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2109 N. Prospect Ave.
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(414) 347-4077
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Miwaukee, WI 53202
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1-800-207-0084
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Jon
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Jan Burke
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| Could you describe the series for people who may not have read any yet? | Irene Kelly is a newspaper reporter in fictional Las Piernas, California -- a Southern California beach city that is a combination of Long Beach, Laguna Beach, Newport Beach, Venice (CA), and everything in between -- with a few wholly invented attributes tossed in for good measure. She's independent but not alienated. She has a sense of humor. She is loyal, and has strong ties to her friends and family. These people complicate her life, but they also help her through times of trouble. She's married to a homicide detective, Frank Harriman. They don't have the cliche relationship of amateur sleuth and cop. Frank is a complex guy, not just a source of information. There's a lot of conflict in their relationship, partly because of who they are, but also because of their jobs. At the same time, they are devoted to each other, and I enjoy writing about a marriage that works. The next book, "Flight" is told third person, primarily from Frank's point of view. |
| Does Irene have any of Jan Burke in her? | There are a number of things we have in common, but many more we don't. She's a fictional character, and she's not me. She has her own life and problems -- I don't want hers, she doesn't want mine. She's much braver than I am, and she thinks up her comebacks on the spot, while it takes me weeks to realize what I should have said to someone who angered me. |
| How much research is involved with your books? They seem to be very accurate about a lot of different things. | Research is my favorite way to procrastinate.
I love it. One of the best things about writing is exploring worlds you'd
probably never venture into otherwise. For "Bones," I was in a forensic
anthropology training course, went out on cadaver dog training exercises,
got a close up look at the inside of a big Sikorsky helicopter, and had
all sorts of other fun. I also do a lot of just plain research work in the
library or over the Internet. (The latter with great care and healthy skepticism
-- I don't need to tell any experienced user of the 'Net why.) When I'm writing, about two percent of all of this research ends up on the page, but the other ninety-eight percent is helping me to place my characters in a more realistic world and to allow them to see what might be in front of them in a real situation. Most of my writer friends are also heavy researchers, but some tell me they think I'm crazy to spend so much time on it, saying, "It's fiction." That's true, and in crime fiction, telling the story has to be more important than writing a forensic science textbook. There are other goals beyond realism for which a writer must, in my humble opinion, reach. That said, I think readers enjoy exploring the world the characters inhabit. I also believe that my readers are sophisticated and aware of contemporary forensic science. They knew about DNA before OJ Simpson went on trial. Try to cheat them, and they'll groan and throw all that beautiful prose against the wall. This will probably wake their spouses and or their cats. Domestic tranquillity shot to pieces, all because somebody was too lazy to go to the library or make a phone call. Not good. |
| What authors do you enjoy? | I love to read, and I read all sorts of books.
I read a lot of non-fiction now, research for my books. But I'll assume
you're asking about fiction. It would be grand to name lofty titles here, and make everyone believe I spend my time perusing the classics. Well, I do -- I enjoy reading Greek playwrights, Roman poets, Shakespeare, Austen, Dickens, Twain, Dumas, and too many others to name. I also enjoy reading the Modesty Blaise series, by Peter O'Donnell -- which grew out of comic strip. Modesty can do anything. I love her. I enjoy high adventure Raphael Sabatini ("Captain Blood" and "Sea Hawk," among many others). I think Georgette Heyer wrote with admirable wit, and love her books. Science fiction writer David Feintuch's "Hope" series is a recent discovery, and not long ago I finished "To Say Nothing of the Dog," a time travel book by Connie Willis. (This last given to me by a woman who is a cadaver dog handler, and who owns some of my favorite dogs!) The truth is, you just never know what kind of book you'll find on my night stand. At the moment, there's a slim but interesting hagiographical work on St. Christina the Astonishing, which Sharan Newman passed along to me because she knows I'm fascinated by this bizarre saint. In the car, I'm listening to Lawrence Block read one of his Bernie Rhondenbarr books and enjoying it immensely. A few weeks ago, I read a short story and an essay by Gary Phillips that were great. In mystery and suspense, I love the classics across the spectrum -- Chandler, Hammett, Himes, Sayers, Allingham, Tey, Chesterton, Brown, Cain, Charteris, Ross MacDonald. I never tire of reading any of them. I love reading Cornell Woolrich, even if he did rely heavily on coincidence, and even if many of his plots have holes in them -- the guy could place a character in the most ordinary of settings and gradually make his situation become so menacing, it's nearly unbearable. Scares the heck out of me. In a different mood, give me the intelligent, suspenseful, and humorous works of the late Ross Thomas. I'm sorry there won't be more of them. Other contemporary writers I enjoy include Michael Connelly, Sharan Newman, Robert Crais, Dick Lochte, Sarah Smith, Jane Waterhouse, Gillian Roberts, Jeff Deaver, Dennis Lehane, Linda Barnes . . . oh, lots of folks, and this is why I hate naming living people, because a week from now, I'm going to run into someone whose stuff I love, but didn't mention here, and they'll feel slighted. This is a great time to be reading crime fiction -- whether mystery, suspense, procedural, or thriller. There is also some wonderful mystery short fiction out there now. |
| Irene is very bright and a strong woman.Yet she also has vulnerabilities.What made you decide not to make her a "superwoman"? | I've never understood why someone would bother
portraying all the procedural details accurately and then write an emotionally
unbelievable character. I've always preferred to read about people who were
less than perfect. On the other hand, I don't want to spend five hundred
relentless pages with someone who is so dysfunctional or depressed I wish
they WOULD end it all. In the classic puzzle-style mystery, there is often little emotional reaction to murder and mayhem. Everyone hates the victim, and the logic problem -- for that's often what it becomes -- is worked out so that we figure out who among the haters had means and opportunity. In the classic hard-boiled novel, there is often actually more emotion beneath all that action, no matter how cynically revealed. But we're also likely to find a hero who can get the tar beaten out of him, knock back a shot of whiskey, and head right back into the fray. In real life, with some truly sad exceptions, people grieve for murder victims. And if a group of jerks beats the crap out of someone, the victim of violence usually doesn't want to leave the house, let alone meet up with those same people again. But the remarkable thing is, in real life, people usually find a way to go on with their lives. Ordinary people often demonstrate admirable courage. They somehow reach inside themselves and find it, or they get by with a little help from their friends and family. So I wanted Irene to be someone who grieves when her best friend and mentor is killed in "Goodnight, Irene." She doesn't become incapacitated, but she misses him. We come to know him because of her grief. Likewise, in "Sweet Dreams, Irene," and "Bones," she doesn't go through hell and back emotionally unscathed. She doesn't say, "Wow, what a thrill, let's do that again!" She's frightened. But she moves ahead with her life even though she's afraid, gets support from the people who love her, and ultimately finds her courage again. This isn't so much a way of parading her damage as it is a way to allow her to grow and change. The events of her life have an impact on her. |
| What other types of jobs have you had? | Oh boy. I've been a waitress, a cashier, a clerical
worker. I've worked in a manufacturing business doing everything from running
machinery (a centerless grinder, if you must know) to metallurgical lab
work to managing production and eventually the whole place. I've been a
singer. I've been a paid oral history researcher -- I interviewed "Rosie
the Riveters." I've taught college classes. I've tutored elementary school
students. We'll skip the unpaid and volunteer stuff for now. |
| If you could travel back in time and talk to a 18 year old Jan, what would you say? | Hang in there. It gets unbelievably better -- beyond the best dreams you can dream. I could say more, but I know you well enough to know you won't listen. |
| I like the extended family that seems to grow with each book.Is it hard to get them all into each book? | They don't all get in each book, but I try to include people she might naturally encounter in a story. Yes, it's a challenge, as is it in any series, to bring back characters without also bringing in too much history, or bringing the story to a grinding halt with a lot of references to previous tales. |
| How important do you think the locations are to your books? | Locations are very important in some ways. Irene
is in a good-sized beach city. Not a little village or town on the shore.
"Mean streets" of urban LA books are great, but I wanted to write about
places I wasn't seeing much of in crime fiction. Southern California beach
cities have this image of being sunny and bright places to play. But when
you get half a million folks together -- as there are in places like Las
Piernas -- anything can happen. Irene is also in an area where the rural towns, farmland, deserts (high and low deserts), mountains, forests, two major cities, and another country are all within about a two hour drive (most closer). It's also on the Pacific Ocean, has a major harbor, and is close to an island. So it's flexible in terms of terrain. Southern California is also diverse, a place where over 150 languages are spoken, and whose people are from a wide variety of heritages. That brings both cultural richness and conflict. There is also great wealth, grim poverty, and everything in between. So all of that has an impact on the world where Irene operates. At the same time, the essential elements of a good story should, in my opinion, be ones a reader feels some relationship to, no matter where the reader lives or has lived. However setting may define or confine a story, the human elements should be most important. It may be great to hike through the Sierra Nevadas with Irene in "Bones," but you should be paying more attention to the fact that she's doing it with a serial killer, a cadaver dog, and a couple of interesting forensic anthropologists. |
| What's the weirdest experience you ever had with a fan? | The competition is tough, even though most of my experiences with fans have been wonderful. I could talk about the odd prison letters and other strange mail, but if we're talking about face-to-face stuff -- I suppose it has to be a mall store signing where I was at the mercy of a woman who spent an hour keeping me company by telling me the plot of a novel she was writing, in which the heroine's new friend (a girl at school who decides to walk home with her one day) is struck by lightening and nursed back to health in the woods by the heroine. While she was telling me this, the names of the characters kept getting mixed up with her own name and that of a girl at school. I took a circuitous route back to my hotel. Now, older and having read too many non-fiction books on crime, I probably would have called the school district to make sure no one had gone missing recently. |
| Do you have a schedule you use to write,or do you write when the mood strikes you? | I can't afford to wait for moods, but I don't
have a set schedule. Someone once told me that the great thing about being
a writer is that you own the means of production. I said, "Yes, but you
never get to leave the factory." Writing isn't just time spent at the keyboard, but you do have to get there at some point. I like to write, so while it is definitely work, I don't want to make it into drudgery. That will come through to the reader. So I don't "clock in" at a certain hour every day. I do try to write something every day. I don't always make it, and I don't despair if I can't manage it -- I just feel restless. I'm a nightowl, and while I will write all day and at any time of day when I really get going, most of my writing is done between about 10 PM and 6 AM. |
| What is the one thing that is always in your refrigerator? | Dr. Pepper |
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