San Diego Noir: Interview with Lisa Brackmann

I’ve mentioned before I’m part of a large writing group and we have quite a few published authors covering multiple genres from literary to horror. We have some outstanding writers. I’m very proud of our group and the hard work our authors and editors do. We’ve been together about five years now and I talk to most of them on a daily basis. I’ve learned so much from them because we tend to share current publishing trends, news, and a plethora of information on writing.

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It’s also fun to keep track of some of their projects and how they get them. Lisa Brackmann recently participated in an anthology for a New York publisher, Akashic Books. Who, you ask? I hadn’t heard about them either. However, if you’re a mystery writer/reader you probably know of them. If you enjoy Noir stories you may have read some of their books. They have quite an impressive line up of authors.

They publish an award winning Book Noir Series centered in various cities around the world. I had heard of Brooklyn Noir but didn’t know the publisher—which is not unusual for me, as I tend to remember book titles or authors better than I do their publishers.

Akashic says of the series, “Following the stunning success of the summer '04 award-winning bestseller Brooklyn Noir, Akashic Books launches a groundbreaking series of original noir anthologies. Each book is comprised of all-new stories, each one set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the city of the book. ”

To date, they’ve published 42 books in the Book Noir Series and there are 12 more planned with 4 being released in 2011.

Being the curious type, I asked Lisa about her participation in the Book Noir Series.



Lisa, you debuted with Rock Paper Tiger in 2010. ROCK PAPER TIGER made Amazon’s Top 100 Books of 2010 (that’s fiction and non-fiction) and is one of Amazon’s Top 10 Mysteries & Thrillers. Still, you’re a debut author and it has to feel somewhat surreal to be involved with an anthology like this. How did it happen?

It happened thanks to editor Maryelizabeth Hart.  In addition to her own writing and reviewing, she’s the co-owner of Mysterious Galaxy, a truly wonderful independent bookstore in San Diego.

I did an event there for the release of my debut novel, ROCK PAPER TIGER and had a fantastic time. Maryelizabeth knew that I had a San Diego connection — I’m actually a San Diego native and was born and raised there — and wanted to know if I’d be interested in contributing. She’s really assembled an excellent, eclectic lineup, including such luminaries as T. Jefferson Parker and Don Winslow, and I was honored to be asked. And a little worried that I wouldn’t be able to deliver — I hadn’t written a short story since college!

Were you assigned a theme to write to?

In addition to putting together a diverse slate of authors, Maryelizabeth also wanted a collection of stories that do justice to the diversity and complexity that is the city of San Diego — it’s not all surfers and beaches. So though I wasn’t assigned any sort of topic or location, I wanted to make sure I didn’t just do another day at the beach.

Of course, what ended up happening is that the bulk of my story is set in Ocean Beach! But I also go to the World Famous San Diego Zoo.


What kind of research did you have to do?

I was getting pretty close to the deadline and quite honestly didn’t have a clue what I was going to write about. I really didn’t know if I’d be able to come up with a story or not. I decided to give it my best shot and proceed with the research and hope that it inspired something.


Now that would add some pressure to a writer. But still, you grew up in San Diego so couldn’t you just create a story from your memories?

Though I’m from San Diego, I’ve lived up in Venice CA for a number of years. So my first order of business was to visit the locations I wanted to use. I went first to the San Diego Zoo. I’d worked there for a number of years – it was my summer and weekend job that basically put me through college — but it had changed so much that I knew I needed to go there if I wanted to do it right. I’m very much a writer who works off of a place—I’m inspired by settings and I like to bring them to life with little, visceral details.

I had a fantastic trip there. I was particularly fascinated by the new elephant mesa, which also features many local animals as well as a natural history lesson on extinct species and environmental challenges.

So now you had a clear vision of the setting?

But I still didn’t know what I wanted to use the setting for.

Yikes. How did you get your story?

 I’d read an article about the same time about a sticker that was for sale in Ocean Beach, reflecting tensions between the local residents and a population of transients that many saw as a more dangerous element than the long-time hippies in VW vans that the area is known for. The sticker is a parody of signs at the San Diego Zoo. It says, “Please Don’t Feed Our Bums.” For whatever reason, that inspired me. And since the theme of this series is “noir,” that suggested a few other things. “Noir” to me means “A woman does a man wrong,” or conversely, “A man does a woman wrong.” So I put all those elements together, and voila, a story emerged!

When will it be out?

SAN DIEGO NOIR from Akashic Books will be out June 1st – just in time for beach reading!

Meanwhile you had also been finishing up your latest full-length novel. When will your new book out and can you tell us a little about it?

I’ve completed my second novel and hope to have more news about that soon. It’s another “existential thriller,” as I like to call ‘em, set in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, featuring another woman who accidentally gets in way over her head. Michelle is a different sort of woman from Ellie (the protagonist of ROCK PAPER TIGER). She’s fortyish, a recent widow, and somewhat of a social chameleon; she’s pretty confident and savvy. But she’s nowhere near equipped to deal with the trouble she gets into.


I’ve been eagerly awaiting this one. As soon as you have a release date I want to have you visit again. Thank you for sharing the information on your upcoming anthology, San Diego Noir to be released in June. I’m looking forward to that one too.

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Lisa Brackmann has worked as an executive at a major motion picture studio, an issues researcher in a presidential campaign, and the singer/songwriter/bassist in an LA rock band. She still takes pride in her karaoke-ready repertoire of bad pop hits and an embarrassing number of show tunes. A southern California native, she lives in Venice CA and spends a lot of time in Beijing, China. Her three cats wish she’d stay put.

Blog: Papertigertail

Interview With Samantha Hunter, Harlequin Blaze

Samantha Hunter is my guest today and has written the second in the Dressed To Thrill Series. A very action-oriented, sexy romantic suspense.

Sam, welcome back to Over Coffee!


Dressed To Thrill is a fun new Blaze series, written by some very talented authors. I’ve read the first in the series and will be reading the second. Considering the shorter format of Blaze, compared to single title romance, these stories are quite satisfying to read. I love the way the authors create realistic, multi-layered characters you can emotionally connect with and share some Red Hot adventures.


Last month, I featured Tawny Weber and the first in the series, Feels Like The First Time. I’ve read Sam’s books in the past and can guarantee her installment will be good.


Here’s the Blurb for Caught In The Act:

• The outfit was ridiculously revealing. Still, food writer Gina Thomas needed a disguise for the costume party…just so she could sneak into divorce lawyer Mason Scott's office and steal a few photos to save her sister—the trouble magnet.However, the costume seems to bring out the naughtier side of Gina. And Mason can't keep his gorgeous eyes—or his hands—off her! But even as the New-And-Way-Sexier Gina submits to Mason's exquisitely carnal attentions, Practical Gina wonders how long before she's caught red-handed….
  
  Sam graciously answered some questions for me regarding the series and her newest book and what we can expect from her in 2010.
  
  
  
  Did Blaze editors approach you about this series? Or did you four come to them with the proposal?

Actually, I was up in Toronto visiting my editor, and mentioned to Birgit and Brenda that I wanted to do a continuity at some point, and they said to come up with some pitches, find some authors I’d like to write with, and get back to them.

So, it was pretty much an open field. I asked Tawny Weber, Karen Foley, and Lisa Renee Jones, and we starting coming up with ideas. However, none of the stuff we came up with stuck with editors. Brenda told me she was looking for something with costumes, and the idea for a “wrong costume” series – much like the popular “wrong bed” books – popped up.

The girls and I came up with the premise of the online costume shop that ships out the wrong costumes to heroines, and Brenda loved it, so we started planning stories.

Another fun element was as we were planning our stories, we wondered “why would these costume mistakes keep being made?” and so we ended up working with the editors to create a mini-romance that carries through each book, found in the prologues and epilogues, that tells the story of the clerk at the costume shop who keeps making shipping errors – and why. :-)

It was a fun, exhausting, and satisfying process, and it was always nice to have each other to talk with as we went through the whole thing. We’re still talking as a group as the reviews come out, and we’re running our free Twitter spin-off stories.

• What Twitter Stories?
  

Glad you asked. ;) Jayne at eHarlequin asked us if we wanted to do some kind of Twitter promotion for the series, and we came up with the idea of a round robin – so, we’re all writing four new round-robin stories that are spin-offs of the miniseries titles.

• That’s quite an undertaking considering the limitations on word counts for each tweet. How do you manage that?

A new story will run monthly, and we post five story tweets each day on Twitter – you can follow @BlazeDTT or read the updated story daily at http://tweettweetlove.com/.

We have a guest author contribute tweets each Friday, and there are also discussions and prizes going on at various discussion groups – you can find all of the info and links through the Tweet Tweet Love website.

As you can see, there are a lot of little treats associated with this series, and I can offer one more, my Online Read at eHarlequin, CAUGHT BY SURPRISE, (you can also find Caught in the Act here) that is the story of my hero’s younger brother.

• Tawny's heroine was a bit of a sexy footloose geek, not well liked in school and reluctantly goes to her HS reunion. Of course she finds love where she least expects it. What's the deal with your heroine?
  

You should all run out and get the book to find out! LOL

• Trust me, I intend to as soon as it’s available :-) Which is October 1st.
  

Gina, the heroine in CAUGHT IN THE ACT, is an overly responsible big sister who has always lived in the shadow of her younger, sexier sister (who is also always in trouble). Gina is a reserved, shy restaurant reviewer who works from home, and you know what it can be like working at home – she spends a lot of time in sweats and doesn’t meet many new men, so not much dating.

Gina is getting her sister out of trouble – again – when she has to sneak into Mason Scott’s home to steal some revealing pictures of her sister (being used in a divorce settlement – Mason is a divorce lawyer). But, while she wanted an inconspicuous costume, she ends up in a cabaret singer’s outfit, and is mistaken for the entertainment. She actually can sing, so she goes for it, and well, let’s just say that’s just the beginning of the end of Gina’s boring life – things get very exiting, very dangerous, and very sexy.

• Which scene in your novel did you love writing and why?

Oh, this is tough, because I love this entire book – seriously, I had so much fun with it. It’s a very action-oriented, sexy romantic suspense. I don’t want to give away any spoilers, but I have to say, one of my very favorite scenes is with the heroine’s sister – when she’s talking to the Coast Guard, and what she does at the end of that scene. I was writing it, and going back and forth with my friend Larissa Ione, whose husband is in the USCG, and they were reading it for me to make sure it was all accurate, and it was a blast, but I absolutely love what Gina’s sister does there.

As for Gina herself, I think one of my favorite moments with her is when she and the hero are in under serious threat, trapped in a house with bad guys coming in, and Mason wants her to hide in the closet. She absolute refuses, and picks up something to hit them with instead – I think it’s a moment where we see what’s she’s really made of, even when she doesn’t see it herself.

• Was this your first experience taking part in a series like this?

Yes, this is my first continuity, though I have done some anthologies, and various miniseries within the Blaze line. A miniseries/anthology is where individual authors write books on a certain theme, and the books all have that flash on the cover, and they come out at various times over several years. A continuity is where several authors work together on separate books linked by a common premise, and sometimes by common characters, and the books come out together, one after the other, since they are linked.Anyway, I did enjoy it. Writing can be so solitary most of the time, it was very nice being able to contact the group at any point to brainstorm or just vent. Now, being able to enjoy the final products and readers’ reactions together, it’s all been great.

So what’s next from you?

My next Blaze release is in March 2010, a two-story collection of Blazing Bedtime Stories where I will share a book with Kimberly Raye – her story in the book is “Cupid’s Bite,” and mine is “I Wish He Might…” – I think it’s hysterical how they rhyme. ;) But my story is about a tabloid reporter who meets a sexy genie… and he gets to make her wishes come true. ;)

After that, I also have a May release which people have come to call “the magic icing book.” LOL! The title is MAKING YOUR MOVE, and it’s about a woman who owns a bakery with her college buddy, who happens to be a scientist who has made an extract used in cookie frosting which enhances female pheromones to attract any man they are interested in. It was an incredibly fun book to write… less of the suspense and danger, though there is a little mystery in there, but most just sexy fun. :-)

Sam, thank you for answering my questions and sharing a bit of what we can look forward to in 2010. I love the idea of Making Your Move and I’m looking forward to reading Caught In The Act.
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Samantha Hunter lives in Syracuse New York with her husband and several pets. Since January 2004 when she sold her first book to Harlequin Blaze, Virtually Perfect, she has gone on to publish several more with new releases on the way. Sam holds two Master's degrees and was a university instructor for many years before quitting to live the writing life.

Visit Sam's author Blog at www.loveisanexplodingcigar.com.

For even more red-hot masquerade mishaps, read other Dressed to Thrill titles, including:

Feels Like the First Timeby Tawny WeberHarlequin Blaze Miniseries: Dressed to Thrill September
2009
Hold on to the Nightsby Karen FoleyHarlequin Blaze Miniseries: Dressed to Thrill November 2009

Santa, Babyby Lisa Renee JonesHarlequin Blaze Miniseries: Dressed to Thrill December 2009