Marrying Suspense Thrillers with Romance — Interview with Belle Ami

 

Pianist.

World traveler.

Skier. Gourmet cook. Wife. Mother . . .

And the author of gripping romantic suspense thrillers.

Meet the remarkable Belle Ami.

After exchanging social-media comments with Belle for a long time, I interrupted this busy lady’s writing schedule and invited (well…implored) her to submit to an interview. Happily, she agreed to join the ranks of the other stellar authors I’ve chatted with here on “The Vigilante Author.”

If you love suspenseful thrillers spiced up with hot romance, then Belle’s novels should be next on your reading list. Our conversation will tell you why.

 

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The Vigilante Author: Hi, Belle. Thanks so much for agreeing to tell my readers about yourself, your journey, and your popular books.

You had already written a number of novels — including three titles in your Tip of the Spear spy series — before your breakout novel, The Girl Who Knew Da Vinci, simply killed it on the Amazon bestseller lists.

But maybe we should begin by having you tell readers about your latest release.

Belle Ami: Thank you!

I just released my second novel in the Out of Time series, The Girl Who Loved Caravaggio — a time-travel thriller with romantic elements. The first book in the series, The Girl Who Knew Da Vinci, is my first Amazon #1 bestseller. Hopefully, by the time this interview is published, The Girl Who Loved Caravaggio will join the ranks.

The Vigilante Author: Congratulations on the huge success of your series debut, and I hope the sequel kills it, too. What’s it about?

Belle Ami: The book continues the story of Angela Renatus, an art historian turned detective with a psychic gift: She can see into the past — into the lives of great artists.

In book 2, Angela is working full time with her fiancé, Alex Caine, a former Navy SEAL turned art detective. When they’re enlisted to solve the mysterious theft of Caravaggio’s Nativity — one of the greatest art heists in history — Angela senses her visions about the tortured artist go far beyond the missing masterpiece.

A web of secrets and lies entangles Angela and Alex on a twisted and treacherous journey. They trace the final years of Caravaggio’s tumultuous life, while facing danger on several fronts as they seek the missing painting.

The Vigilante Author: Sounds like a treat for Dan Brown fans.

Belle Ami: Well, if I get one quarter of the fans that Dan Brown has, I’ll be jumping for joy.

I plotted the book around the actual theft of this painting. In 1969, Caravaggio’s masterpiece The Nativity with Saint Lawrence and Francis was stolen from the Oratory of San Lorenzo in Palermo, Sicily. Thought to be stolen by the Mafia, it has remained on the FBI’s list as the number two biggest art heist in history, second only to the Isabella Gardner Museum theft.

The Vigilante Author: I remember that Gardner Museum heist. It included a rare Vermeer and a Rembrandt, I recall. So, how did you refashion the Caravaggio theft into a novel?

Belle Ami: The curator of the Uffizi Gallery in Florence enlists my heroine, Angela Renatus, and her fiancé, art detective Alex Caine, to find the Nativity. Angela — who has begun to realize the purpose of her psychic powers — decides to employ an unconventional method of recovering the missing masterpiece: Instead of following the trail of the theft, she follows the twisted personal journey of the artist, Caravaggio, who was on the run for seven years prior to his death for killing a man in a duel.

It’s a riveting adventure that will take you all over Italy, with a thrilling surprise ending.

The Vigilante Author: I love it when authors weave real-life events into their stories. Rooting fiction in history gives a story a kind of credibility that pure fantasy can’t. But getting the history right is always a challenge.

Belle Ami: I’m kind of a stickler for getting the history right. Partly because I know history can be manipulated, altered, and molded based on the prejudices, fantasies, and political preferences of the historian or chronicler. We see it happen every day in the media.

I use this premise in my Out of Time series to debunk historical myths and right the wrongs of history. When you’re dealing with events that happened four or five hundred years ago, there is so much gray between fact and fiction. Boy, do I skate the line!

The Vigilante Author: It sounds as if you’ve struck a rich vein of inspiration for an ongoing series, though. What’s next?

Belle Ami: My next book in the series is The Girl Who Adored Rembrandt, which will be out later this year.

I haven’t decided who the artist in my fourth book will be. I’m considering a woman, which will be fun to write about. We’ll see where my research takes me. One thing is certain: I love this series with my heart and soul because it blends art, history, action, adventure, and poignant human relationships in a thrilling story. I can’t wait to start writing the next one.

The Vigilante Author: The Out of Time series seems to be a departure from your earlier books. Is there anything that links them? Or are they distinct genres? If so, do you have a favorite genre?

Belle Ami: I’m an avid reader, which any author worth their salt should be. I read broadly — thrillers, literary fiction, historical fiction and non-fiction, biographies, romance, crime, and of course cookbooks.

The Vigilante Author: Cookbooks?

Belle Ami: I love to cook. I can whip up a fantastic frutta di mare — seafood stew — if you’re ever in Los Angeles.

The Vigilante Author: You’re on.

Belle Ami: My fiction genre has changed since I began ten years ago. I started with a young adult historical novel based on my mother’s survival of the Holocaust. It’s written under my real name and titled In the Face of Evil. I plan on revising this book and re-releasing it in 2020. Given the state of our world, I think it’s important to never forget the Holocaust. In the Face of Evil was a National Jewish Book Award Finalist winner and set me on my path. Since the heroine is my amazing mother, it holds a special place in my heart.

From there, believe it or not, I wrote a romance/erotic/suspense series entitled The Only One, which includes The One, The One & More, and One More Time is Not Enough. I consider this series as my writing school. I plan on re-editing it some time in the future and reissuing this series, although it is up on Amazon and has garnered a decent amount of reviews.

My writing sophistication has evolved as has my knowledge of the publishing industry, which was nada when I started. Fifty Shades of Grey — boy, was that an eye-opener! I must say it influenced my first waltz among the genres. I realized very quickly contemporary romance and erotic romance wasn’t a good fit for me.

Romantic suspense and romantic thrillers with complicated plots became my focus. I love to research, and I’m a stickler for authenticity in my books. I was an art major in college, and combining history, art, mystery, and thrillers became my passion.

The Vigilante Author: That’s certainly an unusual journey for an author.

Let’s talk about the core characters in your stories. In both your Out of Time and Tip of the Spear series, you have strong male heroes. Are they drawn from real-life personalities or purely from your imagination?

Belle Ami: In the Out of Time series, my hero, Alex Caine, is a man’s man. Although he’s a former Navy SEAL — bad ass turned private art detective — he’s also funny, flirty, a gourmet cook, and a foodie. Angela Renatus is really the hero of this series. Her psychic ability is thrust upon her, and at first she refuses to accept it. As a team, Alex provides the much-needed support for her to come to terms with her gift, and for her to realize what a powerful tool it is.

The Vigilante Author: You’ve given my readers enough to whet their curiosity about your stories. But I’m sure they now have a lot of curiosity about you. Tells us about your background.

Belle Ami: I’m a California girl, born and raised. In fact, I grew up in the proverbial San Fernando Valley, a.k.a. a Valley Girl. My mother, as I said before, is a Holocaust survivor, and my father was born in Vienna and was on the Kindertransport that evacuated children to England during World War II.

To say that I was different than most of my friends or contemporaries is putting it mildly. I don’t even want to begin to expound on my childhood. Suffice it to say I was an extremely bright child and teen, who was full of anger, rebellion, and risked life and limb in order to find herself. I was lucky to survive. Okay, you can roll your eyes now.

The Vigilante Author: Not at all. Your rebellious childhood no doubt planted the seeds that enabled you to blossom into the writer you are now. You say you were lucky to survive. Did anything decisive happen to rescue you from doom?

Belle Ami: I made a fortunate marriage, and the world was my oyster — and believe you me, I plucked that pearl!

Unlike some authors who are shy or introverted, I’m a very friendly, outgoing person. One of the reasons character development is so easy for me is I’ve known every kind of character. If you sit down in a bar with me, Robert, I guarantee I will know everything about you by the end of the evening. People have always trusted me with their stories. I’m a very good listener — talker, too.

The Vigilante Author: Things to explore someday over your seafood stew.

Belle Ami: I should tell you, I dropped out of college early on — see above: “rebellious streak” — but then went back. I applied for a Katherine McBride Scholars program at Bryn Mawr College and was accepted. I only did two years — another story — but my art history and literature majors inspired a life-long journey of reading and writing.

The Vigilante Author: When and how were you bitten by the writing bug?

Belle Ami: I’ve always been a writer. In fact, my first-grade teacher wrote on my report card, “. . . has an exceptional talent for storytelling. She will be a writer.” I, of course, decided to be an actress, studied with Lee Strasberg and other famous coaches. I never broke through, but during that period I co-wrote a treatment for a television series, and I made it through budgeting — and when it fell apart, I fell apart. I was so discouraged I gave up. Bad move.

Anyway — in the years that followed, I made a million excuses not to write. Raising my kids being one of my biggest excuses. Only after the kiddlings were grown did my excuses run out. The minute I began to seriously pursue my writing career — that was it. I have never looked back. I began attending conferences, writing retreats, and workshops, and most importantly, I wrote full time, every day, minimum 5-6 hours, sometimes 10-12 hours.

I’ve cut back on most of the peripheral activities now, except the writing. The only thing that pulls me away from my current WIP [work in progress] is working out at the gym and social media’ing — part and parcel of being an author today.

The Vigilante Author: What writers have influenced you, and how?

Belle Ami: This is a tough one, because so many authors have influenced my writing. I’d have to start with Ernest Hemingway. His style of writing — the way he never wastes words and the crisp immediacy of what he writes — for me is enthralling. I love Nora Roberts, whom I discovered much later in my reading journey. Reading Nora is a masterclass in romance/suspense. Her writing always feels effortless. James Clavell, who will forever be an inspiration to me. King Rat, Noble House, Shogun — it just doesn’t get better. I can’t say it better than the New York Times: “Clavell has a gift. It may be something that cannot be taught or earned. He breathes narrative. . .”

The Vigilante Author: Anyone else?

Belle Ami: I’ll add to this pantheon of greats Naguib Mahfouz, an Egyptian Nobel Prize winner in Literature. His Cairo Trilogy is without equal. Beautiful and mesmerizing. I could go on for hours on authors and books that have influenced me: Ian Fleming, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Ludlum, Forsyth, le Carré, Clancy, Follett, and dare I say, you, Robert Bidinotto.

The Vigilante Author: Good lord. I’m squirming, being listed along with any of those names. Thank you, but let me move along and ask if you would care either to compare or to contrast your work with that of writers that most people reading this might know about?

Belle Ami: I don’t think I can compare myself to any other authors. I’ll leave that to the public and my readers. My editor says I don’t write like anyone else. My latest book, The Girl Who Loved Caravaggio, made her cry, and that’s good enough for me.

The Vigilante Author: Many authors find the writing life to be tough and lonely and filled with obstacles and challenges. How about you?

Belle Ami: I’m never alone. I’m always hanging out with my characters. I put too many obstacles in my own path all my life. I’m through with obstacles. Writing brings me joy.

The Vigilante Author: What motivates you to write?

Belle Ami: I’m self-motivated, but now that I’ve begun to break through a little, there’s a light at the end of the tunnel that beckons me — even if it’s really far away. I want what we all want as writers: to share my stories with thousands — okay, millions of readers. And a six-figure deal with a big publishing house wouldn’t hurt.

The Vigilante Author: Do your stories have a unifying message or point of view?

Belle Ami: No matter what I write, there are always kernels to be found embedded in the pages of my books that reflect my philosophical beliefs. I don’t back away from that in my books. As described, my heroes are good guys. They may lose it now and again, but they don’t stray to the dark side. My heroines are strong women who aren’t afraid to show their feminine side. They don’t back down no matter what.

In my Out of Time series reincarnation factors prominently. I have always believed in reincarnation and I am very psychic — not as much as my heroine, darn it, but I do see things before they happen. Please don’t ask me who’s going to win the election. I know, but I cannot say.

At the end of the day, I believe in inner strength. That courage comes not from brute strength, but strength of character. That even in the face of evil we must move forward despite our fears.

The Vigilante Author: You’ve had quite an odyssey, Belle. How is your life these days?

Belle Ami: I live in beautiful southern California. We’re moving next week, so I’m surrounded by boxes, and all I want to do is write, dammit. I live with my husband, and two grown kids that need to eventually leave the nest. Any takers?

We have three dogs. Coco Chanel — our sweet-as-sugar Pitbull. She’s smarter than most people I know. She loves watching TV. They say only ten-to-twenty percent of dogs have this ability. She loves commercials and knows every one by heart. Watching the National Dog Show every Thanksgiving is a hoot. She is not shy about expressing who her favorites are in the lineup. Then comes Pebbles, a snow-white Chihuahua. She’s both a delicate lady and an oink. I don’t want to upset any pigs that might be reading this. I think she suffers from middle-child syndrome. She wants what everyone else gets, and more. And last but not least is the alpha dog, the six-pound man of the house, Giorgio Armani the Chihuahua. Don’t let his name fool you — he’s a macho man and rules the roost.

I spend the bulk of my time writing, reviewing, reading, researching, and cooking. I used to be more exciting, but now, alas, I’ve become a serious author.

The Vigilante Author: Every author writes using unique methods. Tell us a bit about yours. “Seat of the pants” or “plotter”? Or something else?

Belle Ami: I write complicated stories with historical timelines that must be adhered to, and subplots that are fully realized stories, so I can’t possibly write by the seat of my pants. I think of myself as a “plotster.” I write an outline, which changes constantly, but is always there for reference. When you’re dealing with documented history or real events, a timeline is a must. As I referenced earlier in the interview, I’m a stickler for stories that are rooted in fact. Because my research is so intense and fact based, I find my conclusions lead to what may be happening or what might have happened, and the story must entwine seamlessly with the truth. Plus, I have a really big binder full of notes.

The Vigilante Author: Binders full of notes. Sounds familiar.

Belle Ami: In my WIP, The Girl Who Adored Rembrandt, a Rembrandt painting is stolen by a Mexican drug cartel. Well, that turned out to be a complete story in itself, with a new cast of characters that I’ve had to weave into the book. I never planned in my outline for this to become such an important part of the book, but in the end I couldn’t stop these characters from developing. I’ve learned characters have a voice, and sometimes their voice is louder than mine.

The Vigilante Author: Describe where and how you write.

Belle Ami: I write in my bedroom, windows open, door closed, phone silenced, coffee close at hand, research books scattered over the bed, printed articles stacked in piles around me, and my laptop on my lap. Also, notebooks and pens at the ready, as I’m always scribbling. I have an office in the house with my mainframe and printer. That’s where I do my edits. I always print out my final draft and edit with a red pen.

Every time I begin to write, I reread the last few chapters and edit as I go. I catch a lot of typos and whatnot; it helps to put me back into the story, and back into the writer’s mode. Consequently, I never suffer from writer’s block. Sometimes, I get writer’s dullness, where the words aren’t crisp or clear, but I just plow forward and eventually the words start flowing. I’m hyper-aware when this happens: I go back and rewrite immediately, which works for me. Interestingly, some time ago I read Hemingway’s description of his own writing method and, lo and behold, Papa’s was identical to mine.

The Vigilante Author: What’s the hardest thing for you about writing? The easiest?

Belle Ami: The hardest thing about writing for me is punctuation. I’m just crappy at it, although I have improved and continue to improve. Thank goodness I have the best editor and she fixes everything for me. The easiest things for me are storytelling, pacing, and timing. It totally comes natural to me. My voice is distinct and my ability to write in the voice of different eras comes naturally, also. That’s what comes from a lifetime of passionate reading across all genres. I’ve always claimed that before I could travel in my real life, I traveled the world in books.

The Vigilante Author: Is there anything you are particularly proud of?

Belle Ami: I’m off-the-charts proud of The Girl Who Loved Caravaggio. I think it’s my best book yet. Time will tell what the readers think. Fingers, toes, eyes crossed.

The Vigilante Author: You have been self-published and traditionally published. Care to offer any comparisons?

Belle Ami: There are pros and cons to both, as you well know. I’ve never been published by a major publisher, so I can’t speak to that experience. However, my small-pub experience has been disappointing. They throw your book into the sea of published books to sink or swim on its own. I’m beyond dog paddling at this point.

As an indie-published author I’ve found my greatest success. My covers are gorgeous — a team effort between me and my editor/publishing coach, Joanna D’Angelo, and my cover artist, Fiona Jayde of Fiona Jayde Media. Both are so talented.

The Vigilante Author: I’ll say! The Out of Time series covers are first-rate.

Belle Ami: And my interior book designer/formatter, Tamara Cribley at Deliberate Page, is as good as the big houses. Everything is under your control when you’re indie. If you want quality and are willing to invest in your books and in yourself — you can publish the same level of quality as the major publishers. However, that doesn’t come with the big advances. And it takes moola to hustle and get that return on your own.

So my goal is to be a hybrid [a combination of a self-published and traditionally published author]. I’d love to get a great agent and a publishing deal with one of the Amazon imprints. I feel like there’s a next step for me — maybe even a movie. But it’ll take an agent to get there.

The Vigilante Author: To paraphrase the old song, you’ve looked at the publishing life from both sides, now. What publishing route would you recommend to aspiring writers today?

Belle Ami: Dear young writers: If you want to make money, self-publish. The caveat being, it’s unlikely you’ll actually make money until you have five to ten books under your belt. I didn’t say it wouldn’t happen; I said you need to be prepared in your mind that it might not happen.

If you’re the patient type, start sending out those hundreds of queries and get ready to receive hundreds of rejections. If you’re lucky enough to snag an agent, remember — it’s a long road to actually seeing that publishing deal, and an even longer road until your book is published. It’s a snail-paced industry, whereas if you self-publish you can see the results a lot faster. But you have to hustle.

This will be my best year yet. I’ve already published two books, I have another coming out soon, and I’m working on outlining a new series — very excited about it because it has a connection to my mother.

The Vigilante Author: I think all aspiring writers know that writing books is a challenge, even more so if you aim to make it a career. What qualities do you think are most important for any would-be author?

Belle Ami: The qualities I think are most important to reach your personal vision of success as an author are perseverance and discipline. The old adage hasn’t changed. “Writers write.” The more you write, the better you get. Much of writing is a skill; once you’ve mastered the skill set, the easier it becomes.

The one quality that is immeasurable and indefinable is the ability to tell a good story. We don’t all have that ability in equal doses.

The Vigilante Author: What can readers expect from you in the future?

Belle Ami: The Girl Who Adored Rembrandt is on track to be published before the end of the year. My new time-travel/historical/romance/thriller set during World War II is percolating in my head right now.

The Vigilante Author: Until then, where can people buy your books? How can they contact you or learn more about your work?

Belle Ami: My beautiful website is a good place to connect with me. And bless you if you follow me on BookBub!

My books are all available on Amazon. The Girl Who Knew Da Vinci is available in audiobook, as well. It’s also a Finalist for the 2019 RONE Awards.

Here’s all my show-girl stuff:  Twitter, @belleami; Facebook; and Instagram.

My purchase links for the Out of Time Series: The Girl Who Knew Da Vinci (Book 1), and The Girl Who Loved Caravaggio (Book 2).

Thank you so much, Robert! Wonderful questions. I have so enjoyed your Q and A. Thank you for inviting me.

The Vigilante Author: My pleasure, Belle — and soon to be our readers’ pleasure, too.

 

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