Dangerous Situations by Kathryn Lane

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:

KathrynLaneAuthor@gmail.com

Website: https://www.Kathryn-Lane.com/

A Protagonist Who Kills By Kathryn Lane

When I started writing my first Nikki Garcia Thriller, I did not know Nikki’s life would spawn a trilogy of books or even more.

Nikki Garcia, the protagonist of Waking Up in Medellin, grew in my subconscious and broke through my consciousness like a tigress released from captivity. Nikki took up residence in my brain where she roamed freely, lighting up my neurons with nuggets of her life. I started writing her story and the nuggets grew into a complete goldmine.

That’s not to say I did not encounter times when I struggled to write her story. My biggest challenge involved making Nikki likeable, even lovable, while also making her a strong woman capable of standing her ground against scoundrels and criminals in a foreign setting. Okay, so she can stand up intellectually to villains and henchmen with heroine qualities I bestowed on her to rise to the occasion without losing her femininity. But what happens when her life is endangered, and she must resort to a gun?

I placed Nikki in Medellin, Colombia, a city with a past. A city where criminality ruled during the time of Pablo Escobar, one of the world’s worst drug lords until his death in 1993. However, Nikki’s story takes place in current times and in a very different Medellin, a city, which has remade itself into a lovely place, even if its past still haunts the city’s reputation. And speaking of pasts, Nikki has a past that haunts her, even in her sleep.

Up to now, the reader can ride along with Nikki as she performs her work in Medellin to uncover wrongdoing at the Colombian affiliate. Readers can also be happy for Nikki when a medical doctor she meets at a party expresses feelings for her. Her travels to Cartagena, a historical Spanish Colonial town, and her hiking expedition to the Tayrona national park are episodes described in detail, allowing us to experience both sites with her. All the while, Nikki’s love interest inspires her to leave her past behind and live life fully again. But can she trust him?

As Nikki pursues her investigative work, she finds more than she expected. Her life is put in danger, and she must rise to the occasion again, not with words in an argument, but with gun in hand to protect herself.

What happens in the mind of the reader the minute Nikki uses her gun and kills? Do I lose my readers, or do they applaud her boldness? Had I built in enough resiliency in Nikki’s story and enough courage in my protagonist to carry off the gunfight without killing her likeability quotient or the solidarity between Nikki and the readers of her story?

I faced the same challenge in writing Coyote Zone, my second thriller, where Nikki is in Mexico and goes undercover with human traffickers to save a kidnapped child. And she must kill again!

This dilemma of balance in a character’s heart, I’m convinced, is faced by most writers who kill.

Author Biographical Information

Kathryn Lane is the award-winning author of the Nikki Garcia Thriller Series:

Waking Up in Medellín

Kathryn’s debut novel, Waking Up in Medellín (Pen-L Publishing-March 2016) has won:

Silver Falchion for Best Fiction Book of the Year 2017 by Killer Nashville

Silver Falchion for Best Fiction Adult Suspense 2017 by Killer Nashville

Finalist for the RONE Award (Mystery category 2017) by InD’tale Magazine

Coyote Zone (released October 2017)

The second novel in the Nikki Garcia Thriller Series, Coyote Zone (Pen-L Publishing), presents you with high stakes danger in a kidnapping and human trafficking story. Other subplots woven into the plot, such as romance, make this an exciting read.

Kathryn’s collection of short stories, Backyard Volcano and Other Mysteries of the Heart, (Alamo Bay Press-April 2017) will give you a fusion between fantasy and reality; symbolism, punctuated by hints of surrealism, and stories with unusual twists and turns.

Originally from Mexico, a young Kathryn was a painter in oils but changed to accounting and international finance to earn a living. She became a CPA and a CMA and worked for a multinational corporation where she traveled extensively for two decades. After jetting to over 90 countries, her travels gave her the opportunity to fulfill another passion – to write fiction. Now she happily writes stories and novels inspired by foreign cultures.

A graduate of the University of New Mexico, Kathryn is both a Certified Management Accountant (New Jersey) and a Certified Public Accountant (New Mexico – inactive status).  She serves on the Montgomery County Literary Arts Council and resides in The Woodlands, Texas, with her husband, Bob Hurt.