Featured Author: Susan Russo Anderson

ABOUT THE BOOK

Abandoned by her father and mourning the sudden loss of her mother, twenty-two-year-old Fina Fitzgibbons eeks out a living by establishing a cleaning service in Brooklyn called Lucy's. But when she finds a body on a busy sidewalk in the heart of the Heights, she dusts off her PI license and begins searching for the killer, only to discover that the strangled woman's four-year-old grandson is missing. A desperate hunt begins for the kidnapped child. During the chase, Fina resists falling in love with her boyfriend, Denny, an NYPD patrol officer, steps on the toes of Detective First Grade Jane Templeton, and uncovers secrets about her mother's death. In the end, the killer has a vicious surprise for Fina.

INTERVIEW WITH SUSAN RUSSO ANDERSON

Susan, how did you create the plot for this book?
I walk to create plot.

What would your main character say about you?
Boring at first and a little wordy, but asks interesting questions.

Are you like any of your characters?
I wish I could be like Lorraine. In the series she’s the character with the long view.

One of your characters has just found out you’re about to kill him off. He/she decides to beat you to the punch. How would he kill you?
Great question. It would be Ralph, a character in Too Quiet in Brooklyn, and he’d strangle me by squeezing until he heard the crack. Then he’d say, “Look. No blood, boss.”

What’s one of your favorite quotes?
“Everything that rises must converge.” -Teilhard de Chardin

If you could live anywhere in the world, where in the world would it be?
I’d have a home in Paris and a home in Brooklyn.

What would you like people to say about you after you die?
Her words enriched others.

What’s your favorite line from a book?
“Isn’t it pretty to think so.” It’s the last line in Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, but you have to read the book to get it, I mean, really get it.

Who are your favorite authors?
Favorite book of all time: Fell in love with Paris through the hobo in A Family Under the Bridge. But there are lots of writers and books I love: whoever wrote the Nancy Drew books, as well as Georges Simenon, Ross MacDonald, Agatha Christie, James Joyce, not that I understand him, but I love the sound of language, T.S. Eliot, and lots of early twentieth-century American writers, even Hemingway. Love love love A Moveable Feast.


What book are you currently reading and in what format (e-book/paperback/hardcover)?
Ann Cleeves, Raven Black (audible); Anne Perry, Death on Blackheath (ebook); John Green, The Fault in our Stars (ebook)


Do you have a routine for writing?
I get up in the morning and write, which I do until noon. I work on two books at one time, writing a first draft in the morning, editing in the afternoon. After editing, I market (work on a marketing plan). When I take a break, I walk, which is how I plot or listen to a book or music. I read in the late afternoon until dinner. While watching TV, I tweet and Facebook.

What’s the hardest thing you’ve ever had to write?
In my latest book, I killed a character I really liked. It took me a long time to do it, too, and many days of deciding, finally, I had to do it. First she was fed Rohypnol, one of the date rape drugs. While in the hospital recovering, she was hit over the head, finally killed by an overdose of potassium chloride. So she died by degrees.

Where is your favorite library, and what do you love about it?
Park Ridge public library. It was my first library, and it still looks and smells the same after all these years.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Susan Russo Anderson is a writer, a mother, a grandmother, a widow, a graduate of Marquette University, a member of Sisters in Crime. She has taught language arts and creative writing, worked for a publisher, an airline, an opera company. She lived in Brooklyn for fourteen years and misses it. Like Faulkner’s Dilsey, she’s seen the best and the worst, the first and the last. Through it all, and to understand it somewhat, she writes.

Connect with Susan:
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