The Tombs
There is an interesting scene in the book that my developmental editor suggested I remove. But there is a reason I left it in the book. Now, if you haven’t read the book yet, you might want to stop here and come back after you’re done. I’ll try to keep it high level for those of you that haven’t read it yet.
I mentioned in an earlier post that I would explain in more detail how I met Officer Bresnahan. He actually arrested me outside of a club in the Meatpacking District. (I know, mom. You’re so proud I’m sharing this information.) As a result, I spent not one, but two nights in central booking, or the Tombs. The Tombs is the nickname for New York’s downtown jail. And the nickname comes from the fact that there are so many violent incidents in that particular jail.
So when you read the scenes where one of the characters is being held in central booking overnight, remember it’s based on my actual experience. I kept these scenes in the book for two reasons. First, I want to keep the story authentic, so it’s important that you, the reader understand the club scene wasn’t all fun and champagne. I had some less-than-desirable moments during my time going out in New York.
(Spoiler coming next.)
Secondly, I needed to create an emotional situation between Jeanne and Bresnahan. I needed to create a fissure in Jeanne’s trust, and I needed to create a situation that caused Bresnahan to really drop the ball on the investigation.
Yes. I am sure there are other ways I could have achieved the same effect. But this version of the story will allow you to see another part of New York that you’ve likely never (and hopefully will never) experience. The book, as in life, cannot simply be happy, exciting moments. I wanted to keep the gritty, ugly side of the story as well.
Dedicating the Book
Figuring out who the book would be dedicated to was harder than actually writing it. I have so many friends who played a key role in the experiences that shaped this story. I am also lucky enough to have an amazing support system in my friends and family. I am so grateful to all of them for their love and support.
I decided to dedicate my book to two of our friends who passed away over the years following my departure from New York. Leo Ubisee and Pedro Gaspar were both promoters who I was lucky enough to call my friends.
I remember the day I heard about Leo like it was yesterday. I was in Las Vegas, about to get on stage for a runway show. Since my makeup was done, I couldn’t cry. Later that night, I remember sobbing in my hotel room. Leo was killed in a jet ski accident in the Hamptons in 2012.
Pedro also passed away in 2012. And the details around his death are still someone of a mystery. But it was so sudden, unexpected. He was with us one day and gone the next. Pedro used to babysit Jack (my other pug) when I was traveling. He, Dev and Jack had some wild times together. I remember a perfect summer day about a year before he passed when we made empanadas at his apartment.
While they are both gone from us now, they are not forgotten. It only seemed fitting to dedicate a story about the nightlife in New York to these two beautiful souls who had such a space in it. Rest in peace to you both, my friends.
Overbrook Asylum
When I lived in New York, I was working on a photo shoot with a photographer I met through SVA (The School of Visual Arts). We wanted to do something dramatic, so we did a little research, and found an abandoned asylum in New Jersey. We pulled the looks, packed her equipment into my car, and headed West on Route 3 to Verona.
That photo shoot was the scariest three hours of my adult life. I am not exaggerating when I say Overbook Asylum is the creepiest place I have ever seen. I remember shooting against an outdoor stairwell that was surrounded by chain-link fence. And the noises I could hear coming from inside at the top of that stairwell sent chills down my spine. We were so scared; we couldn’t get near the building. Just the energy of the place was off, sinister.
And what a better location than Overbrook for this story. In the book, during the final scene at Overbrook, there is a black cat that jumps out of a well in the ground. This actually happened when we were shooting onsite. I have no idea where the cat came from, but it literally shot up out of the well like someone had fired it out of a cannon. And I did scream. And I was shaking.
Ironically, my friend’s mom went to school near Overbrook, and she told us stories about the patients who escaped the grounds and were found wandering near the school in their white uniforms. Overbrook was torn down a couple of years ago. I think they built a hospice over that site. But I recommend Googling Overbrook Asylum, especially if you don’t believe me. I’m not the only one who thinks this place is haunted.
We did get some great photos from that photo shoot, but more importantly, I discovered a perfect, real-life location to use as one of the most pivotal locations in the novel. The staircase behind me in the photo below is actually described in the novel. Sadly, I’ll never be able to revisit the site, but I hope you enjoy its incorporation into the story, which begins in the prologue.
Shooting the Cover
A couple of years ago, I had this idea to shoot the cover in New York City. I wanted to be in the shot because I used so many personal experiences in the story. And I wanted the photo to genuinely capture the NYC skyline I reference so often in the book. I also didn’t want to use a stock photo.
I am lucky enough to have a lot of very talented friends, and I called on one of those talent friends to help me with the project. On one of my trips to New York, after getting my hair done in SoHo at my friend, Jo Blackwell’s salon Dop Dop, I headed out to Dumbo to meet Richie Adomako in his studio at the time. Dumbo has exceptional views of the city, so all we had to do was walk down the street.
What’s tricky about shooting anything in NYC is avoiding people in the shot. If you’ve ever had the chance to visit Dumbo, you know it’s filled with tourists. It took us longer than we initially anticipated because we had to strategically plan the shots to make sure no one wandered in front of the camera.
And yes. I was barefoot in a lot of the shots. This is not advisable in NYC. I don’t recommend it, but we did ok that day. We ended the shoot back in the studio reviewing the photos over a glass of wine. And we decided on the shot that is now the cover of Concrete Jungle. Richie edited the shot so everything was in black & white except for the red dress.
See, I always knew the color scheme for this book would be black, white, and red. Black and white represents a lot of aspects in the book: the speech Jeanne gives about the promoters in the interview room and the victims’ relationship to the killer, to name a few. By using black and white for the skyline, it also pulls your focus away from the skyline, as if it is an afterthought. Red, the color of blood standing out against a flattened skyline background represents the disruption in the lives of my characters and the shift of focus to the victims in the story.
A huge thank you to Richie for helping to create this amazing shot. I absolutely can’t have imagined anything else as the cover for my book.
September 11th
Every time I re-read the 9/11 scene in the book, I get emotional. I was a senior in high school during the attack on the twin towers. And I remember my first trip to New York was the following spring. A friend of mine went to a high school on Chambers Street a couple of blocks away that was turned into an emergency medical facility for people who were hit by debris and dust when the towers fell.
Creating a story in New York, it only seemed right to pay tribute to the event that changed the landscape of the city, both physically and emotionally. I reference the skyline several times in the story, and that skyline was forever changed by the falling of the twin towers. Additionally, given the fact that my main character is an NYPD officer in lower Manhattan, he would have been directly involved and affected.
I wanted to present this piece of the story as a catalyst for change in my detective’s life, the same way it was a catalyst for change in the lives of so many New Yorkers. This tribute is meant to not only honor the first responders who risked and/or gave their lives that day, but also to honor the people we lost that simply went to work one morning and never came home.
The experience also haunts my detective, many years later, just as the experience haunts so many New Yorkers to this day. Some remember experiencing it and are still dealing with the side effects of the asbestos they breathed in or injuries that were obtained. Others simply miss their friends and loved ones that were lost.
The recounts of that day talk about the survivors that were hit with the dust cloud walking on the streets of the city, covered head to toe in white powder. They are said to have looked like walking ghosts.
This week, we celebrate the 19th anniversary of this tragedy. It is a day that will live in infamy for Americans. I hope my written tribute to this day gives you the same emotional reaction that writing and re-reading it did for me.
The Ham
If I told you we actually stole a Boar’s Head ham from a deli on the way home from the club one night, would you believe me? It’s the truth. While I have altered some details of the story for the purpose of the book, it’s almost entirely true.
In reality, Angel wasn’t there that night. But the rest is true to the actual event. I did stay in the car while the boys headed into a deli for a late-night snack. I won’t tell you what happened next because you haven’t read the book. But suffice to say, especially after drinking all night, it was a hilarious story.
I remember waking up the next morning, opening the fridge and seeing the ham. What a surreal experience. And just as funny every time we told it over the following days. I don’t think we ended up eating the entire thing. (I don’t even like ham.) And as it turns out, without an industrial grade meat slicer, it’s not as easy to cut as you might think.
Now, to be fair to my friends, the only reason they took it in the first place was because of the person working at the deli. He blatantly ignored them as they tried to get his attention to order sandwiches. And being 3:00 a.m., there was nobody else in the store at the time.
Enjoy this story as you read the book. But please don’t tell the police.
Detective Bresnahan
NYPD Detective Mike Bresnahan is based, in theory, on a real NYPD officer. There are some significant parallels between the real Bresnahan and the Bresnahan in the story. And as the writing process progressed, Bresnahan became my central character. Initially, I imagined Jeanne as the main character, but when the book was finished, and I started the review process, I realized that Bresnahan had become the centermost part of Concrete Jungle.
The real Officer Bresnahan and I met on a fateful night in the Meatpacking District, which I will talk about in a later post in more detail. This event took place right before my trip to Florida when I started writing the book. So, just like with Boo, he naturally became a part of the story. The personal character details are really where the parallels between Officer Bresnahan and Detective Bresnahan stop.
In the book, Bresnahan’s character goes through an interesting personal progression as the story goes on. As you read, pay attention to how he changes throughout the story. This actually became more apparent during the rewrite process. As my amazing developmental editor pointed out, he needed to have two clear and distinctive professional behaviors: one at the beginning of the story and another at the end. Watch for this change as you read the story.
Many years after I met the real Officer Bresnahan, he friended me on Facebook. He’s since deactivated his Facebook profile, but I do wish I was able to share the story with him. Maybe he will stumble across this book or one of the sequels someday.
Peek-a-Boo
Ah Boo! Such a fun little part of the story. She just keeps popping up in all of the scenes when Jeanne is at her apartment. She makes her debut in Jeanne’s opening scene in Florida, but she ends up… Wait, I won’t say it because you haven’t read the book yet.
Boo was my pug for almost 14 years, and while she died last year, her memory lives on forever as Jeanne’s faithful sidekick in Concrete Jungle. When I lived in New York, Boo was by my side. Those of you that have known me for any amount of time know how much I love my pugs!
And because she was such a huge part of my life and my friends lives when I lived in New York, I wanted to bring her into the story. Actually, the opening scene of the book for Jeanne and Boo was written while I was visiting my brother in Florida when my nephew was born. That was the first thing I wrote, and because Boo was there with me, naturally, she became part of the story as well.
Bringing Boo into the story brings a stronger connection between myself and Jeanne. Plus, I know my friends will enjoy the little reminder of our late furry friend. She may be gone, but she has certainly not been forgotten. Years after I left New York, Boo became my travel buddy, so she and I ended up back in New York many times before she passed away last year.
I hope you enjoy her little appearances as much as I enjoyed having her in my life for over 13 years.
The Characters
Everyone needs the right group of friends around them. I think all of us can say we have both friends and acquaintances. Some stay with us for a long time, while others only play a small role in our lives.
When word got out that I was writing a book, the response from my friends was incredible. Overwhelmingly, they asked if they were part of the story. And many of them are! While most of their names have been changed to protect their privacy, they will likely know who they are when they read the final manuscript.
In fact, believe it or not, none of them have read the book yet! Other than my editors, I haven’t shown it to anyone. I hope they will be proud of the way I have portrayed them in my story. I have tried to capture them accurately. Though, we have all changed since 2007.
As you read the novel, keep in mind that these are, for the most part, real people. And most of the stories and subplots within the book actually happened. (We’ll get into that more in the coming weeks.) I would have no material to write without my crazy friends, and I love them for it. My goal, by using real people and real experiences, was to create a world in the book that felt real.
Some of these characters carry over into the sequel (Yes!), and some characters do not. But I hope as you read Concrete Jungle, you fall in love with my friends just as much as I have over the years.
Club Kids
The setting for this novel is New York City. But not, perhaps the New York City you know and love. I wrote Concrete Jungle in 2008, when I was living in Staten Island. I actually completed the project about four months before I moved to Florida.
Back in 2007, after calling off my engagement, I met a promoter through MySpace. For those of you too young to remember MySpace, it pre-dated Facebook, but came after AIM and was one of the first social media networking platforms. The promoter invited me to PM, a club in the Meatpacking District. The instructions were to dress up, wear heels, and not to bring anyone ugly. So, my roommate at the time, John, and I headed out for our first experience in NYC nightlife with a promoter.
It certainly wasn’t my last. Over the next year and a half, I spent many nights in the clubs of New York. I became friends with dozens of promoters, doormen, managers, DJs, and bouncers, many of whom, I am still friends with today. I partied with celebrities, fashion stylists, photographers, you name it. I drank free champagne, tequila and vodka. I ate free dinners at places like Rue 52, Tao, and Catch.
Back then, we frequented clubs like Greenhouse, Upstairs, Pink Elephant, Cain, and many others that have long since closed. But I pay homage to these clubs in my book, even though I have renamed them. Those of you who had the opportunity to visit any of these will likely recognize them from their descriptions in the story.
Even though these clubs are gone. And I hardly happen to be out in New York City past happy hour anymore, I want you, the reader to be able to experience the same magic I felt all those nights. I’ve tried to bring the New York club scene to life for you, so you can also experience it.
While I am sorry, I can’t give you a vodka cranberry to sip while you are reading, I encourage you to pay attention to the club scenes in the story. Revel in the descriptions of the late-night parties we spent every week enjoying. Imagine the grandeur of the inside of the clubs you’ll visit in the story. Feel part of every promoter table I bring you to with my characters.
Every person’s experience with the clubs was different. But I invite you to share in my experiences, and I hope that by doing so, I can give you a small taste of what it’s like to go out in New York City. Welcome to life beyond the velvet ropes.
