Author R&R with Gary Born

Gary Born is a renowned international lawyer and author. He has represented countries and businesses in nearly 1,000 international disputes around the world, including cases involving Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia and Yemen. Mr. Born has also published widely on international law, including the leading commentaries on international arbitration and litigation. He has taught at universities in the Americas, Europe, Asia and Africa, including Harvard Law School, National University of Singapore, and St. Gallen University. He lives in London, with two Maine Coons, and travels widely. The File is his first novel

The File follows Sara West, a tenacious botany graduate student on a scientific expedition in the heart of the African jungle. During her research, she stumbles upon a cache of WWII Nazi files in the wreck of a German bomber hidden deep within the jungle. Those hidden files reveal the location of a multibillion-dollar war chest, secretly deposited by the Nazis in numbered Swiss bank accounts at the end of WWII. But Sara isn’t the only one interested in the war chest. Former KGB agent Ivan Petronov and Franklin Kerrington III, deputy director of the CIA, both have deeply personal reasons for acquiring the files Sara has found. With two dangerous men — and their teams of hit men — on her trail, will Sara be able to escape the jungle alive? 

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

 

Author’s guest articles are sometimes about the author, so I’ll say a few things about me, and the book I wrote — but I want to start with someone else.

The File is about a young woman, Sara West. She doesn’t seem so different at first glance, and she certainly doesn’t think she’s different from most other people.  But she is.

Working with her father and friends on a research expedition in Uganda, Sara discovers the wreckage of a Nazi bomber from World War II. In the wreck, which has been hidden for 70 years, Sara finds a file of documents, which contain information on secret Nazi accounts in Swiss private banks, holding billions of dollars. They also have the names of the Nazis most important foreign spies, including in the United States. 

Two incredibly different, but equally evil, men almost immediately learn of Sara’s discovery: Ivan Petronov, a former KGB agent who has been hunting for the Nazi bank deposits for decades, and Franklin Kerrington III, the CIA’s deputy director, whose patrician family’s secret support for the Nazis would be revealed by the file. Petronov and Kerrington dispatch rival teams of mercenaries to Africa to retrieve the file — Petronov for the Nazi money and Kerrington to hide his family’s traitorous past.  

Petronov and his lover (a beautiful former Chinese spy) lead a Russian special forces team to Africa and slaughter Sara’s colleagues and father. Sara flees, with the Nazi file in her backpack, and Petronov’s team hunts her through the jungle. And it’s then the reader realizes why she’s so different. 

Using wilderness skills she learned on earlier research expeditions with her father, Sara escapes the Russians, eventually turning the tables and vanquishing many of her pursuers. The Russians nonetheless corner her in a remote African town but then are themselves attacked by Kerrington’s men. Jeb Fisher, a young, ex-CIA operative, is sent to kill Sara, but instead he both discovers Kerrington’s evil secrets and falls in love with Sara.

Sara and Fisher hijack a plane from a nearby U.N. airbase and fly north, before running out of fuel and parachuting into the Libyan desert. After nearly dying of thirst, Fisher commandeers a Libyan militia Jeep, and they make their way to the Mediterranean and board a ship smuggling refugees into Europe. Once in Italy, the two head north, with Sara determined to uncover the secrets of the Nazi file and avenge the killings of her father and friends. Still tracked by Kerrington and a new team of Petronov’s Russian mercenaries, Sara and Fisher make their way to Zurich, where they confront a corrupt Swiss bank director with the files detailing the Nazi bank accounts. Sara plans a bloody showdown on the premises of the Swiss bank and, well, you’ll have to read the book to find what happens — but it’s not necessarily what you would think. Because, well, Sara is different.

I wrote the book about Sara. She inspired me, like she inspired Jeb Fisher, and took me along with her. I think you will like her, too.

I also think that you will like the stories of Sara and Jeb, who start out not trusting each other and then take things from there. It helps — or maybe not — that they are thrown together in the world’s most exciting places: the Rwenzori Mountains (the so-called Mountains of the Moon), where the plants look like the Pandora universe in Avatar, only better; the Sahara Desert, which almost gets the better of Jeb; Italy, which is impossible not to love, especially Rome and Lucca; and finally, Switzerland, which needs no explanation.

This is a story about Sara. Who turns out to be very different. But it’s also about all of us, and the many different pieces that make us whole.

There’s a lot about Sara in The File. But it has pieces of me as well, mostly the places, but some of the people.

The jungle scenes, when Sara finds the wrecked Nazi bomber and then runs from the Russians who are hunting her, were inspired by the couple months that I spent in the jungles of Congo and Uganda some years ago. Hiking along jungle trails that nobody but hunters used, with local guides who never seemed to get lost, provided the raw material for many of the early chapters of the book. I tried to make those scenes, with the forbidden beauty of the jungle, as realistic as I could. 

The U.N. airbase came from Somalia, at the UN peacekeepers’ base outside Mogadishu – where the planes have to bank sharply in from the ocean to avoid missiles and small arms fire from the ground. I visited there for work a few years ago, and the airfield’s barbed-wire fences and security gates were the inspiration for the base where Jeb and Sara hijacked their plane back to Europe.

The scenes in the Libyan desert and along the coastline were drawn from the hitchhiking I did across the Sahara and the Sinai a few years ago. The emptiness of the desert, and the brutal heat of the day, came from the surroundings of Tamanraset and El Golea. The scenes of Jeb and Sara waiting alongside an empty desert road for most of a night and day were borrowed from those same destinations. 

And the scenes in Italy, from Calabria to Rome to Lucca, come from a dozen trips to one of the world’s most beautiful countries. Sara’s trip with Jeb up the Italian boot retraces trips I have done along the exact same roads.

As for the people, Kerrington and Petronov come, unsurprisingly, from Washington and Moscow, respectively. No single person combined all of the traits, evil and otherwise, of either man. But many in both places contributed to both Kerrington and Petronov.

Most important, though, is Sara. She too contains pieces from people I have met. But more than any other character, she is herself and unique — making her own choices, different from what I had started out intending or what others might have chosen. In those chapters, I was really just along for the ride.

 

You can learn more about Gary Born and his books via his Amazon profile and follow him on Goodreads. The File is available via Histria Books and all major bookstores.

Author R&R with Mark Edward Langley

Mark Edward Langley was instilled with a love for the American West by his father. After many visits, his connection to the land and its people became irrevocable, but he was appalled at the way he saw Native Americans being treated. After spending almost thirty years working in the corporate world, he retired at the end of 2016 and began to focus on realizing his goal of becoming an author. He created a strong Navajo protagonist, a U.S. veteran who fights for his people and their land. Langley’s first novel, Path of the Dead, was released in August of 2018, and the follow-up, Death Waits in the Dark, was the recipient of the 2021 Gold Medal for Best Mystery of the Year in the Feathered Quill Book Awards.

Here's the description of the book:

In Death Waits in the Dark, as Arthur Nakai is attending the wake for a man he considered a brother while serving in the U.S. Marines, he receives a call from an old girlfriend whose sons have just been murdered. Feeling a deep and responsible obligation, Arthur investigates and soon finds himself embroiled in the multi-billion dollar world of oil and gas, coming face-to-face with an old adversary, Elias Dayton. Their paths crossed when Arthur was a member of the Shadow Wolves, an elite tactical unit within U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Now Dayton runs Patriot Security, a Blackwater clone that keeps the oil rigs, gas wells, and "man camps" secure from the Water Protectors, protesters pushing to stop the fracking and poisoning of Native lands.

While Arthur works through the case from his end, Navajo police chief Jake Bilagody tackles it from another angle, looking into the strained relationship between the oil company and the Navajo people, all while searching for a missing Navajo man who may have become an unwilling pawn on the reservation chess board. But when Arthur learns the identity of the boys' killer, he struggles to make sense of it—because if the clues are right, he will be forced to make a decision that will haunt him for the rest of his life.

Today, Mark stops by In Reference to Murder to take some Author R&R about writing and researching his novels:

 

I’ve been told by other authors that I do things a little bit backward. I start with a title, then create a story that fits it. Once I decide what the novel will be about, I begin by researching online anything that might fit the narrative. As with Death Waits in the Dark, I looked up everything I could about fracking because there are over 2,500 wells in the ninety-mile stretch of Highway 550 between Bloomfield, NM and Cuba, NM. I thought that would be a great backdrop for the story. Then, since I don’t live out there yet, I researched the pros and cons of it, followed by the native reactions given during meetings at local Chapter Houses to discuss the issue. I don’t like beating people over the head with viewpoints; I give all viewpoints and let the reader make up their own mind.

My reaction from the Navajo people concerning my writing is that they like the fact that I am bringing to light things that affect them on a daily basis—the alcoholism, the drugs, and poverty and the resulting and lingering affect the oil and gas industry is having on their beloved sacred land. With each book, I end up with a large four-inch binder of research to draw from. Since my stories represent life on and off the reservation, I have been lucky enough to develop a contact with the Navajo Nation Police Department, which is headquartered in Window Rock, AZ. They have been very helpful.

It wasn’t until researching my third book in the Arthur Nakai series, When Silence Screams, that my research began to affect me. The novel concerns itself with a fictional 19-year-old girl, April Manygoats, who was befriended by someone online with whom she arranged a meeting in Santa Fe. She was never heard from again. Then a 15-year-old girl goes missing, leaving behind nothing but her bicycle hidden under a bridge over an empty desert wash. To make matters even worse, a 22-year-old woman has been fished out of a power plant cooling lake on the reservation, missing something unthinkable.

Are the cases related? Or are they simply part of a bigger, more horrifying picture plaguing his beloved Dinétah? But—more importantly—will Arthur be able to piece together enough of the sadistic puzzle that will locate April . . . or is he already too late?

This story was sparked by the 5,712 missing and murdered indigenous girls and women who disappeared during 2016 alone on the reservations in the US and Canada. I listened to many interviews with family members, watched news reports, read stories, and printed out all of the fliers created during 2017 for the girls and women who were reported missing. My research then led me to the dark worlds of human trafficking, prostitution, and BDSM torture, all things I knew nothing about and wished to convey accurately.

As you can imagine, a great deal of time is spent plowing through anything that could be used in my novels. In fact, I am always collecting ideas for stories. I have an entire file drawer in my office filled with possible ideas. Since my subject matter is the land that I love, I feel a kinship with the people and the land itself, so my take on things is personal as far as where the stories take place, who is involved, and what the outcome will be.

To me, you can never have enough research. In fact, the next book I’m working on took me to a Zoom meeting with the Deputy Director of the New Mexico Livestock Board. I had emailed him explaining that I am a writer and was looking to develop a new series that would be built around some of their case files I had requested. He answered my initial questions and we set up a time to meet virtually. When I received the detailed case files, I read through them and began shaping how the story would play out and which characters would inhabit this particular world. The Deputy Director even invited me to take ride-a-longs with some of his inspectors so I could experience their daily duties first-hand. I am looking forward to that aspect.

Research is the backbone of your story; it's what drives your characters to do what they do and how they might react. I outline each chapter, but once I begin writing, the characters take over, and no matter how well I plan, they always lead me to a new level of dialogue, action, or outcome.

 

You can find out more about the author and his books via his website and follow him on Facebook, Twitter, and Bookbub. Death Waits in the Dark is now available via all major booksellers and Blackstone Publishing.

Author R&R with Marie Still

Marie Still grew up a "Navy brat," which meant a lot of moving, but there was one constant: books. From a young age, Marie developed an obsession for the dark and more murdery side of literature, especially Stephen King, Shirley Jackson, and Margaret Atwood. That obsession with words and dark stories translated into a love of writing. Never sticking around one place for too long has given Marie the opportunity to see the world, experience different cultures, and meet many different people—all of which fuel her creativity and the characters and settings in her novels. Marie’s domestic thriller debut We’re All Lying is available March 14, 2023, while her sophomore thriller, My Darlings releases in 2024. She also writes suspenseful book club fiction under Kristen Seeley, whose debut, Beverly Bonnefinche is Dead releases September 2023.

We're All Lying follows Cass, who lives an enviable life: a successful career, two great kids, and a handsome husband. Then an email from her husband’s mistress, Emma, brings the façade of perfection crumbling around her, setting off a chain of events where buried secrets come back to haunt her. A taunting email turns into stalking and escalates into much worse. Ethan and Cass try to move on, then Emma disappears. No longer considered a victim, Cass finds herself the prime suspect and center of the investigation. Her dark secrets—including ones she didn’t know existed—threaten to destroy everything they’ve worked for. 

Marie stops by In Reference to Murder to discuss researching and writing the book:

 

As a thriller author I often get asked, “What’s wrong with you?” In fact, my husband has been scared on many occasions after reading some of my work. It’s always the spouse, though, I’d never be so careless. While a good portion of my research while writing does go into various murder methods, my favorite research is delving into the human psyche. What makes people tick? Snap? How do different personalities process trauma, stress, fear, and being pushed out of their comfort zone?

When I develop my characters, I am very careful to avoid clichés. Real humans with real nuances and flaws and backgrounds don’t act in cookie cutter ways. One of my least favorite phrases is, “I would never…” It’s so easy to observe situations from the outside and make judgement, but the real ‘never’ statement is you never know what you’ll do when emotions (rage, jealousy, deception, etc.) take over.

For this reason, I’m constantly observing humans for what they show on the outside, and who they are on the inside. Social media has made this constant character study much easier. People put more of their lives on the internet than ever before. Sometimes those lives are curated, which is also a fascinating look into the human mind. Quora and Reddit offer anonymity, which makes them two of my go-to sources to better understand people, and create characters with interesting facets.

Preventative mental health care is a subject I feel very passionately about. Additionally, portraying mental health disorders in my stories with compassion and sensitivity. There are several disorders which I have personal, lived experience with. When I don’t, I ensure I’m having conversations with those who do live with whatever I’m writing about. Additionally, I have a sister-in-law who works as a nurse practitioner in a mental health hospital who has been a wonderful resource herself, but also connecting me with psychiatrists when I have additional questions. And, I think it’s important to note, mental illness doesn’t not equate to violence. There are many people living very normal lives with psychopathy, sociopathy, and other mental health disorders.

Whether I’m online or living my life, I’m always watching. Ok that sounds a bit creepy, especially since I started out by saying I was well-versed in ways in which to murder someone. I digress. I pay close attention to how people react to stress, drama, life. I listen with a purpose to people speaking, studying how speech patterns give insight into a person’s personality. Being incredibly nosey has been one of the most useful tools as a writer. And if we ever cross paths, you may just be inspiration for one of my characters. Whether a victim or a villain, I’ll never tell. 

 

You can learn more about Marie Still and her books via her website and also follow her on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Goodreads. We're All Lying is available via Rising Action Publishing and all major booksellers.

Author R&R with Angela Greenman

Angela Greenman is an internationally recognized communications professional. Her career has spanned the spectrum from community relations in Chicago to US and world governments’ public communications on nuclear power. She has been an expert and lecturer with the International Atomic Energy Agency for over a decade, a spokesperson for the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and a press officer for the Chicago Commission on Human Relations, the City's civil rights department. After traveling to twenty-one countries for work and pleasure, she decided it was time to seriously pursue her love of writing. She wants to share the exciting places she has visited, and the richness of the cultures she has experienced.

In Greenman's debut novel, The Child Riddler, Zoe Lorel has reached a good place in her life. She has her dream job as an elite operative in an international spy agency and she’s found her one true love. Her world is mostly perfect—until she is sent to abduct a nine-year-old girl. The girl is the only one who knows the riddle that holds the code to unleash the most lethal weapon on earth—the first ever "invisibility" nanoweapon. But Zoe’s agency isn’t the only one after the child, and when enemies reveal the weapon’s existence to underground arms dealers, every government and terrorist organization in the world want to find that little girl. Zoe races to save not only the child she has grown to care about, but also herself. The agency-prescribed pills—the ones that transform her into the icy killer she must become to survive—are threatening her engagement to the one person who brings her happiness. Can she protect the young girl and still protect the one thing she cares more about than anything else?

Today Angela stops by In Reference to Murder for Author R&R about writing and researching.

 

My approach to research is the same as my approach to life: find the truth. Is that deal really good, or are there hidden charges? Can I trust what this person is saying? What really happened between them? Is this news report factual?

For me, life always seems to involve a quest for truth. So, when I sat down to seriously write The Child Riddler, I realized my research required more than just a technical search to find the correct facts and descriptions. It also involved seeking the truth in a character’s sensory and emotional moments. When I say “truth,” I mean a truth in life—what the description or event needs to be believable. Belief requires a commonality in feeling or experience. If readers believe what I write, they will connect to it and respond.

For example, when I write about a character walking on the beach, I want readers to feel as if they are on the beach too, hearing the waves crashing, smelling the salt water, feeling the grainy particles between their toes as their feet sink into the sand.

Creating a sensory immersion requires collecting the textures, colors, and scents of all that surrounds me. It’s building a giant mental toolbox so I can select that exact truth, the one that brings the scene alive as readers experience what the character’s senses are sharing.

Because I’ve been fortunate to have traveled extensively internationally, my sensory toolbox is stocked with many rich experiences. Here are two passages from The Child Riddler to illustrate what I mean by sensory immersion.

In this first passage, a character is in Vienna, Austria, touring the Habsburg Historic Staterooms in the Albertina Museum:

“His leather loafers silent on the exquisite rose and ebony inlaid parquet floor, Xavier strolled through the deserted staterooms. Greeted by brilliant turquoise, bright canary, and rich burgundy silk wallpaper, under grand chandeliers, surrounded by exquisite furniture and shiny gilded ornaments, he breathed in opulence. This was where he belonged.”

In this second passage, the same character is visiting a home in Petrich, Bulgaria.

“They entered a large garden. Wooden trellises, draped with gnarled grapevines that looked to be more than a century old, stood tall at the entrance. Plump, deep-red grape clusters hung from the thick vines. Red and pink rose bushes, apple and peach trees, and assorted vegetables—cabbage, tomatoes, beans, potatoes, and peppers—lined the neatly planted garden.

Xavier took a deep breath. The roses’ sweet fragrance, used in the specialty essential oil and perfume of Bulgaria, floated in the light breeze, a pleasurable incense after being in the stuffy car.

Folk music played in the background. He scanned the garden but didn’t see a speaker or sound system.”

To research emotional immersion—really diving into the soul of a character—I like to ask lots of questions. Why do people make the choices they do? Why do they hold certain attitudes? Why did something happen to them?

From these questions, I learn about the reactive forces in people’s relationships. Reactive forces are all the varied roles we play. Our roles in the different environments we inhabit make us respond to a particular situation in a certain way. These life dynamics shape our psyche and mold our emotional core.

Understanding the threads woven into the individual tapestries of our lives helps to weave an emotional scene. Readers respond to this scene because of its truth—they too have kicked a chair in anger at betrayal by a friend or lover. The truth can also be a sweet gesture or an emotional trigger that touches our heart—as when your dog, knowing you’re sad, comes to you and licks the tears from your face.

Here are three passages from The Child Riddler where I sought to convey emotional truth in actions and feelings.

“The video went black. Zoe raised her hands and pressed her heels down on the floor, violently pushing herself away from the computer with her feet. Revulsion crawled over her. She didn’t want to touch anything related to that vile scene she’d just witnessed.”

Further down the page:

“Her heaves subsiding, her gaze bored into the blackness of the computer screen, its darkness deepening with every second.”

Another passage:

“Warmth spread through Zoe. A special warmth, a deep tenderness that seeped into her every pore. Now she knew what it felt like when someone said their heart melted.”

Delving into the sensory and emotional constructs of writing may be fun, but you can’t escape the dog work of technical research. Identifying the “most lethal weapon on earth” for my book took considerable investigation. Fascinated by the future technology of warfare, I chose a cloaking spider bot. Cloaking technology has elements of nanotechnology—the manipulation of matter on an atomic scale—and this is the future of warfare. Countries are already spending billions on researching cloaking and nanotechnology.

My career with the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the International Atomic Energy Agency gave me knowledge of technical organizations and sources. Even so, I still spent half the time it took to craft my book on research. I scoured the internet for articles and technical pieces that I found through keyword searches.

But to research character development, there is nothing like studying real people. In The Child Riddler, the director of the spy agency, Easton, is a strong manager. To make sure I’d captured the true essence of a tough senior manager, I asked a former high-level executive from a major government organization to review my Easton passages. This beta read was well worthwhile as his critique gave me great insight in writing realistic “Easton” dialogue.

For the character of the gifted child, nine-year-old Leah, I found internet videos of genius children who had won spelling contests. I studied personal interviews that followed their win, paying particular attention to how they spoke and the words they used.

Now as I write my second book, a sequel—where I’m striving to make Zoe even more human, more flawed—I recognize that all my research for The Child Riddler was technical. I may have divided it into categories, like sensory and emotional, to create a plot and believable characters. Devising a plot that the reader connects to because of its truths requires accuracy—not only in data and location but also in describing the human experience. This is where we grow and change, adapting all the while.

 

You can learn more about Angela and her books via her website. You can also connect with Angela on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. The Child Riddler is available in digital, print, and audiobook formats via Bella Books and all major booksellers.