Author R&R with Pat McKee

Pat McKee studied at Presbyterian College, Georgia State University, and Emory University School of Law and later founded the law firm McKee & Barge, where he represents educators and educational institutions. Always a lover of the written word, Pat decided in 2010 to enroll in the Masters of Professional Writing Program at Kennesaw State University where he combined his legal knowledge with imaginative storytelling to craft his debut legal thriller, the futuristic Ariel's Island.

In the book, attorney Paul McDaniel is framed for the murder of a judge and enlists the help of Ariel, a female-presenting AI program, to clear his name. Yet Ariel's lack of a moral code and Paul's inability to guide her result in disaster as Ariel changes from an able assistant to something far more sinister. What will happen when Paul puts his trust in technology? And will he survive when his emotions combine with an already volatile mix?

Ariel's Island takes the reader on an odyssey that reinterprets Shakespeare’s The Tempest, by way of modernizing the classic tale of Prospero, a castaway sorcerer, the spiteful creature, Caliban, and Ariel, the air spirit. The book blends literary mythos with contemporary issues, all set within a future time period that may arrive soon – or may already be here.

Pat stops by In Reference to Murder today to talk about researching and writing the novel:

 

My first work of fiction, Ariel’s Island, is a legal/techno thriller inspired by Shakespeare’s Tempest. A young lawyer is framed for the murder of a judge, and he enlists an artificial intelligence program to help him clear his name – so you can tell right away there were multiple directions I would need to pursue research. The real challenge was to resist my inner (and dominant) nerd qualities, not spend all my time chasing arcana, and get some writing done!

So, quickly to lay to rest the part that came easiest to me, the legal stuff: Because I am (still) a practicing lawyer and have been so for over 40 years, I didn’t need to do much research in that area. As the protagonist states at one crucial point in my novel, “Being a lawyer has many benefits. One, not so evident, is that a lawyer’s mind is filled with obscure data which often comes in handy at the most opportune times, such as the knowledge that flight plans of private jets are public information . . .” (I did have to look that one up.) But for the most part I relied on my experience built over decades of litigating cases big and small, from federal courts in major cities to magistrate courts in rural communities, and on my knowledge of the inner workings of law firms – again as my protagonist observes, “a major law firm is no different from law school, the closest thing to swimming naked with great whites one can do on dry land.”

On the other hand, I am completely out of my league concerning the technical aspects of artificial intelligence – or anything else to do with computers for that matter. (I am able to operate this word processor, but don’t try to get me to explain how it works.) Writing about technology presents a more literary challenge than merely understanding how it operates; almost any specific technology one writes about is obsolete before your novel is published – a lot like seeing flip phones in a movie that is more than a few years old. While there is the temptation to put your hard-won knowledge about technology on the page – so many gigabytes about this and so many terabytes about that (and maybe bend toward the sci-fi genre than is otherwise intended) – I decided to describe the technology in my novel mostly by indirection. As when the protagonist is confronted with the computer setup of a GBI agent trained in electronic surveillance, he remarks: “Agent Grey took me inside and opened a pair of doors that appeared to be a hall closet, but instead revealed a small room with a desk, server, large flat screen monitor, and laser printer – all the latest equipment, newer even than what I had at the firm. Agent Grey rattled off some computer-geek talk about how fast and good it was, but as far as I was concerned, he might as well have been speaking in tongues.” In so doing it is my hope that the technology in my novel won’t seem so futuristic as the latest sci-fi magazine nor so soon become as out of place as having a teenage character refer to MySpace.

Where I let my imagination truly run and unloosed my desire to research down every obscure rabbit trail is in the connection of my novel with Shakespeare’s Tempest. I indulged myself with multiple readings and numerous performances of the play, then dove into the secondary sources, thematic analyses, historical investigations – most of which, I must admit, were more enjoyable than productive of words on the page. In the end, it was still Prospero’s final scene – one that convinced scholars that the wizard is a stand-in for Shakespeare himself – that inspired Ariel’s Island. Here Prospero frees the spirit Ariel and gives up his magic to travel back to Italy and claim the Dukedom of Milan. And it is his act of freeing Ariel that is the impetus of the novel: What happens when an all-powerful spirit without a moral compass is loosed upon the world?  No amount of research can help answer that question; in the end, it is all up to the imagination.

 

You can learn more about Pat McKee and Ariel’s Island via his website, or follow him on Facebook and Instagram. Ariel’s Island is available today via all major booksellers. (Note that some of the book launch events listed on his website may have been postponed or canceled due to coronavirus precautions, so check with the hosting organization first.)

Author R&R with Marty Ambrose

Marty Ambrose’s writing career has spanned almost fifteen years, with eight published novels for Avalon Books, Kensington Books, Thomas & Mercer—and, now, Severn House. She also teaches creative writing at  Florida Southwestern State College. She placed as a finalist in the Florida Writer’s Association Literary Palm Award last year with the first book in her Lord Byron Mystery trilogy, Claire’s Last Secret. Marty lives on an island in Southwest Florida with her husband, former news-anchor, Jim McLaughlin, where they tend their mango grove.  

Her second book in the trilogy, A Shadowed Fate, is set in Florence, Italy in 1873, and narrated by Claire Clairmont—the last survivor of the famous Byron/Shelley circle. She is still reeling from a series of events triggered by the arrival of an old friend, which culminated in a brutal murder, and begins a desperate search for her long-lost daughter while repairing the past with lovers who betrayed her.  Publishers Weekly describes the book as a mix of "regret and wistful longing for dead loves, [which] imbue the story with a seductive power."

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

 

Researching the Lord Byron Mystery Trilogy

When I moved from writing mysteries to historical mysteries set in Italy, I had no idea the “road of research” would take so many twists and turns.  Doing the background work for the Lord Byron Mysteries involves journeying down so many complex avenues, especially because many of my characters are actual literary figures who possess a large degree of fame from their work.  Lord Byron, Mary Shelley, and Percy Bysshe Shelley all figure prominently in my books, though they are narrated by the “almost famous” member of their circle:  Claire Clairmont, Mary Shelley’s stepsister.  So, I have to pay respect to their well-known personas, but also find a way to make them work as characters in my own mysteries—a tricky balance, especially when there are so many readers who are quite devoted to these authors’ reputations.  I find that I have to immerse myself in their biographies, letters, and journals; but, I also travel to Italy (a tough job, but someone has to do it) to find details that have never been recorded, one of the most interesting aspects of research.  I love the thrill of connecting with places and people who have knowledge that they are more than willing to pass on.

Biographies:  I always start here because my literary characters have had so many biographies written about them—especially Lord Byron.  His life has been analyzed minutely over the last two centuries.  As a writer, I delve into the facts (though they are sometimes a bit contradictory from bio to bio), so I know the basics of dates, activities, and historical events.  But what I look for is something that stands out as a possible dramatic point that can be used in my novel.  For example, I spent quite a great deal of time researching Byron’s pursuits in Ravenna during 1821, so I could include some of the intriguing episodes in his fictional memoir that I include in my book.  He was involved with the Carbonari—an Italian revolutionary group—and this figures prominently in my book to build tension in the plot.  Luckily, Byron and the others had big lives, so there is no end to mining these kinds of biographical details.

Letters and Conversations:  Famous literary figures in the nineteenth-century tended to write letters—a lot of letters.  And, luckily, the people who received these letters kept them.  What is provocative is each author takes a slightly different perspective on the same event.  Bryon wrote letters about his relationship with Claire, Mary Shelley wrote letters about his relationship with Claire and, of course, Claire wrote letters about her relationship with Byron.  I found by taking all three versions of this central couple in my mysteries, I could shade its complexities and subtleties.  Since Clair is the narrator, I did defer to her at times!  Most compelling, though, was the number of people who wrote about their “conversations” with members of the Byron/Shelley circle.  Much like today, people liked to write “tell-all” books in which these celebrated personalities were “framed” in moments of sharing reflections or simply idle chit-chat.  I read some of these volumes with skepticism but found they often had a nugget of information that I could use in character-building.

Travel:  By far, traveling to Italy twice has been one of my absolute favorite aspects of doing historical research—especially because my husband is fluent in Italian.  I visited the towns where my characters lived (often somewhat remote—which added to the adventure!) and walked through many of the houses where they lived.  I used the descriptions of these spots for setting details.  I find if I don’t see a place, I have a hard time making it “come alive” in my books.  Streets have a certain look and feel and smell.  Palazzos occupy space in a particular way.  The Italian landscape has light and shadow that is so distinctive.  Every locale I visited gave me more and more of an ability to flesh out the background setting for my characters.

Locals:  One of the most delightful aspects of researching in Italy is talking to local librarians, archivists, and academics.  They often had knowledge of my characters’ lives in Italy that I could not find in a biography.  One local whom I met in Bagni di Lucca was considered as an expert on the Byron/Shelley circle in the area (which isn’t covered too extensively in the bios).  He spoke only Italian, so my husband translated, and he showed us sights and explained little historical “footnotes” that I included in my mystery, such as the cave where Mary Shelley and Claire would enjoy the hot steam of the thermal springs, or the woods where they would roam near the town.  It always amazed me how eager locals were to share their knowledge and simply drop everything to spend time with my husband and me on our quest!

Certainly, researching historical mysteries is time-consuming, even frustrating at times; but, the excitement of digging for information and finding some unknown fact propels me through the bumps on “research road.”  And there is nothing so satisfying than having a reader/reviewer comment on the “meticulous research” of one of my books.  Bellissimo!

 

You can learn more about Marty Ambrose and her writing by visiting her website and also follow her on Facebook, Instagram, and Goodreads. A Shadowed Fate has just been released and is available via all major bookstores.

Author R&R with Jessica Moor

Jessica Moor studied English at Cambridge before completing a Creative Writing MA at Manchester University where her dissertation was awarded the second Peters Fraser Dunlop-sponsored "Creative Writing Prize for Fiction." Prior to this, she spent a year working in the violence against women and girls sector and this experience inspired her first novel, The Keeper. She currently lives in Berlin.

In Moor's novel, The Keeper, Katie Straw’s body is pulled from the waters of the local suicide spot, and the police are ready to write it off as a standard-issue female suicide. But the residents of the domestic violence shelter where Katie worked disagree. These women have spent weeks or even years waiting for the men they’re running from to catch up with them. They know immediately: This was murder. Still, Detective Dan Whitworth and his team expect an open-and-shut case ... until they discover evidence that suggests Katie wasn’t who she appeared to be.

Jessica Moor stops by In Reference to Murder to take some Author R&R about researching and writing her debut novel:

 

THE KEEPER is set in and around a shelter for women fleeing domestic violence. The body of Katie Straw, a young woman who works in the shelter, is found washed up in the local river. The police are inclined to write it off as suicide, but the women in the shelter believe otherwise. The novel follows the investigation, through the eyes of both the investigating officer and the women living in the shelter. We also delve into Katie’s history through flashback, and discover the void between who she seemed to be, and who she was. Really it’s a novel about violence against women, and the social institutions that allow that violence to continue and go unpunished.

I mostly worked in the head office of a charity that supported victims of violence against women (I wasn’t a frontline worker) but I did visit quite a few shelters. A lot of what made it into the book was little details—the kids’ pictures on the walls, the way the heating was always turned way up. But also there’s this unique feeling of entering an underground railroad—a network of secret spaces that exist to keep women safe. You realize that women essentially have to go there because there are men who want to hurt or even kill them—and the police and the courts aren’t stopping them. I think that shook my faith in the social institutions of law and justice.

I found inspiration within anger. There’s a line from Adrienne Rich that I always come back to “my visionary anger cleanses my sight.” I’m interested in the idea that anger can help us to see clearly, rather than clouding our judgement. Anger is often represented as a force that destabilizes women, in particular. I don’t think that’s true. Rebecca Traister’s book Good and Mad expresses this argument beautifully.

I was also inspired by a lot of the true crime narratives that I saw. I started writing this book in 2016, and stories like Serial and Making a Murderer had been very popular in the couple of years preceding. I take issue with the way we deploy female bodies as a narrative hook—I’m sure we can all think of examples of that. So it was a reverse inspiration; I wanted to do the opposite of those lazy depictions of women as silenced victims. I wanted to center women.

I had to work damn hard on the structure—luckily structure is one of those technical things that you can educate yourself on and improve. I took a lot of feedback from the right people to get that balance. I believe that a great story can operate as a sort of Trojan horse; you can sneak whatever themes you like, as long as you get the story right.

I don’t think it was ever particularly difficult to keep the two timelines in balance because they were always informing each other. I wanted every part of Katie’s experience to be in dialogue with the experiences of the women in the refuge. I think they always stayed roughly in balance, because to me they were connected.

The parts that came easiest were the moments of emotion—maybe it’s that visionary anger thing. Those were the bits that had stored up inside me and were just waiting to come spilling out. The tough part was the mechanics of storytelling, particularly because story is essential to crime. There’s nothing more disappointing than a great setup and then a mediocre payoff. In order to subvert some of the crime novel elements, I needed to understand what those elements were and how they work. It was no hardship—I read and studied a bunch of great crime novels.

There was also the challenge of flipping between a number of different narrative voices. My practical solution to that was to assign a certain song to every narrative voice, and listen to that song whenever I was writing that character so I could get into the headspace more easily.

 

You can read more about Jessica and her writing via her website and also follow her on Twitter and Instagram. The Keeper, which The Observer included in its list of "10 Best Debut Novelists of 2020," is now available via all major booksellers.

Author R&R with Paul Martin Midden

A native of St. Louis, Missouri, Paul Martin Midden received his MA and Ph.D. from St. Louis University and practiced clinical psychology for over thirty years. While in practice, he worked in multiple intensive settings, including hospitals and residential care centers, and in 1992, he founded an independent treatment center that provided broad-based treatment for many psychological and behavioral disorders. Paul’s other interests include historic restoration, travel, fitness, and wine tasting. He and his wife Patricia reside in a renovated 1895 Romanesque home in St. Louis designed by Theodore Link.

 

In Riley, Midden's recently published psychological suspense thriller, writer Riley Cotswald gets way more than she bargained for when she finally leaves her husband and has a fling with the socially challenged Edward. After she rebuffs him, he begins to stalk Riley and then resorts to the Dark Web to find ways to retaliate against her, leading to events that are complicated, intense, and completely unforeseen.

 

Paul Martin Midden stops by In Reference to Murder to take some Author R&R about researching and writing the novel:

 

My latest novel, Riley, has a lot of action; but for the most part the action takes place in the confines of the characters’ heads.

I am not sure I would call my preparation for this book ‘research’ as such. It was more like focused thinking. As with the characters in the book, the ‘research’ took place mostly in my head, in a way not dissimilar from how the action in the novel unfolds. Fortunately, after spending thirty years as a practicing psychologist, it’s a crowded field up there from which to select events.

On the many wonderful things about being a psychologist (‘shrink’ in common parlance, although I’ve never been fond of that appellation) is accompanying people in their personal journeys to enhance their lives. It involves a huge amount of listening as well as a substantial amount of patience. Both of these have most often been well-rewarded.

And then there is the inescapable fact that my own life and history were not exempt from the same rich field. 

None of this is person-specific: I have no idea where my own experience leaves off and that of my sometime patients picks up. There are obvious places in the novel where women do things that I cannot do as a man. But overall, I have learned that we humans are more similar than we are different one to another. And the broad base of commonality is both wide and deep.

All of this sounds like arm-chair research, and to a certain extent it is. But whoever said that sitting in an armchair thinking is a useless endeavor? While it may look easy from the outside, anyone who has undertaken it with any degree of seriousness knows it can be a treacherous activity indeed.

Treacherous? I am afraid so. Thinking poses often unexpected surprises: what if what I had been taught about religion, for instance, was wrong? What if what I thought about my spouse was inaccurate? What if I realize I was blind to the obvious depression/alcoholism/anxiety/ sociopathy of my partner? Thinking can change your life. And it can have major consequences.

And beyond that, thinking can lead to big screw-ups. We humans are hard-wired, it appears, to do unwise and often stupid things. It is unavoidable. And often when we are in the midst of some felonious ‘mistake’ (so called after the fact in most cases, depending on how mortifying the consequences might be) we are filled with powerful self-righteousness. We thought we were doing the right thing. Even when we were not.

Humans are so interesting.

But back to the action: Isn’t it the case that much of the time we spend on this planet is filled with activity that would justifiably be called ‘mental’? We think about things; we form opinions; we change our minds; we behold beauty with a sense of awe and wonder; we chase people who register as attractive in our minds. Sometimes, we let our fantasies override our good sense (if we are lucky). In short, we live inside our heads. 24/7. Even when we are asleep.

So while events outside the minds of my characters (charming phrase, that; as if I own them) do happen, they only make sense when framed against the backdrop of their interior, mental behavior. Just as it is for all of us.

 

You can learn more about author Paul Martin Midden and his books via his website. Riley and his previous novels are available via all major booksellers.

Author R&R with Michael McAuliffe

Michael McAuliffe has been a practicing lawyer for over 30 years. He was a federal prosecutor serving both as an assistant US attorney in the Southern District of Florida and an honors program trial attorney in the Criminal Section of the Civil Rights Division at the Department of Justice in Washington, DC. Michael and his wife Robin Rosenberg, a US district judge, have three children and live in Florida and Massachusetts. Aside from the law and writing, Michael is an alpine mountaineer, having climbed and reached the summits of Aconcagua, Denali, Kilimanjaro (with his eldest daughter), Island Peak in the Himalayas, and many other mountains in the Rockies, the Cascades, and the Andes.

 

In his debut novel, the legal thriller No Truth Left to Tell, flaming crosses light up the Louisiana town of Lynwood in 1994, terrorizing the town. The resurgent Klan wants a new race war, and they’ll start it here. As civil rights prosecutor, Adrien Rush is about to discover the ugly roots of the past run deep in Lynwood. Rush arrives from DC and investigates the crimes with Lee Mercer, a seasoned local FBI special agent. Their partnership is tested as they clash over how far to go to catch the racists before the violence escalates.

 

Michael McAuliffe stops by In Reference to Murder to take some Author R&R about how he researched and wrote the book:

 

I wrote the novel No Truth Left To Tell in three years, but I researched it for thirty.

The novel’s young protagonist, Adrien Rush, is a federal civil rights prosecutor who is sent to the South to investigate a series of hate crimes. Decades ago, I, too, was a young federal civil rights prosecutor sent to the South to investigate hate crimes. During the time I worked as a trial lawyer at the Justice Department, and later as an assistant US attorney, I witnessed, participated in, and collected a great many stories that touch the subjects and characters in the novel. I did investigate and prosecute the leader of the Louisiana Ku Klux Klan. I also investigated and prosecuted a number of cases involving police brutality. One such police matter included torture similar to that depicted in the book. From early in my legal career, I believed the cases I and others prosecuted made for dramatic stories. So, the basic elements for the novel existed for decades before I typed the first word into a MacBook.

I, however, didn’t have the insight or maturity thirty years ago to translate the emotional truths of my experiences into an entertaining and compelling story. Luckily, the intervening years provided ample opportunity to humble, toughen, challenge, and ultimately reward my creative instincts. My varied (some might say disparate) career as a federal prosecutor, big firm law partner, law professor and global company general counsel, created fertile, tilled soil for me to better appreciate the inherent dramas of the law. After all, it’s the law that guides, bounds and protects us as a society, or is supposed to do so.

After I committed to write the novel, I revisited actual events, issues and cases, to ensure the fundamental aspects of the story were realistic, or at least plausible. I also wanted to pull notable traits or habits from individuals I had known as a young lawyer and mix them into the novel’s characters. That process was less an exercise of research than a mining of memory. I knew most of the procedural parts of the story from my professional work, but the creation of a compelling story and characters proved a more difficult endeavor.

After several jumbled starts, I realized that, as a writer of fiction, I had to nurture a world in which plausibility yielded to imagination in the service of entertainment. Once I grew more assertive imagining the characters and living with them in the story (and occasionally outside as I wondered how a character might handle a real-world issue), the path revealed itself. I didn’t recognize at the time that rewriting (and rewriting) and editing waited hidden around the corner!

Of course, for an author, it begins and ends with whether a reader enjoys the story and a connection is made, however brief. That’s a matter of the heart, not facts.

 

You can learn more about Michael McAuliffe via his website, or follow him on LinkedIn and Goodreads. No Truth Left to Tell is now available from all major booksellers.