Warrior Pose follows a gritty intelligence operative juggling perilous missions, personal demons, and a complicated relationship with his partner, who seems to attract danger at every turn, and is trying to protect those who are important to him. What was your inspiration for the wild journey you take readers on in this novel?

We’re the first to admit we’ve had unusual occupations. Make that sometimes weird.

Early on, Susan trained military personnel how to shoot straight. She wanted to be a writer since age six, but took a detour becoming a commissioned naval officer. As a marine inspector, she boarded ships at sea, jumping onto narrow Jacobs ladders, while ocean waves crashed below.

Together with John, Susan orchestrated sting operations against rogue vessels. She switched to battling natural disasters in New Zealand. And when posted in Abu Dhabi, she decided saving lives included health and safety on billion dollar building projects. In her spare time, she wrenched a Presidential yacht—The USS Potomac—from its watery grave, transforming it to a museum.

John is a hazardous materials Superman. Designated as a law enforcement and naval officer, he had a few special powers. While beginning his career as a biologist, he changed outfits to an environmental emergency specialist. He’s been on every continent including Antarctica. At a moment’s notice, he can snuff out chemical and refinery plant explosions, deal with rocket fuel plant meltdowns and dismantle illegal drug labs.

With Susan, John dished out solutions for combatting international security and anti-terrorism for ports in the Pacific. John switched careers to chase pirates and duel with a con artist extraordinaire, while on a remote South Pacific island. In between, he organised jungle expeditions and deep-sea scuba diving.

So, when it comes to writing, we just dig down into our backgrounds. Likely one or even both of us have some real-life experience that helps make everything we write seem real … because usually it is.

I enjoyed the depth of the main characters, Ric and Elaina. What was your process to bring these characters to life?

Do we have to admit this?  We don’t think of our characters as imaginary on a page or as digital words on a computer.  To us, they are real.  We think, breathe, and act out Ric and Elaina … as well as all the bad guys.

We put ourselves into the shoes of our main characters Ric and Elaina.  So they become real people in the sense of their values, beliefs, loves, fears, delights and most importantly their passion. 

Ric and Elaina seem to be part of OUR DNA. Though we’ve created detailed biographies and descriptions of their lives documenting their histories and backgrounds, Susan’s crazy relatives and John’s work associates often show up in the stories as well.  

We are classic plotters.  Read that as: we follow Aristotle and his theories on drama. Thus, in each of the books one of the two main characters will always be working on a flaw.  We started this in Book 1 and 2 with Elaina. And Book 3 and 4 with Ric. We have an intricate pathway they follow to keep the reader interested. 

But let’s be honest. Our characters come to life because of how they would react to the situations and challenges they are confronted with.

They adapt, adjust and hopefully change when new things happen. They grow as characters, as any human would overcoming their flaw.

And we also act our difficult scenes out to ensure we have the tension right.

Once, we were acting out a scene and Susan was wearing a bullet proof vest and John had two kitchen knives. Imagine answering the front door in our ‘book attire’.

Did you find anything in your research of this story that surprised you?

Ans:  In one of our jobs, we were asked to clean up a toxic chemical site on the South Island of New Zealand. At first it seemed like just another day’s work.

Until we dug into it … literally.  A defunct chemical manufacturing company had produced a colourful array of products for the architectural industry. They didn’t stop there. They also manufactured Agent Orange and bright pink and purple toxic chemicals as part of their production list. A bad day for them was a failed product which meant a quick burial at the plant site.  Running out of space, they buried failed products on nearby farms or backfilled it into an estuary.

During the extensive digging, an excavator tipped over contaminated soil from site. A glimmer of rounded white bone appeared. It was a human skull. John and Susan stopped the excavation. The soil was carefully brushed away revealing it wasn’t an ancient artifact. It was an unexpected and more recent burial of human remains.

The police determined the skull was 30 to 40 years old but after a search was finally labelled as an ‘unknown person’.

We were asked to find a suitable burial site. For us, it was important to provide for a proper burial. We obtained permission to create a ‘natural’ memorial as a final resting place for the person that was never identified.

Fast forward 20 years. We are now full-fledged mystery writers with four eBooks and three Audiobooks.

Dead Man’s Pose, Cobra Pose, Tree Pose were all focused on Australia. We shifted gears with Warrior Pose set in New Zealand. Kicking around ideas, we decided to integrate a fictional version of a cleanup and the discovery of a human skull. 

We now have developed a backstory and history for a skull found on an imagined cleanup site. Importantly we dedicated the book: To the unknown person we found and the story we never knew. 

And it should be noted that worldwide, there are unknown bodies and even skills that are dug up year after year.  Some of those bodies and skulls are ancient, but then again some are surprisingly recent.  We discovered in our research, it’s definitely not a rare occurrence.

So just be mindful when you are digging into your garden trying to  plant those carrots in deep soil!

Can you tell us more about what’s in store for Ric and Elaina, as well as the direction of the next book?

Ans:  Whooeee.  We have so much packed in for Ric and Elaina, they are going to be very busy for the next five years. Fortunately, they have kindly cleared their calendars for us. (Thank goodness!)

We have drafts of 4 plus++ of these new book storylines in various stages of development. Ric and Elaina will be traveling to new locations in the next book titled Half Moon Pose. They will be turning up in the South of France. What starts as a simple research project into the past rapidly explodes into a desperate search from Avignon to Nice to Paris.

Complications do arise with some old enemies returning and new friends found.

Writing a series means you are always thinking 3 – 5 books ahead even though you are busy writing the current one.  And of course you just happen to drop a clue or two along the way in all the storylines. Given our careers forward thinking is what we do best.

Author Links: Website | SoundCloud | GoodReads | Instagram | YouTube | Linkedin | BlueSky | Mastodon