toast for tea

Here’s an interview I did with Janet Evanovich last year. What did you most enjoy about writing your latest book Fearless Fourteen ? What were the challenges? I enjoyed the role Ranger played in this book. He was a little more relaxed and he was sometimes put in awkward circumstances – like getting groped in the elevator by an older woman. The challenge is always to be consistent in the quality and level of entertainment . One of the great strengths of your writing is your ability to come up with and create empathy for such a variety of interesting - sometimes whacky - characters. You make them audaciously believable. What's the secret? The secret is that as an author I like them and believe in them and treat them as normal. You've managed to sustain your readership over fourteen books? How do you keep your main characters alive over this length of time without them becoming predictable? I try to have them grow a little with each book so they're not entirely static and I br...

It’s the same story told over and over and over. Same horrific details. Same descriptions. Same turns of phrase – It was like a hurricane – a hurricane of fire You could feel the oxygen being sucked out of the air The roar was like a thousand jet aircraft – I’ll never forget the roar I saw the fire come in the smallest crack – like a blow-torch – searching for oxygen The tops of the trees were snapped off – not by the fire – by the wind – by the force of the wind We had no warning We only had seconds The house was on fire and so was the car We lost everything – everything The whole town is gone – it’s all gone The whole family has gone It’s a wasteland of death It’s like Hiroshima I haven’t been able to cry yet This morning he was here — The same story. But always a different story teller. So many story tellers. Too many story tellers. Not enough story tellers. It is Wednesday and five minutes before the end of the music lesson. Twenty five eight-year-olds have been happily engaged in ...