Former detective’s stories set in streets of Buffalo, Iceland, Ireland

By P.A. Kane

Lissa Marie Redmond is the author of six cold case police procedural thrillers  featuring Buffalo police detective, Lauren Riley. 

Throughout the series, Lauren reveals herself to be smart, gritty and a little reckless, pursuing thieves and would-be murderers. She’s also very human. A mother of two college-age girls, she struggles to connect in her male-dominated work setting and can’t seem to find a stable romantic relationship. 

Set in the streets of Buffalo, Iceland and Ireland, the novels of Redmond, a retired police detective, are infused with authenticity, depth and twenty-plus years of police experience. She has also written numerous short stories and has a stand-alone thriller, The Secrets They Left Behind.

We sat down to talk at Dog Ears Bookstore & Cafe, where she got her start as a writer. She was there to take an improv class, one of the many programs offered at the community-focused nonprofit. She said the class helped her think outside the box, a vitally important skill in both police work and writing compelling fiction.  

PAK: How long were you a cold case homicide detective?

LMR: I worked for the Buffalo Police Department for 22 years. I spent about eight and a half years in the Special Victims unit and then about eight and a half years in cold-case homicide. I started in 1993 and retired in 2015.

PAK: When were you first published?

LMR: The first story that I got published was in the Buffalo Noir anthology in 2015. I was so proud to get my story in that collection with Joyce Carol Oates and Tom Fontana, one of the great television writers from Buffalo, and the legendary crime writer Lawrence Block. And then there’s me, who has never published. It was unbelievable. I had sold two urban fantasy short stories before that, but this was the first one published.

When I retired in 2015, I talked with my husband and told him I really wanted to pursue my dream of writing. He agreed that I should go all in and take a chance. I joined the International Thriller Writers and started attending conferences and workshops to hone my craft.

I also sent out query letters to get an agent. I learned very quickly that you need to have a thick skin. Being patient and persistent wins, because in all the rejections, it takes just one—yes.

 PAK: You were pursuing an agent after you completed your first book, A Cold Day in Hell?

LMR: Yes. So, I had been writing A Cold Day in Hell for about ten years. When Tom McDonnell opened Dog Ears bookstore, he started a Flash Fiction writers group, and I joined it — that flash fiction sort of fleshed out into long-form fiction. I began to take all these pieces of fiction I had been working on for so long, four or five pages at a time, and had the critique group look at them and give me their feedback. John Schreier was running that longer form group upstairs at Dog Ears, and with the feedback I received there, my book, A Cold Day in Hell, was literally born.

Whenever I give workshops and people ask what they can do to get started with publishing, I always say, you know, whether you decide to go self-published or traditionally published, join a writers or critique group.

PAK: What was the timeline between getting an agent and getting published?

LMR: It took about a year and a half of querying before I got my agent. My book deal came about at the same time. When you’re getting your first book published, you don’t realize how much work goes into it, especially for a debut. My book did not come out until 2018, even though I signed in September 2016. During that time lag, I was writing the next book.

PAK: It took 10 years to write the first book, A Cold Day In Hell — how long before the second book came out?

LMR: Six months. I had been writing it when I got my deal in 2016. In the two years between getting signed and the first book coming out, I wrote The Murder Book. When it came time to write the third book, A Means To An End, I knew my characters so well that I was able to write that in a year. The more you write, especially in the series, the more you get to know your characters, the easier it is to trust them to take the story where it needs to go.

PAK: What are the biggest obstacles you face in your writing life?

LMR: I think time is always an obstacle. You never have enough time to put into your writing because life goes on around you—you have to get your car inspected, pay your bills and deal with work issues. That’s one reason why it took me 10 years to write my first book: I had work issues that I had to deal with all the time. Plus, family obligations — my children and my husband always come first.

Eventually, you learn where that balance is, but when you’re a newbie, it’s hard to find that balance. It really is. So, time was my biggest obstacle—managing it and sticking to it.

Another thing I had to learn was to write on a deadline. Scheduling time to write, especially on a deadline, was very hard for me. Had I not retired, I don’t know how long I would have been able to juggle all the day-to-day obligations.

PAK: So, what is your day like as a full-time writer?

LMR: All of my best writing is done in the morning. I wake up and I sit down at my computer. Whether I’m writing a novel or short story, or just returning emails to my agent, or readers who have questions about characters in the books. If you don’t attend to both the writing and business end, you fall behind. On certain days, you might have something going on or go on vacation, and you’re gone for a week. Now you have to figure out how you’ll make up those seven days. It’s a good problem if you love writing and want to share your stories with readers — making up that time.

PAK: You don’t segment the day into creative, email, business, etc?

LMR: Responding to emails in the morning and business in the afternoon. It all works together. Whatever my mind is hooked on when I wake up in the morning, whether that’s a novel, short story, editing, promoting the newest book, or the business end of it, there are multiple goals every day.

PAK: Do you have a word count you try to hit daily?

LMR: When this became my full-time job, I wanted to be responsible and set my word count really high, but that wasn’t realistic, and it was discouraging. Now it’s a more realistic thousand words a day. And that has to be met before I can stop. Most of the time, I want to get the word count out of the way, so I’ll dive into it. Much more often than just hitting it, you hope to get on a roll, where those scenes are coming, and you just keep writing — that’s what you hope for. If you’re 200 hundred words short, the next day it’s 1,200 hundred words — that’s when the pressure comes.  For me, which might not work for everyone, the sweet spot is a thousand words, and I usually go over.

PAK: What is the official genre you write — cold case, police procedural? Is it the same thing?

LMR: My genre would be police procedurals/thriller. My stand-alone, The Secrets They Left Behind, is also considered a police procedural. Within the mystery genre, there are several different categories. My last book in the series, Catch Your Death, is actually a locked room mystery. So that’s an homage to Agatha Christie.

PAK: Who are your favorites in the police procedural/thriller, including local authors?

LMR: Yeah. Joseph Wambaugh is the master. Then you have Michael Connelly with the Bosch series. There are so many. Locally, Gary Earl Ross, if you’ve ever read any of his books, he’s an amazing author. Stephan Talty has a great series set here in South Buffalo — Black Irish, Hangman. Dan Simmons, wrote private investigator books set in Buffalo — the Joe Kurtz series.

PAK: OK, switching gears, your protagonist, Lauren Riley, is smart and gritty. Still, she has some vulnerabilities from the men she becomes involved with to her choices when pursuing a case — I’m thinking of her getting caught in a dangerous situation when surveilling David Spencer in the Old First Ward. What are some of your favorite things about Lauren?

LMR: You know, people always ask — are you Lauren Riley? And, I always joke around and say if Lauren were a real person, she wouldn’t even like me. She does things that I would never do. I wouldn’t be brave or reckless enough to do. I go outside my comfort zone, through her, through her character. As the series goes on, she becomes less of a superhero as she ages. When the series starts, she’s in her late 30s, tall, blonde and beautiful. Time, pressures of the job and personal life wear her down. Becoming a woman of a certain age, she stops caring so much about looks and her clothes. She has cut off most of her hair and let it go dark. She wears her glasses and is just letting herself age gracefully. She’s becoming more herself as the books go on and letting go of that sort of ice queen image she had in the first couple of books. She’s finally letting her guard down and realizes she doesn’t need a man — she’s got a dog.

PAK: What are some things you wish Lauren would do better?

LMR: That’s a hard one. What do I wish she would do better? Better mom, more cautious, less reckless. I think Lauren is a character who does exactly what she thinks is the right thing at that moment. Whether it is or isn’t right, that’s for the reader to decide. Her personality definitely changes. She’s evolving like people evolve, in a gradual way. She’s been around long enough now; she doesn’t have to play anyone’s games. She’s proven herself, and there’s definitely a lot of freedom in that, you know.

PAK: As a reader, I always like characters, even heroes, to have some flaws. As a writer, is it hard to draw that line? Do you run into situations where you’re conflicted about Lauren’s choices?

LMR: No, I’m not conflicted about her choices because I’m trying to evoke an emotion from the reader. If they don’t agree with her choices, I love that because that means I made them feel something, as opposed to not making them feel anything or not caring. If they didn’t feel something or care, that means the story is boring. So if they care and ask why she would do this or that, the reader is participating in the story. If you’re not questioning her motives and her actions, she’s literally not doing anything interesting.

PAK: We were listening to your first book on Audible, driving back from California, and there was a sex scene on a stairway, and we had to pause the stream to discuss it because my wife thought it was out of character for Lauren. That’s what you’re talking about, right?

LMR: That’s exactly what I’m talking about. You know, especially if it’s something you would think the character would never do. But is it out of character for them? Well, now you learn it’s not, and it reveals something about the character.

PAK: In your writing, do you map or outline, maybe follow a step-by-step process or is it more open-ended?

LMR: So with my first and second book, there was no outline. It was strictly by the seat of my pants. With my third book, I knew exactly where I was going, so I didn’t have to outline because the story was in my head all the way to the end. With my fourth book, I switched publishers, and they wanted an outline before I started working on the book, which made things really easy because I had all this detail. I believe it was something like a 15 or 18-page outline I gave to my publishing house, and from there, I just sat and kind of put the meat on the skeleton that I had already written.

PAK: Was it hard to make the transition to an outline?

LMR: No. With an outline, I had parameters. I knew where the story was going and what my characters would do. Of course, characters go in directions you don’t expect, or you think of something better that wasn’t in your outline, or you move on from something that wasn’t working. But the outline was a good tool for me.

PAK: Do you have a resolution before you start writing, or do you let it play out naturally?

LMR: I think I know how it’s going to end, but you never know. No spoilers, but there was a major character who was supposed to die, and I saved them at the last minute, and they’re still in the series now. So you never know.

Readers always ask who’s going to exit and who’s going to come in? They’ll also ask about a character they love and want to know if they will come back in the series, and it’s like—well, everyone is on the table to come back, and everyone is also on the chopping block. So, you don’t get too attached.

PAK: Where do you see yourself in the future? Do you have plot lines constantly running through your head? Or are you looking to branch out into some other areas?

LMR: I have some novels already started on my computer, and I have some ideas about the continuation of the series. But I always have different voices going through my head. I could be with my friends out to dinner. We could be in conversation, and there’s someone across the room I find interesting, and I’ll start hatching a story right there. It can be distracting, always creating characters on the fly. That’s why I carry a notebook all the time, because I might have to write something down that catches my eye.

I also write some horror and science fiction under a different name, but they’re short stories. I do that to clear out the cobwebs between my crime stories.

 PAK: Where do you find the names for the characters in your books?

LMR: For a series like mine, you start running out of names. I’ll meet someone who’s got a great name, and I’ll laugh, and say I think I’m going to use your name in my book, and they think I’m kidding. But I actually have a baby book, and every time I use a name in one of my books or a short story, I highlight the name and I write down what story it’s in. That way, I don’t name a character twice in the same book. I have an affinity for J names for some reason — James, John, Joyce, Jill and I would love everyone to be a Julia. When I realize I’m doing this, I bust out my baby book, and I look and make sure that I didn’t use it. It also gives me some ideas for other names.

PAK: One more question—who would play Lauren Riley in the movie adaptation of your books?

LMR: (hesitates) Blake Lively. She’s great. But the character people ask most about is Lauren’s partner, Reese. I’m a little heartbroken that Mack Hollins signed with the Patriots because his persona is so great. And what a wonderful teammate he seems to be. If he ever broke into acting, he could play Reese. 

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