On Crafting Suspense: From the White House to New York's Dark Corners

In this episode of Talking Book Publishing, hosts Kathleen and Adanna engage in a delightful conversation with accomplished author Ilona Joy Saari. Ilona discusses her latest release, The Wrong Station, the third book in the Mystery Chronicles of New York Women series. The story follows the adventures of Lorna, a videographer who finds herself in a precarious situation after accidentally getting off at the wrong station late at night. What she discovers is chilling and sets the stage for a thrilling tale of survival and suspense.

The episode explores Ilona's unique journey, from her days as a press secretary for President Jimmy Carter to her current role as a mystery writer. Ilona shares her passion for creating complex characters and how her diverse experiences in politics, television, and even food blogging have influenced her writing. This episode is a must-listen for fans of mystery novels and those intrigued by the intersection of life experiences and storytelling.

We’d like to hear from you. If you have topics or speakers you’d like us to interview, please email us at podcast@talkingbookpublishing.today and join the conversation in the comments on our Instagram @writerspubsnet.

Transcript

00:00:02 SPEAKER_01
Hello, and welcome to Talking Book Publishing. I'm Kathleen Kaiser, along with Adanna Moriarty. And today, our guest is Ilona Joy Saari. She's now coming out with her third book in the Mystery Chronicles of New York Women, which I was talking to the gal at Barnes & Noble, and she said, God, I love that idea for a series. So I thought it sounded really good. Ilona has been writing her whole career. She was actually a press secretary for President Carter. She's done a lot of television and all kinds of writing. So welcome, Ilona. Welcome. Thank you. So this is the third

00:00:46 SPEAKER_01
book, but it's the second one with this character, Lorna. Tell us a little bit about what's going on in the wrong station.

00:00:57 SPEAKER_02
Well, Lorna is a videographer and she some years earlier got caught up in a political situation of gun running in New York City. And so she became many celebrity because she helped to expose it and became quite well known in Manhattan for videographing

00:01:22 SPEAKER_02
things like big museum openings and theater parties and political events and so forth. And she was in the middle of, she was finishing a new art exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan and was taking the train into Queens, Long Island to visit her aunt, because her apartment was being renovated, and she got off at the wrong station at two or three in the morning, and consequently was at the wrong place at the wrong time. She saw a door, that are at our garden apartment that they have in Queens that was lit up and so she felt somebody was awake and she knocked on the door because she had lost her her cell phone it was in the in the museum and she had nobody she could have called obviously and she wanted to see if she could borrow a phone and have them call her a lift or a taxi or whatever. And instead, she found dead people and murdered dead

00:02:33 SPEAKER_02
dead people

00:02:37 SPEAKER_02
people. And after that, she was on the run.

00:02:43 SPEAKER_01
Yeah, it's really a great idea because I, you know, I've, I've lived in New York a couple of times and twice I had fallen asleep on the subway. I woke up and I was like, oh, my God, where am I? And I get off and like, I was at a hundred and thirty eight street or something in Harlem one night. And it was like, you know, four in the morning and I'm wandering around and it's like, it's scary. I mean, it's really scary. It's almost like you get this, you lose where

00:03:07 SPEAKER_02
I mean,

00:03:12 SPEAKER_01
you're going, losing your sense of direction. And that's true. And she knew she

00:03:18 SPEAKER_02
was, she fell asleep on the train as well. at because it was again two in the morning and she had just worked hours, you know, videotaping that new exhibit. And so when she got startled and woke up, she assumed just by the time, you know, she looked at her watch at the time, she thought, oh, this has got to be Bayside. This has got to be my stop. And she jumped at it. No, sir, wasn't. She had no idea. whether she had gone further into on to Long Island or whether she was still in Queens and and she realized when she saw all the attached houses garden apartments and so forth that she or row houses they're called in Queens that they that she wasn't still in Queens but she had no idea where and she had no phone so there she was walking around and three in the morning yeah

00:04:11 SPEAKER_01
It's a great story. I really enjoyed it. And what's fun is your first book in the series, Freeze Frame, it's the same character and you bring back some of those people again, people that you know. Yeah. Yeah. Her ex-boyfriends, things like that. Her brother, all kinds of characters that you've already gotten to know. I like that when reading a series is you get to know characters and their family, friends, compadres, whatever, that travel with you through the books. No, I do, too. That's why I was

00:04:44 SPEAKER_02
too. That's why I was a big fan of Sue Grafton. And I was also a big fan of the Spencer books. And, you know, and they give you they give you touchstones and they become old friends. It's like watching a soap opera. If one watches a soap opera, those people become your friends. They're not actors. They're part of your family. And when you were reading a series like that, like even Stephanie Plum, you read those series and I mean, they become family. You know what you know, what they're going to eat, you know, you know how they sleep or don't sleep, you know, if they work out or they don't work out. And that's fun, I think, for the readers, which is why I think they're so

00:05:27 SPEAKER_01
popular. Yeah, I agree. So what started you, I mean, you mentioned soap operas. Weren't you a soap opera writer for a while? I was briefly, yes. The secret's

00:05:40 SPEAKER_02
out. But I never got on staff, so I can't really claim fame to it, but I would have loved it because it is a truly fun genre. And the reason why I think so is because they handle topics that are taboo for primetime or even for most features. They were the first group of actors or film filmmaking or TV making that handled the AIDS crisis and had gay characters and a character that got AIDS not through a gay relationship but through IV. And they were the first ones to handle

00:06:17 SPEAKER_02
were the first ones to handle Streetwalkers years ago, I mean, black and white days before our time, they were doing stories about prostitutes that were kind of taboo in primetime television, unless they were the bad girl. And this was always a sympathetic young woman that got into the life or whatever and how she got out. Jackie Zeman was probably one of the most famous. She's an actress and a dancer that came from New York, and then she was on general hospital from the time she was 19 until she died. And she just died recently. So it's a phenomenal genre in that

00:06:56 SPEAKER_02
genre in that respect. The fact that they only have the writers, as I had like three days to do a 90-page script, is a little hectic, in which why the writing isn't quite as wonderful as it could be on primetime or on features. And the same thing with, there's no rehearsal and there's hardly any rehearsal, there's blocking. So the actors, if they're not well-trained or with stage actors have no idea how to do a lot of it. And so that's why some of the actors are not as good as they should be. Yet some of them are phenomenal because they're theater actors or, you know, whatever, but it's still, it's a fun genre.

00:07:42 SPEAKER_00
So to me, it's have really dealt with like serious mental health things too. Yes. Yes. All my children tackled DID and general hospital has, you know, I mean, Sonny is very bipolar and I mean, he's bipolar in real life. I mean, you know, they, they do, I agree. They, they really do tackle you know, some very heavy things over the course of their one day year, year. That is a day. General hospital has been

00:08:14 SPEAKER_02
on, I think for almost 50 years, if not 50 years. And, and, and soap operas were the first ones to tackle housewives that were addicted to Valium back in the day. Cause that was a very quiet, you kept it swept under the rug. They were the first ones to really have, on television, tackle alcoholism for regular people. I mean, you know, like, like the Lost Weekend characters, you know, a character, a blue collar worker, I mean, not a blue collar worker, but educated white collar workers. And, and they opened the door for rehab for people. People felt they weren't alone because they saw this every day on a soap opera. And they saw how they were dealing with it or not dealing with it. And so in a way, when I wrote Freeze Frame and now The Wrong Station, I try to have some of those themes, even though she's not addicted to anything or whatever, but she is addicted to junk food. So I'm exposing that to the world. You can eat junk food and still be thin.

00:09:25 SPEAKER_00
And cheeseburgers, doesn't she really like cheeseburgers and hot dogs?

00:09:28 SPEAKER_02
cheeseburgers and

00:09:30 SPEAKER_00
dogs? Yeah, that's you and her, isn't it?

00:09:32 SPEAKER_02
Yes. You know, it's definitely from out of my mouth, not literally. I'm still eating the cheeseburger, but yeah. Can we can we back up a little? I

00:09:41 SPEAKER_00
up a little? I mean, we jumped right into the books, but we didn't really jump into Ilona at all. And Kathleen said something in the introduction that I think should, you know, be a starting point, at least. I mean, she said you were Jimmy Carter, one of Jimmy Carter's press secretaries. And I

00:09:59 SPEAKER_01
press

00:10:01 SPEAKER_00
I mean, that's a city. I mean, that's a really important role in this country. And I and I think that, you know, from there to writing, you know, suspense novels like that's a that's a path I would like to know more about. Well, it's I

00:10:16 SPEAKER_02
I mean, I always I've always been involved in politics, I started in my 20s. Actually, I started in my late teens, but I did some press work for Mayor Lindsey back in New York when he was there as a Republican and a Democrat. And it was something that I most of the time it was volunteer work. And every once in a while I would get a pain press job. But I so that was how I got into politics only because it's a passion of mine. But the writing part and going into writing mysteries, first of all, I'm a mystery buff. I love them. And I had been a rock and roll writer. And that didn't pay the bills. So I would start dabbling in television and various other things. And the only thing I was interested in writing was mysteries. So I was writing for politics, which is sometimes a mystery. And then I was writing these mystery stories when I left rock and roll. And so that was the two writing things that I did. And the Jimmy Carter thing was one of those luck things. When I was single and when some of my other friends were single, we always thought, well, where are we going to go to meet people? Not necesSaarily boys, but just to meet different people and expand our horizons. And so I would volunteer on various campaigns in in Manhattan if I was interested in who they were and what they were doing. And so I initially went in nineteen seventy six to volunteer for the card campaign. and the person that was the head of the New York office found out my background and asked if I would do press. So I ended up doing press for the convention, and then he got the nomination, and I did a little press for him after that, and then I went back to work at a day job, at a regular job. And then in 1980, I got actually a paid job in 76, but I had gone there to volunteer. And I met some really great people, none of whom I've ever talked to since, but nonetheless, for that time, it was wonderful. And I brought friends in and it was just really good. And so in 80, I thought I would do the same thing. And I volunteered again. And earlier on when the campaigns were first gearing up before the convention, and I immediately got offered to be one of his deputy press secretaries in New York and so that was a paying job. So I did that all through before the convention and then I did it during the convention and then through the campaign. And then they offered me a job at the UN if a press secretary job, which was four blocks from my house. And I go, oh, this is cool. A whole day job that I could do every day for a big salary. And he lost. So I never got the job. So I was back to TV. And then when I left TV, I just got tired of TV. And that's when I wrote Preach Fair. Because I had written it originally as a screenplay, and it had been optioned three or four times. And And then it kept going back, coming back to me. And so, when I decided I didn't want to write TV anymore, I just, I thought, well, this will make a fun book. So, that's what I did. I turned the screenplay into a novel. And I have never written another

00:14:04 SPEAKER_01
screenplay. I won't go back. I love writing books. So, that's the story.

00:14:12 SPEAKER_02
I can have them do anything I want. You're limited in, my husband's a playwright and he was also a television writer. And you're limited because you're given, first of all, timeframes. You can only have so many pages, you know, it can only last an hour and a half or two hours or 45 minutes, whatever it is. And you're usually constrained on what you can write about. And that, was boring. And it was more dialogue than prose. And I love, prefer writing prose. And I wasn't really that good at dialogue in the beginning, but my, tutored by my husband, I got to be better at it because he was really a terrific dialogue writer. So that, when I left TV, that was just what I wanted to do. Just write books. I can, I can make them junk food lovers. I can make my characters beautiful or ugly, fat or skinny. I can do anything I want with them because I'm not constrained by actors that would be cast. I'm not constrained by the rules of the networks. I'm not constrained by anything other than if an editor says this is wrong or this is bad, you have to change it. So that's it. And I like to tell stories.

00:15:35 SPEAKER_01
Yeah, well, you also write articles. You've been, you know, writing for papers and magazines for a long

00:15:42 SPEAKER_02
time. Yeah, I did. And that was mostly politics. My first, you know, my first passion besides mystery writing. And, and then My husband turned out to be a really great cook and so I started this blog to talk about his cooking because I love to eat. So I started this blog and then that has blossomed into being a food writer. Now I have a career writing a food column for a magazine here in Ojai and then I got another column for another magazine, which is not food, but it's profiles like I used to write for rock and roll stars. So, yeah. So I do write nonfiction that

00:16:24 SPEAKER_02
nonfiction that kind. Do you

00:16:27 SPEAKER_00
think that your career in writing, you know, from political to rock and roll about food or whatever has helped you on the like writing and like writing an entire book process? Or do you think that it isn't helpful because usually those

00:16:47 SPEAKER_00
are shorter stories, you know. It's helpful in

00:16:51 SPEAKER_02
in some ways because both my print writing, print magazines and newspapers, were passions of mine. I mean, it was either rock and roll or it was politics. And so I I don't write about things that I'm not passionate about. And that's why there's so much food in my books. Or I had been a guest designer on HGTV, and that's why there's always these descriptions about where she is. the rooms, the decor, the artwork, the books, perhaps. It's been a wonderful marriage between the two. I don't write nonfiction like I'm not going to write a piece about Ronald Reagan or well, I might write a piece about Ronald Reagan as politics. I'm not going to write a biography of a famous person or whatever. The profiles are just fine. Articles are just fine. But to sit and delve in a nonfiction way to do Alexander the Great, for instance, I admire it. I want to read it. I have no desire to write it. And I would probably be terrible at it. But if I had to write an article about Alexander the Great, and I had 1500 words, that would be fine. So I don't know if that makes sense. But because again, that's politics.

00:18:19 SPEAKER_01
Well, I think it's the commitment and time that you have to put into a book where an article, I mean, you pump out one a month on the profiles. Yeah, but I, yeah, but

00:18:30 SPEAKER_02
but I, that's because the magazine only comes out once a month, but I do it in like three days or four days after I do the, after I do the initial interview and then read out what I want to write about. But, but yeah, no writing, writing for print, for print media is much faster. which is another reason why I like writing books. I can just get lost in a fantasy, whatever that fantasy may be. I think you relate to that, Kathleen. Do you

00:19:00 SPEAKER_01
find, I find like with what the project I'm working on now, the book I'm working on, the novel, all of a sudden the story takes a turn and I just keep following it. Like something happens and it's like some part of my brain has gone off someplace. I think that's what people call like the muse dropped in and you know, let's go down this road. And it's like, oh, that's really interesting. And I'm typing madly as it's unfolding behind my eyeballs. You know, that's

00:19:30 SPEAKER_02
that's that's so true, especially for me, the one that it became really the characters just took over was White Gloves. Those ladies, for some reason, I fell in love with, and they seemed to fell in love with my fingers, because they were dictating what I was typing. They really were. They became alive to me, and they told me what to write about. And I got a little of that in The Wrong Station as well. Because I knew these characters so well, the triangle love story was something I wanted to definitely put in there. Because I wanted her hero from the first book, Jefferson Leeds, who abandoned her at the end of the book, I wanted him to come back. And I wanted her to be conflicted over it, even though I knew that she had moved on. So she was torn between two lovers. literally and figuratively, if you will. And so that was fun. And that became alive on its own. Everything that those three did, their anger, their love, their aloofness, all of that was them telling me what they wanted.

00:20:45 SPEAKER_01
I think that, you know, your Mystery Chronicles of New York Women, White Gloves and Rob Roy, which is the second book, is set back in time. And I find it so interesting because what you cover are, you know, these women that eat alone every day at the same restaurant or a few days a week. And this young reporter comes and starts meeting with them and doesn't understand, like that was the only place that let women eat alone at one

00:21:21 SPEAKER_02
point. Yeah, back in the 30s. It takes place in two different times. Much like Fried Green Tomatoes, the book was an inspiration to me because there was the present and then there was the flashback when she was interviewing that old lady in the old age home. And my book takes place in 1968, is the present. But the flashback is in the 30s and what women

00:21:45 SPEAKER_02
and what women were, could or could not do. I mean, it's not a treatise on feminism or anything, but it, but telling a story of each of these women and why they got conned and why they ended up where they did. was because of the limitations that many or all women really had back then, because these were women that had money and they had these limitations. So that's why they were conned. But it was fascinating to me to go back because I'm a native New Yorker. I love my city, even though I don't live there and I haven't lived there for quite a few years. But it's still in my soul and in my bloodstream. And It was fascinating to me to research what Manhattan was like in the 30s. I have one character that lived in Brooklyn, and she was going to get very few places where women could get a job. And one of the places was Macy's. But Macy's was in Manhattan. How did she get into Manhattan? I had no idea. because there were no freeways or highways back then. But I found out that the Brooklyn Bridge had already been built by then in the early 30s, or I don't think it was built in the 20s, but in the 30s it was operative. And there was like a trolley that she could take into lower Manhattan, and then from Manhattan she could take a subway to Macy's. So these are fun things for me to do. There was a scene in the New York Public Library. I wasn't sure that it was even existed back then, but it did. And it's one of my favorite libraries in the world. And so I had a scene in there so I could describe it because I loved it. I mean, that's the other thing too. You can pick locations. when I, I grew up on a lake during the summer. So I wanted to throw that in this new book in white gloves. So, oh no, in this book and in, in the wrong station. So I had her boyfriend have a cottage on my lake. I mean, why not? So that's the fun thing you can do when you're writing

00:23:56 SPEAKER_00
fiction. Yeah. I, I mean, I do, I think stories have their own, heartbeat. I mean, like you might have ideas of where they want to go, but they don't always go there and you have to roll with that. Oh, you do try to bring it back to where you need it to be. But I don't know, like the last short story I wrote, it had a mind of its own, a hundred percent mind of its own. It, you know, and I, and I, I think that's one of the beauties of writing and you know why I love it so much. I I think that it's just, it's a beautiful journey to be able to put, you know, words to page and have it develop where even you as the writer is like, wait, what?

00:24:43 SPEAKER_02
Yeah, where did this come from? One of the things I used to try to, when I was a story editor in a television production, one of the reasons, one of the things I like to tell writers when I was critiquing their scripts and had to give them bad news or good news was that Many of them thought that they could write one book or one script and that was it. Oh, and it'll sell and then I'll be famous. And I had to make them understand that writing is a job. And you have to go to that job every single day, even though you're not paid. And you have to sit there and sometimes you can stare at the screen and nothing happens. And then sometimes, as we all know, you can sit at that screen and you could be there for 10 hours because it just keeps coming out and coming out and coming out. And and that's the excitement about it. I mean, there are days I don't ever have writer's block, but but there are days when I sit there and. I'm thinking, where is she going to go here? What am I going to do here? And then I say, OK, I'm going to go on Facebook for a while. I go on Facebook for a while, or when I had a pool, I used to swim. Clears your mind, and then you go back to it, and problem solved. I mean, it's a, but the discipline to write is something that many that try to be writers don't understand.

00:26:13 SPEAKER_02
I try to explain to them, if you don't have a passion to write, a real passion that you have to tell stories, then you're not a writer. You can't do it because one book or one script may sell and you may become rich and famous, but usually it's the 50th or the 70th script or book that all of a sudden hits and you

00:26:40 SPEAKER_02
can't give up.

00:26:41 SPEAKER_01
Well, there's no overnight success. Yeah. I mean, I like to tell the story of William Bernhardt, who we had on here. He's like 50, 60 books out there. He had one book. He was a lawyer. And he kept pushing that book and pushing that book. He got over 300 rejections. But when he finally got an agent, They sold it, and it went number one, and he was considered an overnight debut success. He'd been doing it 12 years. He had three other books already written, but he didn't give up. It's like you become an overnight debut success.

00:27:23 SPEAKER_02
And it's and the reason why he didn't give up is because he loved it. Yes I mean you have to love it even I mean, I love Dorothy Parker's I hate I hate I'm gonna paraphrase I hate writing but I love when I I hate writing but I love I wrote Meaning when she loved it when it was over Was out but then immediately she started again into everything that she I mean, I hate it sometimes when it's not working but yet I love it. So, and I'm- I just need to make a comment on here

00:27:56 SPEAKER_00
make a comment on here because Ilona actually said she goes on Facebook and it clears her mind and I don't believe her. Well, I get my anger out on

00:28:06 SPEAKER_02
anger out on Facebook. Things that bother me in real life. If you ever follow me on Facebook, you know where my anger is. It's not something I'll discuss in a podcast, but when I do, I mean, it's just, ah, yes. And it's like throwing bottles against a brick wall. You just break them and break them and break them, and then you feel better

00:28:33 SPEAKER_00
afterwards. That's what I do on Facebook. And that clears my mind. I just had to call that out, because Facebook isn't really known for the mind-clearing presence of the cesspool that is social media.

00:28:48 SPEAKER_02
True, it's true. And it's funny, I don't do it on Instagram. I just post pictures mostly about food, promote my books and do other things that are pleasant. But in Facebook, I get angry. It just makes me feel 100% better.

00:29:10 SPEAKER_01
That's like me when I'm stuck, I go take a shower because it's like the energy has to be changed. Yeah, well, that's when I was still living

00:29:17 SPEAKER_02
when I was still living in LA in Studio City, I would go because we had a little house, but a pool, and I would go do laps. And when you're doing laps and you're counting the laps, it just empties your mind, totally empties your mind. And the water is so soothing. And then you get up, you get out, you get dressed, go back to your computer and start writing again. Yeah, that's fun part of

00:29:45 SPEAKER_01
that's fun part of it. So you have now your book is coming out The Wrong Station on August 21st and it's available for pre-order now? I'm sorry, yes. Your book is available for pre-order?

00:30:00 SPEAKER_02
Yes, it's ordered and I will be sending out alerts to everybody and putting it on social media that they can pre-order it. And whatever else my publicist tells me I should do. What you need to do, too, though, is that you

00:30:18 SPEAKER_01
is that you have some e-book promotions on Freeze Frame so that you can catch up and get to know Lorna, the character. Yes. They start the first full week of August. I think that's August 5th or 6th. August 6th and then 5th. Yeah, because the 4th is my birthday

00:30:38 SPEAKER_02
and it's a Sunday. Oh yeah, that's right. Happy birthday. Happy

00:30:41 SPEAKER_01
Happy anniversary. Thank

00:30:44 SPEAKER_02
you, thank you. I'll see you on my birthday because we'll be at the wrap party.

00:30:49 SPEAKER_01
Oh, yeah, that's true. But when you so you have that. So those are 99 cents. So if people want to go online, it's up on Amazon, I believe Barnes and Noble to there'll be 99 cents. If not, I know it's on Amazon. And then So you can download that, and then you can also do White Gloves and Rob Roy, which I really think captures what I liked about it was these women each were very different, but they were all in the same place, but they weren't together. It was interesting in how they joined together and started revealing their secrets to this young reporter. But it's really, really an interesting read. I think you'll enjoy it. And then, of course, on the 21st, your new book will be coming out. So that will be fun to get in and see

00:31:42 SPEAKER_00
and see what's going on. And that one's e-book will be free for the first week. Oh, yes, that's

00:31:46 SPEAKER_01
free for

00:31:49 SPEAKER_00
that's right. So the first week, the wrong station will be free for the first week as an e-book on the books. Yes. Yeah. So I did. Right. Yeah. Great. For five days.

00:31:55 SPEAKER_02
as an

00:32:01 SPEAKER_00
And then it will be $0.99 for the second week. So from the 22nd to whatever is two weeks from that, you can get it as an e-book, you know, pretty cheap. Yes, I would say.

00:32:16 SPEAKER_02
I would

00:32:18 SPEAKER_01
Well, ALorna, thank you very much for joining us today and telling us all about Freeze Frame and your new book, The Wrong Station. I really love the cover on the book. It's a photograph you had, right, of the Bayside Station? Yes. A girlfriend of

00:32:35 SPEAKER_02
of mine many years ago, on the way out to Fire Island, took that picture as she was going through the station. And that was one of the I don't know, impetus or whatever to give me the start to tell this story because I had been wanting to tell the story, make up a story about getting over the wrong station because that actually happened to me when I was in my early 20s going home from a date. and on the, you know, the, of the Long Island Railroad and I got off at the wrong station at three o'clock in the morning. I didn't discover anything nefarious, but,

00:33:16 SPEAKER_02
but, but, and I always said, this would make a great beginning of a book. And so when I got the photograph, when my girlfriend Judy sent me the photograph, I said, okay, I have to start writing it now. So. That's great. Yeah. Great.

00:33:30 SPEAKER_01
Yeah. Great. Okay, it's Ilonajoysorry.com if you want to learn about the three books. And we'll have up on talkingbookpublishing.today. We'll have all kinds of information, but wherever you've downloaded this, you'll be able to go and find her. So thank you, Ilona, for joining us. Well, thank you for having me.