Loreth Anne White is an award-winning author of romantic suspense, thrillers, and mysteries. She has won the Romantic Times Reviewers’ Choice Award for Romantic Suspense, the National Readers’ Choice Award, and the Romantic Crown for Best Romantic Suspense and Best Book Overall. In addition, she has been a two-time RITA finalist, a Booksellers’ Best finalist, a multiple Daphne Du Maurier Award finalist, and a multiple CataRomance Reviewers’ Choice Award winner. Her most recent novel, In the Waning Light, is a finalist for the 2016 RITA Awards (category: romantic suspense). A former journalist and newspaper editor who has worked in both South Africa and Canada, Loreth now resides in the Pacific Northwest with her family.
DC: Loreth, thank you so much for joining me for this Under the Covers interview. What attracts you to the romance genre? Would you call yourself a Romantic?
LAW: If you mean a Romantic in terms of the Romanticism movement—where weight is given to intense emotions and intuition, the evocative and atmospheric, the past, the sublimity of nature, the individual, spontaneity, as opposed to the purely rational or scientific, then yes, I think I’d call myself a Romantic. (smiles)
A romantic world view in this sense is evident in many genres of fiction, I think, from drama, to gothic/horror, to thriller, to literary, to romance. But being a romantic in this context doesn’t necessarily mean believing in a ‘happy ever after ending’, which is how the publishing industry does define the romance genre—essentially stories of two people overcoming obstacles to falling in love, and ending with a HEA, or a promise thereof.
I’m drawn in particular to the romantic suspense subgenre of romance, where danger and intense emotions can fuel or thwart that journey toward a romantic partnership, and where the stakes are love or death.
DC: You had a sixteen-year career as a journalist before you took to writing fiction. Not all writers find that an easy transition. How did you find your voice as an author?
LAW: Turning to fiction felt like a homecoming of sorts. I certainly found making up stories a whole lot more fun that attempting to tell the truth … or, perhaps, there is even more truth to be found in fiction than ‘news’?
DC: Cold wilderness areas like the BC wilds and Wyoming are frequent settings for your stories. What’s the fascination?
LAW: I’ve written almost as many stories set in hot locales as cold ones—the Congo jungle, several in the Sahara desert, Botswana, or other parts of Africa, and I do like writing those steamy, oppressive, or burning settings as much as the dark and frigid ones, However, editors have been more inclined to ask for my bleak Nordic-toned or wilderness gothic type concepts. So, possibly, the answer is simply that they sell better.
DC: Are you an optimist about humanity and society?
LAW: If anything I’m a pessimist, or, as I like to think, a realist, and perhaps this goes back to your question about what draws me to romance, and to fiction in general, because in writing fiction you can control the outcome. You can make the ‘good’ guy triumph over ‘evil’ You can conquer the heinous villain, catch the criminal, help the deserving heroine survive against impossible odds. You can give meaning to, and create order out of what otherwise often seems like a harsh randomness in real life. It’s perhaps a way of trying to make sense of it all.
DC: Some characters in both reality and fiction—I’m thinking of psycopaths and serial killers—are so far beyond comprehension as to seem utterly devoid of any humanity or ability to feel, to empathize. They seem to represent pure evil in almost a Biblical sense. The number of crimes committed by this type of criminal seems to have risen exponentially in recent decades in Western societies, certainly far outstripping population growth rates. As an author who’s researched these personality types, do you have any thoughts on the reasons for this, and what drives these types?
LAW: I don’t know that serial murder is on the increase. Actual statistics are hard to come by, and conversely, I’ve seen it argued that serial murders might actually be on the decrease, and that the general public’s fascination with serial killers might have already seen its peak.
Certainly, serial murder did come across as being on an exponential rise for a period of time, but I also don’t know how much of that might be attributed to technological/digital advances in linking these crimes, and labeling them as such. Or how much of a role sensational media reporting and the rise of the fictional serial killer might have increased general awareness. Perhaps this even inspired crimes—life imitating ‘art.’
The fact that serial murderers appear devoid of humanity and are unable to empathize in the same way as most people is probably what gives them appeal in the first place. They are not the fantastical monster of a horror novel, but they’re real people who could live next door, or rub knees with you on the bus, or work in the cubicle beside yours. They are essentially Human Beasts, and for those who love their fiction to scare them, who want to feel fear at a safe remove, this kind of cold-hearted, ‘evil,’ human monster will be tough to top.
DC: Tell me about your Black Dog—your black Lab, Hudson.
LAW: Hah, my Black Dog is my daily smile, my exercise, my exasperation…a perpetual lesson on living large and in the moment.
DC: You began your career around a decade ago writing mainstream romance for Harlequin and have progressed to being known for romantic suspense/thrillers like your hugely successful 2015 novel, A Dark Lure, and your most recent work, In the Waning Light. These are dark, intense works featuring psychopathic killers and severely traumatized protagonists. What led you along this road?
LAW: I think it’s a natural extension of my earlier romantic suspense works, a way of exploring craft in a deeper way, trying something new, bigger, darker, and Montlake has given me a venue to do this in way I was not able to accomplish with my old publisher.
DC: Like many romance authors, you’re enormously prolific; in 2010, when you were writing for Harlequin, you published six novels in a single year. Today you still seem to average two longer and much more complex novels a year. In addition to this you have a family life, enjoy the outdoors, travel, and maintain a high profile on social media. What suffers? What do you struggle to make time for and wish you could?
LAW: Coming from a journalistic background I was used to sitting down every day and producing a lot of words. However, I consider myself a fairly slow writer compared to a lot of other authors out there—my goal this year is to work smarter, and to be more focused when I do sit down at my computer for a writing session. And if you ask my husband what suffers when I’m on a particularly nasty deadline, he will say it’s him! He’s a saint in that respect. The only other thing that might suffer is a social life, but having a hectic social life is not a priority for me…or, perhaps staying in tune with current affairs in the way that I was used to.
DC: Your more recent novels are multilayered, tightly-plotted thrillers with solid, believable, characters. How much do you know about the outcome and the plot arc when you begin a novel?
LAW: I’m a plotter/planner. I need to nail the character conflicts and have the novel’s outcome and major turning points in mind before I can relax into the writing of the words—just as one might plot an overland journey from, say, Vancouver to New York, marking your nightly destination points on a road map. However, if I do come upon an intriguing side road, or meet a surprising character along the way, I will explore these things, and often the resulting detours lead the novel in an entirely new direction and change the end game.
DC: You spend a lot of time outdoors and have had close encounters with bears. How do you handle them?
LAW: With great respect and caution! And I do carry bear spray when we head into the interior where the bears can be more predatory and carnivorous than our local bruins are. Mostly I’d like to avoid meeting those bears.
DC: Beyond skiing and the outdoors, what’s your favourite leisure activity?
LAW: Hands down, the ocean and open water swimming.
DC: What do you like to read? Any favourite authors?
LAW: I love narrative nonfiction and biographies, and the fiction I have enjoyed of late includes works by, Tana French, Tami Hoag, Laura Lipmann, JoJo Moyes, Kate Atkinson, Patricia Highsmith, Liane Moriarty, Gillian Flynn, Paula Hawkins, Mary Kubica, Elizabeth Haynes, Erik Rickstad, PD James, Jo Nesbo, Camilla Lackberg, and Tim Johnston.
DC: Despite being a very successful novelist, you’ve mentioned wanting to overcome some writing fears in 2016. Can you talk a little about these?
LAW: I have what I like to think of as bigger, or more mainstream story ideas that I’m hungry to explore, yet I’m afraid I won’t be able to meet my own expectations for them. It’s like the old Schrödinger’s Cat experiment—the cat is both alive and dead until you look in the box, then it’s one or the other. Similarly, both success and failure are possible until I actually sit down and tackle those stories in my head….then will come the proof, and my fear is failure as an outcome. It’s far more comforting to dabble with dreams. (smiles)
DC: Your recent books would make terrific movies. Have you had any interest from the industry or had any books optioned?
LAW: Thank you! I have had interest from both Hollywood and major studios in the UK, including an offer, but no deal yet.
DC: What can your many fans look forward to next?
LAW: Coming from Montlake on August 16 is In the Barren Ground, a dark, atmospheric romance and police procedural with gothic/horror overtones set in a remote fly-in community just south of the arctic circle. I’m working on a police procedural romantic suspense series, and also a suspense novel on the side. Haha, I know—don’t laugh!
DC: Loreth, thank you so much. Here’s wishing you every success in the RITA Awards!
Loreth loves to hear from readers.
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Did you enjoy this interview with Loreth? Let us know with a comment!
Read my own review of Loreth’s “A Dark Lure”
Don’t miss next week’s Under the Covers interview with science fiction/tech thriller author and futurist William Hertling, live right here on Saturday April 9!
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Dario Ciriello 
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Great interview, Dario, and for me the introduction to a new writer.