Twisted Vine (20 page)
cknowledgements:
Twisted Vine
is the book my subconscious has been planning since
Blood Orchids,
first in the series, came out. Preparing for
Twisted
, I wrote all the “loose ends” and subplots I needed to tie up (this book was to be the last in the Lei Crime Series™) on the whiteboard next to my desk while I was still completing the challenging manuscript that was
Broken Ferns
.
I started looking for a crime well ahead of time. I look everywhere for ideas: the news, rumors in the community, blogs, articles, newspapers, TV shows. Some of my favorite crime exposes have been in People Magazine and Vanity Fair—truth is often stranger than fiction!
I needed something
no one had done before
, something the FBI would get involved with, something new and unique.
I’ve included a lot of crimes in the series, from the “basics” of the genre like rape, robbery and drugs to the finer points of money laundering, identity theft, sex trafficking, burglary and of course, murder. It’s challenging to find something really different in the crime mystery genre, and I was coming up dry.
In my therapy practice I saw a series of depressed people—and as part of “motivational interviewing” a technique in which there is open dialogue about why a person engages in a given behavior, and the reasons behind it, I had serious discussions with people struggling with suicidal thoughts. These talks delved into the reasons behind this complex problem—and I realized I wanted to explore the issue of suicide and right-to-death, just as I have many social issues of Hawaii and current times through my fiction.
I came home one day with the idea of an assisted suicide “club,” a variation on the ever-popular “strangers on a train” scenario, updated for modern times with chatrooms and passcodes—and best yet, I’d never heard of such a plot. (It’s probably been done, but I’ve never read or seen it—email me at tobyneal 0 @gmail.com (remove spaces) if you find a book or movie with this plotline!)
It’s challenging to write modern crime fiction with only a basic knowledge of computers, and I’d dodged that bullet by having Lei be a bit of a technophobe, clinging to her spiral notebook and flip phone. Enter Sophie Ang, a character who had begun to capture my imagination when she first appeared in
Broken Ferns
—a woman of mystery, of foreign birth, and of contrasts: an MMA-fighting female agent who’s a genius with computers. So much of this investigation was taking place online that I gave her a second point of view in the book—and if you’ve read my other fiction, that’s unprecedented. Only the “bad guy” and Lei get a point of view—but through the device of Sophie’s perspective, I wanted the reader to better understand the process of tracking criminal activity online.
From the moment she appeared on the page, Sophie Ang was in danger of taking over this important book of Lei’s. The tension between writing from Sophie’s POV and working through so many delicious subplot threads (Marcus Kamuela and the Kwon murder! The relationship with Consuelo! The twist at the end and the IA investigation! Stevens and Lei’s reunion!) kept my fingers flying, and I blazed through this story in a mere three months.
I discovered, sniffling over the scene with Lei and Stevens on Maui, that
Twisted Vine
isn’t the end of the Lei Crime Series™ after all.
I’m just not done with them yet.
I’ve really come to love this mythic couple, and I want to see them move forward into life together and struggle with the same things we grapple with: marriage, children, temptations, aging, health, and careers even as I continue to explore the way the twisted vine of the past reaches its tendrils into the present.
Many thanks go to retired Capt. David Spicer who provided valuable feedback on the procedural aspects and particulars of dead bodies and suicide victims. Thanks to Jay
Allen, internet detective extraordinaire, who took time out of his busy schedule to read several of the Sophie scenes and advise me on write-blockers and other computer arcana used in computer investigation work. Thanks also to Dan, Holly Robinson’s computer engineer husband, who also gave small but important language tweaks to a world I don’t pretend to understand.
Matt Rogers, another writer friend, does MMA and he helped with the scene between Alika and Sophie—thanks for the “spiral ride,” Matt!
My editor, Kristen Weber, earned her money as I fired the rough manuscript off to her “on deadline” before taking a month with my husband to travel the National Parks, out of internet range most of the time. Thanks Kristen! And thanks always to my awesome beta readers Holly Robinson (whose literary influence has singlehandedly deepened my characters and sharpened my writing more than any other) Noelle Pierce, Bonny Ponting and now, my mom Sue Wilson. Each of you had a hand in shaping and developing
Twisted Vine,
and I’m forever grateful.
Most of all, thanks to my amazing husband Mike Neal, whose creative flame fans mine. We truly rediscovered love, adventure and companionship on our epic road trip while
Twisted Vine
was at the editor—and because of twenty seven years with you, I know the best is yet to come for Lei and Stevens too.
Toby Neal, 2013
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http://www.tobyneal.net/
:
Lei Crime Series:
Blood Orchids
(book 1)
Torch Ginger
(book 2)
Black Jasmine
(book 3)
Broken Ferns
(book 4)
Twisted Vine
(book 5)
Shattered Palms
(book 6)
Companion Series:
a Lei Crime Companion Novel (Marcella Scott)
Unsound:
a novel (Dr. Caprice Wilson)
Wired in
Paradise:
a Lei Crime Companion Novel (Sophie Ang)
Middle Grade/Young Adult
Path of
Island Fire
Sign up
for news of upcoming books at
http://www.tobyneal.net/
Toby Neal was raised on Kaua`i in
Hawaii. She wrote and illustrated her first story at age five and credits her counseling background with adding depth to her characters–from the villains to Lei Texeira, the courageous multicultural heroine of the Lei Crime Series. “I’m endlessly fascinated with people’s stories.”
