Broken, But Beloved: BBC’s “Spooks” & The Inherent Sexiness of Spies

Posted on March 2, 2012 by

You can always tell a true “Friends” fan by the fact that she’ll proudly admit to watching all 10 seasons. She’ll know everything about every lead and be able to name cameo appearances by big-name actors, and to which plot line said actors contributed. She will have her favorite couple and her favorite character. There will be certain episodes that stick in her mind, though each one likely has made some sort of lasting impression. And it’s a guarantee that she will get choked up about its (arguably long-overdue) cancellation.

The way some people—true fans—feel about “Friends” is how I feel for the BBC’s 10-season “Spooks.” I had a friend my freshman year of college who introduced me to the wonders of across-the-pond television programming via some likely less-than-legal and now defunct streaming websites, and I fell in love with the British spy drama that was then in its fourth series. I was able to go back and sneakily watch all the episodes I’d missed to-date, and the long months in between new seasons were pure torture…which I can only assume is how “Friends” followers felt, once upon a time.

When considering our wonk manifesto, you’ll note that we’ve said we prefer heroes and heroines who are strange: physically, psychologically, emotionally, and what have you. After watching a decade’s worth of lusciously accented spies run around diffusing terrorist plots and keeping England safe from all threats, I can tell you I have never watched a show quite so filled with strange. Spies have been given a bad alpha rap, thanks to the arrogantly chauvinistic James Bond; the spooks of Mr. Bond’s brother organization, MI-5, are the most broken band of merry men (and women, though I don’t profile their admitted amazingness here) ever represented on television.

This drama provided grotesque scenes of torture, at one time making waves when actor Richard Armitage agreed to be filmed being waterboarded in the seventh season, in relation to his character’s stint in a Russian prison. It showed various actors suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, in the form of flashbacks, nightmares, and crying jags so intense they ended up heaving over a toilet. Sex is used as manipulation, as reparation, as an expression of grief, desperation, lust, love. These intelligence officers frequently—and understandably—break down, and then they shore themselves back up in order to give everything of themselves in sacrifice to the safety of their country. They watch people die. They die.

They are without doubt heroes, damaged and bruised. They are not James Bond.

They are also yummy enough to have provided me with a glorious midnight-fantasy reel for the past six years, and I am of the firm belief that wonk-lovers everywhere will fall just as hard as I did (and for those of you haven’t yet, all 10 seasons are streaming on Netflix). And the spies I loved were a wide and varied bunch, though they all, to the casual observer, might be viewed as, “Oh. Sexy. Wanna hear my Sean Connery impression?”

[Spoiler alert. Don’t say you weren’t warned. Watch the series, anyway.]

Tom Quinn (Matthew Macfadyen)

First, there was Tom Quinn. Played by Matthew Macfadyen (whom most Americans likely know as the most recent incarnation of Mr. Darcy in 2005’s Pride & Prejudice, across from Keira Knightley), Tom was the first heartthrob of “Spooks.” He was also creepily good at lying to the people with whom he tried to build real-world relationships, and in the end, it busted through that cold but charming mask enough to make him question the system…and develop a drinking problem.

Adam Carter (Rupert Penry-Jones)

Then came Adam Carter, and oh, Adam, how I loved you. Actor Rupert Penry-Jones (Jane Austen’s “Persuasion,” BBC’s “Whitechapel”) gave his character a reckless, infectious boyishness, a spy madly in love with his spy wife—until she’s killed. Then he’s just a hot, broody mess who deliberately seeks out suicidal missions, has massive freak-outs on the job, and is enjoyably foul-mouthed. Oh, and we see his bare arse (and a flash of impressive frontal) several times throughout his three-plus season stint, which makes all the angst worth it. So worth it.

Zafar Younis (Raza Jaffrey)

Zafar Younis, portrayed by Raza Jaffrey (now on NBC’s “Smash”), wasn’t a primary protagonist but as a secondary lead he had me drooling. He was quick with a joke, sarcastic and flirtatious, and he was also uncompromisingly tough. Compared with the male “stars,” I feel like he had the steeliest pair of bollocks, and his final episode—the first of the sixth series) remains my favorite of the entire series. His face, in that moment, just kills me. Ironically.

Lucas North (Richard Armitage)

Most women in the romance world recognize Richard Armitage, if not by name then by face; he was the hero of the historical BBC miniseries “North & South” (also an instant must-watch on Netflix) and the deliciously villainous Guy of Gisborne in BBC’s “Robin Hood” (again, see Netflix). As Lucas North, the English spy imprisoned and tortured in a Russian prison for seven years, he’s just as dangerously handsome and rumblingly voiced as always…and his oft-bared torso is covered from neck to wrists in prison tats. He’s stubbly, growly, violent, and he has the craziest case of suppressed amnesia ever.

Dimitri Levendis (Max Brown)

Honorable mentions on this list go out to Ben Kaplan and Tariq Masood as the nosy journalist-turned-reluctant intelligence agent and the brilliantly nerdy Indian computer hacker-slash-god, respectively. But the final slot in my spy-related roster belongs to Dimitri Levendis, played by Max Brown (of “Tudors” fame). His Greek heritage and time serving as a soldier (“He was SBS. They fight sharks for fun.”) make Dimitri more of a typical jock than the others. It’s not that he’s dumb, per se, but his decisions in the field prove him to be a “gut-feelings” kind of guy, a refreshing change in the final two seasons to all the wicked-smart men who’d come before him. And you know me: I consider the less-than-brilliant heroes, surviving in an alpha world where smarts save your life, wonky in the extreme.

No, it’s not “Friends.” Any laughs I had were momentary and, frankly, surprised out of me. And I won’t deny that the show itself cannot possibly be accurate of life as a spy, British or otherwise. But it’s so full of totally effed-up people, many of whom find time to fall in lust/love at some point, that I can’t help but classify it as wonk to the Nth degree. I am a true fan, and was before I knew to consider it through wonked eyes, and I can tell you honestly that 10 seasons wasn’t enough. I know every character, every notable cameo; I know each major terrorist threat that shaped the plot, each shocking death; I feel feelings and experience general teary-eyed-ness when I ponder my favorite episodes, and I’m still in mourning from its cancellation, though I’ve gone back to watch several seasons again and again. And you know what?

James Bond can suck it.

Posted in Television | 6 Comments

Book Report: Wifey (1978)

Posted on February 28, 2012 by

“HIDE IT WHERE THE CHILDREN WON’T SEE IT!” —Cincinnati Enquirer

When I was cleaning under the bed the other day—for the first time in what unearthed issues of Harper’s suggested must be close to two years—I uncovered my yellowed copy of Judy Blume’s Wifey. My immediate reaction was, “Hot damn! I ought to do a book report on this for the Wonk-o-Mance blog!”

I should say up front, Wifey isn’t a romance, and hence can never be classified as a wonk-o-mance. But it’s in a bastard cousin of the genre and was required reading of a bygone era of bold ladies, and it’s thoroughly wonked, so I’m going to round it in.

My copy is a used one—I was two months old when the first paperback edition came out in 1979. My mom was thirty. Sandy, the book’s protagonist, has two young children, seven and ten, I believe, while at the time of publication my mom had a toddler and an infant. Like Sandy, I’m thirty-two, though I don’t have any kids yet. But it was interesting to read the book again for the first time in a few years, being the protagonist’s age and now married, and knowing my mother was a similar age when the book was making waves, a young, stay-at-home mom like Sandy. I’m a stay-at-home writer with a somewhat uncomfortable relationship with my housewifely duties [see: bed not cleaned under in two years]. In short, it all felt very relevant. The book makes me feel a strange, warped kinship with women of my mom’s generation. It’s like taking a field trip into alternate universe of young womanhood. This could have been me…

Wifey is of a genre I quite adore—smutty, rife with scandal and longing and lust and betrayal, with an ending that would make many a happily-ever-after-requiring reader burn the book upon finishing. The last lesson it seeks to impart is “love makes everything okay.”

It very much made me yearn to reread another book— Jacqueline Susann’s Valley of the Dolls (1966). But I already reread that last year, as I do most summers. Valley has got a pretty terrible reputation, but goddamn, I love that book. I don’t know how many times I’ve read it, but it’s in a very heated race with Island of the Blue Dolphins and A Prayer For Owen Meany for the book I’ve spent the most time in. Make of that what you will.

Wifey and Valley of the Dolls are both anti-romances…nearly. They’re jaded, sure, but both are packed with protagonists longing for love and romance. The characters want nothing more than an HEA, but the stories’ morals say, “Sorry Toots, you ain’t gettin’ it.”

Valley is far grittier, and grander in scale and plot, but the books’ endings, in respect to those scales, are strikingly similar in tone. Not suicide-pact tragic, but not cheerful. Endings that don’t satisfy one’s craving for romantic resolution or perpetuate the notion that true love will make everything okay. They’re downers, in a matter of speaking. But I love them so. The thing I, as a reader, relish even more than a happy, tidy ending, is envelope pushing, and Blume was pushing some pretty heavy envelopes when she wrote Wifey. Remember how in Forever… (1975; thanks to my awesome, sex-positive, pragmatist mom for giving it to me when I was about eleven) it was kind of shocking, when the heroine doesn’t stay with the boy she loses her virginity to? Shocking, but…realistic. I mean, how many of us have only slept with one person, the one we marry? Plenty of people, but not a majority, that’s for sure.

So Blume shocked people…by being realistic in a genre not always welcoming of a strict adherence realism. And she did so again in Wifey. Everything that happens in Wifey rings true. It’s more than a bit seedy, but I totally believe there were and are tens of thousands of Sandys out there. Perhaps fewer now that there are fewer full-time housewives, but still. I think what gives me a macabre sense of fascination about both Wifey and Valley of the Dolls is that they’re almost like romances that kept going, after the HEA…and revealed that the happily didn’t last for ever after. More like, Happily For a While, Until Everything Went to Shit, As it Sometimes Does, Kid, Sorry.

From the back cover copy:

Wifey is tired of chicken on Wednesdays and sex on Saturdays.

It’s the ultimate bored housewife book.

Sandy and Norman have been married for twelve years, and over time his dispassion and king-of-the-castle perfectionist expectations have taken their toll on her. We meet Sandy when she’s on the brink of a mental break. She’s tired and beat down, energy sucked out by a listless marriage and a string of psychosomatic illnesses.

Page 9
“Oh, San, for God’s sake.” He tried to put his arms around her but she brushed him away. “You’re so damn touchy these days,” he said. “I can’t even talk to you any more.”
Any more? Sandy thought. But she didn’t say it.
As soon as she heard the back door close she picked up a plate and flung it across the kitchen. It smashed into tiny pieces. She felt better.

Page 19
Sandy waited until the first commercial, then went back to the kitchen and marked Banushka’s chart. Banushka’s chart had been Norman’s idea. He’d recorded every pee and crap the dog had taken since they’d brought him home from the kennel, four years ago. When the children were born Norman had insisted that Sandy keep charts for them too. Careful records of their temperatures and bowel movements, with the appropriate descriptions, exactly as his mother, Enid, had kept for him when was a boy. […] He and Enid still discussed bowel movements and their bathroom cupboards were filled with disposable Fleet enema bottles, just in case.

Page 181
All her life she had let others decide what was going to happen to her. Maybe now it was time to please herself. Call her own shots. She laughed out loud, remembering the two times she had made her own decisions; to vote for Kennedy and to name her baby Jennifer. Two times in thirty-two years that her decision was not based on someone else’s feelings, someone else’s choice.

Page 189
It was true that Norman worked hard and provided well for her and the children. So, was she wrong to want more out of life? She wasn’t sure anymore. A good wife wouldn’t complain. If he beat her, she could complain. If he drank, she could complain. If he ran around, she could complain. But Sandy had no real reason to complain. Not an acceptable reason, anyway. Nobody loves a kvetch, Mona had said. Remember that, Sandy…especially not a man who’s worked hard all day.
I’m sorry, Mother.
I’m sorry, Norman.
I’m sorry, everybody.

Sandy’s unhappy and dissatisfied, miserable and lost, yet awfully lovable. Actually quite funny and charming. And terribly horny.

She’s horny for just about every man who passes by, she’s so starved for affection. She fantasizes about her high school sweetheart and the flasher who keeps turning up on her front lawn and masturbating wearing nothing but a motorcycle helmet. About the plumber, about her friend’s husband, about her sister’s husband, about a cabana boy at a Jamaican resort, about her golf instructor and the veterinarian…

But maybe it’s only fair. Norman’s got secrets of his own.

Page 244
Jesus, you think you know someone and then…
She’d ask him tonight. She’d say, Norman, who is Brenda Partington Yvelenski?
And he’d say, Why do you ask?
And she’d say, Because you gave her five thousand dollars.
And he’d say, How do you know that?
And she’d say, Because this afternoon, as I was about to kill myself, I found the canceled check in the gun cabinet.
And he’d say, You have one hell of a nerve reading my canceled checks!

Sandy doesn’t succeed in killing herself, though she does give it some thought, including thinking the bathroom was best, as the clean-up would be easiest for whomever found her, but then she worries she’d screw it up, wind up a vegetable and be a burden to everyone, and chickens out. But Sandy does eventually succeed in sleeping around behind her husband’s back, more than once, with varying results. She even plots to get a divorce and run away with one of the men, and the way the book and its heroine are written…you’re just about rooting for her to get away with it. Miserable creature she may be, but it’s hard not to like her, even as you ride along, watching her mess up her life.

Page 263
She waited until after dinner, until they were both seated in the den, Norman reading the paper, Sandy with her needlepoint spread out on her lap, the TV tuned in to some variety show, a summer replacement, before saying what she had to say. “Norman, I’d like to talk to you.”
“Go ahead.”
“Will you put down the paper, please, this is important…”
“I can read and listen at the same time.”
“Norman, I’ve got gonorrhea.”
“Uh huh…” He turned the page.
She raised her voice. “I said I’ve got gonorrhea!”

I’d love to hear other people’s memories of discovering Wifey, whether they did so when it came out, or a bit tardily, as I did. In this age when kinky erotica’s gone mainstream and reality shows offer endless peeks into the trainwreckishly boring lives of non-fictional privileged people, I don’t think there could be a Wifey. Not one that makes waves the way the book did in its time. The bar for scandal’s been set far too high since the late seventies, for better or worse…

Though it is awfully good fun to play tourist in that era for a few hours, thumbing through one’s dusty old copy of Wifey.

Posted in Writing Wonkomance | Tagged , , , , , , , | 7 Comments

An Interview with Theresa Weir

Posted on February 23, 2012 by
Theresa Weir photo

Her Wonkiness.

I’m thrilled to welcome Theresa Weir to Wonkomance this morning. For those of you who don’t know her, she writes wonky romance as Theresa Weir and suspense as Anne Frasier (the official bio at the end of this post will fill in the yummy details, including the fact that she has authored twenty-one novels and taken home a bookshelf full of honors). I’ve been gobbling up Weir’s romances as fast as she can reissue them digitally, but it wasn’t until I read her recent, much-lauded memoir, The Orchard, that I decided that Theresa Weir is, at least in my book, the unofficial queen of wonk and the mother of modern wonkomance.

Please join the conversation by commenting below, and enter to win a hardcover copy of The Orchard. Also, make sure you pick up a Kindle copy of Amazon Lily at Amazon.com today. In honor of her appearance here, Weir has made it free for the day!

Let’s talk about Amazon Lily, your first romance novel, for a moment. It’s the story of “Illinois farm-bred social worker Corey McKinney,” who travels to the San Reys reserve in the Amazon jungle of Brazil on a church mission and meets “magnetic, gravel-voiced bush pilot Asher Adams, whose crudeness has the fascination of Humphrey Bogart’s in The African Queen.” (We highly recommend checking out the Amazon.com descriptions of Weir’s books, which she wrote herself for the reissue. They’re hilarious and truer than true.) You pretty much just sat down and wrote Amazon Lily, more or less on a whim, and you’ve said you wrote it in an authorial void, with no sense of whether it was a saleable romance novel. Why do you think it became what you’ve called a “cult classic?”

I can only guess. Maybe the male POV. And a hero who was… well, pretty sexy and more than a bit weird. This was during a time when male leads weren’t supposed to have a lot of personality. I got some angry letters from outraged agents who read the manuscript. DO NOT DO THIS!! THIS IS NOT A ROMANCE! THIS MAN IS NOT A HERO! HE’S REVOLTING! The funny thing is that I patterned him a bit after my husband. Heh.

Given that male POV was so rare at the time, what made you decide to use it in that book?

Jungle love, Bogart-style.

The reason I read romance was because of the hero. I really didn’t care about the heroine (which is probably one of my failings as a romance writer). As a reader, I craved a hero with more personality, someone who was more visible. Someone who said things a guy would say, even if those things were abrasive. A hero I would fall for. I think I started writing romance in order to create the heroes I wasn’t finding in the books I read.

How was Amazon Lily received?

Amazon Lily bombed big time. A lot of people don’t realize that, because it’s kind of well known. It had a print run of 7,000. This was during a time when print runs of 200,000 to 300,000 were common, so the failure was preordained. It had no publishing-house backing. Zero. It wasn’t even reviewed in RT. Somehow a few readers found the book (in the men’s adventure section of bookstores!) and loved it. Booksellers too. And romance writers. So the book became kind of famous even though sales were beyond dismal. I remember going to bookstores, thinking I would spot a copy. Never saw it, and quit looking after a couple of months. It was a dark and depressing time for me, and kind of set the tone for my whole romance career. A writer friend used to say you don’t want to be the first wagon through or the last. I was often one of the first wagons, and a lot of this business is about timing.

You’ve won several of the big awards in the Land of Romance, including a RITA for Cool Shade and a RT Reviewer’s Choice Award for Long Night Moon. Do you think you won them because of or in spite of the wonkiness of your novels?

Never gonna win a RITA.

I’m guessing because of the wonkiness. The thing that many people don’t know is that I was a failure as a romance writer. My books sold so poorly that publishers wouldn’t touch me. When Cool Shade was up for the RITA, I’d been dumped by Harper Collins and I was unemployed and broke, doing all of my grocery shopping at the Dollar Store. This has all the makings of a country song, but I was recently widowed with two children, and writing was my only means of support. I didn’t go to the national RWA conference in Chicago because I couldn’t afford it. At the last minute I asked a good friend, Anne McAllister (wonderful romance writer), to pick up my award if I won. “Haha. Not gonna happen in a million years,” I told her. “Don’t worry about it.”

That year the award ceremony could be viewed live over the Internet. I had dial-up, and I watched. Or tried to watch. The screen loaded one quarter of a crawling inch at a time. And suddenly there was Anne standing at the podium! Loading from her feet up. My daughter was watching the computer screen with me, and our mouths were hanging open. Are those Anne’s shoes? Anne’s legs? Anne’s torso? Anne’s face?! Oh my freakin’ Lord! I just won a RITA. I started crying. And my daughter and I were screaming and jumping up and down in my bedroom. It still seems unreal all these years later.

Did winning awards make it any easier or harder to do the every day task of writing? 

RITA got their attention.

It certainly helped sell my next book, which was Hush (Anne Frasier). Before that, I could not get anybody to read the book. I think I tried for almost a year. So winning a RITA for romantic suspense opened doors that had been closed.

Who are your favorite offbeat/thinky/champion-of-the-wounded romance writers?

Back in the day, I really loved Loveswept authors and loved what was going on at Bantam’s Loveswept. Editor Carolyn Nichols founded the line, and those books were a breath of fresh air. (I never wrote for Loveswept, but I wrote for Bantam.) I really think Loveswept changed the landscape of romance. They removed the boundaries. They encouraged writers to color outside the lines. The books were fresh and fun and fast and daring. In fact, if any editor could be considered a champion of wonk, it would be Carolyn Nichols. Loveswept invited authors to push the boundaries. To completely ignore the boundaries.

I read somewhere you write in a church. That’s pretty wonktastical. How’d you come to work there? Does the location have any resonance for you? 

I’ve always loved nontraditional spaces, so the church immediately appealed to me. And I have to say that there’s something about writing in such an open room. I think I suffer from claustrophobia, and the space just opens up my head. It’s the best writing space ever.

Where does wonkiness come from? Is it something one either has or doesn’t have? Can it be cultivated? Have you ever deliberately cultivated it?

Wonky people, smart-ass voice.

I’ve never cultivated it. That would be like cultivating a curse. :-) I’ve fought it because I always felt it kept me from being a success. And yet, I couldn’t stop it. I wasn’t interested in the story unless the characters were wonky. I think wonkiness might come from a dark sense of humor? And also a nonconformist personality.

Have agents or editors ever tried to convince you to write books that are less wonky?

Almost everyone I’ve ever worked with. And I’ve honestly tried to shut it off. I wrote a few books that weren’t so wonky, and my heart wasn’t in it. I’m pretty sure I was dumped again and again because of wonkomance, because I wrote these WTF books. I was told that the houses just didn’t know what to do with me. Didn’t know how to market me. Didn’t know how to package the books. I was often told that I couldn’t have TWO CHARACTERS WHO WERE MESSED UP. That was a pretty firm rule, so I did try to write some books with just one messed-up lead. But I can’t entirely blame my lack of romance success on the wonky nature of my characters. My writing had a tone/voice that might be called casual smartass (maybe this ties into being wonky). I remember editing my material, trying to tone down the smartass, but I could never get rid of it all. I say things like, “Let’s blow this joint.” That’s how I talk, and that’s how I often wrote. So I had to pretend that I knew how a mature female would speak and think. Ha.

The hero possesses not a single redeeming quality.

I want to add that it’s not just romances that suffer from lack of wonk love. Here’s what I was told after turning in Play Dead (an Anne Frasier thriller): “The hero doesn’t have a single redeeming quality. Because of that, I won’t be backing this book within the house.”

I was given the chance to rewrite his character. I almost always go along with editorial requests regardless of how I feel about them. It’s my job. It’s what I’m paid to do. This was a rare exception for me, and I declined the chance to rewrite the character of David Gould, and I chose to go with no backing. Any writer will know this is a career-killing move, but this was a character I felt strongly about. Sometimes we have to stand up for our characters. And I never rewrote the character of Asher Adams (Amazon Lily) even though many people told me I would have to because he wasn’t a romance hero. But there are just some characters you can’t water down. It wouldn’t be right. You create this character with a bright and shining light, and then you are asked to dim it. No.

What advice do you have for writers who are trying to balance their own stories/voices with what “the market demands?”

I suspect one thing that could make a difference is finding an editor who gets you. Back when I was writing romance, I would have said be prepared for heartbreak, but I have to hope editors and readers are more open today. Over and over I hear readers bemoan the fact that I left romance. I never left romance. Romance left me. I couldn’t sell another romance anywhere. I have a stack of proposals that were turned down by every romance publisher out there. Nobody in New York wanted a Weir romance.

You’ve started re-releasing your romances digitally. What kind of response have you gotten from readers, and how are they selling?

I’ve been surprised by the positive response because I personally feel the books are dated, some more than others.  And I don’t mean dated as in a lack of cell phones and an excess of body hair :). Heroines today are stronger and more self-assured, and heroes aren’t as obnoxious. It’s that simple. My reissued Frasier suspenses sell better than my Weir titles, but I’ve been very happy with the romance sales.

Did you know when you were writing The Orchard that you were writing a love story?

Messed-up boy, messed-up girl.

No, had no idea I was writing a romance. Absolutely none. Once the first draft was finished, I saw that it was a twisted romance, which is what I began calling it. “I’m writing a twisted romance! And it’s nonfiction! And it’s about me!” Realizing that it was a romance made it easier to edit and weed out the scenes that didn’t fit. Writing nonfiction is the opposite of writing fiction, because with nonfiction you start with all of this information and you cut away the stuff that doesn’t fit the theme and tone and mood. With fiction, you build from a speck of an idea. And it wasn’t until you started your website that I realized that The Orchard is also a wonkomance. Suddenly my whole freakin’ writing career made sense. I even borrowed from the Wonkomance manifesto in my description of The Orchard. “Messed-up girl meets messed-up boy.” I hope you don’t mind, and I have to thank everybody at Wonkomance for opening my eyes! It’s been like a free trip to a shrink.

On the contrary! We’re flattered by the imitation. And so pleased to be your free psychiatric care. Any time.

Thanks so much, Theresa, for your time and the funny, thoughtful answers. Oh, yeah, and for all that really great wonk. That woulda been us in the men’s adventure section of the bookstore.

We welcome comments and conversation. If you comment and leave us a way to contact you, you’ll be entered in a drawing to win a hardcover copy of The Orchard.

Theresa Weir (www.theresaweir.com) is an award-winning, USA Today bestselling author of twenty-one books and numerous short stories that have spanned the genres of suspense, mystery, thriller, romantic suspense, paranormal, and memoir. Her memoir, The Orchard, was a 2011 Oprah Magazine Fall Pick, Number Two on the Indie Next list, a featured B+ review in Entertainment Weekly, and a Librarians’ Best Books of 2011. Going back to 1988, Weir’s debut title was the cult phenomenon Amazon Lily, published by Pocket Books. She wrote thirteen romances before moving into suspense. In her more recent Anne Frasier career, her thriller and suspense titles hit the USA Today list (Hush, Sleep Tight, Play Dead) and were featured in Mystery Guild, Literary Guild, and Book of the Month Club. Hush was both a RITA and Daphne du Maurier finalist, and Pale Immortal was a RITA finalist.

 

 

 

Posted in Writing Wonkomance | 18 Comments