Classic Rock Bottom

I recently attended a book signing event for thriller writer (and investigative journalist in Boston) Hank Phillippi Ryan. After the end of the event, I had the opportunity to interview Ryan. You can check out my recap and the interview below.

(The second in a series of occasional articles talking about book signings I attend.

I suppose you could get away with saying my attendance for Hank Phillippi Ryan’s speaking engagement and book signing on January 31st, 2016 at the

Mattapoisett Free Public Library was kind of a family affair. It was my sister who told me that Ryan was coming to speak. Then, in terms of the article itself, the majority of the photos were taken by my brother.

Before everything began with the appearance, there was a small moment that brought a smile to my face. When Hank Phillippi Ryan first walked in, I was sitting in the last row of seats and she ended up walking by me as she made her way to the front of the room. Because we have interacted previously via her Facebook page, she recognized me and said, “Hi Jay! Great to see you, thanks for coming. Talk to me after the signing.” That smile on my face got a little bigger when my brother’s jaw hit the floor like a Bugs Bunny cartoon as he exclaimed to me, “Really?!? First Name Basis?!?!”

The event was originally billed as having the author read from her latest Jane Ryland book, What You See. However after a brief introduction from the event coordinator, Ryan instead skipped the reading portion and instead gave a lengthy and informative talk on topics ranging from her childhood to working as an investigative journalist on Boston’s NBC affiliate (WHDH Channel 7) and her literary career. An engaging speaker, she kept the talk entertaining with a quick wit and hilarious anecdotes that had the crowd – which filled all of the available seats in the event room – repeatedly laughing out loud.

Ryan began by talking about growing up in Indiana and life as a reporter over her 40 years in the business. She related a story about applying for her first reporting job to her standing now as a reporter (whose work has led to 33 Emmy Awards and 13 Edward R. Murrow awards). Ryan also highlighted some of the stories that she worked on that brought about changes in laws and/or how something was done. The one that stood out to me in this particular instance was how some firehouse stations were found to be failing fire code inspections.

A devoted fan of mysteries since she was a child, starting with the Nancy Drew and Sherlock Holmes series of books, Ryan segued into writing for “real” vs. writing crime fiction while talking about making a difference through both means. The mention of Nancy Drew caused my brother to later comment that she read Nancy Drew as a kid and effectively grew up to become her with her investigative journalism.

Ryan also addressed the most cliched of author questions, “Where do you get your ideas?”, with her explanation including the axiom “write the kind of books you like to read.” She made mention of a number of authors that she herself likes to read, including Lee ChildLisa Scottoline and Jeffrey Deaver, for their page turning stories.

The next subject broached in her talk was about her current Jane Ryland series. It features Ryland, a journalist having worked in both TV and print, and Boston PD detective Jake Brogan. She explained some of the background of the main characters and how she took individual puzzle pieces involving a stabbing, a kidnapping and surveillance and wove that into the finished story that became her latest book What You See.

I should mention here, that I’ve read the book already and it was an excellent read that had a sense of immediacy to it and kept thing moving along. The characters alongside the main duo were intriguing and infuriating at the same time and a wonderful twist to a couple of them made you wonder how in the world you didn’t see the end result for each of them coming. Essentially, the book was a job superbly well done and others must agree with me as the book has been nominated for an Agatha Award for Best Contemporary novel. It wouldn’t be the first time Ryan’s work has found acclaim, having won the prestigious Mary Higgins Clark, Agatha, Anthony, Daphne and Macavity awards for some of her past novels.

Briefly mentioned was the fact the 5th book in the series, Say No More, has already been submitted to her publisher Forge Books.

As time was winding down for the speaking portion of the day, Ryan ended with words of encouragement about following your own dreams regardless of what they may be. The appreciative crowd gave a rousing round of applause for Ryan’s speech and then things moved on to the Q&A part of the proceedings.

The first question was about her writing process with Ryan saying there were two types of authors: plotters and pantsers. Plotters, like Ken Follett, plot everything out from beginning to end so they know exactly what they are going to write. And then there are those writers, like Ryan says of herself, that write by the seat of her pants. They start with one little thing and see how the story advances outward. The metaphor of dropping a pebble in water and seeing the ripples spread out was used to illustrate her point.

Audience members asked about whether she had a set time to write each day, which found Ryan describing her own particular process for that. Another questioner asked about how many drafts she goes through for a book and her own personal editing process.

There were semi-off topic questions about going back for her high school reunions as a famous reporter and writer and whether Hank is a nickname. One person asked who her publisher was while another asked what her parents did for a living.

A question about whether Ryan had a mentor growing up brought an interesting answer. While she didn’t really say she had one growing up, she did mention her first executive producer when she started working as a reporter. As for a mentor as an author, she cited the authors that she reads as mentors.

I wish I’d had the following question to ask myself, but someone else brought it up in the Q&A and I thought it was a great question nonetheless. When asked what was the hardest phase of writing a book, the first part of Hank Phillippi Ryan’s answer saw her attribute it to Stephen King when she said, “The hardest part is just before you start”. She went into more detail on this and then followed up by detailing the reasons for how the beginning, middle and end of a book are all difficult to write.

The final question from the crowd asked if mystery novels can capture the “American scene” or is that something best left to mainstream novels. While I’m not even quite sure what the person meant myself, Ryan answered by saying first that she considers mystery novels as part of mainstream books and that the stories told in mysteries can let you see the world through another person’s eyes.

And with that, the back and forth ended and the attendees were given the opportunity to purchase any (or all) of the four Jane Ryland books and have them signed by the author. Many people did take advantage of said opportunity so it was quite a while before everyone filed through the line. At this point I was just watching as Hank signed the proffered books from each person and engaged them in some one on one chatter.

Once the rest of the people were gone, I was waiting for someone to finish as they conducted a video interview with Ryan. Once that was finished,  I got my turn and I got to sit down and have about 15 minutes of interview time with Ryan.

What follows is the transcript of that interview: (Please note that any questions I planned to ask that got asked by others during the Q&A, I skipped over when it came time for this interview.)

On her own books:

JR: Speaking in terms of your own books, with What You See, there was a breakthrough in the Jane and Jake romance department where they were considering becoming fully public with their relationship and then it kind of backslid a little bit. Is there a plan to keep that as a will they-won’t they aspect of the books?

HPRYou know that I don’t have an outline and you know that I don’t know where the stories are going, so when you ask me what will happen with Jane and Jake I can honestly tell you I have no idea. It’s a surprise to me on every page how their relationship evolves. Jane is 34, Jake is 35. They're both very involved in their careers.

So when you’re that age and when you’re deciding how your life will go, you can’t predict, you don’t know. You can make a decision and the decision changes. You can walk out the door and something happens. You can meet someone new or not or ever – you don’t know. And as an author with Jake and Jane, I wish I knew what happened to them but I just don’t know.

JR: There’s talk in the book about the prohibition between cops dating reporters / reporters dating cops. Is that a real thing or is that kind of like an unwritten rule?

HPR: Jake and Jane’s conflict in their professions comes from a real conflict of interest. There’s no rule book for journalists that says you can or can’t do something. But I don’t know any journalists who date police officers, because what would happen if a crime reporter is sent out to cover a crime scene and the primary on the case is their dearly beloved?

You would just not be able, no matter how good a reporter you are, you would not be able to be fair and objective about that case. You would not be able to push that person about whether they were really doing a good job or whether they were really telling the truth. And think about from the other point of view with the police officer. How would the police officer feel about telling the reporter too much or not enough or when there’s a leak from the police department? Who’s going to be the first person who’s going to be suspected? It’s going to be that police officer who dates the reporter, no matter if they’re the one who’s guilty of the leak or not. So obviously the best thing to do is to keep those two worlds apart.

My husband is a criminal defense attorney. I’m a reporter. There are cases he has where he can’t tell me certain things. There are things that I know about defendants or other people in the cases that I can’t tell him. How do you keep those things separate? How do you build that wall?

On the other hand, there are things that he tells me, that my husband tells me, that my news desk would love to know. But I will never tell them. When my husband has a big case, a big criminal case, I can’t be assigned to cover it. So that conflict between your personal and professional life is not written down somewhere, but its very clear where that line is and it’s a line that you simply can’t cross.

JR: The Charlotte McNally series is being republished beginning February 9th. Were the books out of print, or are they just being republished in a new format and how did that come about?

HPR: The return of the Charlotte McNally books is one of the extraordinary joys of my career.

The first Charlotte McNally book came out in 2007 and won the Agatha for Best First Mystery, that was Prime Time. It was followed by Face Time, Air Time and Drive Time. At that point, after Drive Time, I had the idea for my first Jane Ryland book, The Other Woman.

That book, The Other Woman, was published by a different publisher. My publisher of the Charlie books wanted it, but another publisher had a different idea for it and we chose to go with another publisher. So that ended the Charlie McNally books because one publisher doesn’t want to continue a series when really the author is focused on something else. So…The Charlie McNally books…nothing really ever goes out of print exactly because there always on ebooks, but the paper books, the “book” books, did go out of print and finally there just weren’t any more. And the publisher of them didn’t print any more because they weren’t interested really in furthering my career, basically.

So with the wild success let’s say of the Jane Ryland books, my current publisher was interested in the Charlotte McNally books and in reissuing those books and finagled a way to get the rights to those books. To reprint them, to reissue them, to repackage them, re-show them off in all new editions.

They were originally published in mass market paperbacks, you know the pocket sized books. And now they’re gorgeous full sized trade paperbacks and hardcovers and they’ll all be out once a month this year, 2016, in February, April, July and August, something like that.

JR: I read an interview you had with Crimespree magazine that said it was every other month.

HPR: Yes, exactly. Every other month in 2016. So I’m incredibly excited about that. If you like Jane Ryland, you’ll really want to meet Charlotte McNally. Charlie is older than Jane, the books are in first person. They’re funny, they have this hip, wry humorous element to them that the Jane Ryland books don’t have. So the Jane Ryland books are big tough thrillers and the Charlie McNally books are fun, fast paced, humorous, laugh out loud mysteries. So I hope people love them all.

It’s an amazing publishing journey, the Charlie McNally books, that this new publisher would have the faith in those books and the joy in those books to be able to offer them to a whole new audience. I’m over the moon thrilled about it.

JR: Excellent, I can’t wait to read those.

HPR: Oh, let me give you a thousand bookmarks for them (laughs).

On her social media interaction:

JR: You’re very active on social media, both Facebook and Twitter.

HPR: Not as much as you.

(Note: Ryan’s reply sparked some background laughter, she then continued on)

He’s awesome.

JR: I have way more free time on my hands. Being so active on the social media websites including up to asking your fans, the people who follow you on Facebook and such, to help you with picking names for your characters, do you think that gives them an extra sense of “ownership” in the stories when they come out? Like, “I helped write this thing” or not so much write but “I helped pick the name for this character.”

HPR: That’s really a two level question. One is, very selfishly, it’s very difficult to choose names for characters. So when I ask my readers for help in choosing a character’s name, it’s honestly because I have no idea what to do. It’s honestly because I have no idea what the name of this character can be. And I’m, every single time, delighted and laughing at what good ideas the readers have. Names I never would’ve thought of, never in a million years. So I’m incredibly grateful when readers offer help because I’m really asking for help. You know, I’m not doing it to just rope people in to liking my page. I’m doing it because I’m stuck and I need a name for a character and please please please my pals, please help me.

So the thing about social media is that if I would call a good friend to ask them for advice or help or assistance, now my network of good friends can be much bigger and I’m really grateful for that.

JR: You’re also involved in the blog Jungle Red Writers, can you speak to that? I know it involves seven authors currently.

HPR: The Jungle Red blog is one of the most successful author blogs around and we’re very pleased with that. We’ve gotten millions of hits over the years.

Jungle Red is a blog that includes me, Hallie EphronDeborah CrombieRhys BowenJulia Spencer-Fleming,Lucy Burdette and Susan Elia MacNeal. We are all on this blog every day, so readers who come to read our essays and read our chats and talk with us will know that they’ll be able to talk with all of those authors every day, which is quite incredible. So, we’re a good team and we’re a team of pals and we support each other. And we talk about reading and writing and books and movies and television and our real life and nostalgia and just whatever seems to come up.

We have a wonderful community of thousands of readers a day who come just to see what’s up at Jungle Red, to see what we’re talking about, see what we’re caring about. Get previews of our books and novels, get insight into our lives and we share everything from tragedy to recipes. It is like having my seven best friends with me all the time and then everybody going out for coffee and that’s what we do.

On her other works:

JR: I noticed that Neal Griffin published his debut novel, Benefit of the Doubt, and it had a blurb on the back of the book from you. I noticed that you share the same publisher, is that how they choose who they give the books to get any quotes about them?

HPR: The blurb system works in many mysterious ways. Sometimes authors who are friends with each other will say, “Could you read my book and give a blurb?”

I ask authors who I admire and respect for blurbs. It’s a really scary thing to do, to write Lee Child, Jeffrey Deaver or Lisa Scottoline a note and say “I love your books. Would you mind reading mine?” I mean imagine the terror of somebody like that reading your book and then give you a blurb.

I don’t even remember where Neal came from. Somebody must’ve emailed me and the book showed up on my desk and I read it and I loved it. When I’m asked to give a blurb, I’m very careful about it. I read the whole book, that’s my name endorsing their book so it’s very important to be careful about that.

I try to be really generous about it. I often focus on debut authors. People helped me when I was beginning my career as an author, so I try to do my best to help new authors whenever I can. It’s a tough road, it’s a tough road and we all need all the friends and support that we can get, so I try be part of that.

JR: You interviewed Ingrid Thoft for the cover article of Mystery Scene magazine #140 in 2015. Is it easier or more difficult to do an interview with someone in terms of another author versus your daytime job reporting?

HPR: Oh you know, I’ve been interviewing people for 40 years. It’s just like meeting someone new and talking to them and asking them things that interest you. So interviewing people for me is a joy. Ingrid is a wonderful author. I completely enjoy her books. They are set in Boston. It was a perfect match.

I do a lot of research. I do a lot of reading and studying before I do an interview with anyone so I know my stuff going in. I try to ask what I think listeners or readers want to hear. I try to draw out the interviewee to tell me something new, tell me something personal, tell me something big, tell me something fascinating so that the interview is illuminating to them and illuminating to readers and engaging and entertaining.

JR: You mentioned in the talk today growing up in Indiana. I saw that you had written a story for the Hoosier Hoops and Hijinx anthology.

HPR: I wrote the introduction.

JR: Oh, it was the introduction, okay. How did you get involved in that?

HPR: Well, Sisters in Crime. That’s an anthology that was put out by the Indiana chapter. It think its called the Speed City chapter of Sisters in Crime and they came to me and they came to me and asked me if I would write the introduction to their book of short stories. So I read the short stories, they’re just hilarious and wonderful and smart, witty and savvy and mysterious and I was pleased to write the introduction to my hometown gang.

On a mutual television passion:

JR: And the last one. We had spoken on social media in the past about the TV show Longmire and I was wondering, just for my own edification, how you enjoyed the fourth season that was on Netflix?

HPR: I’m catching up with Longmire. I’m way behind on my TV watching, so I’d love to chat with you after I finish season four. We’ll talk about it. I love Craig Johnson and I love Longmire. I think they did a great job with the series so I can’t wait to see what happens in season four.

I just wanted end the article by extending my thanks to Hank Phillippi Ryan for taking the time to sit for the interview. The people in attendance at the event, much like myself, had a great time throughout the afternoon. If readers are looking for some fun, fast paced highly involving thrillers, you can’t go wrong by picking up any of her four Jane Ryland books. I know that I’ve enjoyed them and look forward to discovering her Charlotte McNally series as well.

For more on the Hank Phillippi Ryan, check out her official website, on Facebook or follow her on Twitter.

(Cover Photo Credit: Chitose Suzuki, Article Interior Photography: JM Roberts)

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