Work-in-progress Wednesday: Trust No One interview
My current works-in-progress include a new vampire story, a sequel to Blood on a Texas Moon, and Forced to Trust, the next story in the Vista Security Series. However, given that I’m getting both stories organized (yes, I’m a planner) and even though I have several thousand words written on both, I’m not quite ready to share anything from either of those stories yet.
So I found an interview I’d done with my hero from Trust No One, who also appears in Forced to Trust as part of the Vista Security team. I figured it’d be good to refresh our memories since it’s been quite a few years since I’ve publishes anything new from the Vista Security series. Don’t worry, I do have several more books planned for the series.
For now, here is the interview with Ben Walker, the hero from Trust No One, who a reviewer said: “The book’s hero is the perfect blend of alpha and sensitive…”
It’s a given where Ben gets that alpha thing–he’s former military, now a trained spy. But I thought it would be interesting to get Ben’s opinion of where he gets that sensitive side after all the tough-guy commando kind of jobs he’s done.
DL: First, Ben, why don’t you tell us when you first met the heroine?
BW: Start with the bad memories why don’t you?
DL: Don’t worry, I will twist you around even more, you know me.
BW: Yes, I do. You love those emotional wringers. Okay, I met MJ Thornberg when she was dying…
My job that day was extraction; unfortunately her assignment had gone bad. I managed to get her to the hospital still clinging to life, but immediately afterward I had to leave for an overseas assignment. I was informed later that she lived, but it would be a couple of more years before I learned what became of MJ. By that time, I was in a bad place myself.
DL: When you were sent back into her life, she had retired from the spy business and was working as a small-town mechanic. She was not pleased to see you, if I recall.
BW: Ha, ‘not pleased’ to see me is a slight understatement-once she realized I wasn’t going away. At first I thought she was going to attack me, and given the state I was in at the time, it would’ve been tough to defend myself. Instead, being the sensitive kind of guy, I tried to ease the tension…
DL: Ease the tension? Is that what you were doing?
Are you making fun of my poetry-writing skills?
DL: Oh, I don’t know, let the readers decide.
BW: Really. If you’ll remember, she and I had a discussion of how she changed the version of Sleeping Beauty she read to her daughter.
DL: Yes, I remember. You seemed to have a disagreement whether Prince Charming just wanted to get in Sleeping Beauty’s pink panties.
BW: Ahem <clears throat> Well, if she can alter Sleeping Beauty, I can spontaneously create a poem, right?
DL: So you’re a poet and didn’t know it?
BW: <frown>
DL: <clears throat, too> Of course, go on.
BW: All right.
Mary, Mary—
DL: Mary?
BW: <big exhale> Yeah, that’s her real name. Mary Jeannette. The dossiers Vista Security has on their employees includes everything. And you know she threatened to cut out my tongue for using her real name, but Mary works so much better with this poem. Now if I may?
DL: Yes, of course, sorry.
BW: Mary, Mary quite contrary,
How does your garden grow?
With thorns so sharp–that’s a play on her last name, get it? Thornberg?
DL: Yeah, I got it.
BW: And she is quite prickly.
DL: Because you’re there to force her do something she doesn’t want to do, perhaps?
BW: Okay, okay. Anyway. <takes breath>
Mary, Mary, quite contrary,
How does your garden grow?
With thorns so sharp they’ll poke your heart,
And blood flows from the hole.
DL: Eww, that’s kinda graphic.
BW: But accurate, given she’s a trained assassin and all…
DL: And that’s a nursery rhyme not a poem.
BW: Everyone’s a critic.
DL: So, Ben, “poetry” skills aside, where’d a tough-guy operative like you find the sensitive side?
BW: Truthfully? I had five sisters. All younger. Guess who was the go-to babysitter?
DL: Five sisters!
BW: After me, dad wanted another boy. Although sisters number 2 and 3 were named after grandmothers, and like many southern girl names, they had a manly ring to them. Dana Sue and Eddie May. That satisfied him for a while, then he managed to talk my mom into another one.
DL: Which was another girl.
BW: Yeah, well back then, they didn’t do sonograms so he was sure it was a boy until the last minute. When she came out a girl, he named her Faith-he had faith that they’d have another boy.
DL: Thank goodness he wasn’t like King Henry VIII.
BW: Ha. Not funny. Then they had Grace, he felt like God would certainly grace him with another boy next. But then there was Hope.
DL: Don’t tell me, he named her Hope because he hoped the next one would be a boy.
BW: Yeah—
DL: Your dad’s got a weird sense of humor.
BW: My mom wasn’t all that amused. And neither is dad now that the girls are starting to get married. The cost of those weddings…
DL: Wait, if you think about it, your name is Ben. Then there’s Dana Sue, Eddie May, Faith, Grace and Hope—
BW: Yeah, and my mom’s name is Abby and my dad’s is Carl. So you can put us in ABC order from A-H.
DL: Really weird sense of humor. Thank goodness he didn’t go for the whole alphabet. But now we know where you get your sense of humor—er, I mean where you learned how to be a protector and a caretaker. All those little sisters. And that’s why you were so good with MJ’s baby girl.
BW: Actually, I was a little out of practice with Angelina, but fortunately she’s an easy kid, very forgiving.
DL: And I guess with all that protective instinct, that’s why what happened during those years you were overseas led you to a dark place from which you almost didn’t emerge.
BW: We really don’t need to go there. I can’t believe you brought that up. After all, you deleted that scene.
DL: Yes, I did but perhaps the readers would like to know…they would understand you were in a bad place.
BW: Sometimes you are the master of understatement.
DL: But you survived…
BW: Doesn’t mean anyone wants to read it.
DL: We’ll let them decide. We’re all friends here.
Thanks for reading!
~Diana Layne