Q&A with 'The Ninth Session' Deborah Serani

Deborah Serani is an award-winning author and psychologist who has been in practice for thirty years. She is also a professor at Adelphi University and is a go-to media expert for psychological issues. Her interviews can be found in Newsday, Psychology Today, The Chicago Tribune, The New York Times, The Associated Press, and affiliate radio programs at CBS and NPR, among others. Dr. Serani has also been a technical advisor for the NBC television show, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. The recurring character, Judge D. Serani, was named after her.

★WEBSITE & SOCIAL LINKS★

Website:  https://www.drdeborahserani.com

Twitter: https://twitter.com/DeborahSerani    

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Dr-Deborah-Serani-227062310643715/

Tell us about your book! What is it about and what inspired you to write it?

“THE NINTH SESSION” is a psychological suspense thriller about a psychologist who takes on a new patient that changes her life. It’s the kind of case that no therapist sees coming - and by the time one realizes what’s going on, they’re in too deep. The inspiration for the story came from my thoughts about which is truly more important: professional ethics or moral truth.

Tell us about your publishing process. What was it like? Did you go indie or the traditional way? 

I’ve been Indie published for almost a decade now. I love the freedom independent publishing offers authors. I feel very supported by my editors – something I didn’t feel when I had an agent and went more traditional publishing in my early author days.

How did you choose the title for your book? Did it come to you right away, before you started writing it, or did it come later? 

I knew something vital would happen in the ninth session as I outlined the story, so it was easy to use that hook for the book’s title.

Tell us about the cover design process. Did you have a basic idea of what your book cover would be like? 

I’m a psychologist and trained in the Rorschach Inkblots. Since many people identify the inkblots with personality and pathology, I thought having one that was colored in blood would be a perfect image for the “THE NINTH SESSION.”

Who is your cover designer and how did you find him/her? 

The cover art was done by Colbie Myles, a book designer from my publisher TouchPoint Press.

How was your experience working with the designer? 

It was wonderful working to create the book’s cover. I so enjoyed it and was so pleased with the final artwork.

What has been the readers’ response to your cover? 

Everyone seems to be really moved by it.

What tips would you give to authors who are looking for a cover designer? 

Make sure your cover designer really wants to work WITH you to create a piece of art. I believe a book’s cover is a vital part of relationship with a reader.

Anything else you’d like to say about your book? 

Make sure you don’t read the book without a light on or in the dark. It’s scary!

About the Book:

Dr. Alicia Reese, a recent widow and a CODA – a child of Deaf Adults, takes on a new patient. Lucas Ferro reveals the reason for his consultation is that he wasn't really open with his previous therapist. After gaining Reese’s trust, he shares aspects of his life that are clearly disturbing – experiences that create anxiety and panic, but also reveal horrifying psychopathology. Instead of referring Ferro elsewhere, Reese chooses to continue working with him, feeling reinvigorated by the challenge of his case.  

        

As sessions progress, and Ferro’s disclosures become more menacing, Reese finds herself wedged between the cold hard frame of professional ethics and the integrity of personal truth – and learns just how far she’s willing to go, willing to risk and willing to lose to do the right thing.

★★★★★ORDER YOUR COPY★★★★★

Amazon → https://tinyurl.com/y6qz2sto

Q&A with Trial Lawyer and Author Michael Bowen

After graduating from Harvard Law School, Michael Bowen worked as a trial lawyer for thirty-nine years until his retirement in 2015.  His legal career focused on franchise and distribution disputes, but he found time to participate in representation of the Milwaukee Brewers in complex litigation over building a maximum security prison across the street from County Stadium.  He also represented numerous pro bono defendants, including one sentenced to death.  His career in fiction began in 1987 with Can’t Miss, a “gently feminist” (St. Louis Post Dispatch) novel about the first woman to play major league baseball.  It has continued through nineteen mysteries and one political satire, culminating (so far) in False Flag in Autumn, which will be published this year as a follow-up to 2016’s Damage Control         ( . . . consistently delightful. . . . Bowen’s ebullient antidote to election

season blues.”  Kirkus Reviews)  He has also published numerous articles on legal and political matters, and is co-author of the Wisconsin State Bar treatise on the Wisconsin Fair Dealership Law (paperback and movie rights still available).  He lives in Fox Point, Wisconsin, a suburb of Milwaukee, with his wife, Sara, who is also a Harvard Law School graduate and a published lecturer on Jane Austen and Angela Thirkel. Visit his website at www.michaelbowenmysteries.com.

Interview

Tell us about your book!  What is it about, and what inspired you to write it?

False Flag in Autumn is about influencing elections with “October surprises” – the one that did not take place before the 2018 midterm elections, and the one that might (or might not) take place before the 2020 presidential election.  I was inspired to write it by a lifetime as a political junkie, and by a weird feeling early in the current administration, when I began to read about a slow-motion “crisis” on our southern border, that I had seen this movie before. 

Tell us about your publishing process.  What was it like?  Did you go indie or the traditional way?

I did my level best to go with a traditional publisher.  I sold the story to a major mystery publisher, which paid me for it and then got cold feet after I had written the first version.  I shopped it around to other publishers.  After the third or fourth told my agent what a great story it was but, unfortunately, they didn’t know how to “place” political stories these days, I got the message.  I self-published through Farragut Square Publications, and that process was extremely challenging.  Except for the chance to work with a great independent editor, it was marked by frustration, endless loops, and dead ends.  The one great thing about it was that I knew that I really believed in the story, because otherwise I wouldn’t have kept going through the nightmare that the process represented. 

How did you choose the title for your book?  Did it come to you right away, before you started writing it, or did it come later?

Even before Josie Kendall said in the story’s first paragraph, “I have no objection to the truth, but I don’t let it push me around”, I knew that the story would revolve around a “false flag” attack – that is, an attack by one party that is designed to look like it was made by another party.  For a long time my working title was False Flag at Half-Staff.  With the delay caused by my first publisher’s cold feet, however, I realized that the story would have to have at least two parts.  For a while I used False Flag at Half-Staff as the title for one of the parts, and came up with False Flag in Autumn as the title for the book.  The last step was to drop the idea of having two separate sub-part titles, because it struck me as too mechanical.

Tell us about the cover design process.  Did you have a basic idea of what your book cover would be like?

I had the basic concept – a true flag and a false flag, with the White House in the background – in mind from the start.  It evolved a bit as the story developed in my own mind, but the essential elements were there from the beginning. 

Who is the cover designer and how did you find him/her?

Andy Brown in Atlanta, Georgia.  My agent did some shopping around and recommended him.  It was an inspired suggestion. 

How was your experience working with the designer?

Outstanding.  We seemed to click with each other from the start. 

What has been the readers’ response to your cover?

The jury will be out on that until we go live on October 22^nd, but those who have seen it think that it’s quite striking and does a good job of suggesting what the story is about.

What tips would you give to authors who are looking for a cover designer?

(1) Go with a pro – someone who has a track record and whom other authors are happy with; (2) Remember that, in all probability, you’re verbal and he or she is visual.  That means that if you and the designer are at odds over a particular element, the designer is probably right; and (3) Remember that, at the end of the day, it’s your story, not the designer’s.  If you’re uncomfortable with having a lewd or suggestive image – or, for that matter, someone smoking a cigarette or sipping a cocktail – on the cover, then don’t go along with having that image just because you don’t want to be hard to get along with. 

Anything else you’d like to say about your book?

The subject of False Flag in Autumn is dark, but the themes are redemption and hope and the approach is light-hearted.  Josie Kendall may be a manipulative apparatchik, but she’s a lot of fun to be around.  As Voltaire (I think) said, “Life may be a shipwreck, but we mustn’t forget to sing in the lifeboats.”

          

Title: False Flag

Genre: Political Thriller

Author: Michael Bowen

Website: www.michaelbowenmysteries.com              

Publisher: Farragut Square Publications

Find out more on Amazon

Q&A with Cozy Mystery Author Susan McCormick

Susan McCormick writes cozy murder mysteries. She is also the author of GRANNY CAN’T REMEMBER ME, a lighthearted picture book about Alzheimer’s disease. She is a doctor who lives in Seattle. She graduated from Smith College and George Washington University School of Medicine, with additional medical training in Washington, DC and San Francisco, where she lived in an elegant apartment building much like the one in the book. She served nine years in the military before settling in the Pacific Northwest. She is married and has two boys, plus a giant Newfoundland dog. Visit her website at https://susanmccormickbooks.com/

Connect with Susan on the web:

Goodreads / Bookbub

Find out more about THE FOG LADIES:

Amazon / B&N

Interview:

Tell us about your book! What is it about and what inspired you to write it?

THE FOG LADIES is a cozy murder mystery with a group of spunky older women and one overworked, overtired, overstressed medical intern who all live in an elegant apartment building in San Francisco where old ladies start to die. Mrs. Bridge falls off a stool cleaning bugs out of her kitchen light. Mrs. Talwin slips on bubbles in the bathtub and drowns. Are these deaths the natural consequences of growing old, or does evil lurk in their building?

Years ago, I lived in an apartment building similar to the one in the book, minus the murders, and I always thought it would make a good setting for a cozy. Tenants of all ages live together for years, providing the perfect cast of characters and cozy-type enclosed setting for a series of murders. 

Tell us about your publishing process. What was it like? Did you go indie or the traditional way?

The market for cozy murder mysteries is not enormous, and it is very hard to be published by the few big presses. I pitched, I queried, I received feedback, I revised, I pitched again. My traditional small press, The Wild Rose Press, is perfect for my cozy.

How did you choose the title for your book? Did it come to you right away, before you started writing it, or did it come later?

The name of the book and the idea for the group of women, THE FOG LADIES, came instantly, before anything else about the story. They call themselves the Fog Ladies because you can count on them like you can count on San Francisco early morning fog burning off by midday. I put them together in my elegant, idyllic apartment building and concocted the murders around them.

Tell us about the cover design process. Did you have a basic idea of what your book cover would be like?

I had an idea for a cover design, and was asked by the publisher to suggest three elements I wanted. Two of my three made it to the final cover, the Golden Gate Bridge and fog. Since the apartment building plays such a huge role in my story, my third idea, which didn’t make it to the final cover, was a picture or sketch of a typical San Francisco 1920s elegant apartment building.

Who is your cover designer and how did you find him/her?

My designer is Kristian Norris. My publisher, The Wild Rose Press, took care of everything. They have multiple cover designers, and I looked at the work of each and chose Kristian based on what I saw.

How was your experience working with the designer?

The first cover I saw was very exciting, a vibrant scene with apartment buildings, streets and a bridge. Unfortunately, it was the Bay Bridge and not the Golden Gate Bridge, so Kris redid the whole thing and I am very happy with my current cover.

What has been the readers’ response to your cover?

Very positive. I think they like the bold letters, the intense colors and the spooky fog.

What tips would you give to authors who are looking for a cover designer?

Look at lots of covers, viewed in various forms, on the actual book, on the computer, on a mobile phone. Decide what is important to you, for instance, the font, the coloring, the clarity, the actual scene. Have flexibility because these professionals often know far more than we do.

Anything else you’d like to say about your book?

As an author, I imagined everything about my story, except when the characters I created took over and set off in ways I didn’t envision, like when one character wrote herself onto life support and then expected me, the author, to revive her. But my fingers typed the words, and some part of my brain wrote even that surprise twist. The cover, however, is pretty much out of our hands. We make suggestions, but the cover designer has ultimate creative power. Authors need to expect and accept this, and the hopefully the process will yield them as beautiful a cover as mine.