Today's guest became an international best-selling author with her debut thriller, The Faithful.

S.M. Freedman's smart, haunting thriller was inspired by the idea of a massive meteorite striking the earth and causing mass destruction -- a scary possibility that Shoshona took in unexpected (and deliciously creepy!) directions. The White Sands Missile Range is a real place where real people are working to keep us safe from just such a possibility, and I found an article on one of the ideas they're testing for nudging space stuff out of our path. Just, you know, so folks can sleep at night...

On another note, Shoshona's author page on Facebook linked to an AMAZING article on teaching your kids about "tricky people" -- ie: the kind of adult who is not safe. Parents, read this. It's an easy, not-scary read because the kids did everything right, and it introduces a potentially life-saving concept to parents and kids alike.

Back to books! Impact Winter, the sequel to The Faithful, comes out on July 1st. Shoshona is running a Goodreads Giveaway, so go check that out before July 1st. Or you can preorder!

One last thing: we talk about Shoshona's career as a private investigator and how no one suspected a woman in her twenties of being a PI. It reminded me of Steph Cha's Juniper Song series, where the same is true for her PI. Truth mirrors fiction!

As always, if you'd rather read than listen, here's the transcript. Enjoy!

Transcript for interview with S.M. Freedman

Laura Brennan: My guest today is international best-selling writer S. M. Freedman. Her debut novel, The Faithful, is a complex, haunting thriller, and it’s soon to be followed up by the sequel, Impact Winter, which launches July 1st.

Shoshona, thank you for joining me.

S.M. Freedman: Thank you so much.

LB: So before we talk about your books and your writing, I have a few questions about your background. You actually worked as a private investigator?

SF: Yes! Yes I did. I worked in the private investigator. I started out -- actually, I went to a theater school in New York, and I came home with the knowledge that I really didn't want to pursue that as a career. So the only thing I could think of that I was interested in becoming was a private investigator, and I thankfully had a little bit of a hook up in that industry. So I was able to get in and be trained by them. And I spent a little under a decade doing that job.

LB: Oh, my gosh! That's the dream.

SF: It was definitely the dream for my twenties. I loved it. It's not necessarily the best choice of career, at least for me as a mother. But, uh --

LB: I can see that.

SF: As a young girl, I loved it. Nobody ever suspected me of anything, I looked completely innocent.

LB: Steph Cha, who I also interviewed, she has a PI series and her PI is a young, in her 20s, Korean American woman.

SF: Oh, fascinating.

LB: And that's one of her things, no one ever suspects the young Korean American woman of being a detective.

SF: It's true. It's true. It's funny, I'm actually writing a detective novel myself right now with a private eye who lives in Palm Springs. And I'm kind of bringing together a few of my different little elements of my background into one person. And he's Jewish, raised as a fairly traditional Jew, but has kind of fallen by the wayside on that. And he's a private investigator because he's a failed cop. And he's also an Elvis impersonator on the side.

LB: And you, of course, were an Elvis impersonator?

SF: No, that's the only thing I can say I really didn't do. Although when I was a teenager I absolutely loved and adored Elvis and everything that had to do with him, his music, everything. So I, I went through an Elvis phase as a teen. So that kind of, I brought that in as well.

LB: So how did you get started writing?

SF: I began writing, I think, when I was about 12 years old. I really decided that I loved it. I had this -- I was a terrible,