Outliers Writing University Podcast Series
OUR SHOWS: GET TO KNOW-Interviews With the Authors You Love CRIMINAL MISCHIEF--The Art and Science of Crime Fiction BOOK TALK--Casual Chats on All Things Books and Writing
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Internationally bestselling author Tess Gerritsen took an unusual route to a writing career. A graduate of Stanford University, Tess went on to medical school at the University of California, San Francisco, where she was awarded her M.D.
While on maternity leave from her work as a physician, she began to write fiction and in 1987, her first novel, Call After Midnight, was published. It was just the first of 31 suspense novels that she’s written over a 36-year writing career. She also wrote a screenplay, "Adrift," which aired as a 1993 CBS Movie of the Week starring Kate Jackson.
Tess's first medical thriller, Harvest, was released in hardcover in 1996, and it marked her debut on the New York Times bestseller list. Her novels have hit bestseller lists ever since. Among her titles are Gravity, The Surgeon, Vanish, The Bone Garden, and The Spy Coast. Her books have been translated into 40 languages, and more than 40 million copies have been sold around the world.
She has won both the Nero Wolfe Award (for Vanish) and the Rita Award (for The Surgeon). Critics around the world have praised her novels as “Pulse-pounding fun” (Philadelphia Inquirer), “Scary and brilliant” (Toronto Globe and Mail), and “Polished, riveting prose” (Chicago Tribune). Publishers Weekly has dubbed her the “medical suspense queen” and Time Magazine named her novel The Surgeon one of the best mystery/thriller novels ever written.
Her series of novels featuring homicide detective Jane Rizzoli and medical examiner Maura Isles inspired the hit TNT television series "Rizzoli & Isles," starring Angie Harmon and Sasha Alexander.
She is also a filmmaker. She and her son Josh produced a feature-length documentary, “Magnificent Beast,” about the ancient origins of the pig taboo. It aired on PBS channels around the country. Their previous film, “Island Zero”, was a feature-length horror movie that was released in 2018.
She lives in Maine.
https://www.tessgerritsen.com/
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Mark Greaney's research for the Gray Man novels, including The Chaos Agent, Burner, Sierra Six, Relentless, One Minute Out, Mission Critical, Agent in Place, Gunmetal Gray, Back Blast, Dead Eye, Ballistic, On Target, and The Gray Man, has taken him to more than thirty-five countries, and he has trained alongside military and law enforcement in the use of firearms, battlefield medicine, and close-range combative tactics. With Marine Lt. Col. Rip Rawlings, he wrote the New York Times bestseller Red Metal. He is also the author of the New York Times bestsellers Tom Clancy Support and Defend, Tom Clancy Full Force and Effect, Tom Clancy Commander in Chief, and Tom Clancy True Faith and Allegiance. With Tom Clancy, he coauthored Locked On, Threat Vector, and Command Authority.
markgreaneybooks.com
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JON LAND is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of over 60 books, including his Texas Ranger Caitlin Strong series. Jon has also taken over two of the most iconic legacy brands in mystery-thriller fiction, penning six titles in the Murder, She Wrote and two in the Capital Crimes series. Additionally, Jon has teamed with multiple New York Times bestselling author Heather Graham on a bestselling sci-fi series that includes THE RISING and BLOOD MOON. His next thriller series, written with fellow author Jeff Ayers under the pseudonym A. J. Landau, debuts in February of 2024 with Leave No Trace from Minotaur. The author of numerous, similarly acclaimed nonfiction titles, Jon has more recently turned his talents to ghostwriting with his first effort in that arena, WHITE ROBES AND BROKEN BADGES coming from Harper Collins in August of 2024.
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250877338/leavenotrace
Jeff Ayers is the author of several books, including Voyages of Imagination: The Star Trek Fiction Companion for Simon and Schuster/Pocket Books. He has interviewed hundreds of authors for magazines, newspapers, and podcasts and has been a book reviewer for The Associated Press and Booklist. He currently reviews suspense thrillers and mysteries for Library Journal, Criminal Element, and firstCLUE. Jeff co-writes the National Park thriller series for Minotaur under the name A.J. Landau and co-writes the Jigsaw Puzzle Mysteries for Crooked Lane. He is a retired public librarian and former co-executive director for ThrillerFest. He lives near Seattle, Washington.
www.jeffayersbooks.com
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PJ Tracy is the pseudonym of the mother-daughter writing duo P.J. and Traci Lambrecht, winners of the Anthony, Barry, Gumshoe, and Minnesota Book Awards. Their cyberthrillers in the Monkeewrench series were national and international bestsellers. After PJ’s passing in 2016, Traci began the Margaret Nolan Detective series, set in Los Angeles, where she lived for many years. Deep into the Dark, Desolation Canyon, The Devil You Know, and City of Secrets have been lauded by critics and fans alike. She now resides in Minnesota and continues to write about murder and mayhem.
https://pjtracy.com
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Sandra Brown is the author of seventy-six New York Times bestsellers, including Out of Nowhere, Overkill, Blind Tiger, Thick As Thieves, Seeing Red, Outfox, Tailspin, Sting and Mean Streak. Writing professionally since 1981, Brown has published over eighty novels and has upwards of eighty million copies of her books in print worldwide. Her work has been translated into thirty-four languages. Brown holds an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Texas Christian University, where she instituted the Excellence in Literary Fiction, or ELF, a scholarship awarded annually to a creative writing student. She has served as president of Mystery Writers of America, and in 2008 she was named Thriller Master, the top award given by the International Thriller Writer’s Association. Other honors include the Texas Medal of Arts Award for Literature and the Romance Writers of America’s Lifetime Achievement Award.
https://sandrabrown.net
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Amanda Flower is the USA Today bestselling and Agatha Award-winning mystery author of over forty novels, including the nationally bestselling Amish Candy Shop Mystery Series, Magical Bookshop Mysteries, and, written under the name Isabella Alan, the Amish Quilt Shop Mysteries. Flower is a former librarian, and she and her husband, a recording engineer, own a habitat farm and recording studio in Northeast Ohio.
www.amandaflower.com.
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WALTER MOSLEY is one of America’s most celebrated writers. He was given the 2020 National Book Award’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, named a Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America, and honored with the Anisfield-Wolf Award, a Grammy, a PEN USA Lifetime Achievement Award, the Robert Kirsch Award, numerous Edgars, and several NAACP Image Awards. His work is translated into 25 languages. He has published fiction and nonfiction in The New Yorker, Playboy, and The Nation. As an executive producer, he adapted his novel, The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey, for AppleTV+ and serves as a writer and executive producer for FX’s “Snowfall.”
https://www.waltermosley.com/
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Pro Bono is Thomas Perry's 32nd novel. Parade Magazine included his Edgar-Winning novel The Butcher's Boy in their list of "101 Best Mystery Books of All Time," and his Metzger's Dog" was voted by NPR listeners to be one of the "100 Best Killer Thrillers of All Time." The television series based on his book The Old Man starring Jeff Bridges, John Lithgow, and Amy Brennemann has ended its second season.
Web site: https://www.thomasperryauthor.com/
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JAMES ROLLINS is the #1 New York Times bestseller of international thrillers, sold to over forty countries. His Sigma series has earned national accolades and has topped charts around the world. He is also a practicing veterinarian, who still spends time underground or underwater as an avid spelunker and diver.
https://jamesrollins.com/
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Christa Carmen lives in Rhode Island, and most of her writing inspiration comes from gazing upon the ghosts of the past and into the dark corners of nature. Her new Gothic suspense novel, Beneath the Poet’s House, was released on December 10, 2024, and she is also the author of The Daughters of Block Island, a winner of the Bram Stoker Award and a Shirley Jackson Award nominee; the Indie Horror Book Award-winning Something Borrowed, Something Blood-Soaked; and the Bram Stoker Award-nominated “Through the Looking Glass and Straight into Hell” (Orphans of Bliss, Wicked Run Press). She has a BA from the University of Pennsylvania, an MA from Boston College, and an MFA from the University of Southern Maine. When she’s not writing, she keeps chickens; uses a Ouija board to ghost-hug her dear, departed beagle; and sets out on adventures with her husband, daughter, and bloodhound–golden retriever mix.
https://www.christacarmen.com