I’m thrilled to announce that my book Shrink Rapt is currently on a virtual blog tour hosted by Sage’s Blog Tours. To those of you knew to the term “blog tour,” this means that a select group of book bloggers from around the globe are featuring me! Some of the posts are reviews, while others are author features. It’s exciting.

One of the reviewers wrote, “Just finished Shrink Rapt, the spectacular debut novel by New Jersey psychologist Freda Hansburg.

This dark psychological thriller centers on young Philadelphia psychologist, April Simon,  who stumbles on the body of her domineering department chairman. The police rule his death a homicide, which launches Dr. Simon into a world of deceit, where not even her closest colleagues can be trusted.

This stunning book has a cast of rich characters, razor sharp dialogue, and Breakneck plot twists that made it nearly impossible to put this book down, and the novel’s climax is a gut punch!

If you like suspense, this is the book for you." 

You can follow me on my blog tour by clicking on the tour schedule below. If you missed a stop, just pop over to the blog and find the date I was scheduled to be featured. 

November 28th A Readers Review Blog
November 29th Hogwash
November 30th Deb Sanders
December 5th Live Interview on Blog Talk Radio (10am PST)
December 8th The Gal in the Blue Mask
December 11th Reecaspieces
December 12th Boom Baby Reviews

If you are a book blogger who is interested in participating in a future blog tour for my psychological thriller, please email my publicist for more information.


I'm also giving away a signed copy of Shrink Rapt during my tour - enter below!

... continued from last week.

6. Sara Paretsky, 67.  Who wrote heroines who got slugged around as a routine part of their job description before Paretsky?  Her gritty lawyer-turned-PI, VI, is an icon in the crime genre.  Fussy about her clothes, careless about her housekeeping, passionate about opera and her golden retrievers – one of a kind.

7. Kathy Reichs, 66.  More banter between a cop and a lady professional.  Her Temperance Brennan protagonist, modeled after Reichs’s own career in forensic anthropology, also has drinking issues, which I emulated in my own protagonist.  Check out how adept Reichs is at ending every chapter with an irresistible hook.  Dare you not to turn the page.

8. Jonathan Kellerman, 65.  A psychologist who writes about a psychologist – how can I not relate?  But I can only shake my head in admiration at all Kellerman does so well: the bromance between his protagonist Alex Delaware and Lt. Milo Sturgis, his quirky and scene-stealing bit characters, his well-drawn descriptions of settings.  And talk about a family business!  Check out his newest, genre-buster, The Gollem of Hollywood, coauthored with son, Jesse (who’s too young to make this list in his own right).

9. Jeffrey Deaver, 64.  Ooh, can anyone resist Lincoln Rhyme?  Can anyone resist Denzel Washington playing Lincoln Rhyme?  A brilliant, cranky paraplegic forensic scientist with a fast-driving, ex-model cop girlfriend.  What’s not to love?  Former lawyer and journalist Deaver is a master plotter.  It’s never over till the very last page.

10. Nevada Barr, 62.  A former park ranger (and actor), Barr follows her alter-ego Anna Pigeon through various adventures and perils in different national parks.  Fresh air.  Critters.  Killers.  All good.  Another heroine with drinking issues.  Her last novel, Destroyer Angel, was her best.

So that’s my list of Senior Spellbinders.  Talkin’ ‘bout my generation! 

Thinking I would dedicate a blog post to some of the genre writers whose thrillers and mysteries have inspired me over the years, I made a curious discovery.

A lot of them are my contemporaries. Bestselling, Blockbusting…Boomers!  Many have had successful professional careers that predated and inspired their literary achievements.  All of them are still going strong.  So here’s a heartfelt salute to ten of my favorite genre authors who, like me, are eligible for Social Security.  In descending chronological order, they are:

1. Barbara Vine (aka Ruth Rendell), 84. The Queen of Crime (actually, she’s a Baroness) has inspired many of her younger counterparts on my list.  Her body of work is amazing, but for my money, the stand-alone novels she writes as Barbara Vine are the darkest and most compelling.  She has a brilliant knack for taking a character poised on the edge of reason and then nudging them over the cliff.  And you can’t turn away.

2. Sue Grafton, 74. Her acclaimed Kinsey Milhone series makes us wish the alphabet were longer.  Grafton has drawn on her own rather harrowing personal history to craft the most likeable of sleuths.  We even love her neighbors.  And Grafton’s stories find a way to gently teach us life lessons.

3. John Verdun, 72. It’s only been four years since Verdun, a former advertising exec, launched his Dave Gurney series, set in the western foothills of the Catskills.  It was a terrific debut and gets better with each volume – complex, clever, diabolical and scary.

4. John Sanford, 68. If I had to pick my favorite go-to author, this former journalist would be the one. He almost makes me want to visit (brrr!) Minnesota, just to make sure Lucas Davenport and Virgil Flowers aren’t really out there. Sandford makes those characters that believable.  His riveting plots and LOL dialogue hook me every time.  I have his latest, Deadline, on reserve at the library.

Visit my blog on Thursday, November 20, 2014 to read the remaining five crime writers!

As I prepared for my first author talk, I reflected on what to share about my experiences with the writing process.  I think it’s the finishing process that’s been the most instructive. 

Recently, I saw a magazine piece on Gillian Flynn (is there any magazine without a piece about her these days?).  She was quoted as saying that there are lots of talented, unpublished writers out there who gave up when the writing got tough.  Personally, I feel reassured to know it gets tough for her, too.

I spent many sleepless nights as I struggled through multiple drafts of Shrink Rapt.  I’m having quite a few of them now as I try to complete the first draft of my new novel, Tell On You.  There are so many impasses along the way.  Where will I find my subplots?  Do my characters have distinctive enough voices?  How will I pull off the ending?  Is my protagonist likeable/brave/dark/convincing/funny/beset enough?  How can I write convincingly about forensic or medical or whatever kind of procedures, when I’m clueless about them?     

I call it Hitting the Wall. 

You’re cruising along in your writing, and, bam!  There it is.  What do you do?  Go around it?  Can’t, it’s too wide.  Over it?  Too high.  Hit your head against it?  Probably.  Walk away from it?  Obviously, many do.

I’ve learned a writer must make friends with the wall.  Accept the impasse.  Give ourselves permission not to know how to solve the problem yet, but don’t give up, either.  It’s okay to be stumped.  Necessary, in fact.  It doesn’t make us bad writers.  It makes us writers.

Chew on the problem.  Savor it.  Play with it, research it, redefine it.  Inch forward, and eventually something wonderful happens.

We discover how to problem solve, that it can even be fun to face the challenge.  Befriend the wall, because it’s going to teach you how to grow as a writer.  And then the next wall won’t be quite as intimidating.