Submitted by dan from lynn, ma

Q: To Dave Barry: Will you ever write more fiction? Books like Big Trouble are a delight to read, and right about now the world needs more funny.

Answered 11/14/08 11:18:07 by author author

A: Well, the book Ridley and I have out now, Science Fair, is pretty funny. At least we think it is. It's aimed at young-adult readers, but grownups seem to like it, too. And yes, I think one of these years I'll tackle another solo novel.

Submitted by Francis B from Lauderdale

Q: Do you enjoy reading suspense fiction? If so, which writers would you recommend?

Answered 11/12/08 18:25:53 by author author

A: Me. Me. Me! I've written 17 books. They should keep you entertained for awhile. Edna B.

Submitted by Dennis from Coral Gables

Q: Hi, Edna. i used to think that I could write a novel, too, but when I tried, i only got through a couple of hundred pages before I was so sick of the plot and the characters that i just threw the pages in a drawer. How do you keep going?

Answered 11/12/08 18:24:42 by author author

A: Hey Dennis, You have to like your characters and care about them so much that you are caught up in their stories and lives and can’t stop. In Legally Dead, little girls are stalked and vanish in New Hampshire. The Hero conducts an unauthorized surveillance and an illegal search to try to find them. There’s an assault by robbers, with AK-47’s and a shoulder amounted grenade launcher, on an armored car, leading to a deadly running gun battle on a deserted stretch of roadway. A car erupts into gasoline-fed flames on a dirt road in the Everglades with the remains of two people inside. The heroes go to Paris where one of the heroines of the abducted, sparking a chase and a major shootout in a parking garage. And Scout, the hero’s brave dog, who’s important to the plot (which is why I thought punky’s picture should be on the book). With all that, how could I get bored? I couldn’t wait to go to work every day to see what happened next. Edna B.

Submitted by Tom from Coconut Gro from Miami

Q: Hi, Edna: In "Legally Dead," you've just introduced a new character, Michael Venturi of the Witness Protection Program. I'm curious about long it takes you to become comfortable with a new protagonist as he or she evolves through the writing of a book. You know Britt Montero so well. Was this guy an easy creation? And what's the process of fleshing him out?

Answered 11/12/08 18:18:40 by author author

A: Legally dead is my 17th book, Tom and more than any other work I’ve ever done, this novel was a collaborative effort. At a prior signing at Books and Books, I asked the audience if they had any ideas about how to fake their own deaths. You’d be surprised how many did. I love friends who share their dark fantasies! I needed them because Venturi, the hero of this novel, is a U.S. Marshal assigned to the witness protection program. When, over his objections, a protected government witness -- a dangerous mobster with a new identity -- is unleashed on a small American town, a terrible tragedy results. After he’s made the scapegoat, he relocates to Miami where his best marine buddy lives and after saving a would-be suicide, a man whose life was ruined through no fault of his own, our hero begins to wonder, why not give the gift of a new life and identity to somebody who actually deserves it? He can’t resist. But it’s a lot more complicated than his old government job with the witness protection program. The man cannot simply be spirited away by Federal Agents. His “death” has to be so spirited away by Federal Agents. His “death” has to be so convincingly staged that he is officially declared legally dead. There has to be a body, eye witnesses, or irrefutable forensic evidence - sort of CSI in reverse. A challenge, but not an impossible one for a resourceful former federal agent with time in a city like Miami. And those for whom this done must actually become someone else. Not only do they have to look like a different person, they have to be a different person. All their old habits, likes, and dislikes, must be left behind. The idea for this book was sparked years ago by a fiery London commuter train crash. The death toll was expected to be high – more than a hundred missing and presumed dead. But when the wreckage cooled and recovery workers cut apart the molten metal, all the corpses they expected to find weren’t there. For months after the crash, numerous sightings were reported of missing commuters who’d been presumed dead. Instead of celebrating their survival, scores of shaken passengers made a split second decision to embrace the disaster as a chance to shed their identities like snakes do their skins. That caught my attention. How many of us feel trapped in frustrating and unfulfilled lives, caught in a stress-filled world of traffic jams, road rage, voice mail, and marital stress? Who doesn’t fantasize about a new life, a fresh start – from all the baggage of the past? I bet it’s the world’s number on fantasy. Even winning the lottery takes second-place to the dream of starting over as some one new. People all over the country, all over the world, try to fake their own deaths. Many are caught. I covered a number of those stories as a reporter. No one knows how many succeed. Some seize the moment, as did those who tried to vanish in the smoky aftermath of the World Trade Center terrorist attack. Others concoct elaborate plans. When I signed a two book contract a few years ago, I wanted to write this first. But my editor wanted another Britt Montero book first. So I wrote Love Kills, then settled down to work on Legally Dead, which was a lot harder. Authors write about what they know. I knew cops. And I was a reporter. In the past, I‘ve written about police, bad guys, and reporters. But this hero and his best friend are former marine buddies. His friend, Danny is a high-level risk taker who now operates a Little Havana funeral home, cover for his real CIA job. There are several female risk takers in the book as well, their love interests, colleagues and clients. I did know a few CIA agents years ago. Back in the day, as a cub reporter/photographer, I got a tip that a CIA vessel was docked out by the Coast Guard station and took pictures of it. As I did, some body popped up out of the hatch and took pictures of me. CIA fronts were all over Miami in those days. Around that time I did something really stupid. I got married. I was really young and naïve. He was supposedly a journalist, but it didn’t take long to realize that he was involved with the CIA. He hung out with a man named Frank Fiorini. You all heard about him later — after he changed his name back then, a newlywed, I wanted to play house, wanted my husband to come home for the elaborate dinners I concocted. Instead, he was spending more time with Frank Fiorini and his co-horsts than me. They were flying over the radar, under the radar, dropping pamphlets and medical supplies over Cuba. One night after he didn’t even call or show up for dinner, again I saw TV news footage of a chase across the Florida Straits that afternoon -- the Coast Guard in hot pursuit of a boat with three men aboard. Despite shots fired, it got away, but I recognized it. It belonged to my brother-in-law last seen with my husband and the ever present Frank Fiorini. What were they doing out there? Why did they often disappear for days without warnings? Why did they keep going to Merida? Were they in the country or out? What the hell was going on? I went to the supermarket one afternoon as he took a nap. My car was small, so I took his, which had a bigger trunk. I popped it open so the bag boy could stow the groceries, then quickly slammed it shot when I saw what was inside: Machine guns, lots of them. I speeded home to demand an explanation. I admit I was annoying, a pain in the neck. Soon after, I eavesdropped late one night, as they met in my kitchen. In hushed tones, they all complained about me, including my husband. And they offered a solution, a permanent one. I could be dumped out in the Everglades. He said he’d think about it. Despite being young and naïve, I knew this was bad. Very bad. People were being dumped in the Everglades. Then JFK was assassinated. I was horrified. They were elated. Some how they believed it meant that Barry Goldwater would be the next president. About that time I made my getaway. Got a small apartment in Miami Beach, where two FBI agents showed up to question me about my husband’s activities, some of them involving Governor George Wallace, whose private direct number was in his little black book, which I had brought with me. Some wives are angry if they find other women’s names and numbers in their husband’s little black books. But George Wallace? I gave it to the agents, told them everything, what little I knew, hoping they would snatch him off the street and take him away. To make a long story short, I did learn a few things about the CIA and the FBI. The two agents kept visiting me, knocking at my door, drinking tea, claiming to be looking for him. But every time I told them exactly when and where to find him, they did nothing. Instead they killed time, visiting and watching my apartment. In the morning, I’d find their cigarette butts and Hershey bar wrappers in the stairwell outside my one room apartment. They were stealing their paychecks. My ex-husband relocated to Texas, then Frank Fiorini resurfaced. Big time. By then he had a new name, Frank Sturgis. He was one of the Watergate burglars. I was a cub reporter at the Herald and Watergate was the biggest story in the nation. It had major South Florida connections, yet the Washington Post kept beating the Herald. One day, at the Herald, I get a call from Texas. I keep hanging up. He keeps calling back. Finally I listen. “ A friend of ours is in trouble,” he says. He says urgently. What friend? Frank Fiorini, now Sturgis was no friend of mine. What about all my ruined dinners? Sturgis, behind bars in Washington D.C. had refused to speak to any one including the press. However, my ex-husband said, his mother had died in Miami and Sturgis was being brought to the funeral in handcuffs. While here, he’d be in the Dade County jail and wanted to see me. I was the only reporter he would talk to. He wanted to tell me everything. I said I’d think about it. I was lucky to escape those guys. Unlike many books where I had to flesh out each character and figure out who they were, the cast of Legally Dead appeared fully formed. What a gift! I didn’t have to wonder who they were, what their pasts were like, where they grew up, how their parents treated them, or how they would behave in love, crisis, or danger. Some how I knew them like I know myself though it was intended to be a stand alone book, a couple of reviewers who got the ending somehow assumed it was the start of a new series. I’d love to spend more time with them. (So if any of you have more good ideas about how to fake one’s death, please share them with me). Edna B.

Submitted by Allison from in South Miami

Q: Dear Edna: I LOVE YOUR BOOKS!!!! One thing I've always wanted to ask a real, honest-to-gosh novelist? How do you know for sure when a book is, you know, done? And how does it feel to type the period at the end of the last sentence?

Answered 11/12/08 16:00:17 by author author

A: Allison, my dear. You know the book is finished when that deadline, coming at you like an avalanche, arrives. It has to be on time. That may mean long days and lonely nights hunched over a keyboard. The feeling when it's finished? Mixed emotions. It's a joy to deliver it, it weighs five or six pounds when I send it off to my editor. Like a child, you send it out into the world hoping it will be well received and treated kindly -- and that someday it may even send home some money. But I always fall into post partum depression after finishing a novel. It's so much fun and so exciting to live with my characters 24-7 for the better part of year. They are so alive to me, such good friends and companions. Some, I'll never see or write about again. I miss them all when they are gone and I must return to the mundane everyday world with all its problems. Writing is more fun than real life -- which, I guess, does not say much for my social life. Edna B.

Submitted by Bobby from Sipping a margarita by the bay

Q: Your novels balance murder and romance. Why do we need the lovey-dovey stuff? I don't mind it, but I'm an action kind of guy. I really liked this Venturi character, BTW. Cheers!

Answered 11/12/08 15:47:49 by author author

A: Have one for me, Bobby. Glad you liked Venturi. I loved the characters in that book.(Legally Dead). I hope to spend more time with them. They're tough, brave, resourceful. I've always been fascinated by risk takers, drawn to men and women of action, who live for that adrenaline rush. As for "the lovey-dovey stuff," Bobby, love and sex are what people fight for. Sex and death, baby, that's what it's all about. Edna B.

Submitted by Horacio from South Miami

Q: I really enjoyed 'Cocaine Cowboys'. What was it like filming the documentary and more importantly working as a reporter in Miami in the 80s?

Answered 11/12/08 15:37:59 by author author

A: It was like nothing you could imagine, Horacio, like being a war correspondant in the frontline trenches. I was on call 24/7 as the violence escalated. Miami became number one in murder in the nation as the perfect storm converged: the Cocaine Wars, the McDuffie Riots and the Mariel boatlift, when Castro flushed his toilets on Miami, emptying his prisons and mental institutions, sending us some of the world's most ruthless and dangerous criminals along with the decent families and children fleeing his regime. I remember nothing of my personal life during those years. I didn't have any. I went from murder scene to murder scene to murder scene, determined to tell each victim's story. Sometimes my editors would say "Just cover the most important murder of the day." I always argued and pretended that I didn't understand. Every murder is important to the victim. When you begin to refer to the dead as numbers or statistics, what does that say about your community? I wanted to put all their stories, their names, what happened to them in the newspaper of record, in black and white, on our consciousness . And I did it, sometimes as many as 12 in one story, in trend stories, one way or the other. Death too soon, at any age, is a tragedy. It raises a good reporter's consciousness. It was like being a witness to history. Many of the people interviewed for Cocaine Cowboys felt it was all worth it because the drug money built Miami's skyline. I disagreed. It wasn't worth it for those who died. Edna B.

Submitted by Jennifer from Atlanta

Q: Dear Edna: Your novels always make me nostalgic for my hometown. How do you think your plots and characters would change if you were living and writing somewhere besides Miami??

Answered 11/12/08 15:13:29 by author author

A: If you're homesick for Miami, Jennifer, please come home. What's with Atlanta? I know it's a historic and wonderful city, but it's not Miami. If I had never found this place (where I should have been born) I'm sure I'd still be writing but I'm not sure what about. I always knew I was a writer. At age four, before I could read, I told people I would write books when I grew up. I was born in Paterson, New Jersey, a gritty black and white newsreel. The moment I saw this technicolor place, the hot-blooded pulsebeat of Miami ignited a spark between us, and words began to flow like a river of fire. Miami is a major character in all of my books. Edna B.

Submitted by David Ovalle from Miami

Q: Hi Edna, This is David Ovalle, from Metro. Hey, tell us about the updated version of the Corpse Had a Familiar Face?

Answered 11/12/08 15:03:20 by author author

A: Hi, David, I have a raft of questions for you about some of the homicides and other mayhem you've been covering. Great job! THE CORPSE HAD A FAMILIAR FACE (first published in hardcover in 1987) is currently available in an updated paperback version which will be replaced in July 2009 by another up-updated paperback version. Write on, and remember to Never Trust an Editor! Edna B.

Submitted by Sonja from At MIA, waiting

Q: I remember years ago in that wonderful New Yorker profile, Calvin Trilling wrote something such as "Nobody ever has to ask Edna Who?" That's still true. \How is the sort of celebrity you enjoy as a novelist different from the fame you earned as a Pulitzer-winning journalist. And do you really always, always enjoy meeting fans, or do you ever just want to say Please Just Leave Me Alone???

Answered 11/12/08 14:57:27 by author author

A: You've got a good memory, Sonja. CalvinTrillin, a terrific writer, did a profile which ran in The New Yorker in February, 1986. In it he said "In Miami, a few figures are regularly discussed by first name among people they have never actually met. One of them is Fidel. Another is Edna." Writing is a lonely business, at home with only my dog, Punky, snoozing nearby. So when I finally do venture out I'm thrilled to meet readers who enjoy my work. I want to deliver my books to them like newspapers and read my stories to them out loud, at gunpoint if necessary! The Miami Book Fair International is the most exciting time of the year -- it's like Christmas, my birthday, and New Year's Eve all rolled into one. How cool to meet other writers and all the people who love books! Edna B.