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Bestselling Author Perri O'Shaughnessy Rob Holden: Perri O'Shaughnessy -- aka Mary and Pam O'Shaughnessy -- welcome to ReadersRoom.com. It's a pleasure to have you with us here today! Mary O: Hello, everyone. Pam O: Aloha! Rob Holden: Let's start this off talking about your latest novel Unlucky in Law. Could you tell our readers a bit about it? Pam O: Yeah, Mary, speak up... Mary O: The novel began with a dark thought--we wanted to start our story with someone digging up a grave. One day, while visiting a graveyard in Monterey, California, we discovered a person buried there allegedly connected to the Romanovs. That set us off. Pam O: We couldn't resist playing with this Russian historical angle, asking ourselves, what if? Mary O: The novel is contemporary, and all the characters are. There's just this contact with the past, a dead man with secrets. Pam O: We thought, maybe he was not the man everyone thought he was. He was really...someone else.

Mary O: And maybe there were ambitious, malevolent people out there in the ruins of the Soviet Union who might be interested in capitalizing on this strange connection.

Mary O: Nina's love life might be as unlucky as her poor client's law life.

Pam O: Meantime, our lawyer and protagonist, Nina Reilly, is living with her boyfriend, but it's rocky.

Pam O: Her client, Stefan Wyatt, the murder defendant, seems to have left his blood at the murder scene.

Mary O: But he claims never to have met the victim, a woman named Christina Zhukovsky. Other than his blood at the scene, there's no evidence he knew or ever even saw her.

Pam O: Watch out for the blue egg--it's key.

Mary O: To research the book, we read lots of Russian history and delved into politics, too, although little of what we know makes it into the story. In a book, you can only use what's relevant to the story.

Pam O: Mary and I studied Russian together in college. We learned some good Russian songs too.

Mary O: Oh, Pam. Let's sing for them.

Natalie R. Collins: Cyber singing?

Pam O: C'mon Mary, "Kalinka, Kalinka, Kalinka moya..."

Mary O: Vsady yagoda, kalinka, kalinka maya.

Pam O: The harmony isn't coming out.

Natalie R. Collins: You two seem very close. Although you live quite far away.

Pam O: Yes, at the moment we're 2500 miles apart. Aside from that, we are very close!

Mary O: We're a little giddy today, with our tenth novel out.

Rob Holden: The novel is due to be released July 13. Are you planning any sort of extensive tour for it?

Mary O: No extensive touring for this novel, but a few signings. Lots of publicity, we hope. Pam's crossing the Pacific next week, and we'll stop in Tahoe, Grass Valley, and Monterey to sign stock and make a few appearances.

Pam O: Mary lives in Northern California, I'm in Hawaii. Where it's muggy today.

Natalie R. Collins: But I'm still jealous.

Mary O: Pop up a picture of a wave and visit Hawaii virtually! That's what I do when envy strikes.

Rob Holden: Okay -- let's move back a book to Presumption of Death, which was recently released in paperback. Could you give our readers an idea of what kind of case Nina's got herself involved in there?

Mary O: Pam?

Pam O: Presumption of Death is set in a small community called Carmel Valley in beautiful central California, but there is trouble along the river. The neighbors, each in their own way, are disturbed people. When one of them dies, a delicate, friendly balance is disrupted forever.

Mary O: Arson fires are being set up in the hills. Nina's client is a good friend, Wish Whitefeather, son of her assistant. He comes off the hills, burned, dazed, and lookin' guilty.

Pam O: At the beginning of the book, he barely escapes this devastating fire, and then winds up charged with the murder of a friend.

Mary O: The action focuses on these tightly-knit neighbors on Siesta Court: their relationships, good and bad, their suspicious motives.

Pam O: Our favorite part is the lap-dancing scene, though. The neighbors get Dionysian.

Mary O: They are a wild group.

Natalie R. Collins: Sounds like it!

Mary O: I think we enjoyed building that street and those characters, and wreaking such havoc on them. Of course, Pam went to the original party that inspired the whole thing...

Pam O: Nina has to take this case; it's her secretary's son after all. But because her usual business is conducted up at South Lake Tahoe, she has to share Paul's Carmel office. It's an ad hoc law practice now that she's living along the coast. That causes its own set of problems.

Rob Holden: Each of your novels seems to take on a different social issue -- in Unlucky in Law, it was the "three strikes" rule in California. Do you base these "issues" on what you've been reading in the papers, or do you fit whatever seems appropriate into the stories?

Mary O: In each book, we do tackle an issue appropriate to a story we want to tell, but the books are always about justice, and how to get it.

Pam O: A lot of the legal part is based around my practice of law for sixteen years. There are also current injustices in the system that we try to comment on, like three strikes, which, in theory, puts people away for life for a string of serious crimes. In actual practice, this harsh sentence can be imposed for a petty infraction.

Mary O: Our main character, Nina Reilly, was loosely inspired by Perry Mason, who did whatever he had to do to win for his client, and that included playing fast and loose with the law. Nina's a bit of a renegade, not always trusting the system she represents, questioning how justice gets played out.

Pam O: But Perry had no home life. Maybe we should introduce Perry and Nina in a book. She would like him.

Mary O: She could give him an instant family! Nina's mired in home life. She has a son, a messy extended family, and all the concomitant responsibilities, heartaches, and joys.

Natalie R. Collins: And it is what makes her a character that all readers can relate to.

Rob Holden: That is certainly evident in my favorite of your novels, Move to Strike -- where you tackled the problem of juveniles being tried as adults.

Pam O: Move to Strike was fun to write. We enjoyed our teenage character, Nina's defendant, Nikki, a punk sixteen-year-old girl who likes deth metal.

Mary O: Nikki has become an ongoing problem for Nina, hanging a little too close to her son, Bob.

Pam O: This is not a good thing.

Mary O: She's popping up in later novels, and might make a showing again. Probably because we were both raising teens at the time we wrote Move to Strike, she's a lively one, a real devil.

Natalie R. Collins: So at what point did the two of you decide you wanted to write a book together. Can you tell us how this came about?

Mary O: Accident.

Pam O: Mapu?

Mary O: We both wanted to write novels and over the years started many. Problem was, neither of us could finish one. Finally, I started one, got bored as usual but really wanted to finish something. Anything. Complained to Pam, who suggested I complete a dynamite plot she had started. Voila!

Pam O: Eight years later... our first manuscript was rejected. It's being eaten by worms in a drawer.

Mary O: We did endless revising. Pam corrected my lack of law savvy, and we needed to adjust our very different styles to mesh.

Pam O: Mary is an English Lit major. It messes up a person.

Natalie R. Collins: That English Lit can be nasty indeed.

Mary O: That first book was our training ground, kind of like getting another college degree in how to write a novel. And no dissing English majors. We are the readers of the world!

Pam O: She knows too much.

Mary O: This from a Harvard lawyer. Ha!

Pam O: Anyway, we are collaboratin' fools.

Natalie R. Collins: So, was the second book written the one that got published?

Mary O: Yes. Motion to Suppress, our second manuscript, became our first published novel. Was that a great moment.

Pam O: That book's about a sexy cocktail waitress, a Barbie with a messed-up marriage, memory problems, and a total lack of insight, who is arrested for murder.

Rob Holden: After 10 novels, do you find that one of you concentrates more on plot and the other on character? Or do you divide the "labors" equally?

Mary O: Things definitely end up 50-50. One usually starts, generating an idea or even a proposal and a few chapters, all very logically. Then the other person gets a crack at it and all h*** breaks loose.

Pam O: Mary's getting very good at trial scenes. I still say I'm the best with sex scenes, but she will differ.

Mary O: No, no! She writes all the sex scenes! Tell everyone!

Rob Holden: You just did!

Pam O: We follow a very detailed outline, or we could never write together.

Mary O: Some of the looks we get for the steamy stuff...

Pam O: And all the mistakes are, amazingly, due to Mary.

Mary O: If I take credit for mistakes, I ought to get all the praise, too, doncha think?

Pam O: We get so many e-mails about our mistakes...

Natalie R. Collins: People email about you about your mistakes?

Pam O: Like the ones about the Glock, which doesn't have a safety. We got a hundred e-mails.

Mary O: And then I just read a Jeffery Deaver novel. His Glock also had a safety! What gives on that?

Pam O: Yeah, Jeffrey! How about that?

Mary O: Maybe we ought to look at an actual gun now and then like Erle Stanley Gardner did, who even shot a hole in the family tub once.

Mary O: Back to the outline: it would be grand if we could stick to a plan. We are very well-intentioned, but mistakes, especially continuity errors, are inevitable in spite of heavy revisions and editing.

Rob Holden: Since we announced this chat we've received a lot questions from our readers. Could you answer a few of them for us?

Mary O: Love to.

Natalie R. Collins: Georgia P., Palm Springs, FL: Counselor Nina Reilly is one of my all-time favorite characters! Do you like her as much as we readers do and do you have a favorite situation she has gotten herself into?

Pam O: Thanks, Georgia! My favorite is the fur coat in Paul's hotel room!

Mary O: Nina has been awfully good to us. Hard not to love her.

Pam O: But she is a mystery to us too. Unpredictable, impulsive, smart, deep, with a swinging love life.

Mary O: I like the scene in Unlucky in Law at the end, where she dances...

Pam O: How about when she saves Bob at Angora Ridge in Invasion of Privacy? That's a killer!

Natalie R. Collins: Carla Q., Enid, OK: How much research did you do for Unlucky in Law? The Russian/Anastasia ties are interesting and accent the story so well.

Mary O: As we mentioned, we did lots of reading and interviewed people. Every book, and this one in particular, seems to involve extensive forensics and studying up on medical issues. We find the best twists in science.

Pam O: Hi, Carla! We began with a real situation, a grave in Monterey that supposedly housed a man who was page to Tsar Nicholas II. That fact we didn't invent, and it formed the basis for our plot.

Mary O: The plot also hinges on some odd facts which were brought to our attention by a reader, by the way.

Pam O: There's a strong medical mystery element. But ultimately, the question becomes, what really happened at Ekaterinberg? Did all the Romanovs die that night--or not?

Mary O: We loved the Russian connection. The Romanovs continue to obsess and fascinate people. We learned much more than we could use in one novel--but had such fun twisting up these California types with the Russians!

Pam O: I hope the Orthodox church in San Fran will forgive us for what we did to their priest.

Mary O: You tread a fine line, mixing reality with fiction. We don't want to hurt or offend people, but we probably will. Again.

Pam O: Unlucky in Law also resolves Nina's relationship with Paul.

Natalie R. Collins: I can hardly wait to read it! (I loved the fur coat scene, too).

Mary O: Shocking, ending one book with the coat and beginning the next without it...

Natalie R. Collins: Heather C., San Diego, CA: I am a quilter, and we have what is called a ROUND ROBIN. I finish a section of the quilt and send it to the next person to do their part. Is this how you write, or is every part of the novel written together?

Pam O: Mapu?

Mary O: This is a nice analogy for how we write. We do take turns. The difference is, we revise each other's work. I doubt quilters do that. Our art is definitely a team effort at every stage.

Pam O: It's often like a relay race. Mary runs ahead, I pick up behind, then I run ahead, she picks up behind...

Mary O: And then, pooped, we both collapse, dust ourselves off, and run together to the end!

Pam O: Every word gets double attention.

Mary O: Not that we don't wish we had more time to polish. We do try to write to a schedule of a book a year, and that's daunting at times.

Pam O: It's good to collaborate as we both have our blind spots. In quilting, you can still see the individual's work. Not with us.

Mary O: Not if Pam has her say! All those complicated sentences--OUT.

Pam O: I do have a bit of an Elmore Leonard complex.

Natalie R. Collins: Makinzee K., Spokane, WA: Do you know any other "sister" writing teams? Is there more than one? Which is your favorite?

Pam O: Hi, Makinzee! Sisters? Hmmm...

Mary O: There is a one other sister collaboration I know of, Barbara Taylor McCafferty and Beverly Taylor Herald. They write mysteries together. Lots of people collaborate, using just one name. Don't forget the very successful Brit, Nikki French, a husband and wife team, co-authors of Killing Me Softly.

Pam O: We think women collaborate the best. Egos are more dispensable.

Mary O: We took some inspiration from the two men who used the name Ellery Queen. They were cousins.

Pam O: But those cousins didn't like each other. We are very good friends. Usually!

Natalie R. Collins: I can tell you two are very in sync with each other. And our last readers question: Kara S., Billings, MT: I read in an interview that you were inspired by the sophisticated, genius of Perry Mason. Who else has inspired you since you have begun writing?

Mary O: Pam?

Pam O: Hi, Kara! Well, Ross McDonald, Elmore, John D. MacDonald, Steve Martini...Gertrude Stein. Mapu?

Mary O: Kara, I read everything. Day by day, it varies. Yesterday, Albert Camus. Today, Patricia Highsmith. Tomorrow, Marian Keyes!

Pam O: I try not to read my betters when I'm writing. Too intimidating.

Mary O: In the long run, we both revisit the classics, and dip into the best moderns. I'm moved and creatively pushed by other writers all the time.

Pam O:These days I'm reading math textbooks. Hope to make a sexy math plot for the next book!

Mary O: Which worries me...

Pam O: Ahh, numbers...

Mary O: Since she writes all the sex scenes, remember.

Pam O: The primes are hot...

Mary O: l, 2, 3, 4, can I have a little more...

Pam O: Anyway, we're thrilled Unlucky in Law came out today and hope everybody enjoys it!

Rob Holden: Thank you for answering those. What are the mechanics of writing together -- being 2500 miles away -- and three time zones apart?

Mary O: Phone, e-mail, long car trips, endless talk, arguments, fretting, wonderful dreams shared. We try everything.

Pam O: I write a little, then Mary changes it all and writes a little, then I do it to her...

Rob Holden: And you email it all back and forth?

Mary O: We talk each morning for a long time, and share our work via e-mail. We love to haggle out details on the phone, and wrestle over plot twists.

Pam O: We can write together no matter where we are thanks to the outlines we develop, along with using e-mail attachments.

Mary O: I await Pam's brilliant dreams whenever things flag.

Pam O: That's how we found the solution in our first book, Motion to Suppress.

Mary O: In that novel, we changed the killer in the fourth draft based on a dream Pam had.

Pam O: A little elf got into my head at midnight.

Mary O: She woke up, called me, and said, here's our solution! We knew we had to write the entire book one more time.

Rob Holden: So, can you tell us what is coming up next for Nina -- after Unlucky in Law?

Mary O: Nina returns to Tahoe. Three brilliant college students witness a crime, then disappear. She has to track them down, and gets mired in some theoretical math stuff Pam's studying.

Pam O: We're working on Book 11 right now. It's about a woman shot on a balcony in the casino district at Tahoe. The witnesses and shooter disappear, Nina has to find them before the lawsuit for wrongful death is thrown out.

Mary O: Actually, it's so hard to describe a book as you're writing it. We know how bad we are about keeping things the same, so what we say today might change. We do know Nina's back at Tahoe, and there are more dramatic changes ahead for her both in her working and her personal life.

Rob Holden: And when that is closer to publication, details will be available at your website, www.perrioshaughnessy.com ?

Mary O: Our official website is www.perrio.com .

Pam O: We do try to keep details current on our site. And you can E-mail us from there!

Natalie R. Collins: You like to hear from fans?

Mary O: We love that, although we've discovered we can't always answer each one. We send out a newsletter, too.

Pam O: Oh, yes, we love mail. How else can we get encouragement and learn so much?

Rob Holden: Before we wrap this up, I would like to thank Susan Corcoran at Random House for all her help with this chat.

Mary O: Susan! If you're out there, howdy and thanks!

Pam O: Thank you, Rob. And good luck, Natalie.

Natalie R. Collins: Thanks to Susan. And thank you Pam.

Rob Holden: Finally, Mary and Pam, is there anything you would like to say to any of your fans who read this here at ReadersRoom.com?

Pam O: Life is short. Enjoy the show!

Mary O: As readers ourselves, members of the club of good people, we loved being here with you. Thanks for reading our books!

Rob Holden: Mary and Pam O'Shaughnessy, thanks for a great chat, and best of luck with Unlucky in Law!




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