Stranger in the Room: A Novel
Author One-on-One: Julia Spencer-Fleming and Amanda Kyle WilliamsA former military brat,New York Timesbestselling author Julia Spencer-Fleming grew up in places as diverse as Montgomery, Rome, Stuttgart and Syracuse. A graduate of Ithaca College, George Washington University and the University of Maine School of Law, she took up writing while still a stay-at-home mother of two. During the time it took to finish her first novel, she got a full-time job at a Portland, Maine, law firm and had a third child. Julia didn’t want to write yet another lawyer-sleuth, so she used her army past and a keen eye for the goings-on at her Episcopal church to create Clare Fergusson, first female priest in the small Adirondack town of Millers Kill. The resulting series has won or been nominated for every American mystery award available, including the Edgar, the Anthony, and the Agatha. Her next book, Through the Evil Days, will be released in May 2013.Now happily quit of the law, Julia lives in the Maine countryside with three kids, two dogs and one husband.JSF:  Could Keye Street exist anywhere but Atlanta, or is she the product of her city?AKW:Hard to imagine Keye without her southern roots. The South has a way of shaping you. It gets inside you. She loves the crazy weather and the pine forests. She loves the city and the food. There’s a couple of lines from Stranger In The Room that explains her relationship to her geography. “You don’t merely exist here. You make a blood-pact with it the moment the soft, moist air fills your nostrils with the sensual scent of confederate jasmine and floods your DNA like reproductive seed.”JSP:  InThe Stranger You Seek, Keye is introduced as a disgraced former profiler. Do you think she still carries that disgrace, or has she moved on inStranger in the Room?AKW:It’s getting better. She can make jokes now about being fired, about being unable to manage drinking. But make no mistake, losing the thing she’d worked toward and wanted her whole life and knowing that she sabotaged her own career, marked her. Keye’s not only a product of the American South, she’s a product of addiction. Shame, disgrace, it’s one of the tricks of addiction. It hammers your self-esteem. So that theme had been playing out for years before we met Keye inThe Stranger You Seek. She’s sober now and relearning life, but you learn a way of being, of hiding, of being secretive, of always feeling like less when you’re feeding a drug or alcohol habit. So that’s one of those demons she has to occasionally wrestle down—all the learned behaviors around addiction. But Keye Street is a survivor. She’s not a victim. Keye owns her issues and works on them. And she does it with a sense of humor. Laughter keeps her up. Finding the funny in the little things is Keye’s great talent. And she’s okay with laughing at herself too.JSF:  What’s next for Keye?AKW:Book 3 in the seriesDon’t Talk To Strangers. I’m working on it now and I’m really excited about where the series is going and where Keye is headed. She’s using her profiling skills to consult with local law enforcement more and more often. It’s how she’s bouncing back and getting to do what she loves—examining the psychological needs and dark fantasies of a violent repeat offender.