In Out of the Shadows, a woman fueled by revenge and the encouragement of a new acquaintance turns her passion for justice into a career as a detective. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?

As a psychiatric advocate, I once overheard the trans woman who later became Gloria say exactly what Gloria did when we first met her. I never met her but I kept those few sentences in my head for 10 years until I found a story to put her in. 

Hannah, on the other hand, is a mix of many, many people I have known, both professionally (as a psychiatric professional), and personally, who had terribly traumatic early lives but managed to survive and were some of the most heroic people I ever met. The story evolved from the characters, as most of my stories do, with them leading the way.

I thought your characters were incredibly memorable and relatable. Which character in the novel do you feel you relate to more and why?

Oh, Hannah. I did not have her traumas, but I think her sense of justice and her desire to seek the truth and put down pretentiousness comes from me. I am known for not compromising when it comes to BS and have been a member of the Sceptics Society. I am also a died-in-the-wool feminist and have noted over a long life that life isn’t quite as fair for women as it is for men. So I guess it’s inevitable that some of that comes out in many of my characters. The females, anyway.

What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?

One theme is the difference between justice and the law. While the law of the land seeks to address injustice, it so often fails to do so. Take rape, where 92% of women do not report this serious assault to the police. This is after 20%+ of women and 6% of men experience it. Then because of all kinds of prejudice plus the adversarial nature of court proceedings of the 8% of cases reported, many drop out, so only 1% result in a conviction. It’s not only rape but any crime where injustice happens because of the necessary high burden of proof, clogged legal system, disparity between lawyers’ competence (poor vs rich). So many people will never see justice. Gloria makes all this clear to Hannah.

The other theme is the drag theatre. I didn’t see that as a theme because, as an actress, I worked with gay people all my life and saw nothing odd about that. But a beta reader said it was interesting to him how `these people’ were portrayed as simply ordinary everyday people – which, of course, they are. But to him, it was an important book because it didn’t in any way sensationalize that, and he felt people should read the books to get a better understanding of `them.’ Dear me, are we really in the 21st century? With all the shenanigans going on in America right now, I begin to wonder.

Can you give us a peek inside book 2? Where will the next installment take Hannah? 

Book 2 has Hannah wondering if the detective life is for her. As she puts it, in all her cases her clients did okay but she was kidnapped, beaten up and failed in her major task, But when her first and eternally grateful client asks her to `just visit a friend of her daughter’s, Hannah bites the bullet and goes along with it. What she doesn’t expect is that this favor will bring her head to head with a clever and ruthless psychopath. She’s appallingly out of her depth as she tries to outmaneuver this rogue human being in a race to save her client’s life and her own. In his twisted mind, anyone who thwarts him must be destroyed, and Hannah is in his way. To defeat him, Hannah must think like him, but will that threaten her mind as well as her body?

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