Q&A with Best-​​selling Thriller Author A.J. Scudiere

As you may have seen, I’ve read/​listened to and reviewed both Res­o­nance and Vengeance by A.J. Scud­iere.  I recently received an ARC of her upcom­ing book, God’s Eye and am look­ing for­ward to read­ing it.  In the mean time, here is a short inter­view with A.J. about her pre­vi­ous titles, and her upcom­ing book.  I hope you enjoy it.

Your thriller books have cap­ti­vated read­ers from your debut as an author in 2008 with Res­o­nance – where do you find the inspi­ra­tion for the incred­i­bly vivid details your share?

A.J.: I find inspi­ra­tion all kinds of places. Mostly, I tuck away details for years, wait­ing for the right char­ac­ter to use them with. My friends are really famil­iar with me ask­ing “Can I put that in a book some­day?” For Res­o­nance, the last piece was an arti­cle I read from two Har­vard geol­o­gists propos­ing this hot spot the­ory. As I read their idea and the evi­dence they had, all the char­ac­ters and the story of Res­o­nance just gelled. I almost imme­di­ately put down the arti­cle and started writ­ing the open­ing scene.

You are on the cut­ting edge of Audio Books, releas­ing not just words being read from the story you’ve writ­ten but an actual Audio Movie (www​.AJsAudioMovies​.com) with actors and sounds to accom­pany the book. Tell us a lit­tle about those.

A.J.: AudioMovie credit goes almost entirely to Ste­fan Rud­nicki and Sky­Boat Road Pro­duc­tions. Ste­fan is a mas­ter at audio­books and has so many awards. I remem­ber talk­ing to him and com­plain­ing about the num­ber of audio­books I’d lis­tened to in which read­ers had barked like a dog or tried to imi­tate the sound of a shot­gun being cocked. Ste­fan had been want­ing to do an audio­book with mul­ti­ple read­ers, but it takes an author who uses point of view the way that I do in order to make that kind of nar­ra­tive. Ulti­mately, the AudioMovie for­mat is the only unabridged ver­sion of full cast read­ing with sound­track and score. Ste­fan did such an amaz­ing job mak­ing the back­ground sub­tle, but really adding to the tex­ture of the story. It’s like being in a movie the­ater with your eyes closed: you hear everything!

Has being a female affected your career as a thriller writer? How so?

A.J.: At this point, I don’t know that it does affect things. But ini­tially, I was shocked by how many agents called me and were sur­prised to find out I was female.

You’re a sci­en­tist. Is the sci­ence behind your nov­els true?

A.J.: Obvi­ously, what I write is fic­tion, but I do my research very care­fully. I hate when writ­ers get details wrong – any­one who knows the mate­r­ial bet­ter than the author can have the story shake loose on them when they see some­thing they know isn’t true or doesn’t work. For Res­o­nance, I read tons of arti­cles and applied every­thing I know from my mas­ters degree in phys­i­ol­ogy. So, yes, the sci­ence there is real. Much of what hap­pens at the begin­ning of the book that starts the polar rever­sal is actu­ally hap­pen­ing in the world around us right now. And a lot of peo­ple pre­dict that the earth’s mag­netic poles will trade places soon, given the speed at which they are moving.

For Vengeance, I did much the same. Only this time I spent my time work­ing with my black-​​belt friends and out at the gun range. I worked up to where I can shoot pretty accu­rately two handed. I’m sure if I prac­ticed with Lee’s ded­i­ca­tion, it would be more than pos­si­ble to do what he does. As for the crimes Lee and Sin com­mit, I have to admit my fam­ily got a bit tired of me break­ing into our house. So, every­thing there is plau­si­ble. I don’t rec­om­mend it! But it can be done.

What makes a good thriller in your opin­ion? Any favorite authors you follow?

A.J.: A good Thriller has to have that can’t-put-it-down qual­ity. You have to believe that if you turn the page you’ll get an answer to a burn­ing ques­tion or a seri­ous stand-​​off will be resolved. The best thriller writ­ers do this by not drag­ging out the scenes, but by answer­ing your ques­tions. Only – as the reader starts to feel relief that the ques­tion has been answered – he real­izes that he can’t put the book down because there’s another ques­tion, or some­thing else has happened.

Thrillers also fol­low the laws of other books. 1] The writ­ing itself should be high qual­ity. The turn of phrase should be easy to read and well crafted. 2] The plot should be solid: no gap­ing holes, no unmo­ti­vated actions that drive the plot for­ward. 3] And if you’re really good, your work can be read on mul­ti­ple lev­els – it can be a breezy beach read that you enjoy, or you can take it into a lit­er­a­ture class and dis­sect it, look­ing at the deeper ques­tions the book raises.

I have a few authors that I love, but few hold up over time. I hate recy­cled plots, and books (or even movies) that bring back beloved char­ac­ters only because they are beloved. They need a good story behind them! Some favorites are: Nabokov, Tim O’Brien, and Orson Scott Card.

How do you express your­self out­side of writing?

A.J.: Aside from being really talk­a­tive? I’m a teacher, and I think both writ­ing and teach­ing are sim­i­lar. In both cases it’s my job to con­vey a story with clar­ity so the lis­tener can under­stand. Whether that’s a story I made up or con­tent about where each elec­tron is most likely to be found in the sub­shells of an atom, it’s still some­thing that has to be con­veyed well.

Your newest novel, God’s Eye (www​.God​sEyeThe​Book​.com), releases Octo­ber 2011. What’s it about?

A.J.: God’s Eye is the story of what hap­pens when your world gets shaken and every­thing thing you think you knew is no longer true. Katharine has lived a golden life, she inher­its her mother’s trust fund and has a guar­an­teed job at her father’s invest­ment firm. Though she can’t say every­thing is right with her life, she believes noth­ing is wrong with it. But because of her mal­leabil­ity and will­ing­ness to accept things at face value, Katharine becomes the prize in a tug-​​of-​​war between an angel and a demon. Both appear to her as human and ask her to change her world; she’s in a sit­u­a­tion where she’s forced to choose one side or the other. The prob­lem is she can’t tell which man is the angel and which is the demon.

These are the big­ger ques­tions Katharine and all of us face: what is evil? Would you rec­og­nize it if you saw it? And how respon­si­ble are you for the ram­i­fi­ca­tions of your actions, even the unin­tended ones?

If you could be any of the char­ac­ters in any of your books, who would you be and why?

A.J.: That’s tough. There’s no ‘good’ guy in any of my books. Every­one, even the super­nat­ural crea­tures aren’t purely one way or the other. And just like peo­ple, even the greats have flaws. I love Jillian’s abil­ity to learn, even when it’s hard for her. I wish I had Jordan’s innate vision into peo­ple, and Carter’s irrev­er­ence and Becky’s peace. But each of them has things they strug­gle with, too. I’d love to kick butt like Lee or Sin, but wouldn’t want to shoul­der their bur­dens. I try to ‘do the right thing’ like Owen, but wouldn’t want to face his dif­fi­cult decisions.

I think in the end, I’ll stick with being me. Besides, as me, I get to be each of them for a while!

You can read more about A.J. and her works at http://​www​.ajs​cud​iere​.com/ or you can fol­low here on Twit­ter: @AJScudiere

And please keep an eye out for my forth­com­ing review of God’s Eye.