In the final installment of my interview with Suzanne Brockmann we find out what its like being married to another author, what's next in the Troubleshooters series and her new series Final Destiny.
Author Suzanne Brockmann is married to novelist Ed Gaffney and they have collaborated on numerous projects, from the off Broadway play Looking for Billy Haines, to the upcoming movie The Perfect Wedding which they co-wrote and produced. Before I sat down to interview Ms. Brockmann at the 2011 NJRWA conference, she introduced me to her parents, her son Jason and husband Ed. Throughout the conference I got to see this family in action. Their love and support for one another in every smile, gesture and word is nothing short of extraordinary and it was exciting to be a part of that energy. In seeing this, I had to ask what it's like living and working so closely with her husband.
While they collaborate on certain projects and work together on social issues, they are also novelists who write their own books. One can only imagine what their days are like; sitting in the same house but in separate rooms while they type away at their keyboards conjuring up worlds that will propel the reader to keep reading. I asked her if she ever discusses her books with her husband and for Suzanne, Ed is an integral part of every facet of her life, including her books.
When they are at home in Florida, they take daily walks down to the beach and spend time talking about their work. They bounce ideas off of each other, and many times when she’s hit a snag in her work, or is having trouble with a certain plot point, she’ll talk it over with Ed.
Suzanne said, “I’ve found it’s a matter of just talking about the book. I’ll talk about it and as I’m telling Ed 'here’s the problem', or, 'I’m having this problem', as I'm talking I’ll realize I already know the answer. We do that a lot, and it’s great to have somebody to do that with. I can’t imagine having a life partner who doesn’t understand what I do. To me that’s very important. “
WHAT’S NEXT FOR THE TROUBLESHOOTERS
Before I interviewed Ms. Brockmann I asked you, the readers, what you wanted to know. 95% of you wanted to know what was next in her Troubleshooter series. So of course I asked.
The next thing up is a Troubleshooter anthology. Ms. Brockmann has written about a dozen short stories that have been used in various promotional ways but they’ve never been published in one collective. You may have already read some of the short stories as they have appeared at the end of some of the books. However, in addition to these stories she will be adding three or four new ones to the collection. Me? I’m hoping Jay Lopez finds an HEA somewhere in there. Suzanne are you listening?
FIGHTING DESTINY
Fighting Destiny is not what Ms. Brockmann is doing – it’s what she is writing. It’s the name of her new series, and the first book coming out in March is titled Born to Darkness .
The idea for this series came from her father. About five years ago he was about to go in for knee replacement surgery. She told me “he read this article that if you approach surgery making sure your doctor doesn’t say anything negative to you while you’re under and tells you things like 'you’re going to be back on your feet in no time', 'you’re doing great', it really impacts your recovery and healing.” Her father began to research various techniques on how to have a healthy body by creating a positive mind set. This got her to thinking about a future where this was not only possible but probable. This whole area of science and medicine became for her what authors call their ‘what if’ moment.
What if twenty years in the future people are still fascinated with the need to defy aging? What if with the use of a powerful drug called destiny the user can access parts of their brain that would allow them to not only be self healing and self rejuvenating but also have certain powers? That’s the basic premise for her new series Final Destiny. It’s an urban fantasy setting where the heroes and heroines can access parts of their brains to become almost super human with powers like telepathy and telekinesis – but it takes intense training, hard work and years of study to learn how to use the drug properly and to harness the powers.
As Suzanne says, with any hero or heroine braving new territory, there also has to be a threat. She calls it ‘a big bad’. So who are the 'bad guys'? Suzanne explained “they’re people who have found that pre-pubescent girls have a lot of this chemical, in their system. They kidnap these girls and literally bleed them so they can use the chemicals found in their blood to create the drug destiny."
It was exciting listening to her talk about the new characters and world she has created. While she was talking to me about the concept for the Final Destiny series I could sense the dynamic multi-layered story arcs that will be part of each book and that are Ms. Brockmann’s trademark. She said “I wanted to play into the whole concept where, in our society, women are just undervalued, or devalued or wrong valued. Places where, you know, have a girl baby? Drown it. And I wanted to use that kind of similar metaphor – here is this group of people, these young girls, that we tend to throw away, who are suddenly in possession of this powerful thing that people want.”
Ms. Brockmann has already 'cast' the Final Destiny series. She had a photo shoot in NYC with actors who to her mind look like the characters in her new series. It was exciting to see how she envisions them. She told me “…throughout my career one of the most frequently asked questions is how would you cast your book?” The photos give readers a glimpse of what the characters look like to her. This is not the first time she’s done this. When the audio book for All Through the Night was being produced she had actor/activist/song writer Michael Holland read the book. For her, Michael Holland is the voice of Jules Cassidy and it was very exciting for her as an author that her readers got to hear what Jules sounds like to her. In a similar way she is giving her readers a chance to see how she envisions the new characters in the Fighting Destiny series. The photos as well as video snippets of the characters will be posted on her website and on one of her Facebook pages.
As my time with Ms. Brockmann came to an end, I realized that I’d just spent an hour with an author whose words have transported me to places I’ll never see and people I’ll never meet but places and people I feel I know. I’m looking forward to being introduced to new places and people in her next book because Ms. Brockmann does redefine normal, continually giving me a new way to view the world.
View Part One of Suzanne Brockmann Redifining Normal
View Part Two of Suzanne Brockmann Redifining Normal
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