1--What is the title of your latest release?
The Arizona Triangle
2--What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book?
A female private eye, Jo Bailen, is hired against her will (her agency’s boss forces her to take the job) to locate her long-estranged childhood best friend, Rose. Back in her old hometown an hour north of Tucson, Jo is pulled into an increasingly dark, dangerous web woven by an unknown psychopath.
3--How did you decide where your book was going to take place?
I knew that before I knew anything else about the book. I spent most of my childhood in Arizona and have spent a lot of time there as an adult. I knew I wanted to set a detective series on Tucson—I love California noir, Sue Grafton and Donalk Westlake in particular, and I wanted to transplant that bright desert/dark crime contrast to southern Arizona.
4--Would you hang out with your protagonist in real life?
Absolutely. She’d be great company. I’d love to get tacos with her and ask her all about her line of work.
5--What are three words that describe your protagonist?
Tough, vulnerable, curious.
6--What’s something you learned while writing this book?
I learned a lot about plotting a detective novel—this is my first. I’ve read hundreds of them and was always impressed by the intricate plotting the genre requires. It was so much fun to do it myself.
7--Do you edit as you draft or wait until you are totally done?
Both. I do line editing as I go, and then I do more structural editing in subsequent drafts.
8--What’s your favorite foodie indulgence?
Potato chips!
9--Describe your writing space/office!
I write in bed propped against eight pillows with my two dogs sprawled next to me, an inspiring view of the Taos Pueblo’s sacred mountain out the window, NPR in the background.
10--Who is an author you admire?
In terms of detective novels, I have to say the late great Sue Grafton. Her Kinsey Millhone (of the Alphabet Series) inspired Jo Bailen directly—you could say Jo is Kinsey’s spiritual daughter.
11--Is there a book that changed your life?
When I was 13, I read W. Somerset Maugham’s Of Human Bondage. It blew my pubescent little mind that a book could be so dark, so mordant, so atmospheric, so enthrallingly true. It drove me almost crazy how much I wanted to do that. I always knew I wanted to be a novelist, but that book told me what kind of books I wanted to write.
12--Tell us about when you got “the call.” (when you found out your book was going to be published)/Or, for indie authors, when you decided to self-publish.
“The call” came from my editor at Harper, Sara Nelson. She’d read and liked the manuscript, and she told me that although detective novels aren’t her ‘cup of tea,” she wanted to publish The Arizona Triangle. I was, of course, thrilled.
13--What’s your favorite genre to read?
Detective novels. And as a close second, adventure novels. And food writing.
14--What’s your favorite movie?
I have too many favorite movies to list, and my tastes are wildly catholic. Clueless, Dog Day Afternoon, Blade Runner, All About Eve, Ran, Long Day’s Journey Into Night, the list goes on (and on).
15--What is your favorite season?
Winter, believe it or not. I love how quiet and cold the air gets, how stark and beautiful the landscape is. I love hiking in the snow. And sleeping on cold nights. And winter food—stews, soups, fresh-baked bread. And long hot baths with a good book.
16--How do you like to celebrate your birthday?
With cake, a good hike, a few friends, and some surprise gifts. I’m fairly low-key about my birthday, and I don’t mind getting older.
17--What’s a recent tv show/movie/book/podcast you highly recommend?
Alone is a totally riveting, enthralling series. I can’t get enough of it. In each season, 10 wilderness survival experts are dropped off in a remote location with 10 tools each. They compete against one another to stay the longest in their own isolated area. My husband calls it a “starve-a-thon,” which is pretty accurate, and it’s impressive to see how much they all know about foraging, hunting and shelter-building techniques, and living in harsh, dangerous conditions, but it’s also a show about the human spirit, nature, solitude, and psychology.
18--What’s your favorite type of cuisine?
It’s a pretty even toss-up between Vietnamese, Greek, Korean, and Mexican.
19--What do you do when you have free time?
I hike, play violin, cook and bake, read, play computer bridge, and see my friends.
20--What can readers expect from you next?
I’m about to start the second Jo Bailen book, working title Saguaro City.
In the vein of the bestselling California noirs of Sue Grafton and Sara Gran, a whodunnit about loyalty, love, and the legacy of trauma featuring a hardboiled, queer private eye whose latest case takes her deep into her own complicated past.
On the cusp of forty, Justine Bailen, better known as Jo, works for an all-female detective agency based in Tucson, Arizona. While staking out a cheating spouse, she learns that her long-estranged best friend from childhood, Rose, is missing, and that Rose’s mother wants to hire Jo to find her. This case is all kinds of wrong for Jo, but she has no choice but to head back to her hometown, an hour north and a world away from Tucson.
Back in Delphi, she learns that her high school boyfriend, Tyler—who is probably part of the reason her friendship with Rose went south—is the cop assigned to the case. It doesn’t take long for Jo to realize that he’s all mixed up in it, too. To have any hope of learning the truth about Rose’s disappearance, Jo must finally face the demons she thought she’d escaped.
Thriller Historical | Mystery Private Eye [Harper Paperbacks, On Sale: October 22, 2024, Paperback / e-Book, ISBN: 9780063379992 / eISBN: 9780063380103]
Sydney Graves is a pseudonym for Kate Christensen, an Arizona native and the author of eight novels, most recently Welcome Home, Stranger. Her fourth novel, The Great Man, won the 2008 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. She has also published two food-centric memoirs, Blue Plate Special and How to Cook a Moose, which won the 2016 Maine Literary Award for Memoir. Her essays, reviews, and short pieces have appeared in a wide variety of publications and anthologies. She lives with her husband and their two dogs in Taos, New Mexico.
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