Q & A

I love being able to write about the ocean, but Hannah is what makes UNDER PRESSURE tick.  The pressure on her is largely self-imposed.   She is a gutsy, determined, strong-willed.  But driven.  It is her strength and yet her major flaw.  It makes her vulnerable.  She takes risks in her relentless pursuit of bad guys.  A little thing like the threat of death doesn’t deter her.  She is uncompromising when it comes to justice.  As a result, her relationships suffer.  She is at odds with her boss, with her diving partner, and most importantly with the man she loves, Peter O’Brien.  In UNDER PRESSURE, with a hurricane bearing down, her relationship with O’Brien on the rocks, and a nine-year-old boy on her hands, she is still determined to track down the cause for an airplane that has plunged into the sea.   In the end, it takes that nine-year-old boy to pull Hannah back from the edge.

What do you think distinguishes your work from other authors of this genre?

The most obvious differences are the Caribbean setting, the focus on underwater crime scene investigation, and the environmental sub-themes.  All of these elements go hand-in hand in the novels. My heroine, Hannah Sampson, is an expert diver and underwater crime scene investigator. She lives in a tropical paradise where sunsets cast gold across a serene ocean and gentle morning breeze rattle palm leaves, where a look below the ocean’s surface is like opening a page from Alice in Wonderland.  

But for Hannah Sampson, the serene can turn violent even in paradise and danger can lurk beneath the surface.  Hannah dives where many fear to swim—the deep and often deadly ocean bottom to find the truth.  The more time Hannah spends on and under the ocean, the more she comes to appreciates its delicate balance and worries about the loss of coral reefs and the creatures that flourish there.  In this most recent book, UNDER PRESSURE, a hurricane is building and threatens to strike before Hannah can find a killer.

Why did you choose to set your books in the Caribbean?

My husband and I spend a month or two sailing and diving in the Caribbean each year.  We have a 38 foot Beneteau sailboat in St. Vincent and the Grenadines.   I love the islands and their people.  The colors, scents, sounds.  It is a vibrant place.  You hear a lot about island time.  People have a more relaxed attitude.  There=s not the hustle and bustle and the stress that exists in the States.  And the sailing always feels like an adventure.  The sea can change from serene to wild.  Sometimes sliding across glass, sometime heeled at 45 degrees, salt spray splashing over the bow, the sea flowing down the rail.  The underwater environment is gorgeous with tapestries of coral, sponges, and fishes.  The more time I spend in the ocean, the more I see, and the more mysterious it becomes.   I wanted to share the beauty with others.  But I also wanted to let people know that this world is threatened.

Why the environmental themes?

I want to do more than just entertain in my books.  I want to educate.  I think that addressing environmental issues in the mystery allows me to reach a wider audience than someone who is writing a strictly environmental piece.  I love the ocean.  This extraordinary place is packed with life.  And stunning.  The idea that thirty percent of the world's coral reefs has already been destroyed, that if the trend continues, sixty percent will be decimated by 2030 is frightening.  And what a horrible loss.  Species are being wiped out -- turtles, whales, sharks, dolphin.  A lot of it is just senseless slaughter.  My first book talked about the damage being done to the reef, the second deals with the killing of shark for their fins, the third will be about sea turtles.

What=s the most frightening experience you=ve had sailing and diving?

For sailing it was when we were making an overnight passage from St. Martin to Tortola.  The ocean is a vast, lonely place when it=s pitch black with only your running light reflecting in the water.  The wind was against us, having shifted that day from east southeast around to the west.  All that night we sailed into one squall after another.  Lightning filled the clouds, and bolts flashed into the sea.  I kept thinking about the mast, a tall lightning rod jutting into the sky.  I was relieved to see the outline of  Virgin Gorda appear above the swells in the morning light.  Later we discovered  that the wind had shifted because a hurricane was building in Jamaica.  Wrong Way Lenny came blowing in from the west, an anomaly.  Hurricanes usually come from the east.  It hit the BVI two days later and crashed into St. Martin and the Lesser Antilles, hovering  there for a couple days and doing a lot of damage.

In terms of diving, it was my first ocean dive.  It was a night dive in Jamaica.  That was almost 16 years ago.  I had no idea what to expect.   Breathing underwater is one of the most unnatural things we do, and it can be very claustrophobic.  Inexperience and fear of the unknown in the deep fueled my terror.  The only thing that made me take that step off the boat and into the black void was that I knew I=d be disappointed if I didn=t.   I=d miss an opportunity.  I=ve always believed that pushing yourself a little keeps things interesting and life full.  Otherwise, I  might never make it out of the house.  So I pushed the fear aside.  Still, my risk taking is usually moderated by common sense.  After 16 years,  there isn=t much that I am afraid of under the water because I=m familiar and comfortable with the environment, but I keep my hands to myself and try not to invade other creature=s space.   And I don=t do extreme diving -- dives at 200 or 300 feet through sediment filled wrecks are for those more adventurous and bold than I.  Actually, I=m more afraid of what=s above the water -- like speed boats that aren=t watching for divers in the water -- than I am about being eaten by a Great White or stung by a Portuguese Man of War.  

What other risks have you taken in your life?

Well, one of the biggest risks was probably writing the first book.  There was a lot of potential for failure.  But the rewards have been great.   Getting a contract from NAL, seeing the book cover for the first time, being listed on Amazon and Barnes and Noble, seeing the book sitting on the bookstore shelf.  Wow!  It=s been fun.  It=s something I=ve wanted to do since that first Nancy Drew mystery.  I suppose there are always risks in following your dreams.  Joseph Campbell called it AFollowing your bliss.@  I believe everyone  should do that.  

I=ve  gone on lots of adventures with the mind set that life=s too short, grab the gusto, whatever.  My first was back in the 70's.  I spent a year traveling around Europe and the Middle East, hitchhiking and taking trains.   It was the Europe on $5 dollars a day philosophy.  I lived in Switzerland for a winter, working as a maid.  That=s where I learned to ski.  I tended bar on Cyprus, camped on the Bay of Elat in Israel, listening to bombs blasting in the distance, lived  in a cave on Crete for a week or so.   I don=t think I=d want my own kids doing these things 
but .....  

Why did you choose to write mysteries?

My mother was hooked on mysteries.  She prided herself on being able to figure out who did it long before the investigator did.  I=ve been reading mysteries since I was a kid.  When I decided to try to write fiction, I thought mystery would be fun and something that I could do easily.  Wrong.  But that first book sold, and I signed a contract for the series, so here I am writing mysteries.

What is your writing process like?

It changes based on where I am in the process, researching, writing, rewriting, or scrambling to make a deadline.  Basically though I write five days a week for at least four to six hours, unless I’m completely immersed in a project.  Then it turns to eight hours a day, seven days a week and I miss meals.

I start a project by doing some general research and plotting.  I simply can’t outline.  It’s like taking a walking into a brick wall. Instead, I do time lines and character descriptions.  Quickly the need to start writing takes over.  I find comfort in Anne Lamont’s statement that everyone deserves the luxury of writing “shitty first drafts.”  Mine definitely fit that category.  But it happens that I love the rewriting process.  My first draft is my chance to discover meaning—what it is that I really want this book to be about.  When I have a story—a beginning, a middle, and an end—I revise and revise.  I move scenes, drop characters, cut, paste, add, subtract and then I toy with prose.  One day, I realize I’ve finished.  That’s when it gets scary.  That’s when the story is no more mine.  That’s when I share it with the world outside.

Absolutely.  There was a time when I thought that the only way I could write was on one of those yellow legal pads.  No more.  I love working on the computer.  The investment seems less.  You write something, hate it, delete and retype.  Nothing is as permanent as that black ink on paper.  The effort to revise is so much less.  At various points, I do print the manuscript and evaluate the hard copy.  I find it difficult to get a feel for the entire piece otherwise, especially when it reaches 250-300 pages.   

What about revision?

I revise.  I think it=s crucial.  I move text around, add and delete sections.  I find it to be the easiest part of the writing process.  For me, the first draft is extremely stressful.  Once that=s done, I can play, develop scenes, add dialogue.  It=s fun.  Of course, you have to know when it=s done too.  At some point, you have to turn it over.

What would you tell others who want to write?

That you have to sit down and do it.  People talk about waiting for inspiration, the muses.  That just doesn=t happen for me, and I don=t think it happens for other writers either.  I have to get the computer turned on and start.  That=s when things start to happen, not when I=m sitting around thinking about it.  I need to see one sentence on the page and that moves me to the next sentence.  Sure I sometimes get ideas when I=m lying in bed unable to sleep.  My subconscious is always at work.  It gets on the page in the morning.  So, you have to be disciplined and you have to be persistent.