Author interview

Tell me a little bit about yourself, O. Stefan. What do you do for a living? What part of the world do you live in? How long have you been writing? That sort of thing.

I live in Sydney, Australia and I've been writing on and off for the past 10 years. 

Tell me a little about The Deadly Caress.

The Deadly Caress is a fast-paced story set in California. Suspenseful and thrilling, it is holds a mystery that Amanda Blake, a freelance photographer, must unravel.

Amanda tracks down her birth mother, the multi millionaire Jean Campbell. Hours after her arrival, Jean is murdered.

Amanda sets out to discover her mother’s killer. Her quest takes to Australia to find the man she thinks holds the answer to the killer’s identity. While visiting this man, she has to run for her life under a hail of bullets. Someone will stop at nothing until she is dead. If she thought things were bad enough, they are about to get much worse. 

What was the genesis of that work?

It's what captured my attention at one time from a newspaper article and it started me thinking...what if a person was to discover that the woman she thought was her mother wasn't. How would she feel? What if this mother was murdered? What would this person do?

Then there's a scary scene with Amanda driving down a mountainside and that comes from my memory banks. I grew up across the road from a very bad intersection and every weekend there would be at least one horrific accident. Some of these were youths speeding and chasing each other. Drunks and careless or not drivers who had miscalculated the sharp turn and careened into an oncoming car or the nearby light post. My dad would run over to see if an ambulance was needed, as we were the only family in the street to have a phone. He'd take blankets over if the person/people was badly injured and I would help him. My sister and my mother would be too upset to be of help and didn't go.

I find my characters everywhere and nowhere. 

I was intrigued by how you go from the female protagonist's viewpoint to the creeper's viewpoint. Can you tell us something about the process you follow to accomplish that?

I did get upset when I had to put Amanda in difficult situations, as I’d grown fond of her. I find writing about the evil people easier than writing about someone who’s good because it’s harder to make the honest person shine but it does make you grow as a writer.

Did this project take a lot of research?

The Deadly Caress took a fair amount of research into police procedures and the prison system. I emailed a detective in Monterey who was very helpful. And for what it was like inside the prison system in the US, I did all my research online by reading blogs from prisoners, to online diagrams of layouts inside and articles posted online from newspapers.

What are your plans for the book in the near future?

I self published “The Deadly Caress” early this year. Currently, I’m working on polishing my next thriller “Lurking in the Shadows” which is scheduled for release in the latter part of this year.

Your art work is striking. Who did the cover for you?

I found a graphic designer on fiverr.com to design the cover for me. I’d researched the covers I liked so that made it easier for the designer.

Link: The Deadly Caress

Web site: http://onstefan.weebly.com