Stan Schatt grew up in Phoenix, Arizona and now resides in Carlsbad, California. He has written thirty-five books on a wide variety of subjects ranging from fiction to technology. He is co-author of Journey to a Different Dimension, an Amazon bestseller. He also authored Egypt Rising, a YA novel focusing on a teen’s experience in Egypt at the time of the Egyptian revolution of 2011. This novel contains paranormal elements including a secret buried under the Sphinx. The paranormal mystery Silent Partner is Schatt’s latest novel.
He has led several careers including futurist and executive for many of the world’s leading technology market research firms, police department administrator, autopsy assistant, software trainer, Telecommunications Department Chairman, and English professor. He taught at Tokyo University as a Fulbright exchange professor. His non-fiction includes books on such diverse topics as strategies for changing careers for a green industry job, studies of Michael Connelly and Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., network and data communications technology, telecommunications, computer programming.
www.stanschatt.com
http://www.pen-l.com/SilentPartner.html
@stanschatt
Detective “Frankie” Ryan tracks a sadistic killer while the press attacks her as a feminist vigilante who takes the law into her own hands. The only one who can help her is a tabloid reporter who can’t decide if he’s a psychic who sees ghosts or is just going insane.
As they search for the killer in a sunny seacoast city’s seamy S&M underside, they begin to question everything they know about sexual identity. How can they find the killer before he strikes again when he defies any description?
Silent Partner is a paranormal mystery, a police procedure novel with a female detective that will remind you of Harry Bosch, a ghost story that suggests what lies beyond death, and a comic look at a tabloid where the “truth” is whatever sells.
Q) What inspired you to write this story?
I tend to go on reading jags where I read everything I can find by a writer I like. I would up reading everything Michael Connelly has written including his novels, short stories, and even the articles he wrote as a crime reporter. I became so immersed in his work that I even published a reader’s guide to his works. I then began to wonder what would it be like if there were female detective very much like Harry Bosch. What would she do? How would she be accepted in an almost all male world of a metropolitan police department? I also began playing with the idea of pairing her with another outsider, a psychic reporter for a tabloid that has actual psychic abilities.
Q) How long did it take you to write?
It probably took me around six months including all the revisions. A novel never really is completely done because each time you go over it, you think of just one more touch you can add, one word you could change to make the sentence read better.
Q) What is your favorite thing about writing?
I love the ability to create new worlds and new characters and to tell stories. I’ve always enjoyed doing that. It’s the creativity and opportunity to express myself that makes writing entrancing to me.
Q) What is your least favorite thing about writing?
Well, it’s the isolation. You have to commit yourself to several hours a day of working by yourself with minimal interruptions. Obviously it’s also difficult to deal with rejections from agents and publishers.
Q) If you could be any famous person for one day, who would you be and why?
I was a college professor a long time ago before going into many other career directions, so I know the conventional answer would be some famous writer, but that’s not my answer.
It would be fun to be Michael Jordan in his prime and know you’re better than anyone you play against and to know that you never are afraid of failure. Michael always wanted to take the last shot even if he might miss. Since I’ve never been a good athlete, it would be fun to walk and play in MJ’s shoes back in the 1980s.
Q) What is the oldest thing in your fridge and how old is it?
You mean besides me when the door is open? I’d say probably the lettuce I keep telling myself I need to eat each day to remain healthy.
Q) What can readers expect from you in the future?
Lots more novels in different genres. I already have completed the sequel to Silent Partner (tentatively entitled A Bullet for the Ghost Whisperer). I soon will publish Return to a Different Dimension, the sequel to the Amazon best selling children’s adventure, Journey to a Different Dimension. I’ve already completed my part in a book I’m co-authoring with Brianna Schatt entitled Jane Blond, International Detective; it’s a middle grade mystery. I’m also a third done with a science fiction novel about an ex-SEAL to falls in love with a beautiful extraterrestrial who is far more than she appears.
