The amount of personal data floating around the Internet is mind-boggling. If
you have any doubts, just Google yourself. The ability to remain private is
nearly impossible these days. Government agencies, business firms, and marketing
companies use this public information for their own specific needs. Data mining
or dredging, as it is most commonly called, has changed the way our world
operates.
This month’s Jen’s Jewels
James Grippando
addresses this very topic in his latest release AFRAID OF THE DARK. A
New York Times bestselling author of suspense, he delivers once again a
nail-biting, edge-of-the seat thriller featuring his popularly handsome hero
Jack Swyteck. To all corners of the globe, Grippando takes the reader on an
unforgettable ride into the sinister underworld of data mining.
As part of this interview, Harper, an imprint of Harper Collins
Publishers, has generously donated five copies for you, my favorite
readers, to try to win. So, don’t forget to look for the trivia question at the
end of the column. And as always, thanks for making Jen’s Jewels a part of your
reading adventure.
Jen: A trial attorney by profession, your prowess in the literary world
is just as impressive with eighteen bestselling novels under your belt. So that
my readers may get a glimpse into the life of the man behind the words, please
share with us a brief overview of your educational and professional background.
James: I wanted to be a lawyer since the eighth grade, when my parents
took me to Springfield, Illinois to see Lincoln’s law office. I stuck with the
goal, went to law school, and practiced law full time for about twelve years
until I decided to become a full time writer in 1996. I had the great fortune
of having some terrific teachers in high school and as an undergraduate who
never let me forget my dream of becoming a writer.
Jen: Please describe for us the "Ah! Ha!" moment when you made the
decision to pursue a career as a writer.
James: In 1988, I was five years into the practice of law and tired of
the fact that no one—including judges—seemed to be interested in any of the
legal stuff I was writing. I also noted that the hottest show on television
was L.A. Law, and the hottest book in the country was Scott Turow’s Presumed
Innocent. There seemed to be this insatiable public appetite for stories about
lawyers written by lawyers. So I started writing, nights and weekends, still
practicing law full time. Finally, after four years, I had a 250,000-word
monster in the box that no publisher wanted. But my agent assured me that I had
received—get this—the most encouraging rejection letters he had ever seen. With
his encouragement, I wrote THE PARDON over the next seven months, and it sold to
HarperCollins in a weekend. It’s now all over the world in over 20 languages.
Don’t you love happy endings?
Jen: For those readers unfamiliar with your work, what two previous
novels best encapsulate who you are as a writer? And in your opinion, what sets
these two apart from the others?
James: The answer has to be my more recent novels, because I’m always
evolving as a writer, never what I used to be. MONEY TO BURN (2010), a
Wall Street thriller, was especially personal for me, since I wrote it while my
father’s health was failing, and I worked him into the story as "Papa," a
grandfatherly figure from the World War II generation. Papa was a great
counterweight to the greed of Wall Street that drives the plot. The other novel
I’d point to is WHEN
DARKNESS FALLS (2007). That’s one of my favorite Jack Swyteck novels. The
storyline is intense—a hostage standoff that unfolds in less than 24 hours—and
the character Vincent Paulo, a blind hostage negotiator, is one of the most
interesting I’ve ever created. Vince returns in AFRAID OF THE DARK, where
he finally confronts the man who stole his sight.
Jen: As a New York Times bestselling author, there are high
expectations that subsequent books meet those parameters. In terms of nuts and
bolts, describe for us your writing process. Do you outline first? Are you a
linear writer? Do you know whodunit before you start? Or, does the story simply
take on a life of its own?
James: My plots are complex, and my characters are rarely who they
appear to be, so outlining is essential. One of my longest outlines was for MONEY TO BURN (2010), which
was over seventy pages long. But I never outline the story beyond the point of
major conflict, where good clashes with evil. The resolution of the conflict
always works itself out in the writing. That does lead to some surprises. In
one of the early Jack Swyteck novels (BEYOND SUSPICION) there’s a great "double twist" that I didn’t see
coming. And in AFRAID OF
THE DARK for example, on page 374 … well, maybe I should let you read for
yourself!
Jen: AFRAID OF THE
DARK is your sensational new release that kept me up until the wee hours of
the morning. More chilling and sinister than your previous works, the story
centers on a very hot topic… data mining. How did you arrive at the premise?
James: Data mining is definitely a timely topic, which makes it tempting
for the marketing people to say that AFRAID OF THE DARK is "ripped from headlines." In truth, that tag
line couldn’t be farther from what I do as a novelist. We live in a world of
real-time news. By the time anything is ripped from the headlines, bloggers
have blogged it to death. No one wants to hear another thing about it a week
after it happened, let alone a year or more. If your novel is going to be
timely, you have to stay on top of current events and be able to forecast how
forces may collide to create news somewhere down the road. I started writing AFRAID OF THE DARK more
than two years ago, when Facebook was exploding, and it seemed to me that
privacy issues and data mining were going to become hot-button issues. Right
about that same time, I was also doing legal work for one the recognized
pioneers of data mining—a man who was actually one of the data miners that the
FBI turned to in 2001 to help track down the terrorists who were responsible for
the 9/11 attacks. Very early in the game, I got caught up in the love/hate
relationship we have with the two faces of data mining—the good it can do for
law enforcement, and the evil in can promote in the wrong hands. It’s that
tension that drives AFRAID
OF THE DARK.
Jen: In terms of research, how much was needed in order for the story to
ring true with the readers? And, what was the most fascinating bit of
information you discovered along the way?
James: I love research. That’s the great freedom of a writing career,
being able to dive headlong into any subject matter that interests you. Research
not only gives the book an authentic voice, but it helps keep me as a writer
connected to the real world. By research I really mean getting out in the field.
One of the most chilling moments during my research for AFRAID OF THE DARK was when
I watched a law enforcement demonstration about the trading of child pornography
over the internet. We were in a room with a huge map of the world on a screen.
On another screen, we watched as a tech expert went into an actual live trading
session in a peer-to-peer network and identified a file that was known to
contain child pornography. We didn’t actually view the file, thank God. But
the tech expert then traced the trade history of this file on the big map.
Little red dots showed how it moved from one computer to the next—from "peer to
peer." First, it was a few dots in a community. Then dozens of dots in a city.
Then hundreds in a state, thousands in a region, and in seemingly no time at
all, it was thousands and thousands of trades across the globe. It was like
watching time-lapsed photography, only this was internet crime in motion
depicted by the viral spread of these red dots. That image was something I knew
I had to put in AFRAID OF
THE DARK.
Jen: The main character of the story is Jack Swyteck, a dashingly
handsome criminal defense lawyer who has appeared in your previous works. Please
bring my readers up to speed on his back-story.
James: Jack is not super-cool, super-rich, or super-successful. But he
is the kind of guy we all want as a friend—someone we care about enough to
celebrate his good days and suffer through his bad ones as if they were our own.
Theo and Abuela make Jack especially fun to write and read about. Most of us
can relate to having someone in our life like Abuela—that person who can’t
understand why we didn’t meet the love of our life by our twenty-first birthday.
And all of us need a friend like Theo—someone to remind us that "There are two
kinds of people in this world, risk takers and s--- takers. Someday, you gotta
decide which you’re gonna be when you grow up." Jack has aged in real time,
starting in THE PARDON
as a rebellious twenty-nine year old lawyer who defends death row inmates.
He’s forty-ish in AFRAID OF
THE DARK, but he’s come full circle, reunited with his first boss who
readers met in The Pardon. Readers seem to enjoy that kind of continuity in the
series.
Jen: In this novel, Jack shows us his much softer side. Engaged to a
feisty, take-no-prisoners F.B.I. agent named Andie Henning, his domestic life is
in a period of flux. What makes these two work-a-holics such a good pair?
James: I get a flood of e mails about Jack finding the right woman.
Suffice it to say that he’s made plenty of mistakes. Andie Henning made her
debut in 2000 in a stand-alone thriller called UNDER COVER OF DARKNESS.
Readers really loved her…and it made me think Jack might too. I wrote her into
GOT THE LOOK, the 2006
Swyteck novel, and she and Jack have grown closer in each installment since. The
relationship rings true to a lot of readers who can connect with two good people
trying to find love while balancing challenging careers, trying overcome what
life throws at them. But a big part of what makes them interesting—and what
makes the sparks fly—is the exciting plots that surround them. When you’re a
criminal defense lawyer in love with an FBI undercover agent, life throws plenty
of obstacles in your way.
Jen: Jack’s relationship with Neil Goderich, a former boss and mentor, is
the driving force behind his decision to defend a suspected terrorist. In what
way does his decision put a strain on his relationship with Andie?
James: Neil made his debut in THE PARDON, the very first
Swyteck novel. Neil was the lawyer who brought Jack into the Freedom Institute
right out of law school, where he defended death row inmates. Bringing him back
made sense, because Jack has really evolved since that first novel, and it would
take a character like Neil to bring him back to his roots and defend someone as
unsympathetic as an accused terrorist. But I also like the way Neil’s return
puts a strain on Jack and Andie. Andie’s an FBI agent, and naturally she feels
the heat when Jack takes a case that puts him at the center of the war on
terrorism. But on a more fundamental level, you can easily relate to meeting
"the old friend" who has known your spouse much longer than you have. It can
make you wonder.
Jen: As the harrowing details of the secret detention sites come to
light, why does Jack refuse to walk away?
James: That’s who Jack is: The truth is important to him. I think it’s
why people are drawn to him.
Jen: How did the completion of this novel change you professionally as
well as personally?
James: People have often asked me "what kind of name is Swyteck?" That
question is answered in AFRAID OF THE DARK. Jack
makes a pilgrimage to the
Czech Republic, where he discovers his roots and the horrifying story of a
village known as Lidice. Without giving anything away, writing that aspect of
the story had the greatest impact on me. It opened a window to the side of my
own family that I didn’t know much about.
Jen: Let’s switch gears now and talk about your promotional plans. First
of all, please take us on a tour of your website highlighting specific sections
of note.
James: I was among the first authors to have a comprehensive website (www.jamesgrippando.com), and there is so much good stuff there.
The logical place to start is "About James Grippando" and "About Jack Swyteck."
Then I’d go to "About the Books." One of the things visitors to the website
enjoy most is a feature called "Behind the book," which is literally the story
behind each of my novels. It tells you something personal about the inspiration
for each story. Probably the most hits to the website, however, are for a story
I wrote for the Miami Herald, which can be found under the menu button "Other
Writings." It’s a tear jerker about the loss of my office mate of nine years,
my golden retriever named Sam.
Jen: Will you be participating on a book tour? If so, where may my
readers find more information?
James: I do tour whenever a new book is released, but I’m also doing
events year round. I post all of my events on my Facebook fan page. That’s the
best way to know what’s going on.
Jen: Are you currently at work on your next novel? If so, what can you
share with us?
James: I just finished the 2012 release, which is outside the Jack
Swyteck series, though not entirely. One of the most popular characters in the
series is Jack’s fiancé, FBI Agent Andie Henning. She was a hit without Jack
in MONEY TO BURN (2010),
and she’s back strong and taking on Wall Street again in 2012. But the process
never really stops. I’m now in the fun stage—back to playing that "what if"
game—for the 2013 novel.
Jen: I have to admit…my husband is a huge fan of yours. Having read AFRAID OF THE DARK, I now
know why! I look forward to reading all of your previous work. Thank you so much
for stopping by to chat with my readers. I wish you the best of luck in the
future.
James: Thank you for having me.
I hope you have enjoyed my interview with James Grippando. Please stop by your
favorite bookstore, local library, or on-line retailer such as Amazon.com or
BarnesandNoble.com and pick up a copy of AFRAID OF THE DARK today.
Better yet, how would you like to win one instead?
Answer the following question correctly and you could be one of five winners
What is the name of Jack Swyteck’s love interest in AFRAID OF THE
DARK?
Later this month, I will be bringing to you my interview with Michael Lee West, author
of the hilarious cozy mystery GONE WITH A HANDSOMER MAN. You won’t want to miss it.
Until next time...
Jen
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