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On The Table Read Magazine, “the best entertainment eBook magazine UK“, crime thriller author L.A. Starks shares the inspiration behind Winner’s Curse, set in the high-stakes world of the oil and gas industry, and her creative writing process.
I interviewed L.A. Starks about the story of her new crime thriller book, Winner’s Curse, about corporate espionage in the oil and gas industry, what inspired her main characters, and her creative writing process.
While I was always interested in writing (from my reading), from financial necessity I became an engineer and energy investor. These are also activities I came to love, by the way. Later in life, I was fortunate to start a parallel career as a fiction author.
Since becoming a reader. I’ve always wanted to follow in the footsteps of my hero-authors.
Although I wrote (and write) hundreds of thousands of words of non-fiction in my engineering and investing careers, I didn’t start writing fiction until I began another career as a stay-at-home parent. When my children were young, I began writing fiction and joining critique groups in the pockets of available time.
How long did it take you to complete your first book from the first idea to release? Over a decade. I was writing part-time, without a contract or a deadline. It seems like I went through fifty revisions, but it may have been only twenty-five or thirty. Plotting, action, characters: I had to learn it all and most of it by trial and error.
Six years total, although the first two years were spent marketing my earlier books and the next two years dodging Covid. Since my books have a basis in reality, I was also probably waiting to see how long it will take to snap back from Covid shutdowns and restrictions: e.g. would the “new reality” be like the “old reality”?
West Texas is to energy what New York and London are to finance and publishing: a giant hub. I’ve wanted to write about the unusual West Texas vibe for years. As the epicenter of the oil universe–not just for the US but for the world sometimes more even than the Middle East—the setting is fast, aggressive, high-stakes, and way more global than most people realize. Perfect for a thriller.
The Covid stall made it harder to create deadlines for myself. Too, I like the tech and have another career in nonfiction analysis—it’s fun, as any engineer would tell you. Yet the point of all of my books is to tell an engaging story. Most helpful and important for me was my editor’s advice about personalizing some generalized forces into very specific characters and conflict among them.
My own experiences, of course, but also many people I met and know through working in the energy industry. And then I filled in with research and imagination, particularly for protagonist Lynn Dayton’s motivations—and some of her experiences.
Same as for the protagonist: I think there’s a bit of every author in her or his major characters. I also drew on people and situations I’ve experienced and again, research and imagination.
The protagonist, Lynn Dayton, is reassembling the pieces of a merger left behind when her predecessor was murdered. The primary antagonist, Henry Vandervoost, also wants to acquire the company. Vandervoost will do whatever is required to wrest control of it from the company’s chief, who is his son.
The first-ever woman to lead the drilling division of TriCoast Energy, protagonist Lynn Dayton is determined to prove herself capable but finds herself facing more than just the usual water cooler backstabbing.
Undercutting her at every turn is former TriCoast Executive, Henry Vandervoost, who blames her for his humiliating fall from power. Ruthlessly competing with Lynn for control of Bradshaw Energy, his own playboy son’s company that has revolutionary energy technology, Vandervoost enlists the help of attractive young chemist Hannah Bosko to assist him in taking over the company.
Lynn must battle Vandervoost and international power players who conspire to eliminate her and her colleagues, foil conspiracies to sabotage natural gas plants, and complete a merger that will ensure that the technology remains in the hands of those who will use it to benefit the world.
There are times when it helps to free-write, even during the editing process. However, I learned the hard way that without an outline, especially for a thriller that’s 70k-100K words, it’s easy to overwrite or write oneself into blind alleys by concocting scenes and characters that, while fun to imagine, don’t move the plot along or add key insights into characters’ motivations.
Yes, I did get support with editing. My starting tech, specialized dialects, basic characters and motivations, and macro factors were strong. However, the editor was expert at recommending additional characters to fulfill certain story functions. He also suggested more and better ways to tie the characters together, as well as ways to add action and conflict in ways that progressed the plot. The final few scenes in the book particularly benefited from the editor’s insights.
Read books in the same genre, write your book, keep your reader in mind, and revise as much as you need to, which may be more than you’d like. For serious writers, I recommend eventually working with a critique group and/or editor for all kinds of reasons, not least because after even a few revisions it becomes difficult for authors to read and understand their own books as their audience of first readers do.
I’m intrigued by new locations, so the places the energy business is sparking—what we call “exploration”– interest me. I don’t want to give away more than that.
Yes to both.
Website L.A. Starks Books – the author of the Lynn Dayton thriller series (lastarksbooks.com)
Purchase links for Winner’s Curse:
Kindle: https://amzn.to/48tAzyK
Paperback: https://amzn.to/40oMSdt
Kindle: https://amzn.to/40k5n2U
Paperback: https://amzn.to/3Yue7km
Kindle: https://amzn.to/3YtQrfQ
Paperback: https://amzn.to/3C2INSi
Kindle: https://amzn.to/4hn6rsV
Paperback: https://amzn.to/4hpkMoy
Barnes & Noble Winner’s Curse: A Lynn Dayton Thriller by L A Starks, Paperback | Barnes & Noble® (barnesandnoble.com)
Bookshop.org Winner’s Curse: A Lynn Dayton Thriller a book by L. A. Starks (bookshop.org)
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