Thriller lovers, this next one has all the makings of a bestseller: Amnesia, a family ripped apart by the unknown, ancient cults and ancient Egyptian gods, genetic engineering and cutting-edge science...it's all a big mystery ready to be unraveled. In Malaysia. How did this book come to be? And what else has this author written? Meet the mind behind this one:

Jay Hartlove.

1. Where’s home?

Concord, California

2. What is something few people know about you?

I love to cook. People say I’m pretty good at it.

 3. What’s the name of your most recent book?  If you had to sum it up in 30 words or less, what would you say?

Daughter Cell is a medical thriller about cloning that explores the nature of the soul. It is a story about too much power driven by too much passion.

4. What has inspired you to write this book? 

This story resulted from a collision between Frankenstein and the loss of a child. Frankenstein is one of those great archetypal myths that makes you question your own view of the value of life. I have two daughters, one eight and one turning thirteen, and wanting to protect them is big part of who I am. Once I set these two concepts side by side, the puzzle pieces pretty much snapped themselves together. What if someone who had discovered a Frankenstein-like secret then had his own discovery used against him with the result of losing a child. At first is seems like a wild, out-of-the-blue idea, but it came together naturally.

5. Can you talk about the series a little? Is it a stand-alone or a series meant to be read in order?

Daughter Cell is number two in a series of three. To avoid “middle episode disease,” The Chosen and Daughter Cell are written as sequential but separate adventures of the psychiatrist detective Sanantha Mauwad. The third book in the series is called Isis Rising. Sanantha is the detective in all three books. In Isis Rising, the reader discovers the overarching storyline that ties all three books together.

6. I can’t help but notice the title of the series, the Isis Rising Trilogy. Can you explain this title?  Does it have anything to do with the god from SG-1?

Not necessarily the Stargate version, but the original ancient Egyptian goddess. The series postulates that the gods of ancient Egypt are alive today only disguised as the gods of Haitian Voodoo. This is set up in the first book The Chosen. The second book only touches on this connection, but it is very much a part of the third book, which is called Isis Rising. Not to give too much away, but Desiree Macklin survives the cloning plot in Daughter Cell in part because of a divine intervention by Isis, in the form of the Voodoo goddess Erzulie. Desiree’s connection to Isis is at the heart of the third book.

7. Do you naturally gravitate toward thrillers? Or is it a genre you admire, thus you have worked hard so that you can write thrillers well? Or both?

I enjoy and write in other genres as well. I have always been attracted to speculative fiction, whether science fiction, fantasy, horror, or action adventure. “Thrillers” is the genre of danger. Science fiction makes you wonder what if. Horror takes you out of your comfort zone to scare you. Fantasy creates a sense of wonder. Thrillers make you glad your life is not as dangerous as this story. So when I set out to write this series as thrillers, my only question was how big a speculative element I was going to play. There is a supernatural/spiritual spine running through the stories. The characters are almost continuously in danger, but they are always informed by and in touch with their beliefs as they face these dangers, especially when the dangers take on a supernatural or otherworldly nature.

8. How do you ensure your book is fast-paced?

I plot extensively ahead of the actual writing so I plan what information I will feed my characters and the reader when, and what’s going to happen for the characters to deal with. To be thrilling, the experience has to be personal. So you have to help your reader live in the moment. On the other hand, you can’t let description get in the way of the action. I have found a balance between enough description that you can be there, and enough action to make being there exciting.

9. Do you spend a lot of time on research versus writing? What was it like doing research for this novel versus the others in the series?

Yes, I love the research. I have a packrat mentality that collects lots of odd bits of information and keeps it all for use somewhere eventually. I have a lot of fun finding coincidental connections between unusual things across the world, and theorizing how they are not coincidences at all. I made it my brand: Dark Connections Revealed. The research for this book was different because I needed to get the science right. If you’re going to write a story about a cloning breakthrough made by a leading geneticist, then you have to know exactly what was known at the time the story takes place, which in this case was 2005. So I had the book fact checked and edited by a tumor biologist and a critical care nurse. Working science fiction only inches out in front of actual science was a lot of fun.

10.   Have you ever been to Malaysia? Why Malaysia?

No, I have never been to Malaysia, although I have spoken at length with people who grew up there. Malaysia is this amazing melting pot of cultures and economic interests. There are nine different ethnicities all jammed in on one another, all competing for a chance at economic success. This story is about a collision of ancient ideas, universal passions, and cutting edge science. What better setting than a pressure-cooker island where anything can happen?

11. What was the oddest thing you ever had to research while writing?

Research only looks odd when you’re done and you look back and realized what you have uncovered. The religions, the poisons, the history, the magic, the languages, the science, none of it looks odd while you’re digging. I got an invitation from a publicity group that suggested one way to build PR is to take the factual material you uncover while writing fiction, and bill yourself as an expert. It said talk shows will let you have air time to talk about your expertise and then your brand will sell your books. I was left asking myself which talk shows would want me to talk about how to extract information from a hostage using psychosurgery, or how to booby trap a victim’s chi meridian system to execute a heart attack if a protected piece of information is remembered.

12. What was the most challenging part you have come across while writing?

Making the time. With a full time career and children, I do most of my writing after hours. It tests my commitment almost continuously.

13. When did you first consider yourself a writer?

In the late 1970s when I started playing fantasy role playing games, and decided to write one of my own. Supergame, which lets people play comic book superheroes, was first published in 1980. After several years of play testing and selling the game on the road, and writing hundreds of short stories game mastering, I realized how much I enjoy writing stories. I finished by first novel in 1985.

14. Is there anything that helps you write?  (Any specific place, snacks or background noise?)

Music is a huge inspiration to me. Sometimes if I just can’t seem to capture an emotion or a plot twist or a character motivation, I will seek out music to get me into the right zone. I wore this on my sleeve in Daughter Cell, having the protagonist Randolph Macklin find solace in his boomer classic rock and roll.

15. What tips do you have for aspiring writers?  What have you learned along the way?

Writing is just words on paper that are easily changed. Even words you know you are going to change are better than a blank page. The act of choosing words to write will focus your thoughts better than any navel gazing. Seeing the words you have written will make it easier to edit than trying to get it right the first time. All writing is an iterative process. The first draft is never the finished product. No actor ever tackled a role without rehearsal. No writer should ever expect to sit down and type a finished story. So just write.

My seminar on how to motivate yourself to finish a novel is a free download on my blog HERE.

Good luck!

16.   What’s next for you?  Any current/future writing project?

I have the third book, Isis Rising, completely plotted out, with a 35 page outline. I am still working on whether I have covered certain themes correctly, since this is the book that wraps up the series. So I am taking a break before I start on the prose, and in the meantime I am writing a romantic fantasy online in serial form called Mermaid Steel. I’m 75 pages into that book and having great fun with it. I post chapters as I finish them on my blog and on Facebook. I also have an ongoing project which is a musical stage play called Snow White and the Mirror’s Revenge. It is the sequel to the Grimm’s fairy tale that shows what comes next, and in doing so, it explains many of the characters’ motivations in the first story. My musicians have just finished writing the last of the melodies to my lyrics, so the libretto is just about done. Next we record an album, then we seek a producer. It’s very exciting.

MORE ABOUT JAY HARTLOVE:

Jay Hartlove has been writing professionally for over 30 years, starting in the gaming industry with Supergame in 1980. He writes banking compliance procedures by day, he blogs about spirituality, and he teaches seminars on the craft of writing. His short fiction has appeared twice in the Hugo Award winning Drink Tank. The Chosen is Jay's first published novel. Daughter Cell, which is a medical thriller and the next in the Isis Rising trilogy, will be available from Damnation Books on September 1, 2013. The third and final of the Sanantha Mauwad mysteries is called Isis Rising, and should be out in 2015.

Author Links (blog, FB, Twitter, etc.)

Blog

Facebook (Author Page)

Twitter

Facebook (The Chosen)

Facebook (Mermaid Steel)

Facebook (Snow White - The Mirror's Revenge)

His book:

To read more about his book, click HERE.