KILLER NASHVILLE NOIR: COLD-BLOODED - Author Interview!

ABOUT THE BOOK -
Bestselling authors Jeffery Deaver and Anne Perry join rising stars like Dana Chamblee Carpenter and Paul Gail Benson in a collection that proves Music City is a deadly place to be when your song gets called.
Featuring stories by: Donald Bain, Robert Dugoni, Jefferson Bass, Mary Burton, Jonathan Stone, Steven James, Maggie Toussaint, Clay Stafford, Heywood Gould, Jaden Terrell, and more…
Every year, some of the biggest names in the thriller world converge in Tennessee for the Killer Nashville conference, an event where stars of the genre rub elbows with their most devoted fans, where the bestsellers of tomorrow pick up tricks of the trade, and where some of the best writers of today swap dark tales of good deals gone bad, rights made wrong, and murder in all shades...
This collection of new stories features some of the biggest names in suspense, from bestsellers to ferociously talented newcomers. Grouped around the classic theme of murder, KILLER NASHVILLE NOIR: COLD-BLOODED is a first-class collection and a must-have for fans of the genre.



Q & A with Bill Bass and Jon Jefferson Authors of "In Plain Sight"

About the story -
A group of undergraduate students from the University of Tennessee aren’t surprised when they stumble upon a decomposing body in the famed “Body Farm”. Featuring the Jefferson Bass recurring characters of Bill Brockton and Miranda Lovelady, the shock comes after they realize this particular body wasn’t supposed to be there.
New York Times bestselling author Jefferson Bass is the duo of Jon Jefferson and Dr. Bill Bass. Bass, a renowned forensic anthropologist, is the creator of the University of Tennessee’s Anthropology Research Facility: the “Body Farm.” Author or co-author of more than 200 scientific publications, he is also co-author (with Jefferson) of an acclaimed memoir, Death’s Acre; the nonfiction book Beyond the Body Farm; and nine “Body Farm” novels. Jefferson, the “writer” half of Jefferson Bass, is a veteran author and documentary writer/producer, whose Body Farm documentary, Biography of a Corpse, has been seen by millions worldwide.

- You've teamed up to write quite a number of publications. Could you each tell me, which was your favorite and why?

Dr. Bill Bass:
My favorites are the two nonfiction books, Death’s Acre and Beyond the Body Farm. They include a lot of actual cases from my forensic career. Are the details are factual—we name the good guys and the bad guys—and some of the crimes are as bizarre as anything we’ve ever made up. The saying “truth is stranger than fiction” has a lot of truth to it!

Jon Jefferson:
Different books, for different reasons. (This question is like asking a dad which one of his kids he loves best!) I’ll always be especially fond of the first novel in the series, Carved in Bone.  It’s the one that introduces our hero, Dr. Brockton, and his sassy sidekick, graduate assistant Miranda. It also has a lot of great East Tennessee local color—ginseng poaching, cockfights, and pot patches, among other things. But I also the fourth novel, Bones of Betrayal, for the way it weaves in World War II and the that role Oak Ridge, TN, played in the race to develop the atomic bomb. And I loved doing the medieval religious and art-history research for The Inquisitor’s Key.

- How do you decide what to write and how to write it?

We talk early on about what forensic technique or techniques we’d like to highlight in the book. We want to entertain readers, of course, but we also want them to learn something new from every book. So we’ll make some early decisions about that, and bounce around ideas for the plot. Then Jon will write a draft and we’ll discuss that, paying particular attention to getting the forensic details right.

- I love the premise of your novella "In Plain Sight", I don't think I even knew there was such a thing as a body farm. It would seem to me that if I was going to dump a body it would be the perfect place. Is this a rare occurrence?

First, we’re glad you liked it!  Second, and far more important: hiding a body at the Body Farm isn’t rare, it’s totally unprecedented—no one has ever done it. We have a tall double fence around the entire facility, plus video surveillance and police patrols. Of course, people who are truly determined can defeat almost any sort of security measures—for proof of that, witness the fact that prisoners occasionally escape from maximum-security prisons. But it would take a bizarre (and highly motivated) killer to smuggle a body into the Body Farm. In the case of “In Plain Sight,” thank goodness, fiction actually does manage to be stranger than truth!

- When will we see more from your team?

We’re currently working on a new novel, Without Mercy—the tenth novel in our Body Farm series!—and it’s scheduled to be published in the summer of 2016.


Thank you very much Bill and Jon!

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