Rebecca Forster Featured Author
December 7, 2019 by Rebecca Forster in category Featured Author of the Month tagged as December Feature Author, Josie Bates, Lost Witness, new release, Rebecca Forster., The Witness Series
She marketed a world-class spa when it was still called a gym, did business in China before there were western toilettes at the Great Wall and mucked around with the sheep to find out exactly how her client’s fine wool clothing was manufactured. Then Rebecca wrote her first book and found her passion. Now, over twenty-five books later, she is a USA Today and Amazon bestselling author and writes full-time, penning thrillers that explore the emotional impact of the justice system. She earned her B.A. at Loyola, Chicago and her MBA at Loyola, Los Angeles. Rebecca has taught the Business of Creativity at University of California Long Beach Writers Certificate Program, UCLA and UC Irvine extension. Married to a Los Angeles Superior Court judge, she is the mother of two grown sons and spends her free time traveling, sewing, and playing tennis.
December 1st sees the release of Rebecca’s newest novel Lost Witness the eighth in the Josie Bates Witness.
It’s two in the morning and an aging cargo ship lies off the Port of Los Angeles. Deep in the bowels of the vessel, an important man is dead and the woman who killed him is mortally wounded. On shore another man staggers out of the sea determined to save the woman before she dies or the ship sails. Exhausted and terrified, he goes to the only person he trusts to help, Josie Bates. He brings with him a history she can’t ignore, a problem that seems insurmountable, and a plea she can’t refuse. But Josie is up against international law, maritime justice, a Port Authority that doesn’t want anything to get in the way of profit, the U.S. Coast Guard who dances to the tune of politics and a captain who swears the people in question were never on his ship. With the clock ticking, Josie becomes ever more desperate to prove the woman is real and get her safely ashore. What Josie doesn’t know is that the sands of time that are running out may be her own.
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Rebecca Forster December Featured Author
December 1, 2019 by Rebecca Forster in category Featured Author of the Month tagged as December Feature Author, Josie Bates, Lost Witness, new release, Rebecca Forster., The Witness Series
She marketed a world-class spa when it was still called a gym, did business in China before there were western toilettes at the Great Wall and mucked around with the sheep to find out exactly how her client’s fine wool clothing was manufactured. Then Rebecca wrote her first book and found her passion. Now, over twenty-five books later, she is a USA Today and Amazon bestselling author and writes full-time, penning thrillers that explore the emotional impact of the justice system. She earned her B.A. at Loyola, Chicago and her MBA at Loyola, Los Angeles. Rebecca has taught the Business of Creativity at University of California Long Beach Writers Certificate Program, UCLA and UC Irvine extension. Married to a Los Angeles Superior Court judge, she is the mother of two grown sons and spends her free time traveling, sewing, and playing tennis.
December 1st sees the release of Rebecca’s newest novel Lost Witness the eighth in the Josie Bates Witness.
It’s two in the morning and an aging cargo ship lies off the Port of Los Angeles. Deep in the bowels of the vessel, an important man is dead and the woman who killed him is mortally wounded. On shore another man staggers out of the sea determined to save the woman before she dies or the ship sails. Exhausted and terrified, he goes to the only person he trusts to help, Josie Bates. He brings with him a history she can’t ignore, a problem that seems insurmountable, and a plea she can’t refuse. But Josie is up against international law, maritime justice, a Port Authority that doesn’t want anything to get in the way of profit, the U.S. Coast Guard who dances to the tune of politics and a captain who swears the people in question were never on his ship. With the clock ticking, Josie becomes ever more desperate to prove the woman is real and get her safely ashore. What Josie doesn’t know is that the sands of time that are running out may be her own.
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Q: What Do You Say To Pushy Readers?
November 15, 2019 by Rebecca Forster in category The Write Life by Rebecca Forster tagged as Craft, gratitude, preorder, The Witness Series, writers block
A: Thank you .
Lost Witness is in preorder. It will publish December 1 and I am stunned that this book is a reality. To explain why we need to rewind five years.
In October 2014 Dark Witness, the seventh – and I thought last – book in The Witness Series was published. Originally the first book, Hostile Witness, was presented to publishers as a stand alone novel. When an editor at Penguin/Putnam offered a three-book contract I accepted even though I had never written a series.
Silent Witness and Privileged Witness followed. In the three years it took the publisher to bring those books to market editorial direction changed hands, the marketplace started shrinking and the series progressed no further. My rights to the three books were reverted and, after writing for twenty-five years, I thought that perhaps it was time for me to kick back and retire. That was when my husband said: “Have you heard of this thing called Kindle.”
Fast forward to a career second wind as an indie author. I republished the first three books of The Witness Series and they spent over two years on Amazon’s thriller bestseller lists in the U.S. and UK. Over 2 million copies of the series have been downloaded to date. I continued to add books and finally penned Dark Witness. Not one for bow endings, I left one character walking into the sunset assuming my readers would imagine an ending for him to finish the story.
For five years while I wrote two more series – The Bailey Devlin Trilogy and Finn O’Brien Crime Thrillers – I got emails from readers demanding to know when the next Josie Bates book would be published. They wanted me to write the ending or the next chapter in these characters’ lives. They wanted the adventure to come from my head, not theirs.
I wasn’t ignoring these pleas; I simply had a horrible case of writer’s block. I loved Josie and Hannah, Billy and Archer, but I was terrified of making a big decision about their lives. I was also afraid that I didn’t have the skill to reclaim their unique voices.
At the beginning of this year I received one more email about Josie and the reader convinced me that it was time to meet the challenge of the next book head on. At first the dialogue was creaky, and the plot meandered. One day inspiration hit. I suddenly knew how to begin the book. I knew the end of the story. I knew the last words that had to be spoken. I had been ‘lost’ and because of the readers insistence I found my voice. In doing so I reclaimed Josie’s wisdom, I heard Hannah’s compassion, Billy’s unwavering devotion, and Archer’s steady guidance. I was home again and it felt darn good.
I want to thank the readers who pushed, prodded and cajoled. I didn’t know that I was missing Josie Bates, but the readers did. This Thanksgiving I am thankful to them for making Lost Witness possible.
PREORDER LOST WITNESS now ($.99) and join over 2 million fans of The Witness Series.
0 1 Read moreLost and Found
October 15, 2019 by Rebecca Forster in category The Write Life by Rebecca Forster, Writing tagged as Craft, experience, fans
For the last year I have been obsessed with one word: lost.
One of the reasons is that I have been working on a book entitled Lost Witness. I didn’t choose to write this book; I did it because fans of The Witness Series wanted to know what happened to Billy. After Dark Witness, my intent was to let readers imagine the next chapter in my character’s life for themselves. The more they asked, the more I retreated from the responsibility of making those creative decisions. There were a hundred permutations of the relationships the readers wanted me to address, a thousand ways I could disappoint the people who had invested so much of their reading time in Josie Bates and friends. In short, the fear of disappointing them, myself, and, most of all, these characters we all love created a most fearful case of writers block—and then life stepped in to completely paralyze me.
First, my fabulous, incredible, 95 year-old mom moved to Missouri to be near more of my brothers and sisters, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. This was not something she wanted to do; it was something she needed to do. She now lives in a beautiful place where she is safe and secure, with at least three of her children seeing her everyday – something I couldn’t do no matter how much I wanted to. I am keenly aware that she felt a terrible loss when her house was sold and she left dear friends here in California. Her move left a hole in my heart, too. There was the sadness that comes with this kind of separation even though I knew the decision was for the best. While this was going on I lost seven friends. Some were closer than others, but all of their deaths were surprising. Six of them were my peers, and that knowledge alone brings a huge reality check with it.
Lost Witness became a symbol of twelve months of upheaval, of real life stopping my work dead in its tracks. Days, weeks, and months came and went and I thought I would never write again. I didn’t know how to answer readers who wrote asking about my progress so I stayed silent. I visited my mom; she visited me. I went to memorial services, and I shed a few tears, and I read books, but I didn’t work until one really good day. That day I talked to my mom and she was excited about a lecture she had heard, she had gone to dinner with a new friend, my sister had taken her on an adventure, and my brothers had stopped by for Margaritas.
I visited the widow of my dear friend, Richard, and we talked about his books and remembered what a wonderful man he had been. Part way through that day I had an epiphany about the book that was languishing on my computer. It was time to move forward, not move on.
I began to work on Lost Witness in earnest. I heard Josie, Archer, Hannah and Billy’s voices clearly in my head. There would be no bow ending, but that was okay. I don’t think the readers expect that either because life isn’t perfect. Life is hopeful and exciting. It is about resiliency, and courage, and memories of lives well lived, and about loving those who remain.
I am so thankful to the readers who made me realize that I had somehow done more than write books—I had created lives they cared about. They felt a loss when Josie’s voice suddenly went silent, when Billy hadn’t been accounted for, when Hannah was alone. It took a while for me to understand what they were telling me, but I finally got it. Loss is never the end, it’s simply the beginning of another part of life. It doesn’t matter if those lives we care about are real or imagined, we still want to know what happens next.
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Sister Carmelita Put the Fear of God in Me
September 15, 2019 by Rebecca Forster in category The Write Life by Rebecca Forster tagged as Catholic School, inspiration, Suspense, writing
Rebecca is swamped today, so we’re featuring one of her more popular posts from our archives.
The day I stood in the choir loft surrounded by my fourth grade peers I had no idea that I was about to learn a lesson in suspense, terror, fear, retribution and resolution that would lead me to a career as a thriller author.
The day was hot, air-conditioning was unheard of, and we wore our itchy, ugly, brown wool Catholic school uniforms year ‘round to save our parents money. I was a very good girl. I never drew attention to myself, folded my hands with fingers pointing heavenward when I prayed, picked up trash on the playground and helped pass out papers in class. But that day, I made a blunder that put me in Sister Carmelita’s crosshairs. As she raised her arms and positioned her baton in anticipation of another rousing chorus of a hymn I have long forgotten, I rolled my eyes. Yep, I rolled them to the back of my little ten-year-old head in frustration and exhaustion.
Sister Carmelita cut her own my way. I realize now that she had mastered the art of eye cutting because she couldn’t move her head given her the box-like wimple. Everyone stopped breathing. No one knew what I had done, only that I had done something very, very bad.
“Miss Forster.” Sister Carmelita’s voice was modulated appropriately for God’s house. “Wait after choir.”
My stomach lurched. I felt light headed. I was doomed.
Sister Carmelita is long gone. During her time on earth she faced changes in her church and her life, but I doubt she ever knew how that day changed me. So, if you’re listening, Sister, I want you to know that, 30 years later, that moment sealed my fate. I spend my days writing thrillers, trying to recapture the exquisite sense of suspense I experienced that day. Here is what you taught me:
1) Less is More: Your understated notice of me, the glitter in your eye, the sound of your voice was more intriguing, more compelling, more enthralling than screaming, railing or ranting.
2) Timing is Everything: All 29 of my classmates knew I was in trouble. I knew I was in trouble. I even knew why I was in trouble (disrespecting you, God, choir practice, country, family and all living creatures with a roll of my eyes), yet you didn’t nip things in the bud with a mere instantaneous admonition. My comeuppance was exquisitely timed. You threw in an extra hymn to extend practice, studiously ignored me, meticulously folded your sheet music as my classmates silently went down the stairs. You waited until the door of the church closed, clicked and locked us together in that big, shadowy church before you turned.
3) The Devil’s in the Details: You were taller than me (back then almost everyone was taller than me), but that wasn’t why I was afraid. It was your whole package, the details of your awesome being that were so formidable. Covered head to toe in black, your face framed by your wimple (which, by the way, looked like the vice used during the Spanish Inquisition), your hands buried beneath the scapular that fell in a perfect column to the tips of your shoes, made for quite a package. But there was more: The scent of nun-perfume (I think it was soap, but it smelled like nun-perfume to me), the clack of those huge rosary beads attached to your wide belt, the squish of your rubber soled shoes. I saw all this, I heard all this, I smelled all this and each sense was heightened because of the hush surrounding us.
I remember your methodical advance into my personal space. I remember you lowering your eyes as I raised mine. The suspense was heart-stopping, the anticipation of my penance almost unbearable. Quite frankly, you were terrifying.
But here’s the funny thing: I don’t remember how it ended. Did you scold me, sister? Did you show mercy and forgiveness? I only remember being terrified. Like the brain of the seven year old Stephen King swears gives him inspiration for his horror books, you, Sister Carmelita, inspire every sentence I write in every thriller novel I pen. For that, I can’t thank you enough.
I also want you to know, I have never rolled my eyes at anything since that day in the choir loft.
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