Taylor Stevens made a splash in 2011 with her novel The Informationist. The book introduced readers to Vanessa Michael Munroe, a brilliant, knife-fighting information hunter who travels to Africa to hunt down a missing woman. Stevens followed the book up with The Innocent, where Munroe infiltrates and steals back a young girl from a cult known as The Chosen at the request of a group of adults who escaped the cult. Munroe is a great character, one who has been compared to Lisbeth Salander, but shes her own woman with a unique perspective and approach and one of the best new thriller characters in the past decade. After the release of The Informationist, the book was optioned by James Cameron, who announced that he intends to direct a film version.
Stevens new book, out now, is The Doll. In the book, Munroe is kidnapped by human traffickers and has to find a way to save herself, the people she loves and another young woman and find a way to prevent it from happening again. Its a great thriller thats also a wrenching book that never trivializes the issues shes writing about.
ALEX DUEBEN: For people who dont know, could you just say a few words about who Vanessa Michael Munroe is.
TAYLOR STEVENS: Vanessa Michael Munroe is a chameleon and information hunter who has built her life on a reputation for getting things donedangerous and often not-quite-legal things. Born to missionary parents in lawless Africa, taken under the tutelage of gunrunners, and tortured by one of the jungles most brutal men, she was forced to do whatever it took to stay alive. Haunted by a life of violence and as proficient with languages as she is with knives, she has an ability to survive, fight, adapt, and blend, and this unique skill set has taken her across the globe on behalf of corporations, heads of state, and the few private clients who can afford her unique brand of expertise.
AD: Where did the idea for The Doll start?
TS: My ideal reader (the person with whom I discuss everything to do with my writing) asked me, What would happen if instead of Munroe being the rescuer, she was the victim? That prompted so many other what-if scenarios: Who would be crazy enough to go after Munroe? Why would they do it? How would they control her? What would be awful enough to motivate her to care?
AD: To what degree was this about pushing Munroe into a corner and making her a little less of a superhero?
TS: It was entirely about pushing Munroe into a corner, but its interesting that you bring up the idea of a superhero. The first time I heard that term as it related to Munroe I was truly baffledstill am, actuallybecause although Munroe is a very rare woman in a pantheon of kick-butt larger-than-life characters such as Jason Bourne, Mitch Rapp, and Jack Reacher, her skills and the situations into which shes thrown, while unique to her, are no more impossible than those of her male action hero counterparts. Ive sometimes wondered if its her gender that creates this difference in perception.
AD: Talk a little about telling the story in the way you did with multiple perspectives. You did this in a limited way in The Innocent with the chapters told from Hannahs perspective, but having two story lines in this book is something different for you.
TS: Given that the plot took place simultaneously on two sides of the globe, dividing the story into two story lines was really the only way that I could tell it. But doing it this waydeveloping and writing two stories, with two distinct plot lines, two completely different casts of characters, in two separate time zones, both of which needed to zipper seamlessly togetherwas so incredibly difficult that I hope I never have to do it again. Each story also needed to have its own story arc, its own tension, its own octane, while still giving the characters enough life to become real, all while keeping it within a limited word count and playing it out in parts of the world with which I was unfamiliar. Writing the book nearly killed me!
AD: In The Doll, we learn much more about Miles and really get a sense of what he does and how he works in a way we havent so far. How much was that something youve wanted to explore and how much was just a good way to tell the story?
TS: It was really the only way I could tell this story, but this also allowed me to continue what I started in The Innocent, which was to build out the main characters inhabiting Munroes world and develop them into more than passing shadows. Because these books are marketed as thrillers and Im somewhat limited by word count, character depth and background sometimes get sacrificed for the sake of plot and forward momentum, but the beauty of writing a series is that even though each book is self-contained for plot, the character arc continues and is able to grow from one book into the next.
AD: Human trafficking is a troubling issue and The Doll is in many ways a chilling book. What was the challenge of trying to deal with these issues and not sugar coat it at all, but youre also very careful not to trivialize it or exploit it.
TS: Human trafficking is an issue Ive been aware of for quite some time, and it seemed to me that many people in developed nations still have a tendency to view it as something that happens only in other countries. I felt it could use more attention and the subject matter worked for the story, but its such a dark, depressing, and almost hopeless topic that I didnt feel I could properly do it justice in the form of entertainment. So, rather than use true-to-life scenarios, I built an extreme outlier situation and used that as the entertainment while contrasting against the starkness of what is reality.
AD: This is the third book of this series and you havent really established a typical story that Munroe tackles. Is this intentional?
TS: Yes, because to me each book is nothing more than a snapshot of something that has happened in Munroes life, and her life is constantly changing. Shes not a detective who picks up cases, or a private eye who finds missing people, or even a soldier who takes up rescue missions, shes a conflicted and pain-filled individual just trying to make her way through life and do whats right by her own conscience. So, ultimately, no matter what else happens in these stories, they are about hereven when theyre told from other perspectives or about other things they are really glimpses into her journey through life. I do hope to not fall into a pattern of repeating topics and scenarios, though Ill be the first to admit that the further we get into the series the more difficult this will become. Interestingly enough, even with the deliberate effort at keeping each story unique, a couple of readers have pointed out that all three books feature sexual violence in one form or other and asked if this was intentional (its not) or if this will be the theme of all my books (it wont) so it appears that even in trying to keep Munroe in unfamiliar territory, I managed to include similaritiesbut I also think its possible for anyone to find unifying themes in anything if they look hard enough.
AD: How did you decide on the setting of the book?
TS: Because these books are international in nature, the plot and location are inseparable: the plot has to bend to the location. I had just written books that dealt with Africa and South America and didnt want to return to those continents again so quickly, and most of the research that Id done on the subject of trafficking had told of the trade routes that started in the poorer countries of Eastern Europe and moved west, so the Adriatic made the most sense as the backdrop for the starting point.
AD: When youre thinking about the setting or the background of a new book, do you tend to write about places and issues that you know a lot about or do you write about places and things you want to learn more about?
TS: Its a mixture of both. The stories always start with a combination of what (the topic) and where (the location) and together these become the plot. It helps when its a topic or location with which Im familiar, but if I limited myself to what I already know the series would have already ended.
AD: To what degree is Munroe you?
TS: You mean besides our affection for fast motorcycles and sharp knives? Im kidding of course.I actually get this question often, and really, its quite flattering. I like Munroe a lotI empathize with herbut she and I are so opposite one from the other that its easier to think in terms of differences than similarities. I suppose her analytical mind and her ability to understand people, although far more amplified, are somewhat similar to the way my own thought processes work, and much like her, I had a hijacked childhood. But all that inner turmoil and damage, that rage and suppressed violence?That is so not me. I am far too happy, smile way too much and am too much in love with lifes simple joys to brood. Oh, and Im a total scaredy-cat.
AD: Now I know that the film rights to The Informationist were sold a while back to James Cameron, whos deep at work on Avatar 2 and 3 right now, but have you had any interaction with him or any stories to share?
TS: I have the utmost respect for James Cameron as a filmmaker and would love to meet him one daywho knows, it might be one of those things on my bucket list that I actually get to cross off, but it hasnt happened yet.
Stevens new book, out now, is The Doll. In the book, Munroe is kidnapped by human traffickers and has to find a way to save herself, the people she loves and another young woman and find a way to prevent it from happening again. Its a great thriller thats also a wrenching book that never trivializes the issues shes writing about.
ALEX DUEBEN: For people who dont know, could you just say a few words about who Vanessa Michael Munroe is.
TAYLOR STEVENS: Vanessa Michael Munroe is a chameleon and information hunter who has built her life on a reputation for getting things donedangerous and often not-quite-legal things. Born to missionary parents in lawless Africa, taken under the tutelage of gunrunners, and tortured by one of the jungles most brutal men, she was forced to do whatever it took to stay alive. Haunted by a life of violence and as proficient with languages as she is with knives, she has an ability to survive, fight, adapt, and blend, and this unique skill set has taken her across the globe on behalf of corporations, heads of state, and the few private clients who can afford her unique brand of expertise.
AD: Where did the idea for The Doll start?
TS: My ideal reader (the person with whom I discuss everything to do with my writing) asked me, What would happen if instead of Munroe being the rescuer, she was the victim? That prompted so many other what-if scenarios: Who would be crazy enough to go after Munroe? Why would they do it? How would they control her? What would be awful enough to motivate her to care?
AD: To what degree was this about pushing Munroe into a corner and making her a little less of a superhero?
TS: It was entirely about pushing Munroe into a corner, but its interesting that you bring up the idea of a superhero. The first time I heard that term as it related to Munroe I was truly baffledstill am, actuallybecause although Munroe is a very rare woman in a pantheon of kick-butt larger-than-life characters such as Jason Bourne, Mitch Rapp, and Jack Reacher, her skills and the situations into which shes thrown, while unique to her, are no more impossible than those of her male action hero counterparts. Ive sometimes wondered if its her gender that creates this difference in perception.
AD: Talk a little about telling the story in the way you did with multiple perspectives. You did this in a limited way in The Innocent with the chapters told from Hannahs perspective, but having two story lines in this book is something different for you.
TS: Given that the plot took place simultaneously on two sides of the globe, dividing the story into two story lines was really the only way that I could tell it. But doing it this waydeveloping and writing two stories, with two distinct plot lines, two completely different casts of characters, in two separate time zones, both of which needed to zipper seamlessly togetherwas so incredibly difficult that I hope I never have to do it again. Each story also needed to have its own story arc, its own tension, its own octane, while still giving the characters enough life to become real, all while keeping it within a limited word count and playing it out in parts of the world with which I was unfamiliar. Writing the book nearly killed me!
AD: In The Doll, we learn much more about Miles and really get a sense of what he does and how he works in a way we havent so far. How much was that something youve wanted to explore and how much was just a good way to tell the story?
TS: It was really the only way I could tell this story, but this also allowed me to continue what I started in The Innocent, which was to build out the main characters inhabiting Munroes world and develop them into more than passing shadows. Because these books are marketed as thrillers and Im somewhat limited by word count, character depth and background sometimes get sacrificed for the sake of plot and forward momentum, but the beauty of writing a series is that even though each book is self-contained for plot, the character arc continues and is able to grow from one book into the next.
AD: Human trafficking is a troubling issue and The Doll is in many ways a chilling book. What was the challenge of trying to deal with these issues and not sugar coat it at all, but youre also very careful not to trivialize it or exploit it.
TS: Human trafficking is an issue Ive been aware of for quite some time, and it seemed to me that many people in developed nations still have a tendency to view it as something that happens only in other countries. I felt it could use more attention and the subject matter worked for the story, but its such a dark, depressing, and almost hopeless topic that I didnt feel I could properly do it justice in the form of entertainment. So, rather than use true-to-life scenarios, I built an extreme outlier situation and used that as the entertainment while contrasting against the starkness of what is reality.
AD: This is the third book of this series and you havent really established a typical story that Munroe tackles. Is this intentional?
TS: Yes, because to me each book is nothing more than a snapshot of something that has happened in Munroes life, and her life is constantly changing. Shes not a detective who picks up cases, or a private eye who finds missing people, or even a soldier who takes up rescue missions, shes a conflicted and pain-filled individual just trying to make her way through life and do whats right by her own conscience. So, ultimately, no matter what else happens in these stories, they are about hereven when theyre told from other perspectives or about other things they are really glimpses into her journey through life. I do hope to not fall into a pattern of repeating topics and scenarios, though Ill be the first to admit that the further we get into the series the more difficult this will become. Interestingly enough, even with the deliberate effort at keeping each story unique, a couple of readers have pointed out that all three books feature sexual violence in one form or other and asked if this was intentional (its not) or if this will be the theme of all my books (it wont) so it appears that even in trying to keep Munroe in unfamiliar territory, I managed to include similaritiesbut I also think its possible for anyone to find unifying themes in anything if they look hard enough.
AD: How did you decide on the setting of the book?
TS: Because these books are international in nature, the plot and location are inseparable: the plot has to bend to the location. I had just written books that dealt with Africa and South America and didnt want to return to those continents again so quickly, and most of the research that Id done on the subject of trafficking had told of the trade routes that started in the poorer countries of Eastern Europe and moved west, so the Adriatic made the most sense as the backdrop for the starting point.
AD: When youre thinking about the setting or the background of a new book, do you tend to write about places and issues that you know a lot about or do you write about places and things you want to learn more about?
TS: Its a mixture of both. The stories always start with a combination of what (the topic) and where (the location) and together these become the plot. It helps when its a topic or location with which Im familiar, but if I limited myself to what I already know the series would have already ended.
AD: To what degree is Munroe you?
TS: You mean besides our affection for fast motorcycles and sharp knives? Im kidding of course.I actually get this question often, and really, its quite flattering. I like Munroe a lotI empathize with herbut she and I are so opposite one from the other that its easier to think in terms of differences than similarities. I suppose her analytical mind and her ability to understand people, although far more amplified, are somewhat similar to the way my own thought processes work, and much like her, I had a hijacked childhood. But all that inner turmoil and damage, that rage and suppressed violence?That is so not me. I am far too happy, smile way too much and am too much in love with lifes simple joys to brood. Oh, and Im a total scaredy-cat.
AD: Now I know that the film rights to The Informationist were sold a while back to James Cameron, whos deep at work on Avatar 2 and 3 right now, but have you had any interaction with him or any stories to share?
TS: I have the utmost respect for James Cameron as a filmmaker and would love to meet him one daywho knows, it might be one of those things on my bucket list that I actually get to cross off, but it hasnt happened yet.