Elise Hart Kipness
Dangerous Play
From Amazon bestselling author Elise Hart Kipness comes the next gripping story in the hit Kate Green series.
DOSSIER: Your evolution from sports reporter to crime writer definitely worked since you had exceptional crossover skills, but did it take much to convince people you could do it? There are a lot of former lawyers, cops, and military personnel who have turned into writers, but your background is a little uncommon in the thriller space.
KIPNESS: I think the most critical person I needed to convince was myself. Lol. But I did come at it with different insight and stories than others. For one, I don’t think there’s another thriller writer who had to stand on a milk-crate to do their job. The first sport I covered was basketball. And I’m five-feet, zero-inches. So, you can only imagine how that might be a problem. My producer started carrying around a milkcrate for me to stand on when I interviewed NBA players. And that worked so well, he carried it around for all my interviews.
The other fun thing about going from sports reporter to crime fiction author is that I felt I could share some interesting insights. Elements of the sports world a lot of people didn’t get to see. For example, what it looks like to be in the hidden tunnels at Madison Square Garden or the dugout of Yankee Stadium.
A PitchFest success story with a top agent
DOSSIER: How hard was it to land the amazing Liza Fleissig as your agent and then a book deal for your debut novel, LIGHTS OUT?
KIPNESS: I was beyond thrilled to land Liza Fleissig. She is absolutely the best!!! I connected with Liza at PitchFest a few years ago. That’s the part of the conference ThrillerFest where each author is given three minutes to ‘pitch’ their manuscript to different agents. It’s like speed dating but with agents. By that point, my manuscript was in pretty good shape and I had a bunch of interest. But Liza was my first choice and I was beyond thrilled when I got the call she wanted to represent me. I signed that day. And then Thomas & Mercer was the first publisher we went out to. I consider myself super lucky!
Plenty of stories to tell
DOSSIER: In your new novel, DANGEROUS PLAY, how deep did you have to dig to come up with a compelling storyline after coming off such a successful debut? It seems that with the kind of access you had as a sports reporter, you’d still have “a lot in the tank” with some of the off the record material that you didn’t report on, right?
KIPNESS: That’s a great question. As a sports reporter for a national network, I had the opportunity to cover a range of sports—the NBA, US Opens (tennis & golf), NFL, MLB, etc. So, yes, I do feel like I still have a lot left in the tank for future books.
DANGEROUS PLAY takes place at a fictional Olympics where Kate gets the story she hopes will reestablish her career. That story is covering women’s soccer at the Olympics. This is special to me for a number of reasons. I love women’s soccer. I am a soccer mom! And I anchored our Olympic Coverage of the Sydney Olympics (from our California studio). In this book, I also had the chance to explore themes that are very important to me. Bullying and intimidation in youth sports; the media’s role in snowballing a story. And the Succesion-like relationship between the media moguls from Kate’s TV station and Kate and her colleagues. And let me just pause to say that I’m obsessed with the show Succession!!!
Coffee as a religion
DOSSIER: When and where do you write, and what kind of environment do you prefer? (Music, silence, standing on top of a milk crate? (You can explain the milkcrate if you’d like!))
KIPNESS: The most important thing for me to have while I’m writing is coffee. It’s more of a religion than a ritual. In fact, I’m so addicted to coffee that I made coffee mugs with the covers of each of my books and quotes from my characters, since, of course, they are coffee addicts too.
Whenever I can, I like to write outside. Whether on my screened-in porch in Connecticut or my backyard in Key West. I don’t work in an office. Instead, I have a lapdesk and put my computer on it. Have computer, will travel.
That awful first draft
DOSSIER: How much of your own copy did you write in your past life, and how did that skillset transition work for you when it came to writing a full length novel? Was it your education at Brown or something else that gives you what you need to write such compelling stories?
KIPNESS: Writing a novel is so different from writing stories for television. For one thing, most of my sports stories totaled one-and-a-half minutes. I needed to learn how to write over 80-thousand words. Can you say daunting? My first draft was awful–I wrote it just like a reporter giving the reader the who, what, why, when, and where. I completely missed adding suspense and red herrings! Ugh!
But I took writing classes at Sarah Lawrence Adult Writing Center and Gotham Writers Workshop. I also relied on organizations like Sisters in Crime, Mystery Writers of America and International Thrillerfest to learn skills. It’s very important for new authors to seek out and be receptive to feedback. You don’t just “magic” a book. There are a lot of tools you need to learn. Eventually, it all came together.
DOSSIER: Do you have any news or announcement you’d like to disclose in your Dossier?
KIPNESS: Well, I do have good news, but as you anticipated, it is a little hush-hush right now. I can say that the Kate Green series has been optioned for development into a TV series by a major studio/network, and that there are already some super exciting attachments. I really don’t know when they will announce since there are so many moving parts, but it is incredibly exciting and I feel so, so lucky.
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