Nancy Raven Smith on Inspiration…and a Giveaway!

I am thrilled to welcome fellow mystery writer Nancy Raven Smith today to discuss what inspires her. Leave a comment below to be entered to win one of two signed copies of her novel LAND SHARKS.

Thank you, Nina, for inviting me to do a guest post for your blog. It’s very exciting to be here where you have so many interesting discussions. You suggested I comment on what inspires me, which made me do some serious thinking.

I call what inspires me Murphy’s – and Nancy’s – Law.

It comes from who I am. I have a “hope for the best and prepare for the worst” mentality. I guess I got it from my mother who worried about everything. Then I developed it by managing large horse shows with over a thousand horses entered, running a farm, and working on film and television projects as a production coordinator. All jobs that require questioning everything and trying to anticipate what could, and usually will, go wrong.

I also had a job at the J Paul Getty Museum, and one of my tasks was to open mail in the director’s office and send anything suspicious to security. The Los Angeles Police Department even gave the museum staff training on how to recognize suspicious packages during the period of the mail bomber and the anthrax scare.

That started my brain looking for lies and frauds as well as what could go wrong. Now that I’m writing, I’ve found this to be extremely fertile ground to use in writing mysteries. It’s a mentality that has found a new purpose.

So when I hear an interesting story on the news, my mind starts asking things like – What did the reporter leave out of the story and what could have been done to avert this story, etc.? Then every so often there’s a story about a fraud and my brain goes into overdrive – how did the con work, what did someone hope to gain and what tripped them up?

Here’s an example of how that thinking worked for my current book, Land Sharks, A Swindle in Sumatra.

A mention on a news story about identity theft included a reference to a place called the Plastic Triangle. I had to know what that was. When I researched it I learned the Plastic Triangle is Malaysia, Hong Kong and Thailand. Fifteen or twenty years ago, it was where the majority of counterfeit credit cards were produced. It piqued my interest at the time, but I was busy on other projects. By the time I revisited the Plastic Triangle, it was too late. It was no longer the center of international credit card fraud as there were credit card counterfeiting rings in every major city in the world and it had become commonplace.

Then in 2014 I was following the tragic disappearance of the Malaysian Airlines jet and I read an article that said two of the men on board the plane were flying with stolen passports obtained in Thailand. The men were proven innocent of involvement in the disappearance of the plane, but I was intrigued again and did more research. It turned out that the Plastic Triangle had evolved. It was, and is now, the go-to-place to purchase counterfeit and stolen international identity papers and passports. Thailand alone reported over sixty thousand passports stolen in an eighteen month period from 2012 to 2013. Since Thailand is currently a huge international tourist destination, the majority of  those came from foreign tourists.

I thought this would be a great place for a mystery story and used it for the background story of Land Sharks – A Swindle in Sumatra. Several other frauds are included in the story, but I won’t reveal those and spoil the fun for readers.

The bad thing about my way of thinking is in my home life. Because I worry, I feel I have to warn my daughters of every danger possible. For years now, they’ve called me  Alarm-Alarm. So instead of warning them, I put my alarms into my stories and try to warn readers as well as entertain them. .

LAND SHARKS – A SWINDLE IN SUMATRA

A young heiress has disappeared in Sumatra with a mysterious new boyfriend. Her father fears she may have been kidnapped.

An American bank fraud investigator goes undercover to find the answer. The investigator’s job might be easier if she didn’t have to contend with her boss’s untrained son who has a crush on her and the unexpected appearance of an ex-boyfriend/con man who has his own secret agenda.

Land Sharks was recently named an Amazon/Kindle Scout Program Selection and will be available in mid December.

Nancy Raven Smith grew up in Virginia where she ran horse sport events. On her farm, she rescued horses, dogs and cats and is an advocate for animal rescue. Later in California, she traded her event experience for film work. and attended UCLA for screenwriting and novel writing. Her scripts have won numerous major awards. Raven Smith decided to write one idea as a novel and discovered a passion for writing mysteries.

Thank you so much for joining me today Nancy!I totally share your “hope for the best, prepare for the worst” mentality. I think, in part, it helps us with our mystery writing…where our characters often do face the worst!

Readers, please don’t forget to leave a comment below (by Wednesday, Dec. 16th) to be entered to win a copy of Land Sharks! All comments are moderated, so don’t worry if you don’t see yours pop up right away.