A Conversation with Nic's Main Character

This week, the Rockville 8 and I rock the house as we celebrate my debut, The Kill List: A Jamie Sinclair Novel! To kick-off the ebook’s launch, I imagined sitting down for an interview with my main character, Jamie Sinclair. Over a cup of piping-hot coffee and a sticky, sweet treat at an M Street patisserie in Georgetown, our conversation might go like this:

Nichole Christoff: Jamie, like a long line of Mystery, Thriller, and Romantic Suspense protagonists before you, you’re a private eye. But your business card also says you’re a “security specialist.” What comes along with that job description?

Jamie Sinclair: I’m glad you asked, Nic. I serve high-risk, high-profile clients who call me when their safety is on the line—and calling the police isn’t an option.

NC: Wow. You mean like that big city mayor who ran for president a few years ago? Or that sports star who’s in all those underwear ads?

JC: I can’t really comment on the identities of individual clients. But you've got the right idea.

NC: Well, in The Kill List, you tangle with a TV news anchor’s stalker before your ex-husband claims he needs a security specialist when his little girl is kidnapped. To help him, you return to the army post where you were raised by your tough-as-nails father. Why on earth did you decide to take this case?

JC: I’d have been happy if I never saw my ex again. But this child's in danger and it’s not her fault her father is a jack—I mean, a crumb. Besides, her disappearance hits a little too close to home—and the secret reason my marriage fell apart.

NC: In the course of your investigation, you meet the fictional military police commander at the post, Lieutenant Colonel Adam Barrett. The two of you make quite a pair. He certainly makes it clear he thinks the world of you!

JS: No comment, Nic.

NC: Okay, okay. To keep this interview rolling along, I’m going to steal—ahem!—borrow a question my pals Evie Owens and MacKenzie Lucas came up with. Johnny Lee Miller, Robert Downey Jr, or Benedict Cumberbatch?

JS: Cumberbatch. Definitely.

NC: Hmmm... Back to Adam Barrett… Will you be seeing more of him in the future?

JS: You tell me. You’re the author.

NC: I’ll rephrase the question. Do you want to see more of Adam Barrett in the future?

JS: *blushing* I, uh…well…hey, isn’t my sequel coming soon from Random House?

NC: That’s true! Jamie and another familiar character return in The Kill Shot on March 17, 2015.

And there you have it, ladies and gentlemen! Thanks for celebrating my debut with me. Read on for a bit more about The Kill List: A Jamie SinclairNovel available now everywhere ebooks are sold.

In this taut debut thriller, Nichole Christoff introduces a savvy private investigator with nerves of steel—and a shattered heart.

As a top private eye turned security specialist, Jamie Sinclair has worked hard to put her broken marriage behind her. But when her lying, cheating ex-husband, army colonel Tim Thorp, calls with the news that his three-year-old daughter has been kidnapped, he begs Jamie to come find her. For the sake of the child, Jamie knows she can’t refuse. Now, despite the past, she’ll do everything in her power to bring little Brooke Thorp home alive.

Soon Jamie is back at Fort Leeds—the army base in New Jersey’s Pine Barrens where she grew up, the only child of a two-star general—chasing down leads and forging an uneasy alliance with the stern military police commander and the exacting FBI agent working Brooke’s case. But because Jamie’s father is now a U.S. senator, her recent run-in with a disturbed stalker is all over the news, and when she starts receiving gruesome threats echoing the stalker’s last words, she can’t shake the feeling that her investigation may be about more than a missing girl—and that someone very powerful is hiding something very significant . . . and very sinister. 

From Panic Attack to Story Attack, Capitalizing on Your Imagination

Lately, I've been working on a woman-in-jeopardy story that marks a turning point in my life, specifically, in the management of anxiety and panic attacks. It's a turn for the good. Generalized Anxiety Disorder, or GAD, affects 6.8 million adults and Panic Disorder (PD) affects 6 million adults. Women are twice as likely to be affected as men.(Learn more).  

Based on my own life, I wonder if GAD and PD affect creative, imaginative people more than the general population. Panic attacks are periods of intense fear or apprehension that occur suddenly and last for a few minutes or hours. When I'm in the grip of a panic attack, I am also in the grip of an intense woman-in-jeopardy fantasy that is horribly real.

I can't tell you the number of panic attacks I've had over the years, but I can say the frequency has significantly increased since 9/11, the sniper attacks in DC that followed so closely, tragic attacks like those at Sandy Hook Elementary School, and the simmering anti-American hostility we now find ourselves swimming in.

Five years ago, I was waking up almost nightly in a cold sweat, sure that every noise I heard was an intruder bent on murder. I would bolt wake at an unfamiliar sound and then play the fantasy like a movie in my mind's eye. Each frame brought a new horror that I tried to combat, overcome and outsmart in order to save my family. I felt like a character in a Jason Bourne book, constantly under attack from an unknown threat.  Finally, one morning I said that's it! We're getting a dog. A big dog.

The dog has helped. He's not a scary-looking dog. Most people see Gus and want to hug him. But, Gus is a herding dog and he is serious about his job as chief security officer at our house and nanny/body guard to our son. If the Darling children had had Gus as their nanny, Peter Pan would have been missing more than his shadow when he flew out that window.

Gus makes me feel safe and, thanks to Gus, I've developed a new strategy for preventing and managing panic attacks.  It happened last year on a chilly March Sunday. I took Gus up to Rock Creek Park near Kalmia Road and 16th Street.  It's beautiful there and during the weekend, the trails are usually crawling with joggers, hikers, families, and dogs. We had started a little late and dusk was nearing as we got back to a steep hill I call “killer hill”--I usually try to jog up the hill, backwards. (Vigorous cardio exercise 4 x week is another of my prevention strategies.)

A friend had introduced me to this trail and the day she and I were there, I read a notice tacked on tree warning women to travel in pairs as several women had been attacked when alone.  My brain obviously filled that away until the Sunday in March.  I made it to the top of the hill, backwards, and stood breathing heavily at the top. Gus was off leash and had momentarily disappeared when I realized I was completely alone in the darkening woods. There were no other people and even thebirds were silent.

It hit without warning. In seconds I went from peaceful to a full-on, no holds barred, panic attack. A cold sweat broke out around my neck and shoulders. Hands clenching, my heart thundered. I halted in mid-step almost doubling over with the severity of the attack. On a ragged breath, I jerked my head up, searching for the danger I felt was imminent. What if there is a man? What if he has a knife?

A crashing sound in the underbrush had me gasping for air. What if?  The fantasy over took me. I immediately assessed all my resources – no weapons: no knife, no gun, no mace, no... Wait a minute.  I had a secret weapon. I had Gus. I was so scared I couldn’t shout. I managed to wet my lips and sent a shrill whistle out through my teeth. It split the quiet afternoon air. Gus broke from the underbrush with a great clap of noise, like a pheasant. His doggy face wore a sloppy grin and he carried a tennis ball in his mouth.

I crouched on the trail and hugged him. He sensed my fear and anxiety and stayed close but went on high alert. I knew then that Gus would protect me. IF there was a real threat, but this wasn’t real. Except in my head. I had to stop these nightmarish fantasies from crippling me. I had to take control.

So, I took the “what if” to a new place, a place where I had power of it. I took it to story-making. What if the dog erupted from the underbrush and attacked the attacker? What if predator became prey? What if the heroine was no ordinary couch potato? Hmm, what it?

By the time I arrived home, I had the plot and characters established for “Hunter's Moon,” a thriller
novella with a canine hero, a heroine who can hold her own, and the cop who wants to hold her. Last month, I began putting it all together. That day in March came back to me in sharp definition: the suffocating silence, the clammy sweat gathering at the nape of my neck, the primal fear. It all came back but not as a living nightmare. Now it’s a story. I’ve reframed the panic attack into something positive. I say I’m having a story attack.

What’s something negative in your life that you’ve creatively reframed and now count as strength?  Share your comments with the Rockville 8.

A Knight's Tale

This week, the world marked the passing of mystery master, Robert B. Parker. Readers and writers everywhere mourn his loss. Including me.

A writer to the end, the 77 year-old Parker reportedly wrote five pages a day, six days a week. And reports say he died at his desk working on those pages. Which seems right for a writer, in a world where so much is wrong.

You might know Parker's work through the Jesse Stone, made-for-TV movies starring Tom Selleck. Or you might recall Spenser for Hire, which aired on ABC decades ago. Maybe you're a fan of its spin-off, A Man Called Hawk. But if you're like me, you're a fan of the novels that gave rise to these shows. And of the man who wrote them.

Parker is said to have viewed the hard-boiled detective as the modern knight of chivalric tradition. Nowhere does he prove this point better than in his Spenser novels. Behind the classic structure, the spare sentences, the sharp characterizations, and the all-out action scenes, Parker's heroes - and heroines - hold true to honor, love, and justice.

Consequently, many consider Parker the heir apparent to Raymond Chandler. The Chandler estate even selected him to complete Chandler's unfinished work. It's called Poodle Springs. A first edition holds pride of place on my bookshelf. Parker went on to write a sequel to my favorite Chandler novel, The Big Sleep. He called it Perchance to Dream.

In my opinion, Parker's Spenser novel Potshot is a thoughtful tribute to that other noir icon, Dashiell Hammett and his Red Harvest. Like Hammett's hero, Spenser's mission is to clean up a corrupt town. But Parker redeems his hero in a way Hammett couldn't. The darkness always drags Hammett's heroes down. Spenser, however, always rises above. With a little help from his friends, of course. Which begs the question: which novel is a reflection of the world we live in? For my part, I hope we're living in Spenser's world.

From Spenser and Hawk to Sunny Randall and Jesse Stone, Parker reinvented the detective hero time and again. I'll miss those heroes. And I'll miss the man who created them. We'll have one more chance to savor his work, though. Parker's final Jesse Stone novel is slated for release later this year.

Until then, and long after, I'll wonder about those pages, spread across the desk as Robert Parker slipped away from us. Who will be tapped, as he was for Chandler, to polish off that work-in-progress? Mostly, though, I wonder who can?