Helen Hanson is another thriller writer I met via twitter. Today we'll learn a little bit more about her and her writing here on ThrillersRus.


Q & A
Doug: Why do you write thrillers?

Helen: While I read outside my genre, thrillers are my staple.  I am what I eat, I mean, read.  I enjoy a heart-skipping pace, life-critical stakes, and broody, looming danger. And while I love Jason Bourne, he's too perfect for the scenarios I envision. My stories employ desperate, fallible characters with a sense of humor, whether they are CIA spies or teenage hackers.  

Perhaps my years of business writing wasn't a total waste because I'm told that I write about technical issues in a way that makes them enjoyable to read.  I use technology in my plots, but I don't want to bog down the prose with jargon. I want to know what kind of gun is fired, but I don't need to know how to field dress it.

The characters in my stories tap into the technology available to the populace at large–though not always legally.  The amazing array of information available would have been science fiction fifty years ago.  I occasionally presume a next step in technology for my stories, but I always keep it well within the realm of possibility.

Doug: What was the spark for the idea for this book?

Helen: For my first novel, 3 LIES, it was a combination of 'what ifs'.  One of the main characters, Beth, has a critical medical condition that requires constant attention.  So it's a real bummer when she's kidnapped on page one. 

Her new boyfriend, Clint, was one of the founders of a high tech company.  He grew weary of the 24/7 life he was leading, so he quit work and bought a sailboat. There are days when that option sounds completely sane.

Doug: How did you get to this point? What is your writing history?

Helen: Words and I have enjoyed a lifelong companionship.  Reading them was my first love and writing them was my second.  I look back on my life and see that I've always been a writer, as in a communicator via words.  I started seriously writing fiction about eight years ago.  My first two novels are mercifully confined to my hard drive. You're welcome.

Doug: Plotter or seat of the pants?

Helen: I'm a plotter who sits on her pants and changes things as she goes along.  I know where I to finish, but I don't have every roadside attraction scheduled.  I may decide to skip the world's biggest muskrat and instead stop at the tree that looks like Teddy Roosevelt.  I plot with the intention of keeping on course and defining my work for the next few chapters.  

Doug: Advice for other authors?

Helen: Can I put the Nike swoosh here?  Just do it.  Listen to those who have experience.  When six people tell you it doesn't work, it doesn't.  But don't let the sound of others drown out your voice.  It takes time to develop a personal sense of literary aesthetics.  Listen for it, recognize it, and keep a firm grip.  It's a wild ride. 

Doug: Do you have a critique group or beta readers or how do you get feedback on your writing?

Helen: I attend two monthly critique groups with multi-published authors and several of these people are my beta readers. They are wonderful writers and will tell me when something needs to change.  I've learned to listen when they all agree.  When they don't, I do as I darn well please.

Doug: Marketing and promotion plans that have worked or you have planned?

Helen: I stink at this part.  I'll be happy to provide details when I'm in the top 10 on Amazon.

Doug: What's your favorite book, that isn't yours?

Helen: My favorite is whatever I'm enjoying at the moment.  I rarely read a book more than once.

Doug: Kindle or nook?

Helen: Both.  We own one of each.  I want to see what my books looks like on the different platforms.  Though my husband jailbroke the NOOK Color for use as a development system, we still use it as a reader.   While he was the jailbreak, he ran across the option to "brick" it.  He was trying to decide if "rooting" it or "bricking" it was the better option. The he realized that "bricking" it means to trash the OS so it's only useful as a brick.  He decided to "root" it.

Doug: Anything else coming out or available for your readers?  What's next? 

Helen: DARK POOL will hit the e-shelf in a couple of weeks.
At 22, Maggie Fender hustles to keep her family from slipping over the financial edge.  She's legal guardian to her step-brother, Travis, who's 15 and fresh from juvie prison for felony hacking, and their beloved father, who suffers from early-onset Alzheimer's.  It's not exactly how she expected to spend her youth.  College plans wait while she waits tables.
Travis swears he was framed for the charges, but he also thinks their father is sending them messages.  Maggie keeps moving because she's afraid to stop.  She finds her old pace is too slow when her father is arrested for murder. 
In the headliness, financial mogul Patty O'Mara awaits trial for bilking investors out of forty billion dollars.  The famed dark pool hedge fund manager offered fabulous returns until someone actually looked at his books.  Then investigators realized that O'Mara never made any trades, it was all a Ponzi scheme.  But why is the old man with Alzheimer's a person of interest?
While the SEC officials try to rebuild some credibility, a private investigator and Russian mobsters work to answer one question:  What happened to all that money? 


Bio:
Helen Hanson writes thrillers about desperate people with a high-tech bent.  Hackers.  The CIA. Industry titans.  Guys on sailboats.  Mobsters. Their personal maelstroms pit them against unrelenting forces willing to kill.  Throughout the journey, they try to find some truth, a little humor, and their humanity — from either end of the trigger.

Helen directed operations for high-tech manufacturers of semiconductors, video games, software, and computers. Her reluctant education behind the Redwood Curtain culminated in a B.S. in Business Administration with concentrated studies in Computer Science.   She also learned to play a mean game of hacky sack.

She is a licensed private pilot with a ticket for single-engine aircraft.  Helen and her husband spent their first anniversary with their flight instructor studying for the FAA practical. If you were a passenger on a 737 trying to land at SJC in 1995, she sends her most sincere apologies.  Really.

Born in fly-over country, Helen has lived on both coasts, near both borders, and at several locations in between. She lettered in tennis, worked as a machinist, and saw the Clash at the San Francisco Civic Auditorium sometime in the eighties.  She currently lives amid the bricks of Texas with her husband, son, and a dog that composes music with squeaky toys.

While Helen writes about the power hungry, she genuinely mistrusts anyone who wants to rule the world. If you enjoy her books, please consider writing a review.  If you don't, please be kind.
3 LIES:
At CIA headquarters, a young officer discovers that terrorists may have commandeered their computer systems to launch an unauthorized mission. Elsewhere, conspirators abduct nine people to manipulate the rules of their game. Two disparate ambitions — Clint Masters becomes the reluctant link in the chain of danger.Ever since Clint's almost ex-wife dumped him, he bobs along the Massachusetts coast in a sailboat with his black lab for company. He avoids all forms of technology, a counterintuitive effort for the burned-out founder of CatSat Laboratories. Tired of clutching the brass ring, he needed to untether, step off the corporate treadmill, and smell a flower. Fortunately, he met one, a beautiful, unspoiled woman who doesn't treat him like a commodity. His relationship with Beth offers more promise than his marriage ever did, even if she is on dialysis for her recovering kidneys, until she disappears.

In spite of the evidence, her family refuses to admit she's in danger. Without routine dialysis, she won't survive. As Clint realizes that he loves Beth, damn-near ex-wife Paige sashays back into his life with disturbing news.

While the CIA young gun tracks his quarry, Clint enlists the help of two men to find Beth, a blithe Brit named Merlin, and Todd, his playboy partner-in-tech. But Clint must find Beth before her kidneys fail. And before someone unloads a bullet in his head
Links for Helen:
www.HelenHanson.com   www.amazon.com/3-LIES-ebook/dp/B004F9P8BI search.barnesandnoble.com/3-Lies/Helen-Hanson/e/9780983202707/ itunes.apple.com/ud/book/isbn9780983202707