Readers, I know you have a ton of books in your TBR pile and you are reluctant to try new authors. I strongly encourage you to try Lynn Blackburn. I was thrilled to read Beneath the Surface. If you love a romantic suspense, you will love it.
You can read my review here. Beneath the Surface
Join me in learning a little bit more about Lynn and how she got the idea for Beneath the Surface. Donna
Lynn H. Blackburn; Beneath the Surface
Thank you so much for having me here today!
I’ve been thrilled with the positive reception to Beneath the Surface, the first book in my new Dive Team Investigations series.
One question I get asked a lot is, “Where did the idea come from?”
As a Christian writer, I pray for ideas. I ask God to give me the stories He wants me to tell. I ask Him to give me eyes to see the world around me in new and fresh ways. Usually an idea emerges slowly and it’s difficult to pinpoint the exact source. But that’s not what happened in this case.
It was the summer of 2014. I had just sold my first book and I was thrilled, but also terrified about diving into the world of publication.
I was attending the Writers Police Academy in North Carolina and one particular course offering jumped off the page. It was about how law enforcement dive teams search for evidence. I just knew I had to be in that class.
We loaded into vans and drove to the local YMCA.
I can still feel the thick air around the indoor pool and smell the headache-inducing chlorine levels.
I can hear the metal bleachers I was sitting on creak when I shifted my position.
I can see the officers from the Guilford County Sheriff’s Office as they prepared to show a group of us how they would search for and retrieve evidence from underwater.
I see the ropes, the tanks, the buoys . . . and the body bag.
An officer in a polo shirt with a badge and weapon at his waist told us how their team functioned. How they were all volunteers from different parts of the sheriff’s office. How they were all certified SCUBA divers who had been trained in underwater criminal investigative techniques and how they trained on the weekends to keep their skills sharp. How they could be called out at anytime to recover evidence in anything from a lake to a river to a farm pond.
First they showed us a basic search pattern that they might use if they were searching for a weapon.
And then they explained how they would retrieve a body.
By the time I walked out of that stifling YMCA pool area, my brain was swirling and it wasn’t from the chlorine!
I could picture it. The team out for a routine training exercise. Until it wasn’t routine—or training—any more.
The idea marinated for a time while I wrote a couple of other books, and when it was finally time to bring these stories to life the first scene practically wrote itself. That has never happened to me before or since. 🙂
I hope you get a chance to meet the Dive Team and find out what happened on that fateful training mission in Beneath the Surface.
Thank you for allowing me to share a bit more about the story with you!
Grace and peace,
