Interview With Author Valerie J. Brooks
Today I’m delighted to introduce you to Valerie J. Brooks, award-winning author of femmes-noir psychological suspense novels “Revenge in 3 Parts” and the newly released “Tainted Times 2”. Featuring “… a whirlwind of deceit, theft, blackmail, and worse. … genuinely surprising plot turns.… a striking and complicated protagonist.” (—Kirkus Review) the Angeline Porter Series will keep you on the edge of your seat.
Hi, I’m Ana Grigoriu-Voicu, book cover designer to independent and best selling authors all around the world. My focus lies on creating powerful visual stories for your published masterpieces. Via my blog I’m aiming towards providing you with the unique artistic perspective of someone who wants to turn each project into a best-seller. If you want to find out more about my work or you’d like to stay in contact, feel free to connect with me over Facebook, Instagram or e-mail.
The first title in the Angeline Porter Series, “Revenge in 3 Parts”, is a psychological thriller and debut noir that finds criminal attorney Angeline Porter in the gripping scenario of fighting crime outside the law. “Revenge in 3 Parts” features heart-pumping twists and classic noir language that intertwine with modern elements. What was your main source of inspiration behind “Revenge in 3 Parts”?
Revenge in 3 Parts was the perfect confluence of background, education, my study of film noir, travel, experience, and reading authors who write noir, gothic, and surreal stories.
I grew up in New England with ghosts, the gothic, and secrets. Everyone hid behind a veil of perception. What was perfect on the outside was never perfect on the inside. My early taste in fiction included Nancy Drew mysteries, then novels by Wilkie Collins and Daphne du Maurier. I guess in my personal zeitgeist, I was drawn to the dark.
In college, I studied film noir and loved it. After college, I sought out authors who write noir. Two of my favorite authors are Jennifer Egan who wrote The Keep and Look at Me, both gothic and surreal, and Laura Lippman, author of two perfect noirs Lady in the Lake and Sunburn.
Then on a 2015 two-week trip to Paris with my husband during Christmas and New Years, we were staying in a friend’s apartment in the 15th arrondissement, a new area for us to explore. Paris is my favorite city in the world, and this was my fourth visit. We were ten minutes from the Eiffel Tower, a few minutes from street markets, five minutes from an upscale shopping area, and a walk across the street to an organic store. Around the corner of our building was a butcher shop. The area teemed with both white collar and working class people. My husband is an explorer and while I would write in this beautiful apartment or a cafe, he would go out walking and come back with the best finds, mainly little shops the locals frequented, and small museums. He was very excited when he found a hip burger joint four blocks away.
But this was a month after the Bataclan terrorist attacks, and ten thousand soldiers were on Paris streets. Some of the soldiers were so young they had pimples. Homeless Muslim women prostrated themselves on the cold cement of the Champs-Elysées, holding out begging bowls, while the avenue’s trees twinkled with tiny clear lights. The juxtapositions were everywhere. As I do on all of my trips, I kept receipts, brochures, menus. I took photos of every place I went, especially of small details. I wrote in a journal. One detail that played significantly in the novel was a homeless man dressed in a saggy, dirty Santa costume sitting outside the Franprix holding out a chipped styrofoam cup.
Back home in Oregon, I dug out a story I’d written many years before about an anniversary weekend Dan and I spent in Portland, Oregon. I’d fictionalized it a bit to create a noir story for a debut online travel magazine that was never launched. I was rewriting that as fiction when it hit me—I wanted to write noir.
How did you begin writing? What sparked your interest in becoming a writer?
Again, a number of influences and one funny story.
My love of storytelling started with the Beatles. At the tender age of twelve, three friends and I started a secret Beatles club, taking on the personas of their girlfriends. George was my favorite, so I became Patty Boyd. We’d write stories about our lives with the Beatles, probably based on what we read in the magazines of the time, like Teen Life, Seventeen, and 16 Magazine. That ended one day when a teacher confiscated one that was considered a bit risqué and my girlfriend was sent to the principal. We were shut down. That was my first experience with censorship.
After I moved to Oregon, I went back to college and took a position as editor of a two-year college literary magazine. Later I served as an associate fiction editor on the University of Oregon’s lauded Northwest Review.
I kept journals for years while making a living as a graphic designer. After my son graduated from high school and left home, I started writing with the intent of publishing novels.
After writing two literary novels and working with two high-power New York agents, I reevaluated what I was writing when the agents couldn’t sell my novels. I continued writing short pieces and was published in two anthologies, Scent of Cedars: promising writers of the Pacific Northwest and France, a Love Story: Women Write About the French Experience.
After my trip to Paris in 2015, I made the plunge into writing noir, but it wasn’t until 2018 that I decided I couldn’t go the long, difficult route to publish traditionally and opted for indie publishing. With my marketing and graphic design background, I had no problem learning new programs and researching what I needed, so I published Revenge in 3 Parts as a noir. Unfortunately, most people when looking for a novel don’t search for noir. So I decided to use psychological thriller which is closest to noir.
Now I teach noir classes and workshops to familiarize writers with this timely genre. I’m also on a mission to force publishers to use the term femme noir instead of domestic noir. We aren’t all setting our novels in the kitchen or the home.
TAINTED TIMES 2
“This time family secrets force a disbarred criminal lawyer out of hiding to not only bring down the criminal gang that caused her sister’s death, but to face the dead sister’s unknown twin who could be running the gang. ”
Do you outline the characters’ traits before starting to write a story or do you let them develop on their own as the story progresses?
I never outline. I make lots of notes, but I have a different way of bringing my characters to life and I teach this in my classes. Start with setting. What sparks your imagination? A dark street? A vacant house? What does it look, smell, and feel like? I have students write a description of a place they know well, a lovely description, say of their garden. Then I have them rewrite it, turning it dark. Say, for example, the garden is dead, the fence is falling down, and a cat is clawing at the ground. There’s a smell of rotted apples. Who walks into this space and why? What has happened to this person? What does this person think the cat is digging up? What is the mood of this person? What do they look like? That’s how my characters are born.
With Angeline in Revenge in 3 Parts, the first setting appears as the 15th in Paris. She stepped off the Metro, tired, dragging a suitcase, her head perspiring beneath a wig. She walked up the same street I walked, saw what I saw. She wore a dress and heels. Why? Why the wig? Why was she there in disguise. Oh, she was in disguise! Off I went with my story. My characters tell me the story, not vice versa.
What part of a story do you usually find the hardest to write?
Every novel is different. With Revenge in 3 Parts, I had to keep copious notes on who and what the characters did, because in a thriller and noir, it’s all about what secrets they have, what they do with the secrets, and how they play out in the story. But hard? I would say challenging and fun. I love it when my character is backed into a corner. Then I have to help them find a way out.
With the second novel in the trilogy, Tainted Times 2, this becomes even more challenging. Not only do I need to remember everything the characters have done and why, but I also have to remind the readers about what happened in the first novel. The third novel will demand that and more.
Revenge in Three Parts is available for purchase at Amazon in e-book format.
Valerie J. Brooks’s brand new noire novel “Tainted Times 2” is the second installment of the “Revenge in 3 Parts” series and is available for purchase as an e-book and in print at Amazon
What do you think about the concept of writer’s block?
I don’t think about it. I wish it were never conceived of as a “thing.” Writers fall back on this idea when they’re really not blocked. Stress can make you think you’re blocked, but you probably just need to take a break and have fun. If you think you have some version of writer’s block, I published a piece in MEDIUM that shows one way to be healthy, both mentally and physically. I loosen up with this method to prime the writing pump. No, it’s not yoga or salsa dance.
What is your writing setup and do you have any kind of “writing ritual” to boost your inspiration?
Writers need their own room or space. I have what I call my “studio,” a room in my house that is sacrosanct. No one may enter if the door is closed. I need all my research books, inspirational tchotchkes (you know, those miscellaneous items you pick up here and there), and space for two desks, filing cabinets, an altar, a reading chair, and my Havanese pooch Stevie Nicks.
If a separate room is not available, carve out a corner somewhere if you’re just getting started. Your corner shouldn’t used for anything else. Invest in noise-cancelling headphones. Buy a moveable screen to separate you from the rest of the area.
Another idea: when my writing group needed dedicated writing time, we rented an upstairs room at Vero Coffee House for four hours. It was a perfect.
Another big tip: if you have trouble with focus do this. I promise it works. Buy and download Creative Mind System: Vision and Inspiration by Dr. Jeffrey Thompson. Look it up. I’ve listened to it over 1400 times. With my headphones and the music, I can lose myself in my writing within five minutes. I’m listening to it now.
Tainted Times 2 is available for purchase at Amazon in e-book format.
What is the best piece of writing advice you’d give some that has just started writing?
Write your first draft by hand. Science has proven brain to hand on paper does a deeper dive with better results. It’s a first draft, so let it be rough. I can’t write a first draft on my laptop because it looks like finished work. After I write the first draft, whether its one chapter or a few chapters, I use different colored pens to mark it up: a better word here, a different description there, a new line of dialogue, etc. When I transcribe the rough draft to my computer, more changes take place and the draft gets closer to final draft.
What book is currently on your nightstand?
I have three:
Writers need to read Benjamin Percy’s Thrill Me: Essays on Fiction. He’s brilliant, and I’m a big fan because he challenges the notion that literary and genre fiction are mutually exclusive.
Rene Denfeld holds my heart with her fiction. I’ve read both The Child Finder and The Butterfly Girl. So now I’m reading her fiction debut The Enchanted that won the Prix du Premier Roman Etranger in France. Google her. People like her save the world.
Speaking of world, to give back to my writers’ world, I review advanced reader copies (ARCs). Currently, I’m reading an ARC of Hollywood Park, a Memoir by Mikel Jollett, the front man for the indie band The Airborne Toxic Event. Truth sometimes is absolutely stranger than fiction.
What are you planning to work on next?
I’m working on a blog post about how I review ARCS and how I’ve worked with you, Ana, on cover design.
Naturally, I’m working on the third novel in the Angeline Porter trilogy, although that’s rather hampered right now because it’s set in Hollywood, Florida, and I’m not traveling there to do the research. I’m a big believer in researching “on the ground” because that’s where the rich details are found.
In the near future, I’ll also be launching a podcast with my friend, author Wendy Kendall, that will be of interest to writers. To find out more about this and my other activities, including classes and book events, sign up for my newsletter on my website and follow me on social media. If you’d like to contact me, please use my contact page also on my website.
Wishing you each a deep well of creative juice!
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