Today, I'm happy to Welcome New York Times best selling suspense author Brenda Novak. Brenda and I became acquaintances through her annual online auction for juvenile diabetes.
Bio:
New York Times Bestselling Author Brenda Novak has three novels coming out this summer-THE PERFECT COUPLE, THE PERFECT LIAR and THE PERFECT MURDER, all part of her popular Last Stand Series. She also runs an annual on-line auction for diabetes research every May at www.brendanovak.com. To date, she's raised over $770,000. Brenda considers herself lucky to be a mother of five and married to the love of her life.
What lured you to writing suspense?
I'm fascinated by the criminal mind. If you think about it, so much of that kind of behavior is illogical because it's also self-defeating. And yet we still have people doing terrible things to others. The motivations behind these actions overcome all prohibitors. It provides a puzzle for me that I will probably never solve. LOL
What is the hardest part of writing a suspense novel? Plotting, making realistic characters, or just the writing?
The hardest part of writing is trusting your intuition. This trust is a learned process. It takes time and practice. And I don't think you ever get "perfect" enough at it that you don't have to occasionally go back and rewrite and restructure. It is nice to know, however, that our subconscious mind seems to be ahead of our conscious mind in whatever it is we're trying to create. If we can free ourselves from our internal editor long enough to trust our intuition, it really helps the pages fly.
How long does it take you to research for a book? Does the research and gathering of information get easier over the years since you can fall back on some of what you've already gleaned for an earlier book? It's tough to give an estimate on research time because every book is different, and I don't set aside a specific amount of time for this. I do some preliminary reading to get the creative juices flowing, and then I research various points as they come up in the novel. I'd say that it gets easier as you go along, because your vault of knowledge grows, but there are always things that change or are very specific and need to be double-checked.
Blurb for The Perfect Couple:
A mother faces her greatest fear...
One afternoon in May, Zoe Duncan's thirteen-year-old daughter goes missing from her own backyard. The police think Samantha ran away because she's unhappy about her mother's upcoming marriage--but Zoe doesn't believe it. In fact, she's willing to do anything to bring Sam home, even if it means losing her job, her beautiful home, her fiance. Even if it means divulging all her secrets to a private investigator.
A detective faces his hardest case...
Jonathan Stivers is a P.I. who donates his time to The Last Stand, a victims' charity in Sacramento. He's good at what he does, the best. But never has he had fewer leads to work with--or been more attracted to a client. Jonathan's sure of only one thing: Sam was taken by someone close to the family. He doesn't know how close until he realizes that the "perfect" couple next door is anything but...
