Backstabbed on Broadway takes place in a glamourous yet menacing theatrical world where a young woman must solve the murder of her tyrannical boss and navigate the cut-throat industry. What inspired you to write a mystery novel set in the world of theater?

Many years ago I actually worked in a talent agency office, and I was shocked to the core by how insanely it was run. My boss was a screaming-and-yelling megalomaniac, but there was even more strangeness going on there than just that.  I was the only one working there who wasn’t some kind of an addict and I was resented for that, which of course makes no sense.  I saw lots of young people who would come to New York from all over the country, trying to break into careers in the entertainment industry, and they’d be trying to impress these wacky agents, or, many times, preyed upon by a lot of unscrupulous people who only wanted to use them as cash cows.  Some got ensnared by self-proclaimed “acting teachers,” basically con artists in sheep’s clothing, who claimed they’d make “stars” out of them, and the students spend years paying for “lessons” that led nowhere.  Part of the reason I wanted to write this book was as a warning.  As the saying goes, “All that glitters isn’t gold.”     

Was there anything about Jasmine’s character that developed organically while writing that surprised you?

There were no surprises there, really.  All the way through, Jasmine has a real inner strength that her boss and co-workers lack.  She’s not easily intimidated or impressed, and she doesn’t make excuses for all of the craziness she sees going on around her with the rest of these assorted nuts.  She arrives at work thinking of quitting, finds her lunatic boss dead on the floor, and then learns she’s inherited his agency.  It turns everything upside-down.  Suddenly she owns the place and is the boss of her wacky co-workers and the phony clients she had hoped to leave behind.  Furthermore, any one of them could be the bossman’s killer because he was a nightmare of a man in several different directions.  So Jasmine finds herself in a dilemma.  She’s debating with herself all through the story as to whether she should stick with the agency that’s been handed to her or to run the heck out of there screaming.

The book takes place in a world where many people are not who they pretend to be. How did you approach writing characters with dual identities, and what did you hope to accomplish with these complex characterizations?

I had basically seen a lot of that when I worked in show business jobs, so it really wasn’t hard to write.  There’s plenty of talented people who go into the theater because they want to entertain, but there’s also some who don’t like their own backgrounds and desperately want to become someone else. I figured those types were perfect to include in a mystery story because their true selves are like unknown quantities.  It makes it harder to figure out whodunit, and you have to wonder what happened to push them away from themselves in the first place.

What is the next book you are working on and when will it be available?

I tend to work on several projects at one time and I have several going at the moment.  I’m particularly interested in making BACKSTABBED ON BROADWAY the start of a series and have begun work on  another book featuring Jasmine and many of the same characters.  With any luck, it should be ready later this year.

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