August 25 – 31: “Are there specific requirements for dialogue in thrillers?”

Summer’s coming to an end and this week we’re talking dialogue with ITW Members M.P. Cooley, Thomas Waite, Kelli Stanley, John Florio, Ken Kuhlken, Whitley Strieber and Michael Richards. Are there specific requirements for dialogue in thrillers?

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Thomas Waite is the best-selling author of cyber-thrillers. His latest novel, LETHAL CODE, tells the shocking and frighteningly possible story of a massive, anonymous cyber-attack on the United States by an unknown enemy. Agatha award winning author Hank Phillippi Ryan said of LETHAL CODE: “Taut, tense, and provocative, this frighteningly knowing cyber-thriller will keep you turning pages—not only to devour the fast-paced fiction, but to worry about how much is terrifyingly true.”

M.P. Cooley‘s debut crime novel ICE SHEAR (William Morrow) is one of O, The Oprah Magazine’s Best Books of Summer 2014 and was called “an excellent debut” by Publishers Weekly in their starred review. A native of upstate New York, she currently lives in Campbell, California. She studied literature at Barnard College, and went on to work in tax and law publishing, acquiring business, accounting, and economics books. Currently, she works in administration at a nonprofit organization in Silicon Valley.

Kelli Stanley writes the Miranda Corbie series of literary noir novels, set in 1940 San Francisco and featuring the iconoclastic private eye Miranda Corbie–called, by Library Journal, one of “crime’s most arresting heroines.” CITY OF DRAGONS won the Macavity Award and was nominated for a Shamus and Los Angeles Times Book Prize; CITY OF SECRETS won the Golden Nugget for best California-set mystery, and CITY OF GHOSTS just received a glowing review from the Wall Street Journal.

Ken Kuhlken‘s short stories, features, essays and columns have appeared in Esquire and dozens of other magazines and anthologies and earned a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. His novels have earned numerous awards such as the Ernest Hemingway Best First Novel, the St. Martin’s/Private Eye Writers of America Best First Novel, and the Shamus Best Novel. His new Tom Hickey California Crime novel is The Good Know Nothing. Get the whole story at: www.kenkuhlken.net

John Florio is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in print, on the web, and on television. He is the author of SUGAR POP MOON and BLIND MOON ALLEY—the first two Jersey Leo crime novels—and ONE PUNCH FROM THE PROMISED LAND: Leon Spinks, Michael Spinks, and the Myth of the Heavyweight Title. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his wife, Ouisie Shapiro.

Whitley Strieber is the author of many thrillers, among them classics such as the Wolfen and the Hunger, and more recent books like the Grays, which is in development as a movie, and the Alien Hunter series, which is in development as a TV series. His movies are the Wolfen, the Hunger, Communion and the Day After Tomorrow, based on his book Superstorm. His latest thriller, Alien Hunter: Underworld is the second in the Alien Hunter series. It’s not a sequel, but a stand alone book continuing the character of Flynn Carroll, a police officer who works with an alien police force to apprehend alien criminals on earth.

For more than two decades, M. A. Richards served as a Cultural Attaché in the Department of State at embassies and consulates in Baghdad, Jerusalem, Lagos, Moscow, Seoul, and Tel Aviv, in addition to assignments in Washington. He also served at U.S. Pacific Command in Honolulu as the Special Advisor to the Commander, a four star Admiral.  He speaks Arabic, Hebrew, Korean, and Russian. An award winning photographer, avid surfer, and rider of Victory and Triumph motorcycles, he currently resides in Hawai’i with his wife Young, a ceramic artist. His debut novel, CHOICE OF ENEMIES – A Nathan Monsarrat Thriller – is currently under consideration.