Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Sharon Potts

From a Q & A with Sharon Potts about her new novel, In Their Blood:

How did you get the ideas for the characters in In Their Blood? Are any of the characters based on people you know?

Because In Their Blood was triggered by an incident in my own life, I naturally began with a family that resembled my own--mom, dad, older son, younger daughter. Like Rachel, I spent a number of years working as a CPA, and much like D. C., my husband frequently writes articles on controversial topics. As the story developed, Rachel, D.C., Jeremy, and Elise become their own people. Jeremy and Elise face challenges and situations that my kids have never experienced--their parents haven't been murdered, thank goodness!--and so the characters had to cope with situations that aren't in my frame of reference. As for other characters, while they are totally fictitious, there are naturally bits and pieces of people I've known or who made an impression on me over the years.

In the course of the novel, protagonist Jeremy Stroeb is, in some ways, forced to mourn not only the death of his parents, but the death of his adolescent view of who he thought his parents were. Which of these do you think is most difficult for Jeremy to accept?

Jeremy's true pain comes from...[read on]
Read the prologue to In Their Blood, and learn more about the book and author at Sharon Potts' website.

Publishers Weekly
called In Their Blood a “red-hot suspense novel” and gave it a starred review. New York Times best-selling author Michael Connelly said, “In Their Blood starts with a bang and never lets up. This is thriller writing the way it is supposed to be.”

My Book, The Movie: In Their Blood.

--Marshal Zeringue