September 10 – 16: “Antagonists, why we love to hate them?”

This week we take a look at antagonists and try to answer the question: “Why do we love to hate them?” Join ITW Members M.R. Gott, Connie Archer, Don Helin and Kathy Reichs. You won’t want to miss it!

Connie Archer is the national bestselling author of A Spoonful of Murder, the first in a new soup lover’s mystery series from Berkley Prime Crime. The second book in the series, A Broth of Betrayal, will be released in April 2013. She lives in Los Angeles, but was born and grew up in New England, so writing about Vermont was like a trip home. She is currently working on her third book in the soup shop series, and another series set in San Francisco. She is a member of International Thriller Writers, Mystery Writers of America and Sisters in Crime.

Kathy Reichs, like her character Temperance Brennan, is a forensic anthropologist, formerly for the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in North Carolina and currently for the Laboratoire de sciences judiciaires et de médecine légale for the province of Quebec. A professor in the department of anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, she is one of only eighty-eight forensic anthropologists ever certified by the American Board of Forensic Anthropology, is past Vice President of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences, and serves on the National Police Services Advisory Board in Canada. Reichs’s first book, Déja Dead, catapulted her to fame when it became a New York Times bestseller and won the 1997 Ellis Award for Best First Novel. Her most recent novel, Flash and Bones (2011), was an immediate New York Times bestseller. Dr. Reichs is a producer for the hit Fox TV series “BONES”, now in its seventh season, which is based on her work and her novels.

Don Helin served seven years in the Pentagon as well as multiple tours in the United States and overseas. His Washington D.C. insider positions have provided him ample material for his novels. His first thriller, THY KINGDOM COME was published in 2009, his second, Devil’s Den in September 2012. Don makes his home in central Pennsylvania and is hard at work on his next Zack Kelly thriller, RED DOG.

M.R. Gott, the author of WHERE THE DEAD FEAR TO TREAD and the forthcoming sequel WHERE THE DAMNED FEAR REDEMPTION, is a resident of New Hampshire, content with his wife, two cats and a dog, while his controlled imagination produces spine-chilling works, leading readers to self-knowledge. With disciplined skill, Gott binds disparate scenes of truth flashing across his  “imaginaire” into a coherent whole achieved through “outlining and mapping the series of events and character’s growth”, followed by rigorous editing.  Aside from writing, M.R. enjoys strong coffee, dark beer, red wine, and fading light.