Paperback; Fuze Publishing, LLC (December 15, 2011)
Genre: mystery
LT
Bridget Donovan suspects the worst when her former Naval Academy roommate,
Audrey Richards, perishes in a botched take-off from an aircraft carrier. The
Navy says it's an accident, but facts don't add up. Could it be suicide, or
murder? Donovan's unofficial investigation into what really happened, both
during their past Academy days and in Richards' final hours, forces her to
examine the concepts of honor, justice and the role of loyalty in pursuit of
those ideals.
Kathleen Toomey Jabs is a 1988 graduate of the United States Naval Academy and is currently a Captain in the Navy Reserve. She holds an MA from the University of New Hampshire and an MFA in Creative Writing from George Mason University. Her stories have been published in a number of literary journals and received several prizes, including selection in the National Public Radio Selected Shorts program. She lives with her family in Virginia.
Based on your
personal experience in the Navy, why write a mystery?
Kathleen: "I certainly didn’t start out to write a mystery! For that matter,
I didn’t start out to write about the Navy at all.
In 1999, I enrolled in the MA program at the University of New
Hampshire. I had two small children, a Navy spouse, and a fierce desire to
write. I snatched every free minute and began to write short stories.
My first characters were: a Japanese woman living with her in-laws
in a strict marriage, a teenage boy visiting the Paris catacombs with his mom
and new stepdad, and a 17th century noblewomen leaving the “new
world” to return to Spain. I had been stationed in Japan, visited France, and
accompanied my military spouse to Panama so the choices weren’t as far-fetched
and random as they might’ve seemed, but in many respects the stories were about
places not people. The characters never really came alive. None of the stories
were even close to submission ready. I wasn’t sure I’d ever be thesis-ready.
One day, my creative writing professor challenged me: “Why don’t
you ever write about the military?” I had no quick, glib response. My own
military background was something I tended to hide or downplay. As a 1988 Naval
Academy graduate, my experiences of school and the military, in general, were
complicated. How was I going to dissect that or peel back the careful veneer of
spit and polish without revealing something raw or embarrassing? Exposing some
part of myself? Yet I couldn’t face the idea of getting another round of
lackluster comments in workshop. I took the challenge.
For the next 18 months I wrote about women in the military, and as
I did, I faced down old ghosts—the constant scrutiny, the sweat, the discomfort
with self, body, choices, the loneliness and longing. Along the way, I found
characters that were human, likeable, charting their way through a strange and
hostile land. I kept writing. Once I started writing fiction in a military
setting, I found I wanted to understand the women and tell their stories.
Bridget
Donovan, the main character in Black
Wings, grew from one of my early story drafts. I watched her emerge from
self-conscious plebe to assured midshipman. I’d been writing a series of
stories around her and various roommates when one day the sentence, “Audrey
Richards wanted to fly” popped into my head. I was hooked.
At
one point in my Navy career, I’d considered switching to aviation. The whole
aviation world was cool and mysterious, but it was also competitive and fraught
with danger. My imagination wandered. Could the intensity of competition drive
someone to consider murdering a rival or maybe arranging an accident? What if
rivalry and bad blood between two pilots went all the way back to the Naval
Academy? What leads to obsessiveness? To murder?
These
kinds of questions began to haunt me. Once I knew Audrey Richards crashed I
found I had a mystery. I needed people to understand Audrey, but I also needed
a cast of characters around her who might have a motive. That led me to
thinking about honor scandals and what honor means. At the US Naval Academy,
there is a very prescribed honor code. While it seems black and white, I saw
firsthand during my time at the Academy that the issues are often complicated,
the choices are really hard. Why not put Bridget and Audrey in that situation
and let them explore the choices and their consequences?
The
story grew on its own in many ways, becoming more of a “mystery” with each
twist. My personal experience gave me the insight into the Academy world and
also fueled the questions I couldn’t answer but couldn’t help but ask."
Thanks, Kathleen for visiting and discussing Black Wings.
For more interviews/reviews visit the Black Wings Blog Tour Site:
Welcome to the Sunday 
