Sandra Brown | Jay Burgess is dead.

Jay, who, you ask?

Jay Burgess, one of the main characters in my new novel, SMOKE SCREEN, which, by the way, goes on sale today.

I’m sure you’re wondering how and why a main character can be dead (and not a ghostly presence), but this is very much the case with Jay, and even though he’s deceased, I still had to make him as dynamic as every other character in the book. You see, everything in SMOKE SCREEN revolves around Jay, his childhood friend, Raley Gannon, our intrepid heroine, Britt Shelley and a fire.

And much like the fire, a single event that fuels the back-story of nearly every character in the book, Jay Burgess is a man who impacted many lives.

Besides Jay, Raley and Britt, there’s a host of other characters. Matter of fact, SMOKE SCREEN probably has more characters than any other book I’ve written. This is due in part to the villain not being revealed until so late in the book. Keeping that identity a secret necessitated creating four or five viable suspects and each of them needed motive, opportunity and most importantly, character traits that define them, make them seem not only real but unique enough for the reader to keep them straight.

This can make writing the book a bit for the author at times, but at the same time, more characters means always having “someone” to check in with, and that’s what keeps a story moving forward—Always a good thing for the writer!