Susan P. Baker on using her law experience for the suspense novel UNAWARE

Any one of us can end up the victim of a crime. Today's guest, Susan P. Baker, took inspiration from her experiences as a lawyer for her novel Unaware. If this essay is any indication, get ready for some major suspense!

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Unaware in Real Life

by Susan P. Baker

UNAWARE is loosely based a case I handled when I first started practicing law. At the time, I was married to my first husband. We were the parents of two young daughters. My husband traveled a lot on the job, which was necessary but could be annoying when I was trying to get a law practice off the ground and parent the children at the same time. We did not have an au pair, couldn’t afford one. My father had been an attorney but was on the bench when I won my law license.

One night, when my husband was out of town, I went to a meeting and was out too late. The girls were old enough to stay by themselves. I stopped off at the grocery store on the way home and noticed when I was almost to my house that a car had been following me. When I pulled into my driveway, the car stopped and parked in front of the house opposite mine. I immediately backed out and drove away, hoping to lead the person away from my children. We didn’t have cell phones back then. I drove a short distance to my sister’s house, jumped out, and ran inside. 

My brother- in-law drove to my house to check things out while my sister and I called the police. When they found no one there, I went home, having become aware of how easy it would be for someone to hide around my house, what with the hedge next to the front door. I pulled into the garage, put the door down, ran inside to check on the girls who were okay, and got the butcher knife out of the drawer and put it under my pillow. We didn’t have any guns. I had a hard time sleeping that night. The following day I bought a .38 revolver.

At that time, I was building my family law practice as well as practicing criminal defense law. I shared an office with two of my father’s former law partners. They were much older and often gave me advice. One of them had the messiest office I’d ever seen, but he had a brilliant mind and could cite law that I’d never even heard of.

In one of my cases, a beautiful, young woman with long, blond hair came to see me about her situation. She hadn’t been married to her husband very long but was ready to get out because he’d become violent almost as soon as they’d said “I do.” He worked on the wharves and had a very sharp cotton knife that he threatened her with when she spoke of leaving him. He was a few years older than she was and fairly good looking. His father was a big-wig in the longshoreman’s union and had bailed him out of trouble many times. 

Susan P. Baker

I took the case against the advice of the other lawyers because she didn’t have much money and had been turned down by other lawyers who were afraid. It wasn’t long before she told me that her husband threatened to kill her and me. We tried our best to settle the case amicably. The man’s father even came to see me in my office. He knew my father. He said he’d make his son settle the case, pay the money he needed to pay, and he even gave me a pendant of a gold leaf. Anyway, clearly the inspiration for UNAWARE came from my law practice.

UNAWARE

What you don’t know CAN hurt you.

Frustrated with the two controlling men in her life, Dena Barlow Armstrong has outlined a rosy future for herself and her children, independent of them. Her husband, Zack, constantly pushes her to turn over her inheritance to him and, when she doesn’t, he punishes her with his indifference. Her law partner and cousin, Lucas, controls her money and the types of cases she accepts.

Just as Dena begins to achieve her goal of independence, someone emerges with very different plans for her. Unaware of the danger she faces, Dena lives each day as a wife, mother, and attorney. Then one day, when her husband is out of town, the stranger lurks in her garage, waiting until she and the children go to bed…

This standalone novel is Susan P. Baker’s sixth mystery/suspense novel.

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Learn more about Susan P. Baker on her website.

Purchase Unaware on Amazon.

Romance and Suspense in Emma Elliot's novel AS DARKNESS GATHERS

I am please to welcome Emma Elliot to the blog today. Her novel As Darkness Gathers shows characters skirting the cliff's edge. She shares some thoughts about crafting a world of such complex emotions.

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As Darkness Gathers is, essentially, about betrayal, about varying degrees of the destruction of trust. Trust is essential in any relationship, and any chipping away of that has a rippling effect in one’s life and in his or her interactions with others. The story revolves around Finch, a woman whose reality is turned on end when she’s involved in a plane crash. Surviving that horror is only the beginning of her struggle.

“The line between friend and foe is blurred.” I think that line sums up the struggle the heroine is faced with in the story. You know how to relate to people when you know where you stand with them, when you know of their agendas toward you and their attitudes, when you know what motivates them in their interaction with you. Understanding those aspects affects your approach to the relationship. When there’s a lack of clarity regarding those aspects, you’re left in a more vulnerable position.

In As Darkness Gathers, increasingly frightening events make Finch question those around her. Someone wants to hurt her, and she isn’t sure whom she can trust. I think Finch navigates this uncertainty with a lot more aplomb than I ever would. She’s afraid and angry, of course, but she doesn’t allow it to cripple her. She refuses to be cowed and doesn’t allow the experience to make her bitter. She has a lot of grace and strength of character, even as she struggles to determine whether those she loves are the ones she can trust.

I love a good mystery, which probably comes from cutting my reading teeth on Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys, Trixie Belden, and the Bobbsey Twins books. Intrigue of a multitude of sorts drives any story:  the uncertainty of a relationship in a romance, the personal trials in a drama, the political machinations in a thriller, the outcome of a battle in an historical…. But I love the intrigue of a suspenseful novel, the tension and anxiety, the apprehension and puzzles.

If there’s a secret recipe to combining romance and suspense, I haven’t discovered it yet. I’ve written two different books within the genres. The first, A Thin, Dark Line, is a character-driven story that is very much a romance with a suspenseful subplot. My latest release, As Darkness Gathers, is more plot-driven, and I’d say it’s a suspense novel with a romantic subplot. I think the balance and weight of the two genres largely depends on the story and the character’s journey over the course of it.

Romance and suspense are two genres that are perfect for exploring the human story. Both—love and anxiety—have an internal and external impact on a person, and when the romance and suspense are woven together, you can better dig into the visceral fears and desires of a character. Romantic suspense is an excellent platform to study human reaction, interaction, and motivation.

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Learn more about Emma Elliot on her blog or on Facebook.

Go to Amazon to purchase As Darkness Gathers  and A Thin, Dark Line.

Novelist Justin Robinson Admits He Loves Outlines

Plotter or pantser? It's the eternal writer's question. Justin Robinson, who is celebrating the launch of his very funny suspense novel, Mr Blank, shares his thoughts on how he learned to stop pantsing and love the outline.

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The Importance of Outlines

Back in August, I volunteered over at Marshall High for career day.  Long time readers will remember this as the site of the Afterschool Special “Two Loves for Jenny,” which somehow forgot to include a single character named Jenny.  I was over there because the college counselor inexplicably thought I could have some wisdom to offer high school kids beyond toothpaste making beer taste funny.  I found myself sitting in the lunch area with a little sign that said “Justin Robinson -- Writer” as about sixty teenagers wandered from table to table to chat with the various professionals (and me) scattered throughout.

I bumbled, stammered, and joked my way through the two hours, otherwise known as how I deal with every social situation.  The kids asked a variety of questions, but the one thing I kept returning to was the importance of The Outline.  I used to turn my nose up at the thought, not because it was a bad idea, but because it smacked of work, something that writing couldn’t be.  Accepting that not only is writing work, but is occasionally hard work, is one of the more important steps to doing this sort of thing as a living.  And come on, it’s not like construction workers throw up buildings off the top of their heads.  Someone makes an actual drawing beforehand sometimes.  Books are a lot like buildings, except that barely anyone pees in books.

I’m a compulsive outliner now.  My first novel, Subspace, was the only one I did without an outline, and I got away with it because it already existed as a novella.  When I sat down to write Mr. Blank, I wanted to avoid the issues of stalling out and rambling on that plagued me in the past.  This would require outlining.  I started out knowing I would need exactly 23 chapters (required if you’re writing anything about conspiracies), and went from there.  Each chapter was structured around a conflict between the narrator and some representative of the Information Underground.  Since chapter 12 would be the middle, it would serve the fulcrum of the book, where our hero would develop the hypothesis that carries him through the rest of the story.

There’s a tendency to want to follow an outline slavishly, and it stems from the same place as a reluctance to rewrite.  It’s the weird sense that the words came from on high and are binding contracts.  They’re not.  The outline is a tool, not a master.  Sometimes, either what I’ve outlined isn’t possible to write or sounded better in the outlining phase than it looks on the page.  When that happens, I look at both the outline and the book.  I try to figure out my reason for outlining it that way.  Was it a solid reason, or was it just because I lacked perspective on the book as a whole?  While writing, did I make some breakthrough on character or plot?  Am I missing out on a good moment, or did I outline something no sane person could ever communicate?

Outlines are important for the same reason you don’t wear white to a pie-eating contest.  Be prepared, and you won’t feel quite so silly while fishing raspberries out of your sinuses.

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You can learn more about Justin Robinson on his website.

You can purchase Mr Blank from the publisher, or on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

[Note: I moderate comments, so yours might not show up immediately.]

Guest blogger Marian Lanouette: Why Mysteries?

My guest today is Marian Lanouette, a novelist raised in my own adoptive Brooklyn, but who now lives in New England. She shares with us how she became fascinated with the mystery/suspense genre. Marian's new book is If I Fail, the first in a series of Jake Carrington Mysteries. These stories combine mystery with elements of romance.

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I love a good mystery or puzzle. So it seemed natural when I sat down to write that the genre would be mystery/suspense/thriller.  At an early age I started reading.  Unbeknown to my parents I would read the New York Daily News because I had already read through all my library books. A story caught my eye. It was the murder of eight young women in Chicago.

The case terrified me, yet intrigued me. I wanted the killer punished for his horrible acts. The reported frustrated with the police started to comment in his column instead of reporting the news. At dinner one night, I brought the subject up and each day I’d follow every story. My parents were horrified and put a stop to my reading the Daily News each day. I had to get my tidbits on the case from eavesdropping on the nightly news. How the police caught up with the murderer and the trial that ensued which intrigued me. It grabbed my attention and my imagination. To this day, I still check my closet before going to sleep. I believe it was on that day the mystery lover was created.

Throughout the years, after the trial, I would take every mystery written for children out of the library and gobble them up. As I got older, my mind started creating stories. It wasn’t until recently that I decided to send the stories in for publication. Submitting took a lot of courage. I think I bled every time I got a rejection but I stayed the course and eventually found my publisher who I love.

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You can purchase If I Fail directly from MuseItUp Publishing or from Amazon.

You can view the book trailer here.

Learn more about Marian Lanouette by visiting her website or following her on Twitter or Facebook.

Guest blogger: Suspense author S.L. Pierce

Please give a warm welcome to S.L. Pierce, who knows how to make you sit on the edge of your seat and jump at a plot twist.  Her new novel is The Devil's Game. I asked her to discuss how she fills her writing with suspense. 

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What makes a good thriller?  I thought I might answer that today with an example.

1)  The noise was coming from the bedroom.  But that was impossible.  No one else was home.

2)  It was faint.  Just the slightest creak.  But it was enough to pull her from a deep sleep.  Out of habit she got up to check the baby, but stopped herself short.  Michael was gone.  Forever.  And the house was empty.  Wasn't it?  

Do you find yourself drawn in by number two more than number one?  Why is the baby gone?  Who is in the house? 

There are two things that make a good thriller (in my opinion).  The first, of course, is making the reader curious.  But just the right amount of curious.  You have to give them little crumbs; just enough to keep them interested but not so much they figure out the mystery too soon and lose interest.  It's a fine line and a good writer has to find that balance. 

Second, and more important, is making the reader care about the character(s).  You can write the most edge of your seat, nail biting, thrilling story and yes, that will get people to start reading, but if they don't care about the character, they won't keep reading.  Look at the example above.  Aren't you just a little more curious about the second example?  Aren't you a little more invested? 

Not convinced?  It really hits home with me when I think of one of the bestselling and prolific writers out there today.  I'm sure you know who I mean.  I used to love his books, but for the last few years I haven't been able to read them.  Why?  Because he hasn't made me care about the characters.  His story plots are great – fast and fun.  But the characters are flat.  Boring.  Unrealistic.  And I just don't care about them. 

Thriller readers, think about that the next time you read the first few pages or download a sample.  What makes you keep reading and what makes you put the book down or delete the sample without buying.  I'll bet it's lacking one if the items mentioned above. 

Writers, look at your opening; can you make the reader invest a little more in the story with just a few extra words?  Take a few sentences and give it a try.

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You can visit S.L. Pierce at her blog.