Lisa Unger's Blog, page 9

Women of Mystery

Lisa Unger, Lisa Gardner & Alafair Burke

 

Thursday February 11th, 2016

6:30 PM

Carlouel Yacht Club

Clearwater Beach, Florida

Sign up for the mailing list and be entered to win two tickets to this member only event featuring New York Times bestselling authors Lisa Unger, Lisa Gardner and Alafair Burke.  You will be Lisa Unger’s personal guests for the evening, and will also receive a signed copy of the latest release from each author.  Good luck!!

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*Winners will be drawn at random on Thursday, Feb. 4th and notified via email.  If you are already on the mailing list, you can still use the form above to enter.

My sixteen year love affair with the Florida Keys (and my husband) in the January 2016 issue of TRAVEL+LEISURE magazine!  Pick up a copy in stores today, or .

 

At this time last year, Pocket Books began releasing a series of short stories that I wrote featuring one of my favorite characters, psychic Eloise Montgomery. But they’re not really three separate stories. Together they comprise a single story told in three parts, spanning thirty years in Eloise’s extraordinary life. In January, they’ll be re-released together in a novella called THE WHISPERING HOLLOWS. If you haven’t had a chance to read these stories, January would be the perfect time because the stories flow into the upcoming INK AND BONE (June, 2016). As ever, all my stories and novels stand alone. But if you want the richest reading experience, start with the novella and then buckle up for INK AND BONE, featuring Eloise’s granddaughter twenty-year-old Finley Montgomery. I’m really excited about it! Hope you are, too.

This is the intro I wrote for THE WHISPERING HOLLOWS:

When I first started writing about The Hollows, I didn’t think very much of it. It was the fictional setting for my 2010 novel, FRAGILE, nestled someplace “up North.” It was near New York City geographically, but far from it in every other way. I envisioned it as a smallish town, the kind of place where “everyone knows everyone” – or thinks they do. It was a semi-rural, semi-suburban dot on the map with a long history, similar in some ways to the town in New Jersey where I grew up. But it wasn’t that place. Not at all.

During the writing of FRAGILE, The Hollows started to assert itself. It wasn’t content to be just a backdrop. Originally, I thought that the kind of story I was telling, one about small town people with big secrets, could have been told anywhere. But much in the same way characters reveal themselves little by little as a story progresses, so it was with The Hollows. It had a personality, an agenda. It didn’t like secrets; it seemed to encourage paths to cross. And it was home to a psychic named Eloise Montgomery. It wasn’t the backdrop to a story, after all; The Hollows was a character.

Sometimes I meet a character as I’m writing and he or she stays with me long after I finish a manuscript. I find myself thinking about that person even after the story has ended, entertaining a parade of questions and wonderings. I want to know more about her journey – what happens next? Or what happened before to make him so … strange, stubborn, twisted? So it was with The Hollows. Even after it was time for me to leave, I found I couldn’t go.

I couldn’t stop thinking about the strange little upstate New York burg, about Eloise Montgomery, and about Jones Cooper, the cop turned PI who reluctantly becomes Eloise’s sometimes partner. So I kept writing about them, next in DARKNESS, MY OLD FRIEND. Then in IN THE BLOOD and CRAZY LOVE YOU. Though it’s not a series, exactly, those books are chain-linked by place and by people.

When I had a chance to explore Eloise in a series of short stories, I jumped at it. What evolved were three parts of what I now see as a novella, all collected here in this edition for the first time. The first, The Whispers, starts before the story of FRAGILE begins. The second, The Burning Girl, comes right before CRAZY LOVE YOU. And the last, The Three Sisters, introduces Eloise’s granddaughter Finley Montgomery, who has her own book, INK AND BONE, soon to be published. I’m not sure why the story of The Hollows revealed itself to me this way – through novels and short stories, each separate and yet still somehow woven around each other. But who am I to argue? I’m just the writer.

I recently spoke to a book group who had read CRAZY LOVE YOU together. During this conversation, The Hollows came up as it often does in book discussions, and a longtime reader said:

“To me, The Hollows is a symbol of the Universe.  My question is, does The Hollows act more upon the characters or do the characters more influence The Hollows?”

This question touches on not only the question of what is The Hollows but also, in some sense, how I see life. The Hollows has an endless number of shades and layers, and it shows various parts of itself to everyone. It’s something unique for everyone who visits. And each novel that takes place there is its own special universe. The Hollows, like life, is someplace different for Jones Cooper than it is for Eloise Montgomery than it is for Ian Paine in CRAZY LOVE YOU.

All these characters see what they want to see in the place, and they all take away a distinctive experience. Jones, who is a very practical, feet-on-the-ground type of guy, views The Hollows as he would view any other place. It’s the town where he grew up, where he has always been known as first the local sports star and heartthrob, then later as the town cop. Even when The Hollows conspires audaciously to reveal his secrets, he never sees it as anything else but the town where he has lived all his life and will most likely not leave.

Someone like Ian Paine — troubled, addicted, sensitive — is having another experience yet again. Not as grounded as Jones, and yet not as in touch as Eloise, his relationship with The Hollows is a struggle. He fights to get away. And The Hollows fights back.

On the other hand, Eloise sees — and hears — a totally other layer, something beyond the buildings and trees. The Hollows talks to her. She hears voices that she thinks of as The Whispers, a chorus of all the secrets, pains, joys, hopes and sorrows of the people connected to The Hollows. She, too, has her place there, and will likely not leave. But, unlike Jones and Ian, she doesn’t imagine she has a choice in the matter.

So it’s Eloise then who is the most canny tour guide to The Hollows. She listens; she doesn’t judge. She doesn’t fight. She has learned the hardest lesson of life: that we do what we can with our various abilities and, when we’ve exhausted our resources, we seek to let go. So it makes sense that she is the one to shine the way through this novella.

Like life, The Hollows is exactly what you expect it to be, exactly what you put into it — and yet there are many elements that are totally out of your control. So that’s the long answer to my reader’s question. The short answer is: Both. The people who dwell in The Hollows act upon it, as much as it impacts them, each in their own special way.

The parts of this novella were originally published as three separate e-original short stories. But they really belong together like this, a kind of triptych spanning thirty years in the life of Eloise Montgomery and her extraordinary journey. As you follow Eloise through the winding passages of this story and into the one that follows them, INK AND BONE (Coming June, 2016), I hope you’ll enjoy your journey, too. Welcome to The Hollows.

During the Great American Teach-In last week, I arrived a little early and caught the presentation before mine. A rabbi, the mother of one of the other students in the class, gave a presentation on mindfulness. Every kid (and adult) held a raisin in his or her palm while the rabbi asked the room to consider the journey of this one piece of fruit – from seed, to plant, to harvest, to production. She asked us to consider how many people were involved, how much energy was used, how far that raisin had to travel, who designed the box it was in, who stacked it on the shelves. And then finally, she asked us to hold the raisin in our mouths for a while – to really feel its ridges and valleys and taste its sugary flavor before swallowing. It was the best raisin I’d ever tasted. It made me think about how raisins are eaten in bunches, tossed in the mouth, rarely really noticed.

The rabbi’s lesson was about mindful eating, but obviously she was talking about something much larger. In the rush and crush of the day to day, how many of us are really paying attention to the moments of our lives, savoring, enjoying, and giving thanks? With world events so devastatingly violent, true peace and love among people apparently elusive, how many of us take the time to observe what’s right in the world, how much good people do?

I worry. I’m prone to that, deep thinking about what’s dark and wrong, what nightmarish scenarios might unfold – from what happens as violence escalates on our planet and world climates change, to whatever drama is unfolding in my daughter’s world, in my extended family. I am a perfectionist; I try to fix and control things that are not fixable or in my control, leaving me feeling anxious and lost. And then I remember to breathe, and to ‘get micro’ as we say in our family. Meaning, I remember to focus on the raisin in my palm.

Thanksgiving is a good time to focus on our raisins. There are obstacles to that – worry about the future, anger about the past, busy-addicted rushing around. We don’t have TIME to focus on the small things. Until we realize that only those small things matter. When I think about the terrorist attacks, not just in Paris, but around the world, and all the people who left for concerts and sporting events, evenings out with friends and families, school events, or weddings and never got to come home, I am ashamed for not showing more gratitude, more often, in my life. Each of those people – the mother of small children, the college student, the architect – would surely love to be able to fold laundry, or read one more story, or cook for a family, to study, to put pen to paper. We can honor people who have lost their lives by being more mindful in and more grateful for ours.

I am grateful for so many things this week:

Today is my fifteenth wedding anniversary. Sixteen years ago, I met my husband Jeffrey at Sloppy Joe’s in Key West. It truly was love at first sight, a whirlwind long distance romance, and a fairytale wedding a year to the day that we met. A marriage is a journey. And any real traveler will tell you that there are highs and lows, good days and bad ones. The journey is a mosaic, a beautiful whole made up of parts, some glittering, some dull, some broken, some golden. Ours has been characterized by a deep abiding friendship, a ferocious desire to explore the world, joyful parenthood, striving together towards goals, as well as sinking our toes into the sand and loving our life. Our love — which was crazy and wild and change-the-world passionate – has only deepened. My husband is my boyfriend and my playmate, the person I turn to first when I am happy or sad, excited or angry. He knows everything about me – good and bad. And I know everything about him. (There is no bad. He’s a purely good spirit.) We have walked together hand in hand, or carried each other, or prodded and pulled, or sprinted on this journey. And I can’t imagine having traveled it with anyone else. Night and day, he is the one. I am grateful beyond measure for our wonderful marriage, our partnership.

This week is also my mother’s 75th birthday. That my parents are healthy, able and present in our lives is a gift. My mother, former librarian, an avid reader and lover of story, was the earliest and most important influence in my life as a writer. The things she taught me turned out to be most of what I needed to know. 1) Be yourself. 2) Don’t let anybody push you around. 3) You can’t do more than your best. 4) They put erasers on pencils because everyone makes mistakes. 5) Make sure you lock the door and keep that hair out of your eyes. 6) Never order the tuna fish. Okay, there was a lot. Really I could keep writing. I am grateful for my mom who has always been there for me, who is generous, loving, and supportive in so many ways. And who still has tons of advice to give. Like: 7) Why aren’t you wearing anything on your feet? 8) Don’t talk on the phone during a lightning storm. I love you, Mom. Happy Birthday!

There’s more, too much more to list here – that my creative, funny, brilliant daughter makes paper dolls with my face on mermaid bodies, that my labradoodle howls at sirens, that when I open the door to my office I hear palm fronds whispering and halyards clanging in the wind, that while I was writing the other day a ladybug traveled across my screen. For the million little things, the glittery pieces in the mosaic of my life, I am grateful.

There’s a cacophony of negativity around us – unhealthy messages in the media, every day more bad news at home and around the world, an ever growing list of must-dos, and must-buys, and get this, be this, or else. Inside our heads, too, sometimes there is a litany of criticisms and complaints, worries and fears, that we have for ourselves and others. I find that sometimes it is possible to quiet that, to breathe, and consider the journey of my life, to be grateful. So may your Thanksgiving be filled with family, friends, or something meaningful to you. May there be much laughter, love, and good times. And most of all, I hope you look at the raisins in your palm, give thanks, and really taste every single one.

Wow, this is exciting! IN THE BLOOD won the 2015 Silver Falchion Award for BEST NOVEL: Crime Thriller. I’m so grateful and would like to thank “Killer Nashville” for this honor. Congrats, as well, to fellow nominees and my writer pals who won in other categories, including Hank Phillippi Ryan, Catriona McPherson, John Sandford and other esteemed writers.

IN THE BLOOD wins the Silver Falchion Award (2015)

My interview with Judy Blume was a dream come true! It went so fast, and I felt like we could have kept talking for hours! My daughter Ocean and her fourth grade language arts teachers and classmates were in the front row, which made it that much more special.  Here are a few photos from a truly unforgettable Tampa Bay Times Festival of Reading!

The crowd forms to welcome Judy Blume, in conversation with Lisa Unger.

Judy Blume, in conversation with Lisa Unger.

Judy Blume and Lisa Unger

Judy Blume signs her book for Ocean!

Juli Marquez and Erica Riggins from Bay News 9 with Lisa Unger

Ace Atkins, Reed Farrel Coleman and Lisa Unger

Sign up and be entered to win two guaranteed seats to the  headline event “Judy Blume, in conversation with Lisa Unger“, a copy of her latest book “In The Unlikely Event”, plus a chance to meet Judy Blume at the signing booth.

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*Winners drawn Sat. October 17th.  If you are already signed up for the mailing list, enter by sending an email to pr@lisaunger.com.

 

I’ve always been willing to follow my characters wherever they wish to take me. And they’ve taken me down the rabbit hole into addiction, psychosis, fugue states, the full rainbow of emotion and dark circumstances. I consider myself as a spelunker willing to shimmy myself into the crevices of the psyche, headlamp on, prepared to shine it bright on whatever I find. The truth is: I want to go. There is, after all, no more gripping or fascinating mystery than the human mind.

But a willingness to go anywhere, to explore any type of mystery, even one that delves into the supernatural, can be tricky. Not everyone wants to go there. For example, Carl Jung took a lot of heat — from his mentor Freud especially — for wanting to look more deeply into the mysteries of the psyche by exploring unexplained phenomena.

Jung’s mother was a psychic medium, and throughout his life, he’d had a number of unexplained experiences. He had a spirit guide, one that existed only in his mind, called Philemon from whom he took counsel all his life. A near death experience led Jung to believe that there was much more to the human experience than could be explained by science. He definitely wanted to go there. As Jungian themes run through my entire body of work, it’s not surprising that I would move into this realm eventually.

This exploration started in earnest with (though there’s a bit of a supernatural element even in my first novel ) with the appearance of a psychic by the name of Eloise Montgomery. Since she appeared, I’ve grown ever more fascinated by her, leading me to write , and three short stories , , and . All of these novels and short stories have a supernatural component – though they are certainly also thrillers.

takes the deepest dive into the unexplained, simple because it’s the nature of Ian Paine’s experience, where his story organically took me. And I loved going off the beaten path to learn his truth. His story is about energy, about how we cling to each other, to the past, to anger, usually out of fear. It’s about how negative energy lingers in places, and in our hearts and can create all kinds of damage, like a cycle of abuse in families, or a haunting. CRAZY LOVE YOU demanded to go beyond the realm of the conventional thriller. And why not?

Is the world so easily explained? Do we know everything about the human experience? Are we so certain that what we know now is the entirety of knowledge? Jung believed that the anomaly, the rarity, which was so often rejected or dismissed by the scientific method, should be embraced and explored. I have to agree. Lately, I’ve been exploring that idea in my fiction though the seed was planned long ago.

In my other life as a book publicist, I had the pleasure of working with John Edwards, a psychic medium who communicates with the dead. I don’t claim to understand his gift, but I witnessed it and saw the impact he had on those people in our group who had readings with him. He was clearly tapped into something that most others are not. At the same time, he was a lovely, mild mannered, perfectly earthly guy with a Long Island accent. He might have been my friend or my cousin. Looking back, I think he was the initial inspiration for Eloise Montgomery and my fascination with his type of ability. I liked how the ordinary and extraordinary dwelled side by side in him.

That’s what compels me about Eloise. Her abilities don’t feel mystical. They are an anomaly in her neurological wiring – as if she were a violin prodigy, or a mathematical genius, doing something that most of us can’t dream of doing. When I had occasion to explore Eloise in the e-original short stories, I was thrilled to really get deep with her, to understand her experience better, and during that writing I met Finley, Eloise’s granddaughter who has abilities of her own. Finley was such a powerful, important character for me that she got her own book, INK AND BONE, coming in June 2016. Her story, too, veers off the path of traditional thriller fiction.

But just because I’ve traveled some strange pathways doesn’t mean that I now consider myself a writer of the supernatural. It only means that in the following of certain characters, and stories, and the secrets of my fictional town called The Hollows, I have found myself going places that I didn’t expect. That’s the joy of writing and of all deep exploration. If you don’t go in thinking you know what’s there, you might find all manner of treasure.

I am not the storyteller you read if you want the same thing every time — which I suppose can be difficult for my publisher. It’s so much easier to market someone who is definable and easily categorized. But I have a very high opinion of my readers, and readers in general. I know them to be wise and intelligent, and — maybe more than any other type of person — open-minded. They are spelunkers like me, always willing to go deeper into the darkness just to see what’s there. I am not certain where I’ll go next. But I hope my readers know that whatever they might expect, they can always expect more.

Wow! I’m thrilled to share that I won 2015 Best of the Bay Award for BEST LOCAL FICTION WRITER!

Of course, this would not have happened without your votes and your support. I SO appreciate my amazing readers pals and want to send each of you a big, warm thank you!

The awards party took place at The Mahaffey Theater in St. Petersburg, Florida. What a fun night — filled with some of the most interesting people and fabulous food in the Tampa Bay area! I am so happy to be a part of this wonderful community.

I was a new mom when I wrote BLACK OUT. I was feeling fractured at that point in my life, struggling with the mommy-writer balance, and sleep deprived in the extreme. All of this might explain why protagonist Annie Powers is probably my most unreliable narrator — which is saying something. All I knew about Annie when I started writing was that she was in trouble and in flight. I knew that she was terrified of something, but that the real threat came from something else altogether. BLACK OUT was probably my most intense writing experience. If you haven’t read it, now is the perfect time. The eBook is on sale for $1.99!

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