READ CHAPTERS 4-9 IN THE BOOK, THEN ENJOY THIS

As an author of domestic suspense, I often rely on mundane, every day sources to generate additional tension for my characters. You know what I mean—those stressful little things that really get on our nerves, making a bad day even worse.

One such incident here is the magnetic note pad falling off the fridge every time Cam closes the door. I used to have a magnetic fridge frame with my son’s artwork that did just that, but I hated to give it up. (Now our fridge door is a wooden cupboard panel so no more magnets, etc—problem solved!) Not only did I use this device to add to Cam’s stress, but I needed Mike to see the notepad. It worked beautifully.

A personal pet peeve of mine appears here in the scene involving the supermarket cashier who—when Cam is in a frantic rush to get to her daughter—needs to call a manager over to void something and merely turns on the light above her register and waits endlessly for the manager to notice the light, rather than calling out verbally. This has happened to me before and it drives me nuts!

Of course trivial incidents like this are not the least bit frightening. But when you’re writing a suspense novel, you have to continually turn up the heat on your main character. I like to use every imaginable source to ratchet up the tension with every page.

Also, readers identify with a heroine to whom they can relate. It’s easier for them to put themselves in Cam’s shoes when they can think, “Hey! That happens to me, too!”

I had fun writing the scene that takes place where Mike is in the Manhattan deli and the clueless tourists are speculating about the origins of the sandwich names. One night at dinner last spring, I was telling my husband and children about the scene as I was in the midst of writing it. The three of them—being die-hard Yankees and Giants fans—helped me come up with the “grilled Thurman Muenster” and the “B-LT”! !”

Another scene that demanded my husband’s help (although I didn’t exactly ask for it) was the one in which Mike’s listening to the ballgame on the radio. I had written what I thought was convincing sports announcer dialogue. Um, guess not. When my husband read the finished manuscript, he snorted, picked up a pencil, and started crossing out and rewriting. The result is the very realistic dialogue you see here. Although even I have listened to enough Yankees games to quote John Sterling’s “It is high...it is far...it is GONE!” and “The Yankees win...thhhheeeeee Yankees win!”

Any writer will tell you that inspiration is drawn from past experiences, in bits and pieces that pop up sometimes where you least expect them.

At one point in these chapters, Cam thinks back to opening up their beach cottage in the past and finding a bat inside. This stems from one of my morbid fears—and something that has happened to me many times in the past. My childhood home, a drafty old Victorian, has had its share of bats in the belfry, and sometimes they’d make their way down from the third floor rafters—or fly in at dusk when someone held the door open too long. It usually happened late in spring, and that’s when I was writing this book, so it was on my mind! Few things make me shudder more than feeling the whisper of bat wings on my face in the dark of night—and unfortunately, that’s happened to me before.

When I wrote about Cam sitting in her sunken sunroom, wistfully remembering the days when Tess’s toys filled the blanket chest, I was channeling my own nostalgia as my children grow older. How well I remember stepping over plastic toys and board books every time I walked through the living room...and how I miss those cozy, chaotic days as a mother of young children who were always right where I could see them: under my feet.

In one scene, I made reference to Tess not wanting her parents to take down her wooden swing set so they could put a utility shed on the spot. I wrote that the morning after my husband and I posed the same thing to our children—and were met with a resounding “no way!” If you read Mark’s blog on this site, you know that my brother-in-law carted it away in pieces a few weeks ago, after septic work rendered our beautiful yard a mud pit.

Speaking of which, last spring when I wrote the scene in which the sorry state of Cam’s flower gardens reflects the sad state of her marriage, I was lamenting a similar scenario in my own garden. Not that my marriage was in trouble by any means! But in the good old days, I used to spend every May in garden nurseries and crawling around my flower beds, and our yard was in full bloom by June as a result. Three years ago, I lost my mom in May and that year, the annual beds were barren as summer got underway. The May after that, my grandfather passed away, and I was extra busy with work, and the same thing happened. Last May, I was on a book tour much of the month, and our little nephew was staying with us for a few weeks—ditto. And the perennial beds were full of weeds.

It’s May again and I’m busier than ever. But this year, I swear I’m going to get to a nursery by Memorial day and plant some petunias and geraniums. No more sad, empty annual beds in MY yard. Poor Cam.

Poor Cam again—her pregnancy hormones and food aversions are making life difficult for her at this stage of the story. I have been in that boat twice myself. While Cam can’t stand the sight or smell of chocolate, which she usually loves, I personally never really care for chocolate. But I do love Italian food, which didn’t sit well with me when I was pregnant with my boys. And I definitely became forgetful.

Here, I make the most of Cam’s pregnancy and use her forgetfulness to ratchet up the suspense again—did she or didn’t she set the alarm? Has someone really been in the house, or do hormones have her imagining things?

Her hormones also have her paranoid. There is a scene in this segment where Cam is frantically calling out to Tess in her room, and thinks she’s vanished because there’s no answer. As it turns out, she’s plugged into her iPod. I’m not pregnant, but this has happened to me a few times now that my boys have iPods. I’ll go through the house shouting for them, worried, only to find them safe, sound, and oblivious, blissfully tuned into their music.

There are several scenes here that are written from the viewpoint of the kidnapped child, Leah Roby. These were not originally in the book. After reading the manuscript, my editor, John, asked me to add a few darker scenes in her viewpoint. I was reluctant, because that sort of thing is emotionally difficult for me to write, as a mom. But I always trust his judgment, and in the end, I think it made for a much stronger, more emotional book.

As it happened, John gave me his manuscript feedback early in August, on the day before we boarded an Amtrak train in Washington State, headed for Chicago. We had been traveling for three weeks at that point, in Oregon, Washington, Alaska and the Yukon. From Chicago we were flying to western New York and wouldn’t be home for another week. The publisher’s production schedule was tight, which meant that I would have to do the rewrite from the train.

Thus, those scenes were written as the four of us spent three days together cooped up in a tiny train compartment the size of our bathroom. No escape--there had been a problem and Amtrak couldn’t attach the lounge or snack bar cars—meaning there was literally NOWHERE for us to go while on board, other than our compartment, the bathroom, or the concrete platform at the stops (most were one or two minutes, the longest were twenty tops).

Plus, there was only one electrical outlet in the compartment, which meant that when I was on my laptop, the boys couldn’t watch their DVD players or charge their computer games. Thank goodness they are good kids and very used to traveling—via car, plane, ship, and now train. My husband had decks of cards, and we had plenty of books with us. That is how the three of them entertained themselves as I feverishly did my rewrite for three days—with all of us sitting within arm’s length of each other on the compartment’s one long seat!

Needless to say, those new scenes didn’t feel organic as I wrote them. I never re-read them after sending them in, either—the book was already in production at that point. Luckily, John really liked what I had done and thought they worked.

I finally just reread the scenes today while going through the book taking notes for this read along. I was glad to see that they really do work!

Perhaps the most important thing I want you to notice about these five chapters is the introduction of Lucinda Sloan. She will become the heroine of the sequel, DYING LIGHT...so you’ll definitely be hearing a lot more about—and from—her!

Titles are hard for me—more on that later. Sometimes, I write the whole book before I have a title—sometimes plucking it from a phrase in the narrative. Sometimes, it’s the opposite—in which case, I like to work the title phrase into the narrative somewhere. I knew, as I was writing this book, that it would be called DYING BREATH.

Today’s contest question: on which three page numbers (leading up to chapter nine) is the title phrase (“DYING BREATH” or “DYING BREATHS”) worked into the narrative? The first person to post the correct answer below will win a WCS coffee mug and coffee!
(Remember only members can enter this contest. So if you're a member make sure you're signed in. If you're not a member, click here to join the Wendy Corsi Staub Community and take place in this and other great contests and experiences!)

Tomorrow, we’re going to read chapters 10-12. See you then!

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