MONKEEWRENCH BY P. J. TRACY
Who is P. J. Tracy?
PJ Tracy is the pseudonym of mother-daughter writing duo P.J. and Traci Lambrecht, winners of the Anthony, Barry, Gumshoe, and Minnesota Book Awards. Their first three novels, MONKEEWRENCH, LIVE BAIT and DEAD RUN, have become national and international bestsellers.
Website: http://www.pjtracy.net/content/index.asp
A mother-daughter writing team is fairly unusual - what is the writing process like?
Since we've been writing together for over 15 years, we have the mechanics of our particular kind of collaboration pretty well nailed down. Picture a couple of great friends sitting at a kitchen table embellishing each other's wild stories, and you'll have a fairly good idea of how we do our plotting. We are both passionate about storytelling, and these sessions tend to be more performance art than conversation, complete with character voices, flailing gestures, hysterical ranting, and a lot of laughter. No one likes to watch us do this. It's ugly and annoying.Since Traci lives in California, and PJ lives in Minnesota, how do you go about writing in tandem?
Plotting must be done together - Traci always comes back to the farm in Minnesota for that bizarre stage, filled with wild stories and raucous laughter - but afterwards we can do a lot of writing separately. Traci retreats to the California sunshine, and consequently creates a lot of the brighter moments, while PJ remains huddled inside during the Minnesota winter, thinking up black thoughts and tormented characters. We turn the phones on speaker and collaborate for several hours a day when we're apart, and get together every month or so to pull things together. What is it like writing together?
Everybody always wants to know what it's like to write with your mother/daughter. We've agonized over this question, trying to think of a thoughtful answer, maybe even a profound one, but the truth is, there's little profundity to be found in two women sitting around giggling over imaginary people. We have fun - always. We rarely disagree, we never argue, we laugh most of the time, and a lot of people hate us for this.
Since we've been writing together for over 15 years, we have the mechanics of our particular kind of collaboration pretty well nailed down. Picture a couple of great friends sitting at a kitchen table embellishing each other's wild stories, and you'll have a fairly good idea of how we do our plotting. We are both passionate about storytelling, and these sessions tend to be more performance art than conversation, complete with character voices, flailing gestures, hysterical ranting, and a lot of laughter. No one likes to watch us do this. It's ugly and annoying.Since Traci lives in California, and PJ lives in Minnesota, how do you go about writing in tandem?
Plotting must be done together - Traci always comes back to the farm in Minnesota for that bizarre stage, filled with wild stories and raucous laughter - but afterwards we can do a lot of writing separately. Traci retreats to the California sunshine, and consequently creates a lot of the brighter moments, while PJ remains huddled inside during the Minnesota winter, thinking up black thoughts and tormented characters. We turn the phones on speaker and collaborate for several hours a day when we're apart, and get together every month or so to pull things together. What is it like writing together?
Everybody always wants to know what it's like to write with your mother/daughter. We've agonized over this question, trying to think of a thoughtful answer, maybe even a profound one, but the truth is, there's little profundity to be found in two women sitting around giggling over imaginary people. We have fun - always. We rarely disagree, we never argue, we laugh most of the time, and a lot of people hate us for this.
MONKEEWRENCH SERIES
Monkeewrench 2003 Series: Monkeewrench, 1
Summary: "Haunted by a series of horrifying and violent episodes in their past, Grace McBride and the oddball crew of her software company, Monkeewrench, create a computer game where the killer is always caught, where the good guys always win. But their game becomes a nightmare when someone starts duplicating the fictional murders in real life, down to the last detail. By the time the police realize what's happening, three people are dead, and with seventeen more murder scenarios available online, there are seventeen more potential victims. While the authorities scramble to find the killer in a city paralyzed by fear, the Monkeewrench staff are playing their own game, analyzing victim profiles in a frantic attempt to discover the murderer's next target. In a thriller populated by characters both hilarious and heartbreaking, a rural Wisconsin sheriff, two Minneapolis police detectives, and Grace's gang are caught in a web of decades-old secrets that could get them all killed"--Front flap.
Live bait 2004 Series: Monkeewrench, 2
Summary: Minneapolis detectives Leo Magozzi and Gino Rolseth investigate the murder of Morey Gilbert, the saintly elderly owner of a plant nursery, a homicide that is only the first in a series of killings of elderly victims.
Dead run 2005 Series: Monkeewrench, 3
Summary: Breaking down while en route to Wisconsin, Grace MacBride, Annie Belinsky, and deputy Sharon Mueller stumble upon a nearly deserted town fraught with signs of foul play and are horrified to witness a double murder.
Snow blind 2006 Series: Monkeewrench, 4
Summary: With the holidays over and the long cold winter looming, January can be a bleak month in Minneapolis. So what better way to bring a little cheer to the good people of the city than by sponsoring an old-fashioned snowman-building contest? In a matter of hours, a local park is filled with the innocent laughter of children and their frosty creations. But things take an awful turn when the dead bodies of police officers are discovered inside two of the snowmen.--From publisher description.
Shoot to thrill 2010 Series: Monkeewrench, 5
Summary: Enlisted by the FBI to investigate a series of murder videos that have been posted on the web, the Monkeewrench crew discovers an unsettling link between the videos and the recent murder of an unlucky Minneapolis bride. By the authors of Snow Blind.
Recommended Similar Title: Murder on the Ile Saint-Louis by Cara Black
Another suggestion for a read-alike: This is not a game by Walter Jon Williams
In a near-future world that is dominated by an alternate-reality game without boundaries, players find their real lives increasingly and violently overshadowed by the game and its escalating demands
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