Carolyn: I think there’s a lot of interest in religion now, more so especially since The DaVinci Code.

Jim: We live in a country that’s very religious, much more so than the countries of Europe. I think that probably forty or fifty percent of the people in the U.S. would classify themselves as deeply religious - mostly Christians.

Carolyn: In Italy, it would be one percent. Our books sell very well overseas.

Jim: So it would be odd to exclude religious issues from discussion, because religious issues are essentially having a huge impact on American politics, and world politics. To decide it’s too sensitive to discuss or write about is kind of crazy.

I’d like to talk for a moment about the kind of books you write. When Lee Child visited the Backspace discussion forums last summer, he said, “If you want a truly wide readership, you need to reach those people who hardly read at all, right out there at the margins of literacy (by our standards). Anecdotally, the highest praise I’ve heard from people like this is: “Great book! I finished it!”

Carolyn: *laughs*

“To finish a book is a gratifying experience for them, and they praise the book for ‘helping’ them through.”

Your books are what I would term ‘smart’ books. You do a great job with your science, but it’s sometimes difficult, cutting-edge stuff, and your work often deals with religious themes. Both are topics that require a certain degree of literary and intellectual understanding on the part of your readers. Do you feel that this has narrowed your readership, or do you think that the result is perhaps a smaller, but more appreciative, audience of loyal readers?

Jim: Sometimes people ask who you are writing for, who do you have in mind, and really, I’m writing for myself and for Carolyn. I was thinking about how one goes about deciding what book you’re going to do next, and with me at least, there’s usually some sort of material that I’m very interested in that I just want to read about, a place I want to go maybe, to look into it. Once you decide on a subject matter, then crafting a story within that context is not so difficult. It’s almost as if the research material comes before the characters. I write the book that interests me, or interests us, dealing with the material that we’re fascinated by.

I think that even though the material is often serious and sometimes complex, I don’t believe that actually limits us. I believe that good books will be found, and you develop a readership through word of mouth. There are some people writing in the genre who I think are brilliant, and whose books can sometimes be quite difficult: Alan Furst is one of those. I like John le Carré as well.

Carolyn: I think we’re good story tellers. I think if you tell a good enough story, then the characters will grip the readers. If you get the voices right, readers will be dragged right along through the technical stuff. You have to learn how to present it in such a way so that most people get it. I think we’re pretty good at that. I actually grasped DNA while writing The Genesis Code, though it’s gone now.

Jim: I think if you’re looking to design a book that’s going to sell a lot of copies - basically if I had to do that with a gun to my head - I’d write it as a movie. Look at Dan Brown’s book - it’s got 105 chapters. I think we probably have twenty-five.

Carolyn: And you know James Patterson has two page, and even page-and-a-half chapters. Smash cuts.

Jim: Sentences that are nine words instead of nineteen. I believe that the way we watch movies has affected the way we read books. I think that younger people growing up with the kind of movies they’ve got, are going to expect that kind of experience from books.

Carolyn: If you watch or rent an old movie, even a movie like Rocky, which isn’t that old, the pace of it seems almost elegiac. I like those sort of things. I can relax a little bit. I’m still gripped, but I can enjoy these characters talking to each other. But other people, like my son, will say, ‘I’m going to go get some popcorn now.”

Your newest book, The Murder Artist, came out October 12. Unlike what might be called the traditional thriller format which follows say, three different story lines taking place in three different locales until they all converge, The Murder Artist is written in first person, present tense. Crichton’s Prey is also written in first person and opens and closes in present tense. Do you see this as a trend?

Carolyn: Some people think present tense is edgy, more literary, but a lot of people think it’s too flashy, too showy. I don’t necessarily disagree; I think it really depends on the book. Present tense really does immerse you in the moment, and for a book like this that doesn’t have a major backstory to get in, I think it works well. It keeps your focus.

Jim: First person is very limiting. It can also be a virtue in certain circumstances because it creates mysteries around a character that you can share with the reader. I don’t know that there’s a trend; I think different material has different demands.

Carolyn: The Murder Artist is way different from what we’ve written before. Jim is very big most of the time on confining ourselves to one point of view, which of course we couldn’t do in The Genesis Code - it wasn’t possible. But as soon as we possibly could get from the priest to Joe Lassiter we did. The First Horseman has the villain’s point of view as a kind of counterpoint, and that’s the only one of our books where we did that. But this story of the murder artist is just a different kind. It’s not an international thriller; it all takes place in the United States. It’s such a personal story, that if I tried to write it in third person, I’d have this guy thinking and doing things he couldn’t. It demanded first person.

One last question: The title of your newest book is The Murder Artist, and in your previous novel, The Eighth Day, the main character, Danny Cray, is an artist. The picture you drew of the art scene in that book is absolutely accurate - I know, because my husband is an artist. I don’t think that kind of insider knowledge can be faked, so now I’m wondering: which one of you is the artist?

Jim: Carolyn is the artist. She's a talented water-colorist, who's been painting for many years. As for me, I'm doing well if I can keep my crayon within the lines.

Thank you both so much for your time. Best wishes for continued success in your careers.

Karen Dionne is co-founder and co-administrator of Backspace, an award-winning website and Internet-based writers organization with over 600 members in a dozen countries. She also organizes and runs the Backspace Writers Conferences held in New York City every year.

Prior to forming Backspace, she worked as senior fiction editor at NFG Magazine, a print literary journal out of Toronto, Canada. Her short stories have appeared in Bathtub Gin, The Adirondack Review, Futures Mysterious Anthology Magazine, and Thought Magazine, where her entry won 1st place in their spring 2003 writing competition.  Karen is a member of the International Thriller Writers association, the Mystery Writers of America, and Sisters in Crime. Her debut novel FREEZING POINT will be coming from Berkley Books in October, 2008.

Carolyn Hougan, a former researcher, photographer, cocktail waitress, school bus driver and at-home mom - a resume suitable, perhaps, only for becoming a novelist - wrote her debut thriller, the well-received Shooting in The Dark, in 1981. After penning three more published thrillers on her own, she teamed up with husband Jim to co-author the John Case novels, beginning with New York Times best seller The Genesis Code. Jim and Carolyn live and work together near Charlottesville, Virginia.

Jim Hougan, a former private eye, is an award-winning investigative reporter, a documentary film maker, and the author of two non-fiction books, Spooks, and Secret Agenda about the US Intelligence community. With his wife Carolyn, he has co-authored five novels, all thrillers, under the nom de plum John Case. The most recent of these, The Murder Artist, will be published by Ballantine Books in October.

The Murder Artist

FROM THE PUBLISHER: As a television news correspondent, Alex Callahan has traveled to some of the most dangerous corners of the globe, covering famine, plague, and war. He's seen more than his share of blood and death, and knows what it means to be afraid. But what he's never known is the terror that grabs him when, on a tranquil summer afternoon, he ceases to be an observer of the dark side and, to his shock, becomes enmeshed in it.

Separated from his wife, and struggling not to become a stranger to his six-year-old twin sons, Alex is logging some all-too-rare quality time with the boys when they vanish without a trace amid the hurly-burly of a countryside Renaissance Fair.

Then the phone call comes. A chilling silence, slow, steady breathing, and the familiar, plaintive voice of a child -- "Daddy?" -- complete the nightmare and set in motion a juggernaut of frenzy and agony.

The longer the police search, exhausting leads without success, the deeper Alex's certainty grows that time is running out. And when, at last, telltale signs reveal a hidden pattern of bizarre and ghoulish abductions, Alex vows to use his own relentless investigative skills to rescue his children from the shadowy figure dubbed The Piper.

Whoever this elusive stranger is, the profile that slowly emerges -- from previous crimes involving twins, from the zealously secret world of professional magicians, and from the eerie culture of voodoo -- suggests that The Piper is a predator unlike any other. A twisted soul hell-bent on fulfilling an unspeakably dark dream. A fiend with a terrifying true calling. What Alex Callahan is closing in on is a monster with a mission.