Sheena Kamal is the author of the novels The Lost Ones and its sequel, It All Falls Down. From her Q&A with Sam Wiebe, author of Invisible Dead and Cut You Down, at The Thrill Begins:SW: ...Let’s start with the protagonist of The Lost Ones, Nora Watts. She’s highly resourceful and tenacious, while also displaying tremendous vulnerability. How did you come up with her?Visit Sheena Kamal's website.
SK: Nora came to me very organically. I started becoming serious about writing when I worked in the film/TV industry, so what I saw first was a logline about a woman who discovers the daughter she’d given up for adoption has gone missing, and she doesn’t trust the authorities to look for the girl. Who doesn’t trust the cops? Someone who’s had bad experiences with them, an outsider, a loner. Then I wrote a line about her singing the blues and I suddenly got her personality. I sensed she had a huge identity crisis that’s always hovering over her shoulders. Writing the story can be difficult, but understanding Nora never is.
How was it for you creating Dave Wakeland? Did you think about him a lot first or did he manifest on the page right away?
SW: With Invisible Dead, I knew I wanted a protagonist who’d embody some of the old school virtues of classic detective fiction, but who wouldn’t feel anachronistic. I wanted to avoid the cliche of the heroic loner in a corrupt world; in some ways the novel is about Wakeland coming to grips with his own complicity in the social ills he investigates.
For me, the classic detective writers...[read on]
Writers Read: Sheena Kamal (August 2017).
The Page 69 Test: The Lost Ones.
--Marshal Zeringue