Q&A session with Tess Gerritsen

As a fan fiction writer and a reporter, I always look forward to meeting well-established writers who have some pearls of wisdom to share.

Tess began by talking to the fans about her childhood and how did she become the writer that she is today. Tess knew that she wanted to be a writer when she was seven years old but she was growing up Asian-American and her father wanted her to be a doctor. She became a doctor but still wanted to write and began writing romances until she got a great idea for a medical thriller based on a story she heard while travelling to Russia. Someone told her about children disappearing from the streets of Moscow to be used as organ donors. This story became her first thriller “Harvest”.

Tess got an idea for “Rizzoli & Isles” series when she heard a voice of Hoyt in her head and she needed someone who would stop him. Little trivia: in the book his name was Warren Hoyt but there was a real person in Boston by the same name and on the show his name was changed to Charles. Jane Rizzoli was a secondary character in the first book “The Surgeon”. She was a bitch, she wasn’t very nice. Tess didn’t like her and wanted to kill her at the end of the book but suddenly Jane became more likable, she was brilliant, she was just angry. Tess identified with her as an outsider herself and Jane just wouldn’t let Tess kill her.

When she wrote the sequel, “The Apprentice”, Tess brought in another secondary female character, Maura Isles as a medical examiner. The women’s friendship evolved organically, they both became very important to the stories and soon her two books became a ten-book series with Jane and Maura as major characters. These two women are the core of the books because they are not rivals, they work together.