Mercury in Retrograde--and What Hank's Writing

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I realized something today. The universe is the ultimate pantser. We absolutely cannot predict, from minute to minute, what’s going to happen, and what’s going to make a difference, and what is going to nudge the universe in one direction or another. Never ever is that more apparent than in the weeks leading up to a book launch.

Last year for instance, on the day of my book launch party for TRUST ME, it was so hot outside that the governor declared a heat emergency, and actually told people to stay home!

 I’m like: No no! Don’t stay home! Ahhh…..  But people came, standing room only, and all fine. Take that, Governor.

That’s the universe pantsing.

And you have to remember, when you gasp at how the writers of upcoming books glom on to every bit of reassurance and head-patting, that we were all in our writing places for a year, at least, before that. And alone, and wondering if anyone would read our books, let alone like them, let alone love them and buy then. It is a weird weird job. Isn’t it?

So that said, this pre-book limbo is kind of fabulous. If you decide to look at it that way  Like a panster. Because anything could happen, right? Anything. THE MURDER LIST comes out August 20, (You all know that, right? No pressure, it’s just my career.)

So first the Library Journal Starred review popped up! How great is THAT? And I was relieved and everyone was relieved even though the publishers insist it doesn’t matter, either way, don’t try to tell me that, sister. It does. Every word is fabulous.

It says (this is all we could fit):

HOW ABOUT THAT? Thank you, universe. And LJ, of course.

And then, you know Google Alerts? The other day one popped up and when I opened it, THE MURDER LIST had been named. an Ultimate Beach Read by CNN!  CNN!  Whoo!  Along with Lisa Taddeo’s Three Women and Jean Kwok’s Searching for Sylvie Lee and Dorothea Hart Benton’s  Queen Bee, and some other lovely books.

My fabulous publisher Forge,  too, brilliantly released a free excerpt of the book—and that’s always scary, because, well, it’s always scary. But look what happened? And it stayed there for days.

Did you miss it? I’d adore you to read this extended excerpt—and it’s free!  

One reviewer said: “If Lisa Scottoline and John Grisham had a book baby, this would be it!” How cool is that?  And one reader dubbed it Grish-oline. Which is so funny, if you know what it means. And baffling if you don’t.

Book tour is coming—and it’s a doozy. Click here to see the schedule, so far! And I am crossing  fingers that you all will come see me. Did I say—no pressure, It's just my career?

So. What I’m writing? Is articles for CrimeReads, and the Forge blog, and Criminal Element, and interviews for all kinds of places—oh! Did you see the new Strand magazine? Whoo. Also great.

And in the meantime—I’m also writing the new book, and it is—ta dah, almost done! The first draft , at least, but if I can do that, I can happily happily edit.  Because whoa, it is TERRIBLE! I laugh every day, thinking yikes, sister, you’re gonna fix this later.

Here are the first two lines:

Lies have a complicated half-life. Nora--for now--tried to calculate the lifespan of her most recent one as she waited on the corner of Tremont and Union Park, the evening’s first snowflakes beginning to accumulate on her new--to her--black cashmere coat.

Ah. And here we go!

Thank you, darling ones. Please find me on tour, please understand the needy chaos of pre-publication jitters and excitement, and thank you thank you for being such treasured pals. Thank you for putting up with the nerves, and the yammering, and the general self-promotion. Once a year, okay? We all sound a little frantic.

Plus, talk about the universe pantsing.  Mercury is in retrograde. Until Thursday.  Do you change your life because of that? >>>And an advance review copy of THE MURDER LIST to one lucky commenter!

******AND! the winner of an ARC of CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR is Celia Wakefield.  YAY!  email Hallie (hallie@hallieephron.com)  with your mailing address.****

It's All About the Batteries

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Do you have an Alexa? I love ours. And I use it every day. Alexa, what is 270.00 divided by 20? Alexa, what day of the week is October 17 in 2020?  Alexa, how old is...well, I won't go on. Now. People who know say Alexa IS listening all the time, but only records when you say "Alexa." May...bee...

(Alexa is such a problem that I know have to THINK before I talk to my publicist, whose name is Alexis.) But I love my FitBit, and my Netflix, and  our Waze. Is that a problem? Might it be?

The fabulous, incomparable, brilliant, loving, talented and hilarious Julie Hyzy--and even those words aren't enough--is tackling technology in her amazing groundbreaking new thriller, VIRTAL SABOTAGE. Yes, that Julie Hyzy. The New York Times Best-selling Anthony-winning beyond-successful author of the White House Chef series, and the Manor of Murder series, and so many more wonderful books--has accepted another challenge. You will LOVE this book. 

And we are thrilled she's here today to tell us about it.

Technology in crime fiction, friend or enemy?

Julie Hyzy

For crime fiction authors, technology is great.

Except when it isn’t. Which is why I like to think technology is crime fiction’s frenemy: supportive and fun when your manuscript is rolling along but quick to betray you when the going gets tough.

Here’s the tricky thing about devising mysteries and thrillers: A writer needs to give the villain enough room to carry out his nefarious plan and be successful, but in a way the bad guy will eventually be caught. It can’t happen right away, though. The villain needs to have a reasonable expectation of getting away with it. He will, of course. That’s what the story’s all about. 

I can’t count the number of times I’ve plotted a fictional murder and realized belatedly—and with great disappointment—that my evil plan won’t work. Most often, it’s because of technology. In one memorable draft of Virtual Sabotage, the key scene I’d envisioned involved an intricate sequence of events and precise timing. The power goes out. The phones don’t work. A character realizes he ought to call for help but can’t. I wrote the scene and was even a little bit proud of it.

When it came to my first revision, however, I wondered why the character didn’t simply use his cell phone. Duh! 

Okay, fine. I rewrote it. In this version another character surreptitiously pockets the cell so that the first character can’t find it.

But wait. What if the cell phone’s owner received a call or text at that very moment? Murphy’s Law says it could happen. As the author, I could keep the cell silent for the duration of the scene, but that’s not good storytelling. Too much is at stake.

A little research and—voila!—I discovered that there are devices capable of shielding cell phones from sending or receiving signals. Although technology nearly stymied me, technology came to my rescue. 

It’s getting harder to commit a crime without an audience these days. Audience = witnesses. Security cameras are perched in virtually all public spaces. At the first whiff of trouble, nearly everyone whips out a phone to start recording. And don’t get me started on Alexa, Siri, or the Internet of Things. 

Evidence is everywhere because technology is everywhere.

The immediate identification of criminals —while good for society in real life—can cause serious consternation for a crime fiction writer. A story’s climax may occur in the scene where the killer is apprehended or the criminal mastermind foiled. But readers don’t want the immediate gratification of resolution by chapter two. Where’s the fun in that? 

Technology can make it hard to write believable crime fiction.

On the other hand, where would crime fiction be without technology? From magnifying glasses to forensic microscopes; from fingerprint-matching to DNA testing; from dial phones with curly cords attached to the wall to virtual reality, technology has been detectives’ reliable partner for many years. In some ways it’s almost like they’ve grown up together.

Julie and her first...typewriter!

Consider Sue Grafton’s alphabet series and her indomitable P.I., Kinsey Millhone. When the series ended in 2017, it was 1989 in the books. Home computers, as we know them today, were still out of reach. Note cards, a telephone, a typewriter, and a car were the tools Kinsey turned to most often. By contrast, K.J. Howe’s present-day hostage negotiator, Thea Paris (The Freedom Broker, Skyjack) has a veritable arsenal of technology at her fingertips. And what she doesn’t have on hand she can obtain with call to the right person (and her negotiating skills). These women get their jobs done admirably using the tools available to them.

Contemporary crime writers eager to craft a timely and inventive tale must utilize today’s technology or risk appearing clueless. They also benefit, from the fact that as writers of fiction, we’re allowed to expand on current technology and even invent some of our own. 

Julie's daughter trying virtual reality

That’s what I’ve done in Virtual Sabotage. I’ve taken today’s virtual reality headsets and given them an upgrade. In my book, virtual reality is significantly more sophisticated than it is today. VR is everywhere in Virtual Sabotage, as ubiquitous as cell phones are now. The illusions in my fictional VR are not merely a simple display. They’re brain-generated immersive experiences that can trigger real physiological reactions from unwary participants. That’s why they need lifeguards for the brain—envoys like my protagonist, Kenna Ward. 

Julie tries Virtual Reality

Although the technology isn’t real yet, it soon could be. 

Think about the world we live in right now. Things we take for granted would have been considered outrageous and virtually impossible by our ancestors. And yet, here we are.

For writers of contemporary crime fiction, technology is a force that cannot be ignored. Whether it serves as a story’s catalyst or causes a plot to crumble, technology will always be crime fiction’s frenemy. What are your favorite uses of technology in fiction? Or your favorite technology fails? I’d love to hear from you!

HANK: When I was asked to edit my TIME books for new editions, I realized  the plot of AIR TIME depended on...beepers. Yup. Beepers. I fixed it, but there was a moment when I worried I'd been in the midst of an epic techno fail. What about you? And a copy of VIRTUAL SABOTAGE  to one very very lucky commenter! 

Julie Hyzy is the New York Times bestselling and Anthony Award-winning author of the standalone thriller, VIRTUAL SABOTAGE(October 23, 2018, Calexia Press),the White House Chef mystery series, the Manor of Murder mystery series and the Alex St. James mystery series.

VIRTUAL SABOTAGE 

A new stand-alone thriller from the New York Times bestselling author Julie Hyzy, Virtual Sabotage introduces Kenna Ward, an envoy for a virtual reality company whose implants create a thrilling world that allows people to create daring scenarios in a safe environment. Most of the time, that is. When in the rare instance the human brain mistakes the terrifying event as real, it's up to Ward to enter the scenario and pull them back to reality. But when a key envoy goes rogue and people begin responding in odd and dangerous ways, Ward delves deeper, finding a sinister conspiracy to take over not only the virtual reality world, but the real one as well. Ward must stop it before there are no longer any independent minds left to control.

Terrified of Tech?

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN:  I admit I have an Alexa. The other day, I said: Alexa, Play my music. And “she” played music that I loved. But I have no idea where she got it or why she thought so. Yikes.

What’s your relationship with “things” like that?  The very talented (and very savvy) Karen Olson says well, it’s the good news and the bad news. Here’s some of the bad. (And a terrific new book!)

Terrified of Tech?

   By Karen E. Olson  

I admit that I can be easily frightened. I have a very active imagination and my mind goes places that it probably shouldn’t. I see a plastic bag in the middle of the road and I immediately begin to wonder what grisly thing is inside it. I see shadows on the walls and hear noises in the night. Feeling the cat jump on the bed at night makes me jump when I’m in that place between awake and asleep.

In a more practical way, I am also afraid of heights, and I’m not fond of flying. I can never be on The Amazing Race.

But I was never afraid of technology—until now.

It’s not just our home computers anymore, either. How many of you out there have an Alexa or something like it? One of those little robot vacuum cleaners that roams your house? A home security system that you can turn on and off with your phone? A baby monitor? A car with Bluetooth?

Those are the Internet of Things. And all of them can be hacked.

Technology has made us vulnerable in ways we would never have imagined even just twenty years ago. It’s that vulnerability that’s at the center of my Black Hat thriller series featuring Tina Adler, a 40-ish computer hacker on the run.

Tina is the Jack Reacher of the Information Age: she’s not physically fighting crime, but she’s using her keyboard to do it. To catch people like her who prowl around in the back alleys of cyberspace.

I don’t pretend to be computer literate like Tina. I have to do a lot of research for the series, and I can’t get into anything too technical because if I don’t understand something, my readers won’t, either. I’ve watched documentaries about Anonymous and bitcoin. There are actually how-to-hack tutorials online. I’ve never downloaded the Tor software, which would allow me into the Dark Net, but I’ve been tempted, even though I’m probably already on a government list somewhere because of my Google searches.

A video online by a guy who pulled a skimmer off an ATM, showing how hackers can get all our debit card information, triggered the plot of VANISHED, the fourth book in my series.

After seeing that video, I delved further into how debit card information is actually stolen and uploaded into carding forums, where you can buy what’s called a “dump”: all of the information stored on the magnetic strip on a debit or credit card, including names, addresses, account numbers, and more. And you can get that information on hundreds of cards. All for maybe $50. Sometimes—most times—less.

That’s what our information is worth.

I no longer use an ATM machine that isn’t in the vestibule of a bank. I pay for my gas inside the station rather than use the one on the pump. It’s a little more inconvenient, but that’s what the hackers are counting on. I try not to let my knowledge make me paranoid, but it’s not easy. Don’t click on that link, don’t visit that website, safeguard my passwords.

My daughter, who is in college, has grown up in this new technology age. She has absolutely no expectation of privacy and being hacked is just the new normal. My husband, however, wants to trade in his smart phone for an old-fashioned flip phone.

HANK:  What about you, Reds and readers? Do you embrace technology and its inevitable pitfalls, or would you rather go back to a typewriter and White-out?

 Karen E. Olson is the award-winning and Shamus-nominated author of the Annie Seymour and Tattoo Shop mystery series and the Black Hat Thrillers. She is empty nesting in Connecticut with her husband Chris and cat Eloise.

VANISHED

With a price on her head, computer hacker Tina Adler is determined to stay offline. Only one person knows how to reach her — and he’s in as much danger as she is. A chance discovery leads Tina to abandon her South Carolina hideaway in search of her old flame, undercover FBI agent Zeke Chapman. What is Zeke doing in Paris? And what is his connection to the disappearance of American college student Ryan Whittier. En route to Paris in search of answers, Tina realizes that someone is on her trail: someone who’s getting dangerously close. Has she been set up?

www.kareneolson.com

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