Category: Q & A with Authors

Janelle Brown joined us in our Behind the Pages Goodreads group for a spoiler free Q & A about Pretty Things and her writing process. I am excited to share some of the Q & A with you here today.

Brenda: What does your writing day look like for you? Do you have a choice of beverage or something you have with you while you read?

Janelle: Hi all! Nice to be here. To answer this first question: My typical (non-pandemic) day usually starts by dropping the kids at school and then racing to my office, which I share with a bunch of other writers. It’s basically a co-working space for writers. (Here’s a story about our office: https://www.latimes.com/books/la-ca-j…).

I work there until 3:30-4pm and then race back to get the kids. During the day, I try to write about 1000 words, and generally what I drink when I’m writing (and reading!) is a either Nespresso coffee with lots of cream and sugar, or a Pamplemousse LaCroix!

Brenda: How did you come up with the idea for Pretty Things?

Janelle: It’s always hard for me to pinpoint where my ideas come from, because they often formulate around a lot of disparate things that come together. But I was inspired for Pretty Things by a few things:
1) Kim Kardashian being robbed by jewel thieves who had been tracking her Instagram posts. This was so interesting to me!
2) The desire to write about a modern female con artist. I felt like there haven’t been a lot of books that did this and I was very curious what one would do in the social media age.
3) Lake Tahoe! I have always wanted to set a book there, it’s a place I love and it’s so atmospheric.
4) Spending time on Instagram and thinking about Influencer culture, and its impact on how we see ourselves.

All these kind of synthesized into what became Pretty Things!

Brenda: What came first for you the plot or the idea of Vanessa and Nina?

Janelle: I started with a very rough idea of the plot – I knew I wanted it to be the story of a grifter who targets someone she’s been following online, with twisting and turning of who is doing what to whom. Then I started thinking about the character of Nina, and who she was, and the plot started to become more clear as she evolved as a person. Vanessa came last, just because she was the hardest character to write.

Brenda: How did you go about capturing your character’s voice? Was there one that you enjoyed creating more than the other or you struggled with?

Janelle: It’s always a lot of hit or miss. I start by trying to write in someone’s voice and keep trying different directions until it starts to feel right to me. It’s really intuition.

With this book, Nina came very easily and quickly. Vanessa was the hard one. I wanted her to initially come off as a privileged heiress but become more and more humanized as the book went along. I wanted her to be a little unbalanced and for us to be unsure whether this was the mental illness that runs in her family, or her own insecurity talking

Brenda: In the voice of your characters Vanessa and Nina can you tell us a bit about them in a couple of sentences?

Janelle: Ha, that’s a challenge! What if I used some sentences from the book that I think sum up the characters?

Nina:
So I’m a grifter. You might say that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree—I come from a long line of bagmen and petty thieves, opportunists and outright criminals—but the truth is that I was not raised for this. I had a Future. That, at least, is what my mother used to say to me late at night when she found me reading Anna Karenina under the covers by flashlight: “You have a Future, baby, the first one in this family.”
And for a while there, I even believed her. Got caught up in the great American myth, the Puritan ethic of nose-to-the-grindstone-and-thou-shalt-prevail. That was back when I thought the playing field was even, before I learned that it was not flat at all; and that, in fact, for most people not born into privilege, the playing field is a steep incline and you are at the bottom with boulders tied to your ankles.

Vanessa:
I know what you’re probably thinking: Look at the spoiled rich girl, all alone in the great big house, trolling for our sympathy when she doesn’t deserve any of it. You feel so smug, looking at me! And yet you also can’t seem to look away from me. You follow me on my social media accounts, you swipe up to study my links, you watch my YouTube fashion tutorials and like my travelogues and read every Page Six mention you can find. You can’t stop yourself from clicking on my name even though you tell everyone that you hate me. I fascinate you.
You need me to be the monster so that you can position yourself in opposition to me and feel superior. Your ego requires me.
And there’s another thing, though you would never admit this out loud: When you look at me, you also think, I want what she has. Her life should be mine. And if I were given the resources at her disposal, I would do it all so much better.
Maybe you’re not so wrong

Brenda: I thought you took some very unlikable characters and made me feel some empathy for them with their backstories. Was that something you planned and were aware of it or did that happen as you were writing?

Janelle: Yes! That’s absolutely my intention. I wanted them both to come fully to life. For the theme of the book, it was important to me for the characters to be flawed but empathetic: The book is a lot about image and judgement in the social media age, and the need to look beyond the frame to see the real person. I wanted readers to be surprised by what they felt for each character, and for their feelings to evolve as they read

Norma: Can we first talk about that cover? It is absolutely stunning and one of my absolute favourites. It definitely caught my eye and enticed me to request an eARC. Would you mind enlightening us how you felt when you first seen the cover of your book. I can only imagine how exciting you must have been. Did you have a hand in choosing the cover design?

Janelle: I have so little to do with the covers! It’s really the fantastic team at Random House who did them. They sent me a few options to choose from and I picked this one. And then we went back and forth a few times to fine-tune things — for example, we tweaked the quantity and variety of jewelry that appears on the cover, and changed the font a bit from the original design. But mostly credit goes to them!

Norma: Pretty Things is such a fitting title for this story. Did you have a title in mind before you began to write this story or did it come after?

Janelle: Nope, the title came dead last! I had an entirely different title for the book but my editor / publisher weren’t in love with it so we did a lot of brainstorming to come up with this one. The idea for Pretty Things as a title came from my agent, actually – she pulled the phrase from the book, because I use it a few times throughout. I loved the idea.

Brenda: What do you want readers to get from your books? Is there anything you would like us to know?

Janelle: I would love readers to find my books entertaining, but also provocative. I want to create a world and a story and characters that people get lost in, but that also keep them thinking about afterwards. My favorite books are ones that linger with me, and I realize later what the ideas in them were. I hope mine do that for my readers, too!

Brenda: Are you working on anything you can tell us about?

Janelle: Well, I’m writing the TV pilot for the series of Pretty Things that Amazon is adapting for Nicole Kidman’s production company! And beyond that, I have a new book in the works… but it’s far too early to talk about.

Form more of the Q & A can be found here

What Lies Between Us by John Marrs is now available! It’s one not to be missed! John Marrs joined us in our Behind the Pages Goodreads Group for a Q & A and answered our questions about his books and writing process. I am excited to sure some of the Q & A with you today!

Brenda: Hi John! Thank you so much for joining us and answering our questions!! What does your writing day look like to you? How has it changed for you?

John: My first four books were written on trains as I commuted to London from my home an hour and a half away. When I gave up journalism two years ago, I write from 10am until 6pm most days in my office at home. It took quite some getting used to being in the quiet compared to what it was like being on a train.
Since our son was born last year, I now grab the hours when I can and they are usually in the evenings and at weekends. I have to be flexible and work around him for now.

Debra: Hi John! Thank you so much for joining us! I just read an ARC of What Lies Between Us and loved it. I know you were a journalist for twenty-five years, during that time did you want to write books, was that always a thought in the back of your mind or a natural progression?

John: No, I never had any plans to be an author, I just came up with an idea for a book and thought of it as a fun project. I wanted to know if I could write a book that people should enjoy. Two years later, When You Disappeared was complete and it’s gone on to sell more than I could have ever imagined.

Debra How do you come up with the ideas for your books?

John: Ideas vary. One came from a conversation with a friend whose partner was a helpline phone operator, another was based on a newspaper article, one was a dream I had, and another appeared one night as I was on the train going home. They can come from anywhere at any time!

Brenda: How did you come up with the idea of Maggie and Nina in What Lies Between Us? Did the idea of them come first or did the plot?

John: After The Passengers I wanted to go back to writing a character led story and had an idea about two women who shared a house but who hated each other. I wanted to write something that felt claustrophobic , that was twisty and turny and in which the reader never knew whose side to be on. This was one of those books that kind of wrote itself, I really enjoyed the process. It brought out my devious side and I’m not sure I’ve been able to bury it since… lol

Brenda: In the voice of your characters Maggie and Nina can you tell us a bit about them in a couple of sentences?

John: Maggie: My daughter is a complex character, but one whom I love dearly. Her decisions are questionable but I know that deep down, the beautiful child I raised and loved still exists inside her.

Nina: She is never going to leave this house after what she has done to me. If it’s the last thing I do, she will spend the rest of her solitary life paying dearly for robbing me of the life I deserved.

Brenda: Was there one character between Maggie and Nina that you enjoyed creating more than the other or you struggled with?

John: I enjoyed writing them both equally. Maggie is a little more wistful, the voice of experience but is thrown into a situation that she has no frame of reference for. Whereas Nina is just full of anger, spite and self satisfaction. Now I think about it, I probably enjoyed writing Nina more as she gets to be callous and cruel and we all know it’s more fun to write from the perspective of a baddie!

Debra: I loved the twists, turns and reveals in What Lies Between Us. Are these easy to come up with? Do you know what they are going to be before you begin writing your books or do they come naturally as your writing progresses?

John: As for twists, I have some ideas ahead of writing, but often, the best twists are those that come to you when you’ve already started writing. In What Lies Between Us, the very ending came after I’d finished the original ending. It was a sudden flash of inspiration

Norma: Hi John, What Lies Between Us was quite the impressive, twisty and gripping read. I absolutely loved both characters and their voices.

The title of this book is absolutely brilliant, clever and such a fitting representation to the storyline. Did the title come first or after?

John: Thank you! For a long time the working title was The Woman Upstairs, even though variations of that have been done to death. I met with my editor for lunch and we brainstormed ideas but came up with nothing. The next day this title came to me in a flash. I love it as it’s so fitting.

Brenda: What research did you do for The Passengers? What were some challenges you faced there with the tech side of it while creating an entertaining read?

John: I knew nothing at all about driverless cars when I started to plot this book. So I basically read everything I could about them, watched a lot of YouTube videos and traveled to the Geneva motor show in Switzerland to see first hand what these cars were about. Once I learned how they operated and had a factual knowledge, then I slipped into gear and started using my imagination to come up with the scenarios in which I could use them to tell my story.

Brenda: Of course, we have to talk about the social media side of the story. I thought you did a brilliant job there. You had me horrified at the thought of voting for the characters live on social media yet I found myself caught up in tension you created there and I was rooting for the characters. As I learned more about each character I changed who I was rooting and that was entertaining for me. Your pacing was spot on there!!

How did you pull that all off? lol, Why did you use social media to create that tension?

John: That’s really kind of you to say. I love social media, I waste many an hour getting lost in rabbit holes on Facebook, instagram and Twitter. But I know a lot of it can be toxic and it seems like it is getting worse. So for this book I decided to capitalise on it, to show social media at its bleakest and to use the public and their inability sometimes to realise the people they are bullying are still human beings. Like I say in the book, it’s pack mentality and it’s a disturbing trend.

Brenda: I loved that your stories are unique and different from each other as well as your characters. In The One and The Passengers, there are a few characters. How did you go about creating your characters and capturing their voices? How did you keep their character traits straight and their storylines especially with The One?

John: There is a lot going on in my head when I’m writing multiple characters at any one time! It doesn’t help that I tend not to write methodically. I’ll do bits here and there and then tie everything up at a later date. I don’t keep loads of notes on each character, I store them in my head and I prefer to work organically and let the characters alter and shift as the story goes on. The One was easier because they are five separate stories under the umbrella of one book. But in The Passengers, their stories or at least the situation the characters fine themselves in, are linked so it was more complex remembering who was doing what in which chapter and linking them together.

Norma: I noticed on Social Media that you were asked a question and I think it such a great one that I’m going to ask something similar here for you to comment on. What does it feel like to hurt a character in your book? Do you know a character’s destiny before you start writing or does the flow of the narrative guide you there? Have you ever hurt a character that you absolutely loved? Was it hard for you to do or you accepted it as it was written? 🙂

John: Have no guilt or qualms about hurting a character, making their lives miserable or killing them off! I have killed off a fair few leading characters in my time and it always keeps readers on their toes. Sometimes I know their destiny from the start but much of the time, I will just start writing and see where the words take me. It’s more fun and spontaneous like that.

Norma: I wish you all the success with The Lies Between Us and look forward to your next release. Do you have anything in mind yet that you are able to share with us? A little tidbit….LOL

John: It’s all been written and comes out in the uk this July and probably next year in the US and Canada. It’s called The Minders and is in the same universe as The One and The Passengers, a five minutes in the future style thriller. It’s very different to What Lies.

For more of the Q & A you can find it here

It’s no secret how much I love Lisa Regan and her character Josie Quinn. Well I love them even more after Lisa joined us for a Q & A in the Behind the Pages Goodreads group. Lisa generously spend as afternoon with us sharing her insight to Josie, the series and her writing process. I am excited to share with you some of our Q & A with Lisa.

Brenda: Right off we need to start talking about Josie! In the first book, she came across a little too hard for me and then once I found out a little more about her and seen the dynamics between her and Ray I started to warm up to her. I think the thing I love about her the most is her character development from one book to the other. You perfectly paced that with revealing a bit about her and her past in each one.

How did you go about developing Josie? Did you plan her character out or did she grow as you were writing?

Lisa: Josie is a little intentionally thorny and out of control in that first book because I wanted her to grow and change throughout the series.  When I was planning out the first three books, I had no idea that the series would take off the way it has and so those first three books are a pretty complete arc. She starts off kind of rogue and a little obnoxious and I wanted her to become a little more patient and more self-aware and then finally confront the largest parts of her past in book 3. Since then, I do a little bit of planning with each book in terms of asking myself, “What can I throw at her this time that’s going to test her and how will she respond?” Then I let the writing happen and see where it goes. So now it has become a book by book sort of thing. I’m often surprised by her which is kind of cool. It makes it fun. But I don’t want to stop testing her and I’d like her to keep growing as a character as long as I’m able to write the series.

Brenda: As an author can you tell us about your emotional connection to Josie? How do you go about capturing who she is as a character?

Lisa: I feel very connected to Josie. I believe it was last year that I was asked to write a short story with a character from one of my other books in it (Jocelyn Rush of Hold Still and Cold-Blooded) and the whole time I felt like I was cheating on Josie. People say to me, “Don’t you want to write something else?” and I feel like no, that would make me very sad! I love Josie. We’re very different though. I don’t have all the trauma she had in her childhood. I’m way more emotional than her. I mean just about everything makes me cry! Good and bad! I cried this morning watching the Today show!

In a way, Josie is my hero though because she is someone who will always run toward the danger. She wants to protect people and help people even if it kills her. It doesn’t matter the cost to her–justice is justice. You see in Book 1, Vanishing Girls, that when faced with injustice, she can’t walk away. I think she says to someone, “I’m not built that way” and it’s true. To her, it’s not a choice. It’s who she is. I love this about her.

In capturing her, I constantly have to remind myself of the type of person she is–she’s kind of closed-off in the sense that she tries very hard never to freak out. She compartmentalizes. She’s hyperfocused on work. But she’s also very compassionate and empathetic. A lot of times, when she’s in a scene, I have to remind myself things like, “Well this would make me bawl right then and there and Josie wants to bawl but the difference between us is that she can control herself so I can’t have her crying right here, she’s just going to push through!

Brenda: You grabbed me in the first book Vanishing Girls with all the characters and I was so happy to see you still gave them focus in your stories. I enjoyed the focus you gave to Josie’s relationships with her colleagues and friends in the series and then gave some of them their own story with a crime.
For me, it made Josie a realistic character and you kept it real with how each relationship grew or how they changed.

Did you plan out in advance to give the characters a crime for Josie to solve in your books or did that all come together from one book to another?

How did you go about developing the dynamics between the characters? Did you feel that out from one story to the other or did you know from the start what direction you wanted them to go?

Lisa: That came together book by book. What readers seem to enjoy the most are the books that have some kind of personal stake for Josie whether it’s to do with her or someone in her sphere. So when my editor and I were talking about book 4, we discussed doing something with Gretchen and perhaps a crime in her own past that personally affected her. Then for Book 5, I originally had Sergeant Lamay’s wife being the murder victim and my editor felt it wasn’t close enough to Josie. So I thought what if we put Noah in this horrific situation? How would he act when tested? What would it do t their relationship? So I went that route instead.

In terms of the dynamics between characters, I kind of let it happen organically as I write. I find that Mettner is always playing devil’s advocate to Josie and it kind of gets Noah’s hackles up sometimes but for Josie, this is a normal part of working a case is to try to disprove one another’s theories. With Gretchen, it started out a little rocky because Josie was under so much pressure but now they’ve got this great rapport that’s borne of mutual respect and I think that Gretchen can say things to Josie that no other character would get away with, particularly because Gretchen’s faced a lot of trauma in her past as well. Gretchen and Josie are a lot a like in that they’re very work-focused and try to be unemotional.

I really just try to let them be themselves and see where it goes based on the cases they work and the pressures they’re put under.

Brenda: In Josie’s voice can you tell us a bit about her?

Lisa: If you asked Josie to tell you a little bit about herself, she wouldn’t want to talk about herself. So she’d probably say: “My name is Josie Quinn. I’m a detective with the Denton City PD in central Pennsylvania. I work with a great team of investigators and together we do our best to solve whatever crimes happen in our town.”

Brenda: Even though I think your books get better with each one I thought that Her Mother’s Grave was the best one. In that one, you reveal the demons that haunted Josie from her past. I was a bit surprised by how dark that one was from your other ones. I do have to say it was brilliant. You stirred up some thoughts and emotions from the Traveling Sisters there with that. I also thought that was a turning point for Josie with some of the things that were revealed there.

Did you intend to go a little darker there or was that the direction that Josie took you in while writing the stories? Was it always your plan to reveal some of Josie’s past the way you did or again did that come as you were writing?

Lisa: To be honest, my tendency is to go really dark and then my editor has to pull me back. So that book–and every book, really–is usually much darker than the finished product as my editor will kind of indicate to me that I can still make the impact I want without being quite so dark. She’s always right.

My plan, especially with those first three books, was to parse out the information a little at a time so readers would want to keep reading to find out more. I said in an earlier comment that I planned the first three books as a pretty complete arc because I didn’t think people would enjoy the series so much and want more. I thought if I plan a nice complete arc with these three books and don’t get to continue the series, then readers will have a nice little trilogy to read. So that’s why I tried to spread out the tidbits about Josie’s past so you really don’t know the entirety of what happened to her until the end of book 3. Even in later books, I’m still finding things out from her. But yes, that was intentional!

Debra: I love how fast your books come out, you are obviously a fast writer. Which I love. How long does it usually take you to write a book on average?

Lisa: It usually takes me between 6 weeks and 3 months to write a first draft (I’m getting faster as I go) and then there is about 2-3 months of intensive editing. Usually the first draft that I turn in looks nothing like the finished product. My editor is really fantastic at pulling better stuff out of me once the first draft is written. I couldn’t do this without her.

Debra: I love the Josie Quinn Series but I also loved Finding Claire Fletcher and Losing Leah Holloway. Will you be writing more books in this series? I hope so!

Lisa: I’m so happy to hear that you enjoyed Finding Claire Fletcher and Losing Leah Holloway. Those titles have a very special place in my heart. I don’t have any firm plans to write more in that series only because I’m contracted to write so many more Josie books. But I do have ideas for new adventures for Claire and Connor so never say never

DeAnn: My initiation to you was a binge read of the first three books and I couldn’t read them fast enough! I love that you write so quickly. How did you learn so much about police procedures? It seems so realistic that I have to assume you’ve done your homework!

Lisa: I’m so happy to hear the word binge in connection with my books! That’s fabulous. Thank you for that. Well I read a lot of books about police procedure but I’ve also talked to a lot of people in the profession over the years. Right now I have a friend I went to grade school with who is a police officer on a city force in Pennsylvania that is a similar size to Denton which is fictional. He’s really wonderful. I can message him on Facebook in the middle of the night with the most inane question and he’ll answer in great detail. I’ll say, “I need Josie to do this . . . ” and he’ll tell me everything I need to know. I also am a member of my local chapter of Sisters in Crime who have speakers every month come and talk to us about their specialties. We have some amazing speakers that I’ve learned so much from. Last year, I attended Murdercon which was a conference for writers who wanted to learn about police procedures. It was two days of intensive classes taught by law enforcement to help us make our stories more authentic. Generally I find that law enforcement people are happy to help if you just ask!

Nicole: How do you come up with the titles to your books? And is there a favourite book you’ve written?

Lisa: I actually have no control at all over titles which is a good thing for me because I stink at coming up with them! My publisher handles that. I can make suggestions (not that I have any) but usually they come to me with a list and I tell them what I love or what I hate and then ultimately, they decide.

I don’t think I could choose a favorite overall book. I have favorites for different reasons. The book I enjoyed writing the most was Book 5, The Bones She Buried, because that was a story I’d wanted to tell for many years in some form or fashion. I remember turning that first draft in to my editor and actually feeling like I missed the book, as if it was a person! LOL. I couldn’t wait for her to get it back to me so I could work on it some more. The one I am most proud of is probably number 8 which just came out last week, Find Her Alive because it was so difficult to write and I was convinced it was just terrible when I turned it in but then with the help of my editor and many, many rewrites and changes, it transformed into a completely different book. I worked so hard on that one and I was actually happy with how it turned out. Then my favorite book to read over and over in the editing process was the first one, Vanishing Girls. With each book, after it’s finished, I’ve probably read it 8-12 times in a short amount of time and usually I find it hard to concentrate on something I just read a half dozen times last week but with Vanishing Girls, I was able to maintain focus every time I read it. Every book in the series is special to me in some way though. I would say the way I think of it is that I just have a list of my favorite scenes from the series in my head. It’s hard to pick one book. I love them all for different reasons. Each one taught me a valuable lesson about writing as well.

For more of our Q & A with Lisa can be found here