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14.
AOTW: Tell us about your next book and what you have in the
works for the future.
Michael
Leahey: The next book is called The Pale Green Horse and it
will be published in January 2002, by St. Martin's Press. The
Pale Green Horse was the fourth rider of the apocalypse and
his companion was death. When Boris is mistaken as the intended
recipient of some critical information, he becomes the unwitting
target of a killer. As they race to stay alive and one step ahead
of this madman, J.J. becomes the last hope for some helpless and
very sick people.
After
The Pale Green Horse, will come: Back in the U.S.S.R.
In this book J.J. and Boris, decide to close their consulting business,
liquidate their assets and invest in the new Russian. Following
sage advice from Victor, a distant Koulomzin cousin, they lose everything.
Next thing we know, they're back in business, this time chasing
after their own money.
I have
two more J.J. Donovan novels are outlined (see #2 above). One involves
Madame Karina and the other develops indirectly out of a story line,
which began in The Pale Green Horse.
I am
also writing a book call The Harlem Moon. This is not in
the J.J. Donovan series. It is a sad, funny story about a very confused
research veterinarian who steps out of his famous father's long
shadow and finds himself or at least a reasonable facsimile. Along
the way, he makes some very peculiar friends and learns something
about love.
The
truth is, I've got lots of stories just waiting to find ink and
paper!
Suzanne
Chazin: I'm at work on a sequel about New York City Fire Marshal
Georgia Skeehan. I'm still very excited about her and particularly
interested in exploring her growing abilities as an arson investigator
and her growing relationship with her lover, supervising fire marshal
Mac Marenko. Georgia is a character I plan to stay with for a long
time. I can't imagine getting bored with her. She's got so many
facets --- as a single mother, a daughter, a woman in the macho
world of the New York City Fire Department. There's a lot of material
to mine.
Stephanie
Gertler: My next book is completed and accepted and hopefully
will be out in about a year. Written in the third-person, it is
the story of the importance of truth and honesty of emotion in a
family, in a marriage and with oneself. Although I never thought
I would enjoy writing anything as much as I enjoyed writing Jimmy's
Girl, I loved the process for this second book. It was the same
way I felt when I had my second child: I wondered how I could ever
love anyone the way I loved my first child, but when they put her
in my arms, I realized how I loved her just as much but already
in a different way than her brother.
With
the third child, it was more of the same. I've started my third
book and I'm calmer....
Sallie
Bissell: In my next book Mary Crow is charged with guarding
her beloved mentor and friend, Judge Irene Hannah, from a conspiracy.
The action takes place back in the North Carolina mountains (though
this time she's in a cave rather than hiking). Jonathan Walkingstick
and Stump Logan are back, though the rest of the characters are
new. It's due out in early 2002. I'd love to tell you the title,
but I don't have one yet. I'm doing rewrites now. This summer I'm
planning to learn to sail, in preparation for my third novel, which
I want to place on water. Beyond that, I'll be at the Bouchercon
Mystery Conference this November in Washington, D.C.
NM
Kelby: Well, the next book is a literary mystery and a love
story-but not just a love story between men and women, but also
between mothers and daughters. Le Theatre Des Etoiles (Theater of
the Stars) is actually based on my own life. I grew up in the shadow
of World War II. My father fought in it. My mother, a Belgian Jew
raised in France, was shot in it. The war loomed over everything
and we never talked about it. It was a huge painful secret. So,
at the center of Le Theatre Des Etoiles is Lucien Kundera, an astrophysicist
who has uncovered a black hole as mysterious as the secrets in her
own life. Lucien's mother, Helene, like my mother, was shot in the
war and claims to have no memory of her own past. After many years
of painful silence, the two travel to Paris together, and then on
to Dakar, to retrace their family history. It is journey of great
sorrow and great love. It's the best way I can tell my mother just
how much I love her.
Thisbe
Nissen: I'm working now on another novel, very different from
"The Good People..." It's tentatively called "Osprey Island' and
it focuses on the inhabitants of a very tiny island on the eastern
shore. The whole thing takes place over the course of one summer
and is largely centered around a big hotel to which tall the characters
are in some way connected. They are people who have all lived on
this small, rather depressed, and rather incestuous island their
entire lives, and the story culminates in the murder of one friend
by another. It's a departure for me in many ways: a much more omniscient
POV than I've used before, and a much more somber story in general.
It's also really different in its pacing. I'm trying to slow myself
down. I'm trying to become a more patient writer, to take more time
with things. With "Osprey Island" -- as with any new work, I think
-- I'm trying to learn new lessons, trying to teach myself how to
think about things differently, how to do things in a way I've never
done them before.
Cat
Bauer: Since I'm in the middle, I don't like to talk about it
for fear of jinxing it. But the voice is a bit different, and part
of it's set in Venice.
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