Suspense, Mystery, Horror and Thriller Fiction FEBRUARY 2015 WHO'S INSIDE JENNIFER HILLIER SOPHIE LITTLEFIELD DENNIS PALUMBO MATTHEW REILLY PHILLIP MARGOLIN MICHAEL CONNELLY JAMES ROLLINS & REBECCA CANTRELL From the Editor CREDITS John Raab The first letter from the editor in the New Year President & Chairman is always the toughest to write. I didn’t know if I should talk about trends coming up or about new Shannon Raab Creative Director releases from some great authors, so I decided to go a different route. Romaine Reeves CFO I found myself thinking about authors who write series novels, and how I would like to see Amy Lignor some of them take a different direction this year— Editor maybe not write about their main character, but Jim Thomsen step outside of the “norm” in order to give the Copy Editor reader a fresh story. I’ve said for several years that Contributors while I love to read series novels, I think my real passion is the standalone. There is Mark P. Sadler something in having to sit down in front of a computer, looking at a blank canvas, and Susan Santangelo having to create a tale from scratch. With a series character, half of the story has already DJ Weaver CK Webb been written; the author just needs to fill in the blanks with the plot. Kiki Howell I’ve talked with several authors and a lot of them seem handcuffed by publishing Kaye George Weldon Burge issues or the popularity of their character that they simply can’t step outside that formula. Ashley Wintters This is also a reason for an author to write under another name. Scott Pearson D.P. Lyle M.D. It is sort of like an actor who is identified with a role—for example, Robert Downey, Kathleen Heady Jr. as Iron Man. At this point, he doesn’t want to do another Iron Man movie. But let’s Stephen Brayton Brian Blocker say the studios want to make another one in five years. They would have to reboot the Andrew MacRae series with another actor, having that new person be compared to Robert. The Spiderman Val Conrad movies are a perfect example. First, you had Tobey Maguire play Spiderman and now Melissa Dalton Elliott Capon Andrew Garfield plays him. It makes the viewer have to really forget about the first three J.M. LeDuc movies. Holly Price Kari Wainwright But you see it everywhere, not just in movies or TV, but also music and writing. I had David Ingram a great conversation with an author about killing off his main character to finally end the Jodi Hanson Susan May series. That author would love to do it, but didn’t Jenny Hilborne want to hear the backlash from fans. Stephen Anthony J. Franze Kristin Centorcelli King wrote about this in “Misery.” I believe the Jerry Zavada name of the character and the book title meant S.L. Menear Leslie Borghini simply that this is where an author can live. Mary Lignor My plea to fans is this: While you love your Julie Whiteley Sara Guisti series character, realize that you need to believe Jeff Ayers in the author more. You read the character Elise Cooper created by the author; therefore, if they decide to Customer Service and change course and do something different, you Subscriptions: For 24/7 service, please use our website, need to not only respect that decision, but also www.suspensemagazine.com or write to: trust their talent and ability to create additional SUSPENSE MAGAZINE at 26500 Agoura Road, #102-474 stories with brand-new characters that you will Calabasas, CA 91302 love just as much. Suspense Magazine does not share our magazine subscriber list with third-party companies. John Raab CEO/Publisher Rates: $24.00 (Electronic Subscrip- tion) per year. All foreign subscrip- Suspense Magazine ■ tions must be payable in U.S. funds. “Reviews within this magazine are the opinions of the individual reviewers and are provided solely for the purpose of assisting readers in determining another's thoughts on the book under discussion and shall not be interpreted as professional advice or the opinion of any other than the individual reviewer. The following reviewers who may appear in this magazine are also individual clients of Suspense Publishing, an imprint of Suspense Magazine: Mark P. Sadler, Ashley Dawn (Wintters), DJ Weaver, CK Webb, Elliott Capon, J.M. LeDuc, S.L. Menear, Leslie Borghini, Susan Santangelo, and Amy Lignor.” SuspenseMagazine.com 1 CONTENT SUSPENSE MAGAZINE February 2015 / Vol. 062 Copy Editor’s Corner: Torture Your Darlings By Jim Thomsen . 3 Special Excerpt: “Crash & Burn” By Lisa Gardner . 4 Smoke Rings By Johnathan Lowe . .. 7 Across the Pond with Leigh Russell By Chris Simms . 10 Forensic Files: The Vacuum of Space By D .P . Lyle . 16 Woman With a Gun, Man With a Pen: Phillip Margolin By Elise Cooper . .18 Special Excerpt: “Innocent Blood” By James Rollins and Rebecca Cantrell . .20 Inside the Pages: Suspense Magazine Book Reviews . 24 And the Winner Is: Oscar Predictions By Susan May . 46 Suspense Magazine Movie Reviews . 48 Featured Artist: Cindy Grundsten ................................. 49 Michael Connelly: The Evolution of Harry Bosch By Elise Cooper . 53 Big Black Cadillac By Jed Power . 64 Digging my Grave By Jason Chinn . 73 COPY EDITOR’S CORNER Torture Your Darlings By Jim Thomsen Not long ago, I was hired to edit a romantic thriller. But it quickly became apparent that it was a ‘thrill-free’ thriller. The heroine was a young woman in her twenties who lived a cloistered life. Enter a handsome stranger at her workplace. He romanced her, and she fell in love. He’d commit some minor procedural dating error, she’d burst into tears and tell him off. He’d back off, beg her forgiveness, bathe her in soothing reinforcement, buy her pretty things, take her on fancy vacations. And, once in a while, he’d forget to call twice a day, or bring her purple roses when she preferred peach, or otherwise upset her sensitive sensibilities. Finally she agreed to marry him. Aaaaand…that was it. The heroine did nothing but bask in attention and burst into tears. There was no real suspense, no character growth, no oppositional tension, no doubt about the outcome. What the novel really was, was a wish-fulfillment fantasy. What followed was an awkward conversation with the author. She admitted after a while that her heroine was an idealized version of herself, and that she wanted to write a story that gave her doppelganger all the things she wanted and hadn’t yet gotten in her real life. She was open to constructive criticism, however, and after a while she came to accept that people don’t want to read novels about happy people becoming happier. They want to read about happy people who lose everything and find their way back, or unhappy people finding—and earning—their way to happiness. They want to happily suffer and sweat along with the heroine, to have an emotional experience with her. It wasn’t easy getting there, though. As my client put it: “I love my character. I don’t want her to suffer.” Well, yes, you do. If you want readers. I run into this occasionally in my editing practice—writers who are too emotionally close to their characters to be willing to hurt them in the way readers love. Usually these are writers who have learned a little craft and decide to rush into their writing before they’ve become competent at it. Their characters are too “on the nose”—basically, thinner, prettier, more athletic versions of their creators. As a result, they don’t really get to breathe on their own. All good fictional characters may be informed—even heavily informed—by the writer’s experience, but they take on their own lives. Don’t they? They tend to decide what they want to do, and they help the plot take shape by the choices they make, or don’t make. So, as you craft your lead character in a first draft or revisit your assumptions about him in revisions, ask yourself how much he is you. And if he is you, look for ways to get some distance while still keeping him close. I’ll use my own fiction as an example. I’m working on a crime novel about a character much like me who lives in the community in which I was raised (and reside now). He’s in his forties. Like me. He was a newspaper journalist, like I was. He was a sort of put-upon sad sack. Like…ummmm…. The more I wrote about Fictional Jim, the more I got lost in a mopey, dreary interior voice. So, in my second draft, I changed things. I chose a different setting. I gave Fictional Jim a military background, made him a little older, gave him a daughter. I gave him a voice that was less sarcastic, more spare, and self-aware. Probably the two smartest things I did were a) switch from first person to third; and, b) give him an ex-girlfriend who’s smarter and stronger than he is, who constantly pushes him out of his comfort zone and forces him to live a more exterior life. I’m still finding my way with my character and my novel. But that’s possible only because I got some distance from me. Just as you should always do for you. Unless, of course, you’re a real-life Jack Reacher or Stephanie Plum. Which you’re not.