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SINNERS AND SAINTS
will be coming out in paperback
in December. St. Martin's has let me add an author's
note to the front, which will read: Sinners
and Saints made its hardcover debut in August
2005 exactly five days before a storm was spotted in
the ocean that was later named Katrina. I obviously
wrote Sinners before
the hurricane. The New Orleans I picture is the New
Orleans that was and will be again. The city is very
alive, the citizens determined to bring it back to the
colorful, generous, profoundly unique city it was. If
you love New Orleans as much as I do and can’t wait
to see it fully risen again, you can help by donating
to Habitat to Humanity.P.O. Box 6439, Americus, GA 31709-6439
for Hurricane Katrina relief…
Or you could simply go enjoy
the city. It’s there waiting for you.
So, obviously I have a special
place in my heart for New Orleans. I made many friends
there—who are, as I write this, recovering—and
many more memories I will cherish. Many of them I list
below in my research section. Enjoy. And when I get
back from Ireland, I'll add the research I just did
for Daughters of the Myth.
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Forensic nurse Chastity Byrnes is trying to
put her past behind her. It has been ten years
since her actions shattered her family and sent
her into exile. Ten years since she's seen her
sister Faith. But now, Faith needs her help. She's
missing from her upscale home in New Orleans,
and Chastity has to find her. Along the way she
battles her own demons in a city where forensics
is an old boy's club and a woman can find trouble
in her sleep. She has to investigate fertility
clinics, the powers of St. Roch, and the mysteries
of voodoo to find her sister. As a hurricane threatens
New Orleans, Chastity puts more than her life
on the line to rescue her sister from the threat
that stalks them both...
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| FORENSIC FACTIOD
OF THE WEEK: |
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One of the newest positions in trauma rooms is
the *Forensic Nurse Liaison*, who is reponsible
for collecting evidence, identifying and assisting
victims of abuse, being conversent with the laws
on interrogation and interview(if a patient is
a witness to a crime, do the police have the right
to interview him in the ER? It varies jurisdiction
by jurisdiction), names the unidentified and works
with the coroner or medical examiner to clear
deaths. In other words, any task taht would interface
with the forensic system is the forensic nurse's
responsibility. Chastity Byrnes in *Sinners and
Saints* is such a nurse.
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| Research
for SINNERS AND SAINTS |
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So, let's see. For Head
Games I went to Death Investigator School.
For With a Vengeance
I went to SWAT camp. Do you get the idea that
research is getting to be almost as much fun as
the book itself? Well, it sure was in New Orleans.
Not that I didn't work hard. I drove and walked
over that entire city and beyond, crossing the
Pontchartain Causeway—all 26 miles of it—at
least three times.
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| Doing
very serious research at Jean Lafitte's Blacksmith
Shop with forensic friends Gretchen Grisbaum,
Gwen Haugen and Kathy Diebold. I wish I could
remember the piano player's name.
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By the time I finished,
I knew more about the city than one of the ex-homicide
detectives who took me around. I sat in dark bars
and climbed around cemeteries and drove one rainy
day through the Garden District with Rexanne Becnel
and , who were gracious enough to tell me the
social side of New Orleans("Where did you go to
high school?").
I had my palm read at
least five times in Jackson Square (why do I always
get the "you're in a time of change" reading?
You'd think at least one of those people would
have promised that I was going to be rich and
successful soon). I went to an autopsy and toured
the real Charity hospital ER and morgue, where
JFK was filmed. I listened to cops and coroners
and forensic nurse liaisons tell stories. I ate
and I ate and I ate. And then one night after
I'd spent time at a bar out by Lake Ponchartrain,
my friend Dr. Karen Ross and I took a cab back
to town. And since my lead male character—the
lovely James Guidry—is, in fact, a cab driver—and
none of my other contacts down there seemed to
know any—I asked this cabbie if he'd mind
telling me about his job. It was 2:00AM at the
time, and the streets were pretty quiet. My cabbie's
name was Cristophe, and he was handsome and smooth
and very interesting. And the best part was, as
we were traversing that sleeping city, he turned
to me and said, "Ya know, I can't possibly tell
you everything I need to. How 'bout I take you
to my favorite restaurant, and we'll watch the
sun come up?"
And we did just that.
I took my notes on the paper place mat in the
little all night restaurant in the Fauberg Merigny,
and Cristophe told me about his life and his beliefs
and his background. He even explained about the
saints on his dashboard, who weren't quite saints
after all...which, of course, appears in the book.
Yeah, New Orleans is like
that. Everybody had a story, and every story was
fascinating.
And that doesn't even
tell you about the research I did into fertility
clinics or hurricanes (want to know about the
Saffir-Simpson Scale, and why the west coast of
Africa is so important?) And voodoo (DON'T get
people started on that. Believe me.). And the
ongoing research I do on forensic nursing and
forensics. But that's another page for another
time....
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