Ask me why I created a female sports reporter protagonist and the answer is easy. That’s my background. I intimately know the character’s experiences—the smell of the locker rooms, the chit chat with a camera operator and the adrenaline rush of a newsroom.
Ask me why I decided to write a thriller—well, that question stumped me for years. I figured the reason was my love for the genre. It never occurred to me that the answer went much deeper until I attended an author talk this past winter.
The author was asked the same question—why crime fiction? She said, and I’m paraphrasing, it helped get the ‘darkness’ out—purge it so to speak. That resonated with me. It was one of those lightbulb moments in a cartoon and I realized that was also my reason.
Before I became a sports reporter, I was a TV news reporter, starting on Long Island and then moving to WNBC-TV, NYC. News often focused on tragedy. And I found myself assigned to some horrific stories.
The first was the 1994 Long Island Massacre Trial of Colin Ferguson; the gunman who opened fire on a commuter train, killing six people and injuring nineteen. I spent months covering every aspect of the case. From the pre-trial motions to the testimony of victims, to the verdict. As a reporter, you are taught to keep your emotions in check—and I get that. The suffering wasn’t ours. It was the victims’ and their families’. And it was heartbreaking.
A few images have never left me from this case—one is of the gunman on the stand in court. His blank stare as he testified. I didn’t believe in pure evil until then. And it’s haunted me.
By 1996 I had moved to WNBC-TV where I continued to cover breaking news. Again, much of it was tragic, from murders, to abuse, to arson to deadly storms. For me, the worst was the crash of TWA flight 800, which crashed in the Atlantic Ocean off East Moriches, Long Island on July 17, 1996. All 230 passengers died. I was among the reporters who spent nearly a month in the area, reporting on all the emerging details of the tragedy. There were interviews with the victims’ families, reports on wreckage recovered, and updates from the FAA.
I remember going home each day and crying. Then feeling guilty for crying because I was simply reporting on the tragedy—others were truly suffering.
When I had the opportunity to switch to cover sports, I figured why not give it a try? My first assignment was the 1998 NBA lockout. A news reporter for a news story. I know it wasn’t great for the owners and the players—but, if I’m being honest—it was pretty great for me. I got to regularly interview the Knicks’ center Patrick Ewing, the president of the NBA National Basketball Players Association and David Stern, the Commissioner of the National Basketball Association.
When the lockout ended, I stayed with Fox Sports Network. And, wow, did I like this job. Sure there were issues being one of the few women in this predominantly male world. When we’d speak to players in the locker rooms, I was usually one of half a dozen women among forty-plus male reporters. And not everyone wanted us there—some were very vocal about their opposition to our presence.
But many more athletes were respectful and helpful. I learned so much about what it took to reach the top level of athletics. So much more than talent—the mental toughness needed, the physical toll, the sacrifices.
That experience in sports made for great material as I plunged into fiction. In LIGHTS OUT, the first thriller in the Kate Green Series, I wrote about an NBA player murdered in his Greenwich, Connecticut mansion. My protagonist is a former gold medal Olympic soccer player turned sports reporter. Kate’s investigation takes her into the tunnels of Madison Square Garden chasing leads revolving around jealousy, greed and secrets.
What I didn’t realize at the time was the hidden reason why I chose to write thrillers. Like many authors of crime fiction, when I read, I try to figure out the reveal before I get there. Sometimes I’m able to. Sometimes, I’m not. But it was surprising to me, that in the real story of why I write thrillers—that reveal took me so long to uncover.
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