Meg Gardiner and the Deadshrinker

Interviewed by Sandra Parshall

We’re giving away three hardcover copies of Meg Gardiner’s just-released thriller, The Liar’s Lullaby. To enter the drawing, leave a comment and include an e-mail address where you can be contacted.


Meg Gardiner, a lawyer and teacher in a previous life, is now the Edgar Award-winning author of the Evan Delaney series and the Jo Beckett series. A Californian living in England, she was published in Europe for years but couldn’t interest a U.S. publisher – until Stephen King, whom she had never met, happened to pick up one of her books on a trip. Today she talks about the improbable turn in her career, as well as her new book and her approach to writing thrillers.

Q. Tell us about The Liar’s Lullaby.

A. It’s the third thriller featuring forensic psychiatrist Jo Beckett. When a singer dies gruesomely during her entrance at a stadium rock concert, the San Francisco police ask Jo to perform a psychological autopsy. But the investigation turns Jo’s life upside down, because singer Tasia McFarland was the ex-wife of the President of the United States.

Tasia is a country-pop singer whose rocky life has been laced with addictions, breakdowns, erratic behavior, and broken relationships. Most notorious is her failed marriage to Robert McFarland, the former army officer who now occupies the White House. But Tasia’s on a comeback tour. In the opener for her spectacular stage show, she slides down a zip line as helicopters fly overhead. And the stunt goes disastrously wrong. The helicopters crash, the crowd stampedes, and Tasia plummets to the field, dead—from a gunshot wound.

Video can’t prove that the shot came from Tasia’s own Colt .45 and the ballistics report comes up empty. So the authorities call on Jo Beckett to do a psychological autopsy and clean up the potential political disaster. But as Jo sifts through the facts, she finds only more questions. Was Tasia’s gun loaded? Did she kill herself in one last cry for attention? Were her politically-charged lyrics the rantings of a paranoid woman losing her grip? Or warnings from a woman afraid and in danger? The media hounds Jo and the White House pressures her to shut down the investigation. Conspiracy theories ignite and right wing fanatics arm for a confrontation with the government. Jo finds herself racing to extinguish the conspiracy rumor mill before it incites a level of violence that reaches America’s highest corridors of power.

Q. Why did you make your protagonist, Jo, a forensic psychiatrist? What was it about this profession that appealed to you, and what can you do with this character that you might not be able to do if she were a lawyer or a detective?

A. Jo calls herself a deadshrinker. She analyzes the dead for the police. She’s the last resort in baffling cases. When the cops and the medical examiner can’t determine the manner of a victim’s death, they turn to Jo to perform a psychological autopsy and figure out whether it was accident, suicide, or murder.

Jo looks at victims’ emotional, moral, and psychological lives to figure out why they died. She digs beneath the clinical what and how of the police lab, into the messy, mysterious, and spooky realm of the mind. And that’s what fascinated me about her job.

CSI is great, but I wanted to go beyond it. In the real world, crime lab technology is not an infallible truth-o-meter. Physical evidence is not in fact bulletproof. Real life is murkier—and more fascinating. That’s what Jo explores. She goes beyond DNA sequencing and gas chromatography to uncover why a victim has died. And she can come at cases from fresh, atypical angles.

Q. How did you educate yourself about the work of forensic psychiatrists? Did you speak with any pros in the field?

A. I read. A lot. And I talked with real forensic psychiatrists about their jobs. It’s fascinating, difficult, and important work. I’m also lucky to have a sister who’s an MD trained in both neurology and psychiatry. She’s wonderful—and patient—about explaining medical and psychiatric issues, recommending books, and reading my first drafts to correct everything I goof up.

Q. Your career has taken an unusual course – you were published first in Britain, weren’t you, although your books are set in the U.S.? Would you tell us about your road to publication and how your career has evolved?

A. Writing is my third career, after law and teaching. I wrote my first novel when I moved to the U.K. after my husband took a job in London. But I’m a Californian, so I set the story in my hometown, Santa Barbara.

My agent presumed that an American woman who wrote novels set in the USA would generate interest from U.S. publishers. He sent the manuscript to U.K. publishers as well, but told me not to hold my breath. However, China Lake was bought almost immediately by a British publisher, followed by French and Dutch publishers—while American publishers said: No, thanks.

American publishers then turned down the sequel, Mission Canyon. They didn’t want to pick up a series mid-stream. This continued for five books. I couldn’t complain, because after all, the Evan Delaney novels were published everywhere in the English-speaking world besides the USA, and in a dozen foreign languages to boot. But I was frustrated that my books weren’t available at home. And my relatives were starting to think I had invented this whole “published writer” thing.

Then, through serendipity, Stephen King picked up China Lake to read on a flight to the U.K. He liked it, read the rest of the Evan Delaney series, and learned that I had no American publisher. He wrote an article on his website, urging readers to find my books. And then, in a spectacular burst of support for another writer, he wrote a column about my novels in Entertainment Weekly. Forty-eight hours later, fourteen American publishers had contacted me about publishing my work. Dutton bought my entire backlist plus the Jo Beckett series, which I was developing at the time.

Since then, Dutton and its fellow Penguin imprint, NAL, have published all my novels. American publication has given me a tremendous boost in visibility. My books have hit the bestseller lists in a number of countries, and are now published in, I think, 19 languages. The Dirty Secrets Club was a USA Today summer reading pick, was chosen by Amazon as one of its Top Ten Thrillers of 2008, and won the RT Reviewers Choice Award for Best Procedural novel of the year. And to my surprise and delight, in 2009 China Lake won the Edgar for Best Paperback Original. That was a thrill, validation, just a stunning honor. So: Thank you, MWA, and Dutton, and NAL, and Mr. King.

Q. How has your life changed now that you’re a mystery star in the U.S.? Are you spending more time here than before?

A. Star—ooh, I’m printing that out, so that the next time my kids demand to know when dinner will be ready, I can wave it at them. I’m excited that my books are now published in America and yes, I’m spending a lot more time in the U.S. But that’s okay—I may currently reside in London, but I’m a Californian, and I’m happy that when I attend Bouchercon, Left Coast Crime, ThrillerFest, or walk into American bookstores, I can find my novels. Even better, all this travel means I get to see my mom more often. And I get to meet American readers, writers, and booksellers, which is wonderful. A few weeks ago in Portland, Oregon, I signed books at the Public Library Association national conference for three hours solid. That ain’t bad.

Q. You describe yourself as an “escaped” lawyer. I know several attorneys-turned-writers who say they’re “recovering” lawyers. This always make me curious – why were you eager to get out of the legal profession after going to school for so many years to get into it? Was the reality of law practice different from your expectations?

A. I always knew I wanted to write, but thought: I don’t want to live in a dump and be an unemployed novelist. I’d rather have a profession that will serve me all my life, and pay the bills, and allow me to write in my spare time. My grandfather was a lawyer who enjoyed a long, satisfying career, so I followed his path. And I love the law.

But after working in commercial litigation I realized I didn’t want to argue for a living. And litigation is both stressful and time consuming—you work intense hours. I didn’t want to burn the candle at both ends and the middle while I had little kids. So I jumped ship. I went and taught legal research and writing at the University of California, which was a blast.

Q. Your family seems to be full of musicians. Are you also musical? Did the popular music world feel like a natural one for you to explore in The Liar’s Lullaby?

A. I love musicians. Guitar players especially. I dig them so much, I married one. And the popular music world can be fascinating, exciting, and over the top, all at once. The Liar’s Lullaby is about fame, personality, and excess. But it’s equally about music as a singer’s core, obsession, and bliss—Tasia McFarland composes and sings as if holding back the songs would cause her to self-combust.

The book is also about celebrity and politics colliding in an explosive mess that threatens to scorch everybody involved, including Jo.

I am not a musician. In high school I was a mime, and there was a good reason for that.

Q. Your books are marketed as thrillers. How would you define the difference between a mystery and a thriller? What makes your novels thrillers?

A. In a mystery, the object is to solve a whodunit. The plot focuses on a detective’s efforts to interview suspects, sort clues, and solve the puzzle. Revealing the murderer’s identity is the climax of the story.

Thrillers play on a broader field, and they race across it. They might feature a murder mystery. But they might not. What they should always feature is pace, high stakes, and characters facing the worst crises of their lives. In thrillers, people face severe pressure and increasing threats—people including the protagonist, her friends, family, community, and perhaps her nation. Thrillers need to frighten, get pulses pounding, and keep people from putting down the book.

Q. You have one scene in The Liar’s Lullaby that involves a highrise building, dangling cables, and... Well, I won’t say more and spoil it for readers. How do you come up with scenarios like that? If you want an action scene that’s exciting and different, do you brainstorm with friends, read about weird accidents, or just turn your imagination loose and follow it wherever it goes?

A. Weird accidents… thanks, that’s a great idea. Let me note that down.

To write action scenes, you have to know what’s already been done—so you can purge those ideas from your writing. Cop in a fast car chases hit men; gunfire ensues. That had better be Bullitt, because if you’re writing that scene today it’s a retread, minus Steve McQueen and the Mustang. If readers have read or seen it a hundred times already, it’s a cliché. They know how it ends. It won’t thrill. And there goes your thriller.

So what do I do? I turn ideas inside out. Upset expectations. And back my characters into tight corners, literally or metaphorically. Then I think: Yeah, let’s see you get out of this one. Go ahead, drive over those spikes and get SEVERE TIRE DAMAGE. Then fight off the villain. Yep, that guy, the one toting a twelve-gauge shotgun—and fight him off using only a can of house paint. And when the good guys try, I throw crazed animals at them, or a 757 at takeoff velocity.

Sad to say, I also observe everyday situations and wonder how they could go horribly awry.

Q. Although your books are thrillers and, to use a cliché, action-packed, you also have quieter emotional scenes. Which is more difficult for you to write? Do you believe a thriller must have both?

A. “Must” is tricky. I definitely need to write both. Neither is more difficult; they just present different challenges. When writing action an author has to consider blocking (that is, moving the characters around physically), freshness, authenticity, and clarity. When writing quieter emotional scenes, you have to consider honesty, revelation, authenticity, and clarity. Actually, the two types of scenes are not so different. Getting the right emotional tone, illuminating the moment, revealing character through the choices people make, is vital for both.

Thrillers cannot thrive on action alone. That’s like turning up the volume on death metal and leaving it at maximum while a guitarist shreds nonstop. Authors have to give readers a breather. If you don’t, they become numb, and the action loses its impact, no matter how loud the screaming or how big the explosions.

Q. Is any subject matter off-limits to you – are there some things you would refuse to write about even if your publisher wanted you to?

A. Child abuse or molestation. I find it too upsetting. And I don’t want to spend a year of my life writing about something that would drag me, and readers, down. For what purpose? Entertainment? I don’t think so.

Q. In parting, what advice do you have for aspiring crime fiction writers?

A. Read. Learn about the genre. Learn what works, and what doesn’t. Read widely, read the classics, learn the clichés, avoid them, read what’s out there this year to see what’s grabbing readers – not to copy them or jump on a bandwagon, but so you get a sense of the modern crime novel and thriller. Then, if it’s your passion, go for it.

Above all, be honest. On the page you can break the laws of physics, but you must tell the emotional and moral truth.
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Visit Meg’s website for more information and to hear the title song for The Liar’s Lullaby. Leave a comment below and include an e-mail address if you want to enter the drawing for a free copy of Meg’s new novel.

Interview with Anthony Flacco

Interviewed by Sandra Parshall


Anthony Flacco’s first historical suspense novel, The Last Nightingale (2007), featuring San Francisco detective Randall Blackburn, has been nominated for a Thriller Award by International Thriller Writers. The sequel, The Hidden Man, was released this week. Anthony is an award-winning screenwriter and the author of two nonfiction books, A Checklist for Murder and Tiny Dancer. He has also worked as an acquisitions editor for a literary agency and is creator and former director of the AFI Alumni Networking Workshop.

Q. Would you give us a brief description of The Hidden Man?

A. It is early in the year of 1915 in the city of San Francisco, and the environment is permeated with falsehood. The city leaders are desperate to succeed with their ten-month Panama-Pacific International Exhibition in order to re-attract the business base that dried up after the Great Earthquake of 1906. The backroom powers that be operate far outside the law to prevent their desperate ploy from failing. They draw Randall Blackburn into their snare and present him with the worst moral dilemma he has ever faced. It tears at his very definition of himself.

Against all of that falsehood, Shane Nightingale and Vignette Nightingale are pulled into the story because they both still live at home. The story opens with their family unit under a sustained assault from a crooked police captain who wants to drive them apart. But after nine years together as a family, this unit that they have created with nothing more than their mutually sustained love and caring turns out to be something that not one of them is willing to live without.

Q. The Hidden Man features the same trio of protagonists as The Last Nightingale, but it takes place nine years after the events of the first book. Why did you decide to skip those years in the characters’ lives?

A. It allowed me to advance the ages of Shane and Vignette, who are twelve and nine, respectively, in The Last Nightingale, to that of a twenty-one year old young man and a young woman of nineteen for The Hidden Man. This gave each of them substantially more ability to affect the story with their actions. The nine year leap ahead in time also placed the setting at the beginning of San Francisco’s glorious coming-out party after the decimation of the 1906 quake. That all made for a grand story backdrop.

Q. Is your mesmerist/showman, James Duncan, based on a real historical figure?

A. No, Duncan is a bit of faded glory, a celebrity desperately hanging onto his public persona, still physically vital but mentally failing. He lives in a time when there is no social knowledge about Alzheimer’s Disease, only the label of “senile,” a single word that would kill his career. He is addicted to a brand new drug which helps to clear his mind, but thus demands his continuous use of a substance whose addictive power is eventually too much even for his lifelong self-discipline. It does not matter how determined he might be to avoid addiction because he has to use the drug to be able to perform. The drug is brand new and unheard of in America, at that time. Today meth, or methamphetamine, is commonly known by any one of a list of street names.

Within the chaos of all that dysfunction, my goal was to consider the plight of such a man when his heart and soul are good, and when he is experiencing great moral torment over finding the right course of action for himself – even as he balances the ego of a longtime showman with the needs of a secret drug addict.

Q. I was fascinated by the references in The Hidden Man to Dr. Alois Alzheimer and his use of stimulants to treat the brain disease we now call Alzheimer’s. Did that information inspire the story of Duncan, or did you come across it in your research and decide to fit it in?

A. I had already decided that Duncan needed to be battling cognitive degeneration, in order to raise the stakes on his internal conflict. In the research, I was happily surprised by the coincidence of Dr. Alzheimer’s groundbreaking work in Germany in the immediately preceding years, and also by the invention in 1913 of methylenedioxymethamphetimine – “meth” – also in Germany, by a company that is still known today as Merck.

Since Duncan is an international showman, it is no great leap to place him in Europe on tour a couple of years earlier, where his initial symptoms are diagnosed by Dr. Alzheimer, who then refers Duncan to a Merck scientist in order to get him a supply of one of the only drugs then available for clearing the mind. He therefore has all that he needs, so the issue of supply is not a problem. Instead he is afflicted with the clawing urges of an addiction that produces effects in him which nobody of the era understands.

Q. You’ve obviously done exhaustive research into San Francisco’s history. Here’s another chicken-or-egg question: Did your interest in the city inspire your novels, or did you first decide to set a book during the 1906 earthquake and fire, then embark on your research?

A. My initial idea was to write a “gaslight thriller,” meaning a murder mystery set in the era of gaslight street lamps, just prior to the widespread availability of electricity. The sweeping changes that technology was just about to unleash upon America at that time remind me of the digital electronic revolution that has utterly transformed our own landscape over the last twenty years.

I am fascinated by the pressures that these larger forces place upon the individual moral character of the people affected by them. The Last Nightingale takes place where the citizens have been betrayed by the very ground beneath their feet, and there is talk everywhere that they may have brought about the city’s demise with their own wickedness. Religious leaders are warning of the impending end.

And so the more things change, the more they don’t. The situation is little different in 1906 or nine years later in 1915, while the Great War raging in Europe has not yet ensnared America. And so there are wars and rumors of wars. It is clear to those people that the world is perched at the brink of Biblical destruction… Through those bygone events, we may hope to look at ourselves, sometimes with greater clarity, using the emotional advantage of that illusion of distance.

Q. In the back of The Hidden Man, you have a wonderful essay about the attractions of historical fiction and the role of family in the lives of real and fictional people. I know it’s not fair to ask you to boil your thoughts down to a couple of paragraphs, but since the alternative is to print the entire essay here, I’m going to ask you to do just that. Why do you think people are drawn to historical novels, and what do the readers demand from these stories? Why do you believe it’s essential for a character to have some kind of family structure in his life?

A. The Hollywood-ization of character has permeated the Western world’s storytelling process with so much two-dimensional characterization that it is practically expected in many quarters and tolerated by many more. It’s not that anybody is guilty of anything, here – rather it is the natural and understandable result of a film’s need to get through the visually uninteresting character development scenes so that they can utilize the more visually stimulating shots that are loved and embraced by millions of film goers. The phenomenon has bled over into the writing of narrative novels as well, of course, because the effects of major Hollywood movies are cultural in scope. Nevertheless, writers who capture my attention and enthusiasm tend to create characters who are so well rounded that they seem as if they could get up off of the page or step off of the screen to greet you.

As for the larger issues of your question, I love the fact that you raise them, but I can’t do better than that “dossier” piece without using up about as much text space. I am very glad that you found it worthy of interest and invite the readers not to miss it, since it’s tucked away at the back of The Hidden Man.

Q. You’ve written screenplays and published two nonfiction books. Why crime fiction? Why now? Has this been a long-time ambition for you or a more recent interest?

A. I ricocheted into this subject matter off of the historical fiction of another novel, a book that I began before these two, but which I have only recently completed. That story takes place in Europe at the turn of the 20th Century, and then in New York City from 1900 through 1946. I loved the research work, and the more I thought about the story that eventually came from it, the more it became apparent that the surface differences of any historical era do little to disguise the familiarity of human nature within the situation. The cosmetic differences, however, do impart to the writer a greater freedom to explore perennial issues of human nature without getting caught up in the political and social winds of the day. Within the time frame of that other book’s story, I felt attracted to the gaslight era, and began to think about doing a story or series of stories revolving around a small set of disparate characters who live in that time. That was the beginning for The Last Nightingale.

Q. Has writing crime fiction presented any difficulties you didn’t anticipate? Which aspects of it have given you the most pleasure?

A. The only challenges that I encounter in writing narrative fiction are the recurring issues of free imagination versus coherent structure, ease of narrative versus disciplined polish, and the constant questions of how best to create compelling characters and evocative dialogue. All of which are challenges that I heartily embrace. There is nothing about the writer’s life that I don’t love, and I am grateful to have it. My readers are my heroes because they let me know that what I am doing matters to them, and I am thankful for that beyond measure.

Q. In your work as a freelance editor and an acquisitions editor for a literary agency, what are some common flaws you’ve seen in manuscripts?

A. I am continually astonished by the number of people who strive for mainstream publication by sending out unfinished or unpolished work. Don’t such writers ever go to a bookstore and look at the shelves? How about a library? Because that’s all you need to do to get a picture of the competition. I am also surprised by how commonly writers try to add their own personal stories of great illness or personal trauma to a submission of their work, as if to further convince the reader to their cause. This places the reader in a bizarre and most unwelcome position, and oddly enough, signals the writer’s essential lack of faith in the strength of the work itself.

Q. Who are your favorite crime fiction and true crime writers – authors whose work you’ve learned from?

A. I look to the basics in contemporary American crime writing: Truman Capote for In Cold Blood and Joe McGinniss for Fatal Vision. Of course there are many fine male and female writers of crime fiction today and we don’t need to look backward to find excellence. However, these two in particular can show a writer everything that they need to know about true crime writing, if that writer studies the way that both books balance a well-structured story with deeply developed character portrayals of the real-life counterparts, and above all, an abiding respect for the powerful use of polished language.

Q. Aside from Thrillerfest, will you be attending any mystery conventions this year where fans can meet you?

A. I certainly hope to. We are just now beginning to process of putting together my summer and fall schedule in light of the fact that I am moving my literary bunker and all of my Graduate Interns up to the Seattle area just before The Hidden Man is released in June. I love to speak or give seminars at writers conventions and it’s always a pleasure to meet an enthusiastic reader.

Q. In parting, what advice do you have for aspiring writers?

A. Out-work your competition! Out-work your competition! Out-work your competition! Put in more head-work prior to sketching out your story. Do more research than most would do on the background of your story and characters. Before you send out your work, spend more time than most other writers are willing to spend in polishing it. The foolish greed of writers who undertake the writing of a book as a get-rich-quick scheme is only exceeded by the carelessness of preparation that they inevitably display in their hurried and impatient work.

It doesn’t matter if they have more talent than you do. It doesn’t matter if they are smarter than you are. It doesn’t even matter if they are somehow more deserving of success than you may be.

YOU can still join the winners on the strength of your own sustained determination.

Visit the author’s web site: www.anthonyflacco.com
See a trailer for The Hidden Man here.

Inspiration from a Unique Setting

Hailey Lind (Guest Blogger)
Sisters Carolyn & Julie

Writing our third book, Brush with Death (published July 3), proved to be easier for us than writing the first two (Feint of Art and Shooting Gallery). It’s good to know that experience helps the process! We got the idea for the book one summer when Carolyn was visiting Julie in Oakland, California.

Oakland’s a bit of an ugly stepsister to San Francisco, but in truth it’s a beautiful city in its own right: poised right across the bay and rimmed by mountains, it is a shining example of Art Deco architecture and a lively port that date back to the days before the Bay Bridge was built, when Oakland served as the East Bay’s major city. We had driven past the Chapel of the Chimes Columbarium for years, en route to other places, and finally stopped to check it out.

The Columbarium’s original architect, Julia Morgan, stood four feet eleven inches tall but was by all accounts a real dynamo. According to legend, she came from a well-to-do Berkeley family, and lobbied for years to gain admittance to Paris’s lofty Ecole des Beaux Arts, which in her day did not accept women. But after winning several national architecture awards in France, she was finally allowed in.

Morgan went on to design buildings all over San Francisco and the East Bay, though her most famous is Hearst Castle, on the central coast of California. If you haven’t been, it’s well worth a special trip. Newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst spared no expense to create an ornate, over-the-top wonder in the hills overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Whatever Julia Morgan couldn’t find locally she imported from Europe – and we’re not just talking dining room tables or armoires, but entire rooms (walls, fireplaces, and ceilings) from old European estates. She designed the castle around these features, mimicking and embellishing them to create a seamless architecture. It’s really quite stunning.

In the 1920s Morgan turned her attention to converting a tram terminal at the end of Oakland’s Piedmont Avenue into a columbarium. She used leftovers from Hearst castle and incorporated items specifically purchased for the columbarium to create a labyrinthine, mosaic-encrusted, mural-coated eternal resting place. It is almost impossible not to get lost when wandering the corridors – some of which are dead ends (no pun intended) while others lead further into the building.

What writer could wander those convoluted halls and not think of murder and mystery? When Carolyn and I were walking through, we immediately thought: Annie Kincaid would love this place! And out came the ever-present notepad. The rooms have great names: Chapel of Serendipity and Slumber; Gregorian Hall; the Garden of Repose. The ceilings are made of beautiful glass tiles, above which is a crawl space. Some ceilings are skylights that slide open to let in fresh air and sun. Canaries chirp in cages, fountains tinkle, sunlight gleams through elaborate stained glass. We were enthralled.

Next door is a cemetery that is not connected to the Columbarium but is historic and amazing in its own right. Designed by Fredrick Law Olmstead, the man who designed Central Park in New York City, the cemetery’s steep hills offer some of the best views to be found of Oakland, Berkeley, the bay, San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge. The higher on the hill one goes, the grander and more expensive are the tombs. Some are so large and impressive they seem more like public monuments than private family markers. Some of the illustrious residents include the Ghirardellis, of San Francisco chocolate fame, as well as Julia Morgan herself, though her name is inscribed in a simple granite block, eschewing the fancy buildings and stained glass.


In Brush with Death this setting inspired all kinds of possibilities, and soon the ideas took shape: encountering a ghoul in the graveyard, something creepy involving the crypts, a chase through the twisting halls of the Columbarium. And it had to be at night, of course. The scenes unfolded in our minds like a movie: Annie trying to scale a long bank of niches but falling to the ground; Annie getting locked in a small toilet (we didn’t go so far as to ask someone to lock us in – that would have seemed weird – but we did shut the door while we plotted Annie’s escape), Annie encountering Michael and getting lost. We also sat at the summit of the cemetery and marveled at the view, as Annie does in the novel with the fictional accountant, Manny.

Brush with Death brings back characters from the first two novels – Annie’s assistant, Mary; Brian, Annie’s devoted but over-the-top friend; Evangeline, from Shooting Gallery; Pete – of course! – and Samantha. Inspector Annette Crawford makes an appearance during a picnic-gone-awry, when Annie’s friends find themselves in the middle of a Goth Naval Battle (this being San Francisco, after all). Annie makes a new friend, and a few new foes, and her on-again, off-again flirtation with Frank heats up even while Michael keeps dropping in to tease and tempt her. And, naturally, Grandfather is a constant presence, giving Annie advice and complicating her life yet again.

It was fun to draw our inspiration for Brush with Death from a real setting. Luckily, the events coordinator at the Chapel of the Chimes, Allison Rodman, was excited about the book and gave us special access to the building. She even invited us to have our Brush with Death release party there –if you happen to be in town, join us! It will be held on Friday the 13th (how appropriate!) of July, at the Chapel of the Chimes on Piedmont Avenue, Oakland, from 7-10 p.m. Details are on our website, www.haileylind.com. We hope you can join us for a celebration in a fascinating, beautiful, real-life setting!