The Birth of a New Mystery-Thriller Series By Susan Specht Oram

By Susan Specht Oram

I wanted to write a novel about a strong female protagonist who rescues boaters, and I set aside early efforts. But then one evening, I was visiting my son’s family in San Francisco, and they had gone upstairs to bed, taking my magical newborn granddaughter with them.

I sat at the dinner table, smiled at their dog, who was sniffing ornaments on the Christmas tree, and opened my laptop. Fairy lights twinkled on the tree, and I wrote whatever came to me. In a few hours, I had the beginnings of a mystery-thriller book about a close group of friends, an accident, and a heroine who must find her missing ex-husband to protect her daughter from heartbreak.

I closed the laptop that night and nudged the dog from my sleeping spot on the couch. Sirens wailed outside, lights flashed as an ambulance sped past on the busy city street, and I nodded to myself. The tale I was drafting had life and death stakes, and it could be Book 1 in a three-book series.

I flew home to an airport north of Seattle and made my way home to Fidalgo Island, where the wind whips past in winter and roars down our street, howling as it heads east from the San Juan Islands. Tugboat engines rumble all night, and their spot lights shine into homes. Our dog’s ears flap in the wind on morning walks. Rain is our constant companion for eight or more months of the year, with mist, drizzle, or hard, driving drops. I wanted to permeate my mystery-thrillers with a sense of the atmospheric setting in our part of the Pacific Northwest. 

Some books almost break you in the birthing, but this first-in-series, Under Jackson Bridge, was relatively easy after that evening in San Francisco. When I began writing the second book in the series, my husband had a heart attack and was sent by ambulance to a Seattle hospital. I slept by his bedside and was his patient advocate. Three weeks later, he went in for a stent procedure but had complications and was kept overnight. I slept in a recliner in his hospital room, and although we only got two hours sleep, I wrote part of Book 2, Missing Man, a medical psychological thriller. Missing Man was released on October 24, 2024.

Book 3, By Midnight, will be released in December 2024. Book 3 will wrap up the series, but more tales can be told about this group of close friends living in a small waterfront town in the Pacific Northwest. My lesson with this series is to let ideas come to me, no matter where I am. A hospital room? No problem. My son’s place? Sure, I’m in. A book or a series? I’m open. I hope you’ll read Under Jackson Bridge and Missing Man and By Midnight! Thanks in advance.

—

Susan Specht Oram is writing mysteries-thrillers set in a windy part of the Pacific Northwest.

Her books are available on Amazon, Audible, Barnes & Noble online and by calling Watermark Book Company in Anacortes, Washington.

Website: www.susanspechtoram.com

Under Jackson Bridge: A Thriller (Beyond the Bridge Book 1)

A close group of friends. An accident that will change their lives. She must decipher the clues he left behind.

Between repairing boat engines and caring for her teenage daughter, Irena Fishbone is always on the run. Still owed ten years child support by her ex-husband, she’s made her own way and built a thriving business. But when she and her ex join a shipboard celebration with a close-knit group of old high school friends, she’s furious when the stubborn man refuses to wear a lifejacket and the two of them are swept away by a rogue wave.

Horrified that he never returned to the boat, as the Coast Guard scours the sea the driven woman organizes a search party to track down her missing ex-husband. But returning to the marina empty handed, her growing suspicions reveal damning financial records, furtive friends, obscure messages… and a tangled web of lies.

Under Jackson Bridge is a nail-biting psychological thriller. If you like courageous heroines, unsettling conflict, and jaw-dropping twists, you’ll be gripped by this chilling page-turner.

Read Under Jackson Bridge to solve a complex puzzle today!

BUY HERE

Tags: featured, women writers

Category: On Writing