INTERVIEW WITH AUTHOR KYLIE BRANT

Today I'm chatting with Kylie Brant, bestselling author of award-winning books from Silhouette Romantic Suspense. Kylie's books have twice been nominated for the RITA Award and have won the Daphne Award twice, including the 2009 overall Daphne. As well as being a prolific novelist, she's an elementary school special education teacher. The mother of grown children, Kylie lives in Iowa with her husband and dog. I'm particularly excited to interview her because she has a new romantic suspense series beginning in September, a full-length trilogy from Berkley Publishing. Welcome, Kylie!

SUSAN: Waking Nightmare is the first in your Mindhunters series. Would you tell us a little about this book and the series?

KYLIE: The Mindhunters series features criminal consultants from a private forensics company who are hired by local law enforcement to help with particularly puzzling or high-profile crimes. At the end of the agency is the legendary Adam Raiker, a top FBI profiler before his last case for the Bureau nearly killed him. In Waking Nightmare, Savannah police detective Ryne Robel is leading the task force to hunt for a brutal serial rapist. Rather than complying for his request for another investigator, the commander hires Abbie Phillips, a criminal profiler from Raiker Forensics. The two strike sparks from the first, but Ryne's antipathy turns to reluctant respect when she helps him bring down the first real suspect in the case. Ryne doesn't put much stock in psychobabble head games, but Abbie has to convince him that head games are exactly what this offender is all about. The seemingly random acts of torture are in fact calculated to match each victim's darkest fears. And the stakes are rising. While they study the offender, he's watching them0--the next objects of his horrifying obsession.

SUSAN: Developing protagonists who are forensic profilers and criminologists requires specialized knowledge. How did you research this specialty?

KYLIE: Before starting a new book I always get two or three research books online, or search my own good-sized nonfiction library to help me with specific aspects of the story. I read these as I'm writing. I also research the topic on the Internet so I can at least articulate intelligent questions prior to finding experts to consult on the stories. I've received assistance from ex-CIA and FBI agents, police detectives, state crime lab techs, forensic anthropologists, SWAT commanders, wilderness guides, doctors...whatever the plot calls for. Books can't answer questions I have that are specific to the story--only a real-life person with specialized expertise can do that.

SUSAN: I'm fascinated by another aspect of your research. I know you hiked in the Oregon woods to research the third book of the series, Waking the Dead. Did you travel there specifically for research or was it part of a vacation? Please tell about that excursion.

KYLIE: After the San Francisco RWA conference, I continued up to Eugene, Oregon, where my sister lives. It was sort of a working vacation. My sister and her husband anre avid kayakers and hikers and know the area well. For three days they hauled me around and we hiked the Willamette Forest and crawled through caves as research for Waking the Dead. We'd gone through about four when my mind made the association--cave::bats. I hate bats! After that, I was content to look at the caves from the outside. They introduced me to a friend who described a little-known cave he'd discovered on the face of Castle Rock. That cave turned out to be the perfect spot for my villain to dump bodies. :-) As a matter of fact, while the guy was describing it, I was just sort of watching him...and deciding that he was the villain I'd been imagining! :-) I didn't share that with him though. That was the first time I'd ever made a concerted effort to travel to the spot I was setting the story for the express purpose of doing research. It was a fabulous way to stoke the creativity. At one point I was standing in the forest near some caves we'd gone through, and the entire final scene of the book unscrolled in my mind. And that's exactly the way I wrote it, too!

SUSAN: I'd have been creeped out by the bats, too. Which leads to my next question. What in your opinion is the hardest part of writing romantic suspense stories? What is the easiest?

KYLIE: The research can get mind-numbing. :-) I know in Waking the Dead, it felt like I'd write three pages, then have to quit to do research. Write another three, then stop to research something else. Of course, I have no idea why I thought it would be a good idea to write a book in which I needed to know about dermestid beetles, forensic anthropology, and extracting DNA from bone, among other things. Other than that, I always have tough time with love scenes. each needs to be unique to the characters and the first such scene in a book can easily take me 2-3 days. The easiest part for me is always the dialogue. I can hear the characters talking in my head. And really, what other job could I have that makes that okay and not reason to call for a psych consult?

SUSAN: Then you have to get those people out of your head to begin a new book with new characters. You're ready to begin a new project. What's the first thing you do? Character bios? Plot and plan? Or just jump in and let the muse take you?

KYLIE: Hmm, I'm not much of a plotter. I write proposals only because I must and they really serve as more of an excuse to lie than anything else. The characters used to always appear to me first but these days I'd say the overarching suspense plot and the characters take turns. When I begin a book, I know the characters and their backstories, the suspense plot, how it's going to end, and I have a few ideas for scenes. Most of the time I know who the villain is, but not always. And that's pretty much it. I like to write the first three chapters just to get an idea of where the story is going to take me. That process clarifies my direction. But I'm totally an "organic writer," to use Allison Brennan's term. And once I stopped feeling inferior for being incapable of a more structured approach, I began to enjoy the process. I bore very easily and if I plotted out the whole book before I began, I'd feel like I'd already written it. I like to be surprised as I'm writing. That's what excites me and provides motivation to continue.

SUSAN: Not knowing where I'm going with a book would make me shudder, but I'm in awe of people who can write like you do. Your previous books have been short ones for Silhouette. How did writing full-length novels change your writing process?

KYLIE: I only needed to write short synopses for these book proposals, so I had to revamp my process a bit. I used to write the three chapters first and then stop and write the synopsis. Now it's reversed. When I began writing for Silhouette, the Intimate Moments books were 80-85,000 words. So I learned to write quite a bit longer stories. The word length has been cut several times over the years until the current length for Silhouette Romantic Suspense (current line name) is around 55,000 words. That's very difficult for me. I had a yen to write longer, more complex plots that were darker overall. Some of the Silhouette books I was proudest of would no longer be possible under the new length restrictions. That was one of the factors that compelled me to try my hand at single titles. I love the freedom in the mainstream books. It's liberating to go where the story takes me, and to allow the relationship between the hero and heroine to develop at its own pace. There's more of a psychological element of suspense in my new books because I have the space to expand on that. These stories are darker, more complex suspense plots but they still have a satisfying relationship in them. The suspense is more at the forefront than the romance, though.

SUSAN: I know you work full time as a teacher. How do you manage to schedule your research and writing time to write for two publishers?

KYLIE: I work all the time during the school year and it does get a bit grueling. I get up, exercise, go to work, go exercise some more, and then sit down at night and write, promote, or research. Weekends are the same, minus the teaching. Unless I'm under tight deadlines, I still make time to get together with friends and family. But under deadline, for two months I might not go anywhere but work and exercising. The rest is writing time. Somehow it all works out. When I sold to Berkley, I still owed books to Silhouette so I had a tight schedule. In seventeen and a half months, I wrote four books while teaching, had two sons get married, and had surgery. It's amazing what you can accomplish if you have to! I just don't ever want to have to do that again!

SUSAN: I'm exhausted just thinking about what you went through. They say if you want something accomplished, ask a busy person. For you that's certainly true. What advice can you offer to writers who are working toward publication?

KYLIE: Write. Finish the manuscript. I'm always taken a bit aback by the number of unfinished manuscripts aspiring authors say they have. I suppose that's okay while you're still learning craft, but it's important to learn to complete the whole thing. You need to learn how to unsnarl plot tangles and slog through the sagging middle. That's what will be required of you when you sell, so the more experience you get now completing a project start to finish, the more ahead of the game you'll be when you make your first sale.

SUSAN: If you could invite three people to dinner (real, fictional, living, or dead), who would they be? What would you serve and why and what would you want to discuss over coffee?

KYLIE: Well, Jesus Christ would be the first because I'm full of questions about the meaning of life. :-) I'd also like to speak to Mahatma Gandhi to discuss theories of non-violence in an increasingly volatile world. And I'd love to sit down with Barack Obama because I think he's brilliant, but I'd like to point out the errors in some of his ideas on education. :-) Dinner would be traditional Midwestern fare--Iowa chops, grilled potatoes, and sweet corn. And if I could invite a fourth--Johnny Depp. Just because.

SUSAN: Fascinating guests. I'd like to be the maid serving dinner so I could eavesdrop--and ogle Johnny Depp. But let's go back to your books. The second book in your Mindhunters series is Waking Evil, due out in October. How about a sneak preview of the plot?

KYLIE: Here's the back cover blurb: Buffalo Springs, Tennessee, is a neighborly kind of place where folks leave their doors unlocked and crime is unheard of. But once every generation, a strange red mist settles over the town, and with it comes omens of death. When the body of a young woman is found, forensic investigator Ramsey Clark is called in. She knows about the legend of the mist and about the curse that has the entire town afraid of the dark. But Ramsey believes in evidence, not superstition, despite what she's been told by Devlin Stryker, the parapsychologist who's been dogging her every step. Then another murder rocks Buffalo Springs, and Ramsey begins to wonder if a killer is playing on everyone's fears or if a prophecy is indeed being fulfilled--one victim at a time.

SUSAN: You've hooked me--on the entire series. I can't wait to read these books. Thank you for a fascinating chat.

Readers can visit Kylie Brant at her website, http://www.kyliebrant.com/ to learn more about the Mindhunters series--Waking Nightmare (9/09), Waking Evil (10/09), and Waking the Dead (11/09).