American - Novelist | June 12, 1953 -
My father said writing was a nice hobby. He strongly encouraged my brother and me to become doctors.
Tess Gerritsen
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I met my husband, Jacob, in medical school. We married and went to live in Hawaii where his family lived. It was very beautiful, but I wasn't used to being on an island and needed wide open spaces. Eventually we moved to Maine, New England.
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I shy away from showing cruelty on the page. A lot of the violence in my books actually happens off stage. The police come on to the scene after the event has occurred.
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I always write on unlined typing paper and write the first draft in longhand, using cheap Bic pens. I try to write about four pages a day, which usually yields a first draft in six months. I don't plot ahead of time, so I'm flying by the seat of my pants for the first draft.
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I think of myself as a fairly logical, scientific and somewhat reserved person. Maura Isles, the Boston medical examiner who appears in five of my books, is me. Almost everything I use in describing her, from her taste in wine to her biographical data, is taken from my own family. Except I don't have a serial killer as a mother!
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I spent my childhood watching every scary movie that Hollywood ever made. And I think that gave me the best education for storytelling. It also made me want to reproduce the scary moments that I felt, sitting in a theater at the age of 5.
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I think fiction, for me, is a way of trying to understand why people do the things they do - and trying to explain what is, at heart, illogical.
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Mom and I often talked about the trip we'd someday take together to the 'city of eternal spring' where she was born. In Kunming, she said, the fruits are sweeter, the mountains look like Chinese paintings, and the weather is always perfect.
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In China, the dead are not forgotten - my relatives cheerfully pointed out all the niches of deceased friends and family, as if gesturing at the homes of the living.
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I was an anthropology major in college, and I've had a lifelong fascination with Egyptology, mummies, and all sorts of bizarre cultural practices.
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For years I've wanted to write a book about mummies, and had been following the science of mummy CT scans when the premise for 'The Keepsake' occurred to me: what if an 'ancient' mummy turns out to have a bullet in its leg? How does a modern murder victim get turned into a mummy?
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I sold my first short story while I was home on maternity leave, then began working on novels. Since I was reading and enjoying romance novels at the time, the first two unpublished manuscripts I wrote were both romances. I sold my third novel, 'Call After Midnight,' to Harlequin Intrigue after submitting it unagented.
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