December 8 – 14: “How do you organize the details to ensure consistency?”

For many, it takes months to draft a novel and consistency can suffer. Names, vehicles, time required for a familiar walk may vary. This week ask ITW members Jaden Terrel, Suzanne Chazin, C. Hope Clark, Patricia Stoltey, Jerry Amernic, Reece Hirsch and Arthur Kerns: “How do you organize the details to ensure consistency?”

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Suzanne Chazin is the author of two thriller series. Her first, about the FDNY, include The Fourth Angel, Flashover and Fireplay. The series has been called “searing and emotionally explosive” (USA Today), and her heroine, fire investigator Georgia Skeehan, “incredibly strong” (People Magazine). Chazin’s newest mystery series stars Jimmy Vega, an upstate New York cop navigating the world of the undocumented. The first book in the series, Land of Careful Shadows, is due out in hardcover from Kensington on Nov. 25th. It has already garnered advance praise from Lee Child, Julia Spencer-Fleming, S.J. Rozan, Reyna Grande, Maggie Barbieri and Publishers Weekly, which called the book, “timely and engrossing,” and Jimmy Vega, “engaging, psychologically complex.” A former journalist, Chazin’s essays and articles have appeared in American Health, Family Circle and the New York Times.

Jerry Amernic’s new novel The Last Witness is about the last living survivor of the Holocaust in 2039, but the world is abysmally ignorant of events from the last century. Amernic has produced a video showing how university students today don’t know much either. His biblical-historical thriller Qumran will be out soon, to be followed by the re-release of his earlier novel Gift of the Bambino, and later next year another historical thriller called Medicine Man.

Patricia Stoltey is the author of two amateur sleuth mysteries, The Prairie Grass Murders and The Desert Hedge Murders, as well as her newly released standalone suspense novel, Dead Wrong. She is co-editor of the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers blog and maintains her personal blog where she frequently features guest authors and book reviews. Patricia lives in Northern Colorado with her husband and the very demanding Katie Cat.

Shamus award finalist Jaden Terrell is the author of three Jared McKean mysteries and a contributor to Now Write! Mysteries, a collection of exercises published by Tarcher/Penguin for writers of crime fiction. Terrell is the special programs coordinator of the Killer Nashville Thriller, Mystery, and Crime Literature Conference and a recipient of the 2009 Magnolia Award for service to the Southeastern Chapter of Mystery Writers of America.

C. Hope Clark is author of The Carolina Slade Mysteries and the newly released Murder on Edisto, book one of The Edisto Island Mysteries. She’s published The Shy Writer and The Shy Writers Reborn, nonfiction motivational books, and is editor of FundsforWriters.com, chosen Writer’s Digest’s 101 Best Websites for Writers for 14 years. She lives on Lake Murray in central South Carolina when she’s not strolling Edisto Beach.

Reece Hirsch is the author of three thrillers that draw upon his background as a privacy and cybersecurity attorney. His first book, THE INSIDER, was a finalist for the 2011 Thriller Award for Best First Novel. Hirsch is a partner in the San Francisco office of an international law firm and co-chair of its privacy and cybersecurity practice. He is also a member of the board of directors of 826 National. He lives in the Bay Area with his wife and a small, unruly dog.

Arthur Kerns is a retired FBI supervisory special agent and past president of the Arizona chapter of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers (AFIO). His award-winning short fiction has appeared in numerous anthologies. He is a book reviewer for the Washington Independent Review of Books. In March 2013 Diversion Books, Inc. published his espionage thriller, The Riviera Contract and in May 2014 the sequel, The African Contract.