April 25 – May 1: “Imagine you could reach out to any author and ask a single question.”

Imagine you could reach out to any author (living or dead) and ask a single question. This week we ask ITW Members Thomas Kirkwood, Dustin Dodd, Elena Harwell, Jean Heller, J.D. Horn and J.L. Abramo which author would you choose? And, what is your question?

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Thomas Kirkwood is an international author best known for his Cold War thrillers. His novels have been published by Macmillan, Collier Macmillan (Europe), Penguin (Donald I. Fine), Signet, Amazon, Brilliance (audio), ACX (audio) and Stjerne-Spenning (Europe). After years in the EU, he now makes his home in Salida, Colorado. His new release, THE THIRTEENTH DISCIPLE: A REQUIEM FOR AMERICA, describes how the world’s oldest democracy set itself up to become the world’s newest dictatorship.

Elena Hartwell was born in Bogota, Colombia, while her parents were in the Peace Corps. Her first word was “cuidado.” At the age of nine months, she told two men carrying a heavy table to be careful in their native tongue. She’s been telling people what to do ever since. After almost twenty years in the theater, Elena turned her playwriting skills to fiction. “One Dead, Two to Go” is her first novel.

J.D. Horn was raised in rural Tennessee, and has since carried a bit of its red clay in him while travelling the world, from Hollywood, to Paris, to Tokyo. He studied comparative literature as an undergrad, focusing on French and Russian in particular. He also holds an MBA in international business and worked as a financial analyst before becoming a novelist. He and his spouse, Rich, and their pets have settled, at least temporarily, just outside Sisters, Oregon.

Dustin Dodd was born and raised in the heart of the Central Valley of California in Clovis. He graduated in four years from California State University, Fresno, with a Bachelor of Science in Criminology with an emphasis in Law Enforcement and a Bachelor of Science in Psychology. He also attended California State University, Long Beach, where he graduated with a Master’s in Public Administration. Dustin served on the street with his K9 partner Kota for over four years. It was from his exploits as a K9 handler, Bomb Squad technician, SWAT breacher, and detective that he crafted Savage Justice, his first novel with several more on the way.

Most of Jean Heller’s career was as an investigative and projects reporter and editor in New York City, Washington, D.C. and St. Petersburg Florida. Her career as a novelist began in the 1990s with the publication of the thrillers, Maximum Impact and Handyman by St. Martin’s Press. Then life intervened and postponed her new book, The Someday File, to publication in late 2014. Jean has won the Worth Bingham Prize, the Polk Award, and is an eight-time Pulitzer Prize nominee.

J. L. Abramo was born in Brooklyn, New York on Raymond Chandler’s fifty-ninth birthday. Abramo is the author of Catching Water in a Net, winner of the St. Martin’s Press/Private Eye Writers of America prize for Best First Private Eye Novel; the subsequent Jake Diamond novels Clutching at Straws, Counting to Infinity, and Circling the Runway; Chasing Charlie Chan, a prequel to the Jake Diamond series; and the stand-alone thrillers Gravesend and Brooklyn Justice.