Patricia Abbott is the author of more than 125 stories that have appeared online, in print journals and in various anthologies. She is the author of Monkey Justice and Home Invasion and co-editor of Discount Noir. She won a Derringer award for her story "My Hero."Abbott's new novel is Concrete Angel.
From her Q & A with J. Kingston Pierce at Kirkus Reviews:
How long had the story in Concrete Angel been kicking around in your head before you tried writing it? And was it always going to be a novel?Visit Patricia Abbott's website.
Megan [Abbott, Patricia's novelist-daughter] challenged me to write a novel. She said I would probably regret it if I didn’t make a try. So after Shot in Detroit (or, as it was called then, Raising the Dead) went nowhere, she advised me to get right to the action in the next book because in SID it takes a long time to develop. She also advised me to look for newspaper stories—something she did but that I had never done, somehow thinking I had to invent it from scratch or from the lives of people I know.…So I found a story about a mother and daughter charged with various credit-card crimes and outright theft. The daughter said in court that her mother made her do it. And that got me to thinking, under what circumstances could a mother make someone commit a crime? And then I remembered the relationship of...[read on]
The Page 69 Test: Concrete Angel.
Writers Read: Patricia Abbott.
My Book, The Movie: Concrete Angel.
--Marshal Zeringue