The recent virus scare coming out of China reminds me how becoming
an author has made me write about danger rather than travel to perilous
locations looking for it.
For two decades, while I worked for a multinational corporation,
my friends thought I was crazy to travel, taking temporary assignments in
places like Colombia during the Pablo Escobar years, jetting to Africa as an outbreak
of Ebola was underway, and going to India when the bubonic plague threatened to turn into an epidemic in
that country.
Yet I never felt in danger. I’d be
in northern India when the plague was mostly concentrated in the south. Or I’d
be in Morocco when Ebola popped up in the Democratic Republic of Congo. And as
far as Pablo Escobar was concerned, his radar never focused on a foreign female
accountant in a backroom examining financial data at her company’s Colombian
affiliate.
Then I left my
corporate job to start writing.
That’s when my friends concluded I was indeed crazy. Why would I abandon
well-compensated employment to write fiction?
Besides
my paycheck, a fringe benefit consisted of my business travel. The weekends, my
own time, had provided opportunities to visit tourist sites, indulge in local
cuisine, meet people, and luxuriate in cultural experiences of my host
countries. Leaving my corporate job also upended risky ventures, such as
swimming in the rio Amazonas in Brazil or chasing wild camels in the
high, dry plateau near Ouarzazate
in Morocco. Overnight my travel pursuits went from being lived out in
real life to emerging as stories on a computer screen. I still travel for
research purposes, most recently to Croatia, to check out falcons and Harris Hawks.
One of these beautiful birds features in my latest novel.
When I started writing, a woman named Nikki Garcia came to life in
my consciousness. She became the protagonist in my first novel, Waking Up
in Medellin. Pure fiction, it’s set in the murky world of international
finance. For the second book in the series, Nikki changed jobs from
international finance to international private investigator in Coyote
Zone (soon to be re-released as Danger in the Coyote Zone)
set in Mexico.
My
latest novel, Revenge in Barcelona, finds Nikki escaping to
Barcelona, Spain, after her life is threatened in Mexico. She discovers very
quickly that the danger she is running from has followed her to Spain.
Now I live vicariously through Nikki. I place her in heaps of
trouble, and she must fight her way out to survive. I’m taking advantage of my past
travels to set my novels in exotic places. Since I never experienced a plague
or viral epidemic up close, I will probably never write a story about an
end-of-the-world crisis. But if I do, I’ll send Nikki in to do the real work
while I sit at my desk carrying out the necessary research.
About Kathryn
Kathryn Lane, originally from Mexico, took the long road to becoming an
author. An artist in her early years, she became a certified public accountant
to earn a living and embarked on a career in international finance with a major
multinational corporation until she decided to take up writing. In her stories,
she draws deeply from the prism of her experiences growing up in a small town in northern
Mexico as well as her work and travel in over ninety countries around the
globe. Her Nikki Garcia Thrillers are set in various
locations:
Waking Up in Medellin, set in Colombia, South America, won “Best Fiction Book of the
Year-2017” at Killer Nashville’s International Mystery Writers’ Conference.
Danger in the Coyote Zone, set in Mexico, won first place in the Action-Adventure category
of the Latino Books into Movies award-2018.
Revenge in Barcelona, the latest Nikki Garcia Thriller is set in Spain. It was
released in December 2019.
Kathryn’s collection of short stories, Backyard
Volcano and Other Mysteries of the Heart, mostly set in the U.S. and
Mexican border states of Texas, New Mexico, and Chihuahua, was named “Best
Short Story Collection-2018” by Killer Nashville.
Kathryn and her husband, Bob Hurt, split their
time between Texas and the mountains of northern New Mexico. She loves the arts
and is a board member for the Montgomery County Literary Arts Council (Conroe,
Texas). She is a member of Sisters in Crime and Mystery Writers of America.
Contact Kathryn:
Website: https://www.Kathryn-Lane.com/
What an exciting path toward writing fiction! Our world seems to offer too much in the way of man-made and natural disasters, doesn't it?
ReplyDeleteYour life story alone is amazing. Nicely done!
ReplyDeleteYou have fodder for fiction, that's for sure. Good luck with the series!
ReplyDeleteYou've used your experiences to weave fascinating fiction set in unusual places. I hope your series thrives.
ReplyDeleteI give you a lot of credit, Kathryn. At the first sound of danger, I would be cancelling any trip I had planned. I would rather read about them from the safety of my own home. But, congratulations on your publications. They sound exciting--but maybe not as exciting as your real life.
ReplyDelete