Pump Up Your Book Chats with Pamela Samuels Young

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Pamela-Samuels-Young

Pamela Samuels Young is a Los Angeles attorney and the author of four legal thrillers. In her latest novel, Buying Time, a disbarred attorney is unwittingly drawn into a scam targeting the terminally ill. NY Times bestselling author Sheldon Siegel describes Buying Time as “a deftly plotted thriller that combines the best of Lisa Scottoline and Robert Crais.” A former journalist, Pamela is the Fiction Expert for BizyMoms.com and is on the Board of Directors of the Southern California Chapter of Mystery Writers of America. She is a graduate of USC, Northwestern University and UC Berkeley’s Boalt Hall School of Law.

To invite Pamela to your book club meeting via speakerphone, Skype or in person, visit her website at www.pamelasamuelsyoung.com.

Thank you for this interview, Pamela. Do you remember writing stories as a child or did the writing bug come later? Do you remember your first published piece?

Creative writing came to me much later in life. I’ve always been a writer, but journalism was my focus. I spent five years as a television news writer, then went to law school in my thirties. It was my love of reading legal thrillers that prompted me to take a stab at writing fiction. My first published fiction piece was Every Reasonable Doubt, my first novel, which was released in February 2006.

What do you consider as the most frustrating side of becoming a published author and what has been the most rewarding?

The most frustrating part of being a published author is reaching readers. There’s so much competition out there, it’s really hard to get noticed without strong marketing support. The most rewarding part is receiving praise from readers. When I’m feeling tired or frustrated about writing, I’ll take a few minutes to read my reviews on Amazon.com and that instantly cheers me up!

Are you married or single and how do you combine the writing life with home life? Do you have support?

It’s not always easy to balance my law practice, my writing career and my family life. It requires a lot of organization, lack of sleep and sacrifice. Luckily, I have an extremely supportive husband who never complains about me writing all weekend or going away for an entire week to write. My husband frequently joins me on the road when I’m out promoting my books and is my biggest supporter next to my mother.

Can you tell us about your latest book and why you wrote it?

The idea for Buying Time came to me while chatting with a friend at a party. I knew he was in the insurance business, but when he explained that he was a viatical broker, I started asking lots of questions because I’d never heard of the viatical industry. When he began explaining how he helps terminally ill people sell their insurance policies for upfront cash, I instantly knew the viatical industry would make a great backdrop for a legal thriller. In Buying Time, Waverly Sloan is a down-on-his-luck attorney who provides quick cash to terminally ill patients. His clients, however, must agree to sign over rights to their life insurance policies before they can collect a dime. When Waverly’s clients start dying sooner than they should, he’s the number one suspect. Unwittingly drawn into a perilous web of greed, blackmail and murder, Waverly goes on the run—with a determined female prosecutor hot on his trail.

Can you share an excerpt?

I’d be glad to!

Prologue

Veronika Myers tried to convince them, but no one would listen. Her suspicions, they said, were simply a byproduct of her grief.

Each time she broached the subject with her brother, Jason, he walked out of the room. Darlene, her best friend, suggested a girls’ night out with some heavy drinking. Aunt Flo urged her to spend more time in prayer.

Veronika knew she was wasting her time with this woman, too, but couldn’t help herself.

“My mother was murdered,” Veronika told the funeral home attendant. “But nobody believes it.”

The plump redhead with too much eye shadow glanced down at the papers on her desk, then looked up. “It says here that your mother died in the hospital. From brain cancer.”

“That’s not true,” Veronika snapped, her response a little too sharp and a tad too loud.

Yes, her mother had brain cancer, but she wasn’t on her deathbed. Not yet. They had just spent a long afternoon together, laughing and talking and watching All My Children. Veronika could not, and would not accept that the most important person in her life had suddenly died. She knew what everyone else refused to believe. Her mother had been murdered.

“Did they conduct an autopsy?” the woman asked.

Veronika sighed and looked away. There had been no autopsy because everyone dismissed her as a grief-stricken lunatic. When she reported the murder to the police, a disinterested cop dutifully took her statement, but she could tell that nothing would come of it. Without any solid evidence, she was wasting everyone’s time, including her own.

“No,” Veronika said. “There wasn’t an autopsy.”

The funeral home attendant smiled sympathetically.

Veronika let out a long, slow breath, overwhelmed by the futility of what she was trying to prove. “Never mind,” she said. “What else do you need me to sign?”

Later that night, Veronika lay in bed, drained from another marathon crying session. She rummaged through the nightstand, retrieved a bottle of sleeping pills and popped two into her mouth. She tried to swallow them dry, but her throat was too sore from all the crying.

Tears pooled in her eyes as she headed to the kitchen for a glass of water. “Don’t worry, Mama,” Veronika sniffed. “I won’t let them get away with it.”

Just as she reached the end of the hallway, a heavy gloved hand clamped down hard across her mouth as her arms were pinned behind her back. Fear instantly hurled her into action. Veronika tried to scream, but the big hand reduced her shriek to a muffle. She frantically kicked and wrestled and twisted her body, trying to break free. Her attacker’s grip, however, would not yield.

When she felt her body being lifted off the ground and carried back down the hallway, she realized there were two of them and her terror level intensified. But so did her survival instinct. She continued to wildly swing her legs backward and forward, up and down, right and left, eventually striking what felt like a leg, then a stomach.

As they crossed the threshold of her bedroom, she heard a loud, painful moan that told her she had likely connected with the groin of one of her assailants.

“Cut it out!” said a husky, male voice. “Hurry up!” he ordered his partner. “Grab her legs!”

The men dumped her face down onto the bed, her arms still restrained behind her back. The big hand slipped from her mouth and Veronika’s first cry escaped, but was quickly muted when a much heavier hand gripped the back of her neck and pressed her face into the comforter.

Fearing her attackers were going to rape, then kill her, Veronika defiantly arched her back and tried to roll her body into a tight ball. At only 130 pounds, she was no physical match for her assailants. They easily overpowered her, forcing her back into a prone position. As one man sat on her upper legs, strapping her left arm to her side, the other man bent her right arm at the elbow and guided her hand up toward her forehead.

During the deepest period of her grief, Veronika had longed to join her mother. But now that she was face-to-face with the possibility of death, she fought valiantly for life.

That changed, however, the second Veronika felt something cold and hard connect with her right temple. She stiffened as one of the men grabbed her fingers and wrapped them around the butt of a gun. At that precise instant, Veronika knew with certainty that her suspicions were indeed fact. Her mother had been murdered and now the same killers had come to silence her before she could expose the truth. And just like her mother’s death, her own murder would go undetected, dismissed as the suicide of a grieving daughter. A conclusion no one would question.

As the man placed his hand on top of hers and prepared to pull the trigger, a miraculous, power-infused sensation snuffed out what was left of Veronika’s fear, causing her body to go limp. The heavy pounding of her heart slowed to a barely detectable level and she felt light enough to float away.

Completely relaxed now, Veronika closed her eyes, said a short prayer, and waited for a glorious reunion with her mother.

Where’s your favorite place to write at home?

Oddly enough, I like writing at my local Starbucks more than any other place. The noise and crowd don’t bother me one bit. I settle into a cushy chair and immediately get into the zone, blocking out everything around me.

What is one thing about your book that makes it different from other books on the market?

Buying Time features a female attorney as one of the protagonists and also includes a racially diverse cast of characters. After finishing law school, I developed a fondness for reading legal thrillers. There were very few books on the market, however, that featured female and/or minority characters as attorneys. I’ve stepped in to fill that void.

Tables are turned…what is one thing you’d like to say to your audience who might buy your book one day?

Be prepared to be engaged by my characters and plot and enjoy the wild ride. If you find the events that unfold in Buying Time in any way predictable, then I’ve failed as a writer.

Thank you for this interview, Pamela. Good luck on your virtual book tour!

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Question of the Day

How do you make sales happen for you?

A lot of hard work! I sponsor a lot of on line parties, festivals and contests. Book sales don’t magically happen, believe me. An author has to work hard to earn her readers. And then she has to work hard to keep them by giving them something they’ll enjoy reading. I try hard to make my books worth a reader’s time.

-- Sheila Roberts, Author of Winter at the Beach