight, is it due to her hard work or the result of a spiraling conspiracy that may expose her troubled past?

Wiehl stops by In Reference to Murder today to take some Author R&R and discuss the inspiration for the novel:

I was sitting in a steakhouse in midtown Manhattan when the idea for The Newsmakers hit me.

I'd been casting around for an idea for a new mystery-thriller series. I quickly decided I wanted to set it in a world I knew intimately: cable network news. After all, I'd been a legal analyst and anchor at FOX News for almost 15 years.

I've always been fascinated by journalism and its search for the truth. I think it's a noble and important profession. But it does have a darker side. It gives rogue reporters a platform to advance their careers by embellishing, or even making up, stories. I remembered the Jayson Blair scandal. Blair was the young New York Times reporter who both plagiarized and fabricated stories, often inventing characters and putting words in their mouths that bolstered whatever point he was trying to make in his article. What would happen, I wondered, if an ambitious, even ruthless television journalist engaged in the same thing, with devastating repercussions?

I felt the idea was promising but that it lacked a certain oomph. Then one day my friend Steve Berry, who also writes thrillers and mysteries, and is also an attorney, was in New York. He visited me at FOX news headquarters at 1211 Sixth Avenue, and we then went out to lunch at Del Frisco's steakhouse directly across the street. I was sitting facing the street and over Steve's shoulder I could see 1211 and it scrolling news ticker.

I told Steve my thoughts about my new series, the idea of a reporter who basically creates news to further his career. Steve listened thoughtfully, nodded, and then said the two words that ignited my imagination: "Go big."

I looked across the street at the towering skyscraper that seemed to pierce the clouds, its lower floors belted with the continuous news feed, and it hit it me: What if it wasn't one immoral reporter who was manufacturing the news, what if it was an entire network, led by an evil megalomaniac? And what if his goal wasn't just personal ambition, it was nothing less than world domination?

I felt an immediate surge of adrenaline and ran my brainstorm past Steve, whose eyes lit up. I'm afraid I was lousy company for the rest of the meal, because I couldn't wait to get back to my office and start making notes.

As I scribbled, my excitement grew and I called my agent, Todd Shuster, who has a fantastic editorial eye. Todd loved the idea. He had just read a psychological thriller called The Mentor by Sebastian Stuart, and suggested Stuart might be a strong collaborator. I called Seb and we had an immediate rapport, bouncing ideas off each other with mounting enthusiasm. To my delight he came on board.

The star of the series is Erica Sparks, a young and ambitious regional reporter with more than one dark secret in her past. Erica is the product of an abusive childhood, and struggles to build a healthy relationship with her own 8-year-old daughter. When she's hired by a fledgling cable news network founded by tech billionaire Nylan Hastings, she moves to New York and slowly finds herself pulled into a web of evil and depravity. While the story is certainly big and plot driven, we worked to layer the book with emotional complexity and suspense.

It was great fun to take readers behind the scenes at a cable news network and introduce them to everyone from the hair and makeup people, to the sound and camera techs, to the CEO. It's a messy, thrilling, and ruthless world that literally has its finger on the planet's pulse.

That's how my new series was born. Sometimes I wonder what would, or wouldn't, have happened if Steve and I had swapped places at lunch that day.

© 2015 Lis Wiehl, author of The Newsmakers

 

You can read more about Lis Wiehl and her novels via her website and follow her on Facebook and Twitter.

Author R&R with Scott Allan Morrison

 

Scott Allan Morrison was a journalist for almost twenty years, covering politics, business, and technology in Mexico, Canada, and the United States. Morrison arrived in Silicon Valley as a reporter for the Financial Times during the darkest days of the dot-com crash. Over the course of a decade, Morrison covered most of the world’s top tech companies and chronicled many of Silicon Valley’s greatest stories, including the rise of Internet insecurity and the explosion of social media. Morrison's new thriller Terms of Use, which deals with the weighty issues of cyber security and social media, was inspired in part by Scott's background as a journalist.

Terms of Use centers on Circles, the most popular social network in the world: vast, ubiquitous, and constantly evolving. Days before expanding into China, Circles suffers a devastating cyberattack—and a key executive is brutally murdered. As he fights to save the company he helped build, top engineer Sergio Mansour uncovers evidence of a massive conspiracy that turns the power of Circles against its users. But as Sergio investigates, someone is watching his every move, someone ruthless enough to brand him a criminal and set a vicious hit man on his trail. Desperate to clear his name, Sergio turns to Malina Olson, a beautiful and headstrong doctor who has an agenda of her own. Now, he and Malina must survive long enough to expose the truth in a world without hiding places, where a single keystroke can shift the global balance of power.

Morrison stops by In Reference to Murder today to discuss researching the book and how his background played a role in its writing:

 

I spent a decade as a Silicon Valley correspondent for the Financial Times, Red Herring and Dow Jones Newswires, so I guess you could say I started researching Terms of Use more than 10 years ago without even realizing it.

I covered a wide range of companies, topics and trends, and over time it became apparent the companies that dominate the Internet have amassed great deal of power, most of it derived from their ability to collect and analyze our data.

I also met hundreds of contacts in Silicon Valley, some of whom became friends over time. Often, over dinner and drinks, we’d get into discussions about data privacy and the power of social media, and I realized that industry insiders were concerned about the direction in which we are all moving. Sometimes we’d get into “what if?” discussions and I began to wonder what could happen if this tremendous capability – which can most certainly be a force for good – were to fall into the hands of people with the wrong motives.

I had a pretty good foundation already in place when I set out to research and write Terms of Use. But while I understood what was conceptually possible, I needed a lot of technical guidance to bring my hypothetical scenarios to life on the page. And for me, that meant relying a reporter’s most important research tool: the interview.

Over the next many months, I interviewed dozens of Silicon Valley coders, network architects, security experts, IT consultants, entrepreneurs and even a venture capitalist. But before asking a single question, I made sure they understood what I was writing and why.

By and large, there were no set rules for these meetings. Early discussions were conceptual in nature, as I needed to build a credible plot. Once I settled on the overall arc of the story, I peppered my sources with questions about tech company practices, coding techniques and security measures. The next challenge was to simplify all the technobabble so that it remained accurate, yet easy for a mainstream audience to read. I repeatedly went back to my sources to make sure my interpretation of their words reflected their true meaning.

I also interviewed a friend who is an emergency room doctor. She was basis for my Malina character and the gnarly ER stories in the novel were drawn straight from her experiences. This doctor and many other female friends helped me shape Malina’s personality, and they guided me through a key decision this character makes early in the novel. My friends assured me they might well have made the same choice in the right circumstances.

My greatest challenge was nailing down the procedures, tactics, habits and language of law enforcement. While I could call on dozens of talkative techies, I didn’t know a single police officer or FBI agent. So I began putting out feelers, asking everyone I could think of if they had any connections with someone in law enforcement, whether a brother, uncle, or friend.

I got my first big break when I met a retired county sheriff and fellow author at a writing workshop. After pointing out that several details in one particular scene didn’t ring true, Dave handed me his phone number and told me to call any time I had policing questions. A short while later I discovered the new goalie on my hockey team was an FBI agent and he too agreed to help as necessary.

I never asked either of them to share confidential information. Instead, I’d summarize scenarios I’d concocted – chain of command conflicts, SWAT raids, taskforce meetings, etc. – and ask them to correct me when strayed outside the bounds of verisimilitude. Occasionally they would figuratively delete entire pages and explain how they’d handle a specific situation, right down to the weapons and gear they’d use.

And finally, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention all those Google searches (the Lebanese emigration to Mexico, the mines of Bayan Obo, WiFi hacking tools, etc), as well as Google Maps. My novel is set in San Francisco, but it takes readers to southern California, China and the Philippines. I used Google Maps to ensure directions, distances and geographic features were accurate. More importantly, I relied heavily on Street View to help me describe scenes in the novel, particularly those set in Beijing and Baotou.

I may have spent as much time researching Terms of Use as I did writing it. But it was time well-spent, because it was crucial in enabling me to create a well-rounded story that has enough depth, context and atmosphere to draw in readers and hold their attention – hopefully – for hours on end.

 

To find out more about Morrison and Terms of Use, check out his website or follow him on Facebook, and you can order a copy of the book here.