INTERVIEW w/ Jennifer Jackson @ readersmagnet
What is your book all about?
Well, we meet almost all of the characters in the series in Book One, but Charles Burns is the main character, since we follow him throughout the series. It’s about his journey. He’s ex- military, spent most of his career in Special Ops and retired young from active engagement and later combat training. Currently designated as ‘Specialist Trainer’ with a newly formed major crimes task force with the London Metropolitan Police. He was supposed to start on Monday…
But Something in the Water is also about science, medical science in particular, and how sometimes good intentions make bad things happen.
The night we meet Burns, a brilliant young scientist has disappeared, along with a potentially lethal discovery. Little is known about his work, and it’s unclear if the scientist was kidnapped or complicit. What becomes clear is the potential for global disaster. Burns gets the early call to action in the middle of a hockey game, and finds himself back at the sharp end.
What inspired you to write the book?
I was inspired to write a novel because I used to work in Show Biz in Canada and missed the creative process, the storytelling. My life changed when I began living abroad and working as a teacher, and I realized I needed to reconnect with the Creative inside me. That’s why I started wring novels. But why Something in the Water? Well, let me just say right off the bat, I started writing Something in the Water long before Corona time. I wanted to write a thriller, and I figured a global pandemic was one of the scarier scenarios to me, so it seemed like a good place for a thriller to start. Something else that’s been bothering me about humanity is our hunger for “bigger, better, faster, more”. Science and technology continue to advance exponentially, and sometimes we don’t always see the potentially negative ramifications of new discoveries until they’ve become a problem. When Covid hit… Conspiracy theories aside, I don’t know if I can describe how it feels to see fiction come to life in the worst possible way.
What is your target audience for the book?
That was something I never thought about until the first book was published. Honestly, I was writing for me, not thinking about what kind of reader I was, let alone who might want to read Something in the Water. So, I did some research, and was surprised to learn how many thriller fans are women. Apparently, women aged 30-60 make up the largest percentage of thriller readers. Turns out my target audience is narrower than I imagined. All I was thinking when I finally published Drowning was that it was a story that I found real enough to be truly scary, especially after all the research I had done. I confess, I haven’t really been writing to a ‘target audience’, nor have I been marketing the book that way. That’s what makes the feedback I’ve got and the reviews all the more gratifying, because they’re coming from readers who are really into thrillers. Hopefully, some of your followers are in that category and check out my book!
What do you hope readers could get out from of your book?
I do, of course, hope they enjoy the ride, first and foremost. It is a thriller, and a fast-paced one at that. Readers have called it a ‘page-turner’, which is truly gratifying. But it’s not just an action-packed thrill ride. There are themes, questions raised by the characters along the way that I hope give readers something to think about. As the series moves on, the lives of Burns and 3 other characters change, in very different ways. I hope they enjoy the characters enough to follow their journeys through the series. Naturally, I want readers to want to read Book Two!
What are your future goals/plans for the book?
I’ll run a few ads for Drowning when I get closer to releasing Book Two. I’m still working on the manuscript for Book Two, and in the meantime I hope to have the audiobook of Drowning to release at the same time. At some point, I’ll figure out how to get my stories made into films. That’s the ultimate goal.
And something more about yourself.
I lived and worked in the entertainment industry in Canada for 20 years before taking what I called a “5-year hiatus from the biz”, to explore the world teaching English. That five years is now going on 20 (part of the reason why I started writing again). It started in Turkey and now I’m living in Freiburg, Germany, with my wife and son.
Thanks to Jennifer and the team @readersmagnet for the interview. Funny, I found it interesting to see how my answers (to the usual questions) have evolved as I get closer to finishing Book Two. I just read my answers again and realized how much of a learning process all of this is.
Cheers, Jennifer!