Author R&R with Robert McCaw

Robert McCaw grew up in a military family traveling the world. After graduating from Georgetown University, he served as a lieutenant in the U.S. Army before earning his law degree from the University of Virginia. After law school he spent a year as a judicial clerk for Supreme Court Justice Hugo L. Black. Thereafter, he was a partner in a major international law firm with offices in Washington, D.C. and New York City, representing clients in complex civil and criminal cases. For a number of years, McCaw maintained a home on the Big Island of Hawai'i, studying its history, culture, and people, which was the inspiration for his crime fiction series featuring Chief Detective Koa Kāne. Putting himself in the shoes of Kāne, he has walked the streets, courthouse corridors, and parks of Hawai'i’s Big Island. (You an read more about another title in the series we featured here.)

Having killed his father's nemesis and gotten away with it, Hilo, Hawai'i Chief Detective Koa Kāne is not your ordinary cop. Estranged from his younger brother, who has been convicted of multiple crimes, he is not from a typical law enforcement family. Yet, Koa's secret demons fuel his unwavering drive to pursue justice. In Fire and Vengeance, never has Koa's motivation been greater than when he learns that an elementary school was placed atop a volcanic vent, which has now exploded.

The subsequent murders of the school's contractor and architect only add urgency to his search for the truth. As Koa's investigation heats up, his brother collapses in jail from a previously undiagnosed brain tumor. Using his connections, Koa devises a risky plan to win his brother's freedom. As Koa gradually unravels the obscure connections between multiple suspects, he uncovers a forty-year-old conspiracy. When he is about to apprehend the perpetrators, his investigation suddenly becomes entwined with his brother's future, forcing Koa to choose between justice for the victims and his brother's freedom.

Robert McCaw stops by In Reference to Murder to talk about researching and writing Fire and Vengeance:

 

One need not look further than the current coronavirus pandemic to know that health issues often play a dramatic role in life. Yet, for those of us not trained as physicians, making sense of medical research is challenging. In Fire and Vengeance, the latest story in the Koa Kāne Hawaiian mystery series, medical issues play a critical role in one of the book’s pivotal threads. Koa’s incarcerated brother Ikaika blacks out and collapses in jail. Doctors diagnose him with a slowly growing, frontal lobe brain tumor he’s almost certainly had since childhood and recommend immediate surgery. Koa learns that frontal lobe brain injuries frequently affect behavior, making those affected more impulsive and less able to control themselves. He then embarks on a seemingly quixotic effort to win parole for Ikaika by establishing that his brother’s pre-surgery medical condition contributed to his criminal behavior.

After outlining this part of the plot, I had many questions. Was the scenario I envisioned credible? How should I describe the tumors? How would doctors establish that the tumors had been present since childhood? How often do such tumors occur? Exactly how do they affect behavior? How could the connection to behavior be proved? Where might one find knowledgeable doctors? What diagnostic tools would they use? How should I describe corrective surgery? What is the recovery time?

As a layperson, I could have spent months overwhelmed by the medical literature attempting to ferret out answers through a maze of unfamiliar medical terminology. I was willing to make the effort, but only if the plot was credible. So, I turned to my own physician, who had read the first books in the series, and he put me in touch with a specialist who validated the concept and pointed me in the right direction. I later had dinner with a psychiatrist friend who encouraged me to pursue the plot idea and offered suggestions.

Then began a journey of discovery. Through medical journals, I learned that such tumors are rare—about one in 4 million people—and picked up some useful medical jargon. More importantly, I discovered a growing body of literature discussing the behavioral problems of soldiers returning from the Afghan and Iraq wars with brain injuries. Many of these patients suffer from impulsive behavior like that behind Ikaika’s criminal acts. Those sources also led me to research the miraculous developments in real-time brain imaging, allowing physicians to “see” the actual electrochemical workings of the brain under various stimulations. This research offered the possibility of proof that Ikaika’s thinking processes post-surgery would differ from his previous inability to control his actions.

My review of case studies in medical journals and on the Internet suggested that children suffering from the early stages of such tumors might have absence seizures where they stare off into space and drop things. During the relevant period, doctors often prescribed the drug Depakote for such conditions. Based on this research, I imbued Ikaika with those childhood symptoms, had him treated with Depakote, and thus found a plausible way to tie his tumors back to his childhood.

My need to describe the surgery itself took my research into the world of robotic and image-assisted brain surgery, where I developed some understanding of the processes and timetables. Most relevant to the plot, these sources outlined the most likely outcomes and prospective recovery times for this type of medical procedure. I drew on this background in creating the dialog between the doctor and Koa, and subsequently between Koa and Ikaika.

My story needed a world-class neurosurgeon to consult with Koa about the medical issues, so I researched the country’s leading brain clinics, ultimately creating Dr. Kepler, a fictional specialist at the Johnnie L. Cochran, Jr. Brain Tumor Center at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. To add context to a meeting between Koa and Dr. Kepler at the Cochran Center, I make a virtual visit to the facility using Internet images and Google street view.

Perhaps as much as one-hundred-fifty hours of research went into about twenty pages or 6 percent of the final manuscript. Even then, I struggled to limit my use of medical terminology by having Koa insist that the doctors speak in plain English. You might be thinking it was a long run for a short slide, but it’s thorough research that informs the little details that make a story both captivating and believable.

 

You can read more about Robert McCaw and his books on his website and also follow him on Facebook and Twitter. Fire and Vengeance is available in ebook and audiobook formats from all major bookstores now, with the hardcover edition to follow in September.

Author R&R with John Bishop

Author John Bishop, MD, practiced orthopedic surgery in Houston, Texas, for 30 years. An avid golfer and accomplished piano player, Bishop is honored to have once served as the keyboard player for the rhythm and blues band Bert Wills and the Crying Shames. Bishop's Doc Brady medical thriller series is set in the changing environment of medicine in the 1990s. Drawing on his years of experience as a practicing surgeon, Bishop entertains readers using his unique insights into the medical world with all its challenges, intricacies, and complexities, while at the same time revealing the compassion and dedication of health care professionals.

Bishop's series featuring Houston orthopedic surgeon Doc Brady debuted in August of 2019 with the medical thriller, Act of Murder. In the follow-on novel, Act of Deception, just released this week, Brady has been sued for medical malpractice after a mysterious infection caused a knee replacement to end up as an amputation. Donovan Shaw, a ruthless plaintiff’s attorney, has taken the case and doesn’t seem bothered by the fact that he and Brady share a number of friends.

But Brady isn’t the only one in his practice being sued. How is Shaw getting his inside information? Can the patients afford to say no to filing lawsuits, even if the claims aren’t valid? Through a series of twists and turns, and with the support of his wife Mary Louise and their professional-investigator son J.J., Brady once again doggedly goes into “sleuth mode” to get to the truth of the matter—even after his life is put in jeopardy.

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

I began writing in the mid-1990s, and created a character named Dr. Jim Bob Brady, an orthopedic surgeon in Houston, Texas, who had a penchant for getting himself involved in sordid murders and mysteries, and ultimately being able to solve them. I wrote a series of novels about Doc Brady, which didn't make the cut back then, but which are being published now after all this time.

ACT OF MURDER involves the hit-and-run death of Brady's neighbor's child. ACT OF DECEPTION, out June 10th, revolves around a questionable lawsuit filed against Doc Brady for medical malpractice. The third, ACT OF REVENGE, out September 10th, centers around the murder of the CEO of an insurance company who has cancelled the medical malpractice insurance of a large number of Houston plastic surgeons over the breast implant debacle. 

To update and edit these novels to current times became an almost impossible task. After a period of soul searching and hand wringing, the decision was made to update the writing, but to leave the setting in the 1990s. That meant that that restaurants, so much a part of the Houston scene, would remain intact. Also so would the sports teams, their victories and defeats in all their glory relived for the world to see. The bars and the music venues, so much a part of Houston back then, would come alive again, and the Bluesmen that entertained us at that point in history would return to the forefront. It was a good move for me because all the details about the city of Houston were already in the books. I had to update the stories and the characters but leaving the setting in Houston during that time frame allowed the reader to relive a glorious time in Houston, Texas. 

I don't remember every detail of the research I had to do back then, since it was over twenty years ago. but even though the internet began around 1991, there was not the information nor the detail available to a writer as it is today. Being an orthopedic surgeon myself, I knew most of the medical details involved in the mysteries I wrote about. Of course, there was still extensive library research time involved because I had to gain extensive but forgotten knowledge about metabolic diseases, such as Osteogenesis Imperfecta, at the center of ACT OF MURDER. A great deal of legal research was involved for ACT OF DECEPTION, to the extent of lawyer thinking and behavior, including a vicious malpractice trial at the end of the novel.

In ACT OF REVENGE, I had to research the breast implant lawsuit business extensively, and again, that was mostly library time, plus some necessary knowledge gained from lawyer friends over glasses of wine.

I have started writing again, influenced by the publication of the first three Doc Brady books, and have a few more Doc Brady novels in the wings. While I won't say it is any easier writing a novel, the research is vastly easier with the internet. There is so much information available that I sometimes find myself "clicking" details on a subject and then find myself so embedded in information that I've lost my original train of thought. But the internet saves a great deal of time and effort in leg work. I have also found that once I've educated myself on a subject, my lawyer, scientific, and law enforcement colleagues are more than willing to share information, and bring me up to date on subjects out of my purview. As these friends of mine say, "If you're buying, we're talking.”

 

You can learn more about John Bishop M.D. and his fictional protagonist, Dr. Jim Bob Brady, via the author's website. His books Act of Murder and Act of Deception are available in both ebook and paperback formats through the Amazon store.

Author R&R with Vee Kumari

Vee (Vijaya) Kumari is known for her work as executive producer and lead on HALWA, which received HBO's 2019 APAV award. She has also been a co-star in TV shows that include GLOW, Anger Management, Teachers, and Criminal Minds, among others. Vee spent over three decades as a neuroanatomy professor, a neuroscience researcher and for ten of those years was an Associate Dean for Medical Education at the University of California Davis Medical Center in Sacramento, CA. In 2012, she retired to pursue a career of acting and writing and calls this "a journey from the left side of my brain to the right." 

In her debut novel, Dharma: A Rekha Rao Mystery, Rekha Rao is a thirty-something Indian American professor of art history who becomes disillusioned by academia and is haunted by the murder of her father. She believes police convicted the wrong person and moves away from her match-making family. As she tries to manage her PTSD and heal her broken heart from a previously abusive boyfriend, she gets entangled in a second murder, that of her mentor and father figure.  Rekha is attracted to the handsome detective Al Newton, who is investigating the murder but steers clear of him because of her distaste for cops and fear of a new relationship. When police arrest one of her students and accuse her mentor of theft, Rekha is left with no other choice but to look for the killer on her own. 

 

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

 

In my novel, Dharma: A Rekha Rao Mystery, Rekha’s beloved mentor, Professor Faust is murdered.

I’m unclear how I came up with the name ‘Faust’ for the murdered professor.

Once I did, I looked up what I could find of the details of the story, FAUST by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1808,1832). If you read the novel, you’ll realize that the name truly doesn’t fit the man my protagonist revered, because he was gentle, kind and humble despite his many achievements. However, one of Rekha’s students, Neil, clearly perceives him as evil.

The original 1808 German title page of Goethe's play read simply: "Faust. / Eine Tragödie" ("Faust. / A Tragedy"). The addition of "erster zweiter Teil" (in English, "Part One") was retrospectively applied by publishers when the sequel was published in 1832 with a title page which read: "Faust. / Der Tragödie zweiter Teil" ("Faust. / The Tragedy's Second Part").

The two plays have been published in English under a number of titles, and are usually referred to as Faust, Parts One and Two.

I was able to find the English version online and it provided the source for the verse that Neil’s mother includes in the book she left for him.

“Oh, came a magic cloak into my hands
To carry me to distant lands,
I should not trade it for the choicest gown,
Nor for the cloak and garments of the crown.”

I Googled the verse innumerable times to make sure that it would bring up the original text and it did. In the novel, Neil not only figures out his father’s name using the verse, but also considers it an apt inscription for his mother’s tombstone and a meaningful farewell to him before she dies.

The idea of Neil’s mother leaving a cryptic message for him came from a less well-known mystery novel by P. D. James, An Unsuitable Job For A Woman, in which a private detective, Cordelia Gray, embarks on a journey to find the killer of the son of a prominent scientist. The son receives a book from his nanny left for him by his mother. And it has an inscription that he doesn’t decipher, but Cordelia uses it to find the identity of the killer.

 

You can learn more about Vee via her website and also follow her on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Dharma: A Rekha Rao Mystery is available via Amazon in both digital and paperback formats.

Author R&R with Thomas O’Callaghan

After a successful career in insurance, Thomas O'Callaghan turned his hand to writing his debut novel, Bone Thief and its sequel, The Screaming Room, which were published by Kensington Books and translated for markets in Germany, Slovakia, Indonesia, the Czech Republic, China, and Italy. The series features Homicide Commander Lieutenant John W. Driscoll and his dedicated team as they track the darkest killers in New York City.

The third installment, No One Will Hear Your Screams, was recently released by WildBlue Press:  Is there a sociopathic killer murdering prostitutes in New York City? NYPD's top cop, Homicide Commander Lieutenant John Driscoll, believes there is. Someone who calls himself "Tilden" claims to have been sexually abused as a child by his mother's john. But what could have triggered Tilden's rage to place him on a mission to eradicate all of New York's prostitutes? Tilden is not your run-of-the-mill sociopath. After all, would a common murderer take the time to embalm his victims—determined as the cause of all the deaths by the medical examiner? Driscoll is on mission to put an end to the madness. A man haunted by the events of his own unstable childhood, he teams up with Sergeant Margaret Aligante and Detective Cedric Thomlinson to stop the killings and bring Tilden to justice before he kills again.

 

O'Callaghan stops by In Reference to Murder to take some Author R&R about writing and researching his novels: 

 

Though my novels depict fictional murder I feel it’s important to accurately and definitively describe all aspects of the heinous killings. The reader, though he or she knows what’s being read is an imaginary tale must have a sense that the murders, meticulously depicted, could be real. Otherwise well crafted fiction becomes fantasy.  With that writing style in mind, I invite the reader to board a rollercoaster of sorts on page one. I then keep them on that rollercoaster until the last page. The key is to never let them off.  My dedication to clearly describe the killings must carry over into how I depict the procedures employed by my fictional team of homicide investigators who must track down these psychotic misfits terrorizing New York City.  But, since I’m neither a killer nor a detective I rely on in-depth research to get both factions right.  Failing to do so brings credibility into question.

When I created the villain in BONE THIEF it was important to depict an individual who not only craved bones, but had a wealth of knowledge about them.  Who better than a radiologist?  There are 206 bones in the human body, by the way. I know this because I looked it up.  And not being a radiologist myself, I was able to ascertain what a normal workday looked like for such a medical practitioner by searching the web.  Admittedly, most of the research for BONE THIEF was done via my laptop.  I did rely on an assist from an actual NYPD homicide commander to get the investigative procedure right, but I failed to ask what weapons a police officer routinely carries.  In the first edition of the book I had Lieutenant Driscoll release the safety on his Glock revolver.  Had I done a tad more research I would of realized Glock, Incorporated only manufactures pistols and none of them have a safety.  On a bright note, my mistake led to an entertaining conversation with a New York Times bestselling thriller writer who admitted to making the same mistake.  She suggested I simply arm Driscoll with a semi-automatic in the second book.  Which I did! 

In THE SCREAMING ROOM, which features a set of demonic fraternal twins, I wanted to add a unique twist to the investigation.  After reading several articles online that detailed interesting information about twins in general, I happened upon one particular article that spoke of something called the Turner Syndrome.  I knew nothing about the condition until my random online search of “Twins” produced that link.  It’s an extremely rare genetic disorder that only affects the female.  But, what I found fascinating was that their DNA would be identical.  A great find!  By adding it to my storyline, Lieutenant Driscoll was baffled.  How could two people have the same DNA?  The information I’d gathered through my online research thickened the plot!

The most memorable research I’d conducted while writing NO ONE WILL HEAR YOUR SCREAMS began when I happened upon a website called BlueLips.com.  My killer in this one is an embalmer by trade who uses those skills in an extremely shocking way to commit murder.  Because it was important to get the details right on precisely what that entailed I purchased a DVD from BlueLips.com that depicted the procedure in vivid detail.  Morbid?  A tad.  Informative and helpful to me as a thriller writer?  Absolutely!

 

You can learn more about Thomas O’Callaghan and his fictional protagonist Lieutenant John Driscoll via his website, and follow the author on Facebook and Twitter. No One Will Hear Your Screams is available in both ebook and paperback formats through the Amazon store.

Author R&R with Shelley Blanton-Stroud

Shelley Blanton-Stroud grew up in California’s Central Valley, the daughter of Dust Bowl immigrants who made good on their ambition to get out of the field. She co-directs Stories on Stage Sacramento, where actors perform the stories of established and emerging authors, and serves on the advisory board of 916 Ink, an arts-based creative writing nonprofit for children. She teaches college writing in Northern California and has also served on the Writers’ Advisory Board for the Belize Writers’ Conference. She's had flash fiction and non-fiction in such journals as Brevity and Cleaver, and she recently published her first novel, Copy Boy.

Copy Boy, which one reviewer called "Raymond Chandler for feminists," is set in the 1930s depression era and centers on Jane Hopper, whose parents are trapped in a loveless marriage. When her mother threatens to leave her father for another man, he becomes violent towards her and Jane, and Jane strikes her father with a crowbar in defense. Leaving him for dead, Jane steals his truck and escapes to San Francisco to start a new life as a copy boy at the local newspaper, the Prospect. But copy boys are just that, boys, so Jane disguises herself as a man, even learning to smoke and swear. When she becomes obsessed with the mystery of a woman found unconscious after being assaulted with a crowbar—a woman who was photographed with Jane’s father—Jane’s old life threatens to come crashing down into her new life and expose her as a fraud.

Shelley stops by In Reference to Murder to talk about the book:

 

On July 18, it will be ten years since I got the call.

I was packing up to head out the door to my neighborhood Sacramento library to lead a book talk on Ann Tyler’s Digging to America. I’d been leading those talks for ten years but it still made me a little nervous, every time. I was last-minute-gathering the snacks, notes, discussion questions, the key card. Hunting a lost sandal. I was late.

When the phone rang, I didn’t expect to pick up—there was no time. But I looked at the handset in its cradle and the digital caller ID read, Monterey Bay Ambulance.

Which one is it?

My husband Andy and two college-age sons were on a scuba diving trip. Our oldest, Will, was a dive master. My husband and youngest, Henry, were getting certified, preparing for adventure.  This was the final step—getting tested in Monterey Bay.

Which one is it?

I picked up the phone and heard twenty-year old Will. “Everything’s okay Mom. But I’m in an ambulance with Dad. It looks like he’s had a heart attack.”

Treading in the Bay’s 56-degree water, Andy felt pressure, everything yellow, a buzzing in his ears. His arms and legs went weak. Will saw how white his face was. He called to the scuba guide, who was treading water over the spot where eighteen-year-old Henry had submerged. The guide told him to get Andy to shore. The guide stayed waiting for Henry to come up.

Will did swim Andy to shore, paddling with one arm, the other hooked around his father’s chest. On the beach, he found a doctor with a phone. At the hospital, they discovered he’d suffered heart failure. He’d had a previous heart attack we’d never even known about. As I was running to his hospital room, five hours later, I could hear Andy down the hall, laughing and joking with the doctor. Acting like himself. Will was pleased with the scrubs the nurse had given him to wear. Henry was shaken, but fine. We were going to be okay. For now.

Ten years later, Andy is fine, he’s great. So why do I share this with you now?

Because it was that weekend, ten years ago, when the two of us really saw how everything could end, just end, before we were finished being who we wanted to be, doing what we wanted to do. That’s when Andy and I agreed, we’d better start doing it now.

That’s when I began to write my novel, Copy Boy, though I didn’t know yet that’s what I was doing. I was just recording family stories in a journal, getting down whatever I could remember seeing, hearing, being told, as I grew up, about my family’s history as Depression-era, Dust Bowl Okies, migrating from Texas and Oklahoma to California’s Central Valley, where they would have to work and fight and hustle themselves into the lives they wanted. Just getting it down.

Then I starting researching the bigger picture, the history all around our family. So many books, so many field trips to the Central Valley, to San Francisco’s neighborhoods, bars from the thirties.

Then I started taking local writing workshops, where I met teachers and other writers—mostly women my age, fiftyish—who encouraged each other to develop a voice. To make syntactical choices, patterns of them, that would become a kind of thumbprint, making each of us recognizable in the print.  There were many such workshops.

Then, I started taking workshops about the science or architecture of story, especially the architecture of mystery. It was a revelation to learn the elements of it, getting under the hood of my own book. I attended the Book Passage Mystery Conference to learn such things and there I met writer friends who would become essential to my preparation. Some of us continue to talk twice a month by Zoom. It was also at this conference where a famous mystery writer told me the chapter I’d shown her was a mess. I had work to do.

So, I worked on it. Then, six months later, five years ago, I sent off a chapter to a couple literary workshops, hoping to get into one. Instead, miraculously, I was accepted by both the Napa Valley Writers Conference and the Squaw Valley Community of Writers. (I got into this one off the Wait List.) In those places, I got more literary advice. I made terrific writer friends I’m in contact with now every day. I began to believe that maybe I could do this. At Squaw, a famous writer assigned to read my chapter, told me he was still hung over from the absinthe the night before, and that my kind of writing wasn’t really the kind of thing he liked to read. So that was bad. I was embarrassed. But when I told him one of my family stories, he said, Why don’t you put that in your first chapter? I did. He insulted me but I got over it. I used it.

The next year, I attended the Bread Loaf Writers’ Workshop, again off the Wait List. (Did I mention I believe in wait lists?) There I heard brilliant talks on craft, watched authors perform their stories, had my first-ever chance to read one of my stories to an audience in the Blue Parlor. I cried up there as I read it. Some people in the audience cried too. I thought, maybe I belong here.

There were years of revising—I mean head-to-toe revising. The male protagonist turned into a female. The female became a cross-dresser. I moved from first person to third. From YA to adult literary historical mystery. I changed every inch of it. I spent three more years doing this, with feedback from so many freelance editors and critique groups, who made worlds of difference by giving me advice.

Once it got to the place where I was happy, I knew pretty quickly that I would sign with She Writes Press. That part was obvious. I liked the blend of support and control they offered. They’re a writer’s team. I like a team.

So, you’re probably thinking it’s odd that it took me ten years to make this book. But it also took me ten years of library book talks before that to develop a strong sense of what I just enjoy reading.

Ten years of book clubs. Ten years learning to make a book. You’d better believe I’m going to be making a new ten year plan next month.

 

You can read more about Shelley and her work on her website and also follow her on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.