THIEVES GET RICH, SAINTS GET SHOT: AUTHOR INTERVIEW AND GIVEAWAY

 GIVEAWAY ENDED
THIEVES GET RICH,

SAINTS GET SHOT

BY JODI COMPTON

ABOUT THE BOOK:

Thieves Get Rich, Saints Get Shot is the gripping sequel to Jodi Compton’s Hailey’s War.  When we last left her, West Point dropout Hailey Cain had defied a powerful mobster to protect a pregnant teenager and child. The events of Hailey’s War nearly cost Cain her life, but Thieves Get Rich, Saints Get Shot sees Hailey back in Los Angeles, now second-in-command to rising gangster Serena “Warchild” Delgadillo. 

At the heart of this thrilling novel is a complex case of stolen identity, ruthless motives, and violent crime that puts Hailey back on the road, with her old friend Warchild by her side, to reclaim her name and chase down the murderer who has taken it. 

Fast-paced, suspenseful, and teeming with powerful young characters, Thieves Get Rich, Saints Get Shot is a ringing affirmation of Jodi Compton’s high-octane talent. 

PRAISE FOR THIEVES GET RICH, SAINTS GET SHOT:
"Hailey is a complex character whose exploits make adrenaline-producing reading, and the resolution here bodes well for the future of this compelling series." 
--Booklist

Searing....compelling....Readers fascinated by Hailey's conflict between her aching heart and her canny head will hope she continues raising Cain."
--Publishers Weekly

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Jodi Compton lives in California. She is the author of the acclaimed novel The 37th Hour, which also features Detective Sarah Pribek and is available in paperback from Dell. Find out more about Jodi Compton at her website HERE!  Photo by Donald Dodd.

AUTHOR INTERVIEW:
1. Welcome, and thank you for agreeing to an interview for BOOKIN‘ WITH BINGO. Is there any personal information you’d like to start out with?
 You mean, the obligatory biographical stuff? Sure. I’m a Californian writer living outside San Luis Obispo, about halfway between San Francisco and Los Angeles. I spent some time in Minneapolis, Minnesota, to study journalism and work briefly as a reporter. Minneapolis became the setting of my first two books, 37th Hour and Sympathy Between Humans, which have a missing-persons detective at the center. Now I’m writing about Hailey Cain, a former West Point cadet from Southern California. She isn’t a cop or a PI, but has ties to the gang underworld and the work she does—like finding a missing teenager in Hailey’s War—arises from those connections and is strictly unofficial.

2. Where did you get the inspiration or idea for this book?
My inspiration was a two-book contract with Crown and with Simon & Schuster UK! After writing Hailey’s War, my first story about Hailey Cain, I spent a lot of time throwing a tennis ball against the wall of my office and trying to figure out where to go with her next. But to answer your question more in the spirit that was intended, the genesis of my books is always the creation of interesting new characters. Hailey has some new people to interact with in Thieves—particularly the powerful gang-intelligence detective Magnus Ford—who is both her adversary and ally in the course of the book.

3. How did the title of your book come about?
That’s a great question. “Thieves Get Rich, Saints Get Shot” is part of a Stephen Sondheim lyric, from the musical “Merrily We Roll Along.” I heard it quoted on the short-lived series “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip”; Stephen Weber’s cynical studio head quotes it. It fit the tone of the book—which ultimately is about a grifter and her crimes—perfectly.

4. Do you see yourself in your characters? Which characters are easiest or more difficult to write?
I don’t see much of myself in Hailey.  I enjoy writing her very much, though, because her character and her world are my love letter to a great time in one’s life, the early 20s, when you can come home late, have a glass of Coke and a slice of chocolate cake, and go to bed and sleep like a rock. That doesn’t last, as a lot of us know. The hardest characters to write are the ones that just fail to come fully to life, and it’s very hard to predict or understand why that happens. I’m not naming names here as far as characters in Hailey’s War or Thieves, because it’s unwise to draw readers’ attention to weak spots in a book, just like you wouldn’t dress in a way that draws attention to your worst body parts. But it does happen. There are one or two characters in every book whose gunpowder is damp.  They’re just inert. 

5. What books would you say have made the biggest impression on you, especially starting out? What are you currently reading?
Thomas Harris was a big influence on me when I was starting out, even though I don’t write much like him. I loved the way he saw the world, as generally dark with rare bright spots of light. I loved the way he could appreciate a 5.0 liter Mustang as much as a Vermeer painting.  Sarah Pribek’s world (my first protagonist, in 37th Hour and Sympathy Between Humans) is inspired by Harris’s world.  But my actual writing style is much more like that of the late Robert B. Parker, who I grew up reading. He’s fairly terse and I am too. I trust the reader to know what a tree looks like.  Currently I’m re-reading the debut novel Learning to Swim, by Sara J. Henry, which is a fantastic book about one of the classic recurring themes in crime fiction, the protagonist who is childless and a loner and then suddenly thrust into the role of a child’s protector.   

6. What is the next or current book/project you are working on?
I’m hoping there’ll be enough interest in Hailey Cain to justify a third outing for her, which will probably be a kidnap-and-ransom storyline. But I’ve also finished my first screenplay, which was just a joy to write.

7. What is something about you that you would want people to know about you that we probably don’t know?
Oh, I just touched on that ... that I’m very interested in broadening my work into other media. Screenplays are surprisingly easy to write once you know the rules, and doing a comic someday really appeals to me.  It’s not just that the format makes writing much speedier—though it does—but also different stories are being told in those media, and I’ve got story ideas on the drawing board that probably wouldn’t fly as novels.

8. What is your advice to anyone, including young people, who want to be writers?
Start now. Don’t wait. People who don’t write but are in a role to advise young people tend to   impose a lot of romantic ideas about writing on the young: You have travel first, get your heart broken, have lots of life experiences and only then are you ready to settle down, maybe at 30 or so, and write.  Not true. Very young, relatively sheltered people have contributed fantastic works to the canon, including Jane Austen writing the first draft of Pride and Prejudice at 21 and Stephen King writing Carrie at 24 (or younger, he might have gotten it published at 24).  You could get hit by a bus at 25 while waiting to be mature enough to write. Don’t wait.
 

GIVEAWAY

THANKS TO KATIE AND THE GOOD FOLKS

AT RANDOM HOUSE PUBLISHING, I HAVE

TWO COPIES OF THIS THRILLING BOOK

TO GIVE AWAY TO MY READERS!

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