Janet Evanovich was in an Atlanta hotel room by herself when the call came from her New York publisher with stunning news: Her latest novel, the sixth featuring bounty hunter Stephanie Plum, was about to debut in the top spot on the national best-seller lists.
"That was so exciting," recalled Evanovich in an interview. "I had been hoping to make the top 10, but coming in at No. 1 was so mind-boggling that I started screaming something incoherent.
"And then the first thing I did when I hung up the phone was burst into tears. Because I've been scratching and clawing away at this writing for years; I'd worked real hard at it. And I have an editor, Jennifer Enderlin, who has no life because she had put herself on the line for me, and a publisher, St. Martin's Press, that had thrown everything behind me — all of this was riding on me and my book. So it was not just the joy of making No. 1; I was carrying the weight of all those who had struggled with me."
The sudden chart-topping triumph of Janet Evanovich was no accident. It was as carefully planned and orchestrated as a premeditated murder. It's no wonder the New Jersey-raised writer often refers to her books as "the product."
"Hot Six" (St. Martin's Press, 294 pages, $24.95) is the culmination of years of conscious efforts toward reaching the goal of best-sellerdom, including Evanovich's switch from writing romance novels to thrillers and including her flashy Web site www.evanovich.com, which was started by her daughter three years ago and has proven so popular that it had a phenomenal 2 million visits last month.
"Hot Six" centers on the murder of a mob boss, a murder for which the prime suspect turns out to be Plum's outlaw lover ("Ranger"). The new book continues the winning Evanovich formula for her Plum series: The randy heroine from Trenton, N.J., with the hots for two guys (one safe, one not) and a penchant for landing in messes of various sorts. The cadre of wacky minor characters to provide comic relief. The simmering heat waves of sexual tension. The quick-and-breezy plot that alternates between snap-crackle dialogue, scene-setting narrative and hard-knuckle action.
The Plum series is part "Indiana Jones," part "Moonlighting," part "Midnight Run."
This mix occurred to Evanovich after a year and a half off of serious study of other popular writers and series — what worked well, what did not, plus what she liked herself and what readers liked too.
"I knew by then what the audience wanted, and not just the audience who loves books, but also the audience who watches television — they want a high entertainment level," Evanovich recalled.
Evanovich needed "a hole in the marketplace," some other job for her plucky heroine, and "Midnight Run" provided the inspiration — bounty hunting. So Evanovich immersed herself in the ways and wiles of that shadow trade, talking with bounty hunters and cops, learning to shoot a gun, as she developed her fictional alter ego.
"I could be a bounty hunter, but with some limitations," Evanovich said. "I know I could find people, I could lie, I could finesse people, and I could arrest them. But I'd have a hard time with really dangerous guys because I'm not all that brave."
The 57-year-old Evanovich may look, as she puts it with a laugh, "like the president of the garden club." But lurking below that respectable surface is a strong current of off-kilter humor.
Evanovich wanted "an entertainment Web site that would make a reader come back to it at least once a month. So we had contests (including one to name the next Plum novel), we had places where fans could talk to one another, we had e-commerce options offering merchandise, although we don't make any money on that but do it more as a service to fans.
Evanovich's entire family is now employed by Evanovich Inc. Besides her Web-master daughter, her son handles the financing, and her husband manages the business. That leaves the writer to write, holed up with her heroine, her laptop and her trusty supply of Cheese Doodles ("my drug of choice").
So addictive have Doodles proved to be that Evanovich actually destroyed a previous laptop with "all that grease and orange gunk." Her solution? Get a new laptop and a canister of air to blow the Doodles' leavings away. But give up Cheese Doodles? No way.
As Evanovich stressed, "The salt and cheese and crunch make all my creative synapses come together."