Rebecca Cantrell; She’s All That and More

Rebecca Cantrell. One of the nicest authors (and I keep saying that because mystery authors are the BEST!) and multi-award-winning! Accolades as a New York Times and USA Today bestseller. I hardly know where to begin. But we must begin because I want you to know about her and her work. Let’s get started.

JERI: You have a variety of series to choose from (no need to choose, really. Just get them all!) And we can talk a little about all of them. So let’s start with this. What began your interest in the Hannah Vogel series, and what parallels are you seeing in America today with Nazi Germany in the 1930s (which is a question I never thought I would be asking, but here we are)?

REBECCA: More than enough to keep me awake at night. My senior history thesis at CMU was about how the Nazis persecuted gays first (after political opponents) to see what they could get away with and to cause terror. The current administration is doing similar things to trans people. And they’re also using the Nazi playbook for scapegoating immigrants, calling the press “enemies of the people,” asserting dominance over universities and scientists, attacking lawyers and law firms, and forcing civil services to swear allegiance to one man instead of to the Constitution and the people of the nation. And keeping up a barrage relentless propaganda that doesn’t care about objective truth. Those are the current parallels, and I’m probably missing a few. It’s distressing to see it playing out in real time in our country.

JERI: I don’t think there’s any person of conscience who isn’t awake at night about this. As a Jewish person myself, I tend not to like thinking about this time period, so what caught your interest about telling this particular story?

REBECCA: I lived in West Berlin as a student in the 1980s and history was all around. Bullet holes from the Russian army were still visible on buildings. The Wall separated the city and I rode through East Berlin ghost stations every day on my way to school. I ended up on a trip to Dachau and saw all the triangles on the wall and realized that my friends and brother would have been there if we lived a few decades earlier. I wanted to find out how that could have happened. Now I recognize it, but feel as powerless as the people then must have. I march, donate, protest, vote, and write and hope it makes a difference.

JERI: I really think that every little thing helps. Standing by mute is not an option. But in terms of writing, what tidbits of research did you discover that made it into the book? What didn’t?

REBECCA: I love to research and for 1930s Germany there are a lot of primary source materials. Details about perfumes and cigarettes and zeppelins came out of a few 1931 issues of Berlin Illustrierte Zeitung and made it into the first book, A TRACE OF SMOKE. Eyewitness accounts of events like the NIGHT OF THE LONG KNIVES in 1934, the 1936 Olympics, and the November Pogroms in 1938 also made it into later books. Much of the wider sweep of history didn’t because my characters couldn’t have known what was happening behind closed doors or events that would unfold outside of the scope of their stories. A lot of the fashion details didn’t make it in, only a little bit about cars and food. I wanted the books to feel as authentic as possible without overwhelming readers. I try to get all the details right, but only use what’s absolutely necessary

JERI: Yes! It’s just as much about leaving out as putting in. The characters don’t sit around and say to themselves, “I shall turn on this light from the Southern Electric Company.” Less is more. Let’s look at some of your other series. Can we talk about your Malibu Mystery series? Was it you or your partner in writing for the series Sean Black (left) that decided to mirror the Sue Grafton conceit of an alphabet series?

REBECCA: That was Sean. He had the core idea and the title of the first one and we went from there. It was fun to take a break from my grimmer stuff and write comedy for a while. Those books are full of silliness and there’s a place for that.

JERI: Always. I started off writing noir and now I just don’t want that sensibility in my novels anymore. I want it happier, funnier. But, I do love to play with my medieval weaponry, cook medieval meals, play with Victorian stuff. What’s your favorite bit of hands-on research?

REBECCA: Travel, books, movies, and food. I love walking in my characters’ footsteps, reading the books they might have read, seeing the movies filmed then (full of background historical details), and cooking or eating what they did. Immersing myself in other worlds and times never gets old.

JERI: No it does not. Kind of happy writing in the Victorian era myself so I can see photos of people and places I’m writing about, read the newspapers. So different from medieval or Tudor periods. Now, the Joe Tesla series. Do you wish you named it something else about now? (Naw, I’m just funnin’ ya.) It’s so dark and twisted with a little Phantom of the Opera feel to it, except it’s not the sewers of Paris, but the underground tunnels of New York. Tell us.

REBECCA: Well, it’s named after NIKOLA Tesla, who is still fascinating. But, yeah, it’s more freighted now. I wrote the first 2 Joe Tesla books while living in Berlin. We didn’t have a car and took public transit everywhere. It made me wonder about the space between stations that we travel through but never see. And so Joe Tesla was born. He suffers from agoraphobia and can’t go outside so lives his life stuck in this liminal space. He lives under Grand Central Terminal and goes down to a Victorian house via an elevator inside the clock. I loved the image of that. He and his psychological support dog, a golden retriever named Edison, solve big problems without going outside using brains, a bodyguard named Vivian, and a lot of hacking. I wrote some of those pages sitting on the Berlin Ringbahn in a train traveling around the city with my laptop on my lap. Tremendous fun.

JERI: The series sounds fun. How easy or difficult is it for you to sustain a historical series? I know that my Tudor series is just wiping me out. It is so dense into politics, so much is there that has to be right or I will hear about it. Does it keep your interest over time, or is the research so much of a bear?

REBECCA: It’s a huge amount of work. I don’t want to get anything wrong and there are so many details. Right now, I’m too worried about living in the US in 2025 to immerse myself in 1930s Germany. I’m escaping elsewhere in my work.

JERI: I certainly hear that. Can you tell us how your collaboration with mega-author James Rollins came about? And do you have his number? Heh. Just kidding.

REBECCA: We met when I was in his class at the Maui Writers Retreat, he blurbed my first book, and we worked on some projects at International Thriller Writers. He was looking for a coauthor and one of my books came out and he thought “hey, she could do this” and a couple thousand pages later, here we are.

JERI: So cool. Writers write in solicitude in our own little worlds, but we do have to raise our heads into the sunshine to network. Networking always makes good results. So what can we look forward to from you coming up?

REBECCA: I just released a standalone horror novel, IT WANTS US ALIVE, about a menopausal demon hunter on a revenge quest to destroy the demon who killed her hunting partner. But of course it ends up more complicated than that. There’s a magical harp, a kickass falcon, otherworldly beings, and a passel of armed supernatural Marines. It’s a quiet little story about tea and lavender. Not.

JERI: Heh. Sounds like another winner. Rebecca, thank you so much for slowing down for a second to stop by. Oops, there she goes again. A whir of activity, that girl. She’s got so many great series going on. RESPECT! Do check out her books at https://www.rebeccacantrell.com/ Read them!