By Nicole Rogers

Writing a suspense novel often calls for writers to delve into the world of the sick and twisted. This complete immersion allows writers to be entirely lost in a world they have yet to create.

Suspense writer Erica Spindler tucks herself away at a family lake house in Jackson, Miss., in order to enter her suspense-driven worlds, but she also has another gift she said she believes is the source of her talent.

“People will say when they meet me, ‘Wow, you seem awfully normal to be writing these books!’” Spindler said. “And I realized at one point it was just this dark gift, that I have a way of looking at the world and listening to a story and spinning it into the worst-case scenario.

“The first time I realized it, we were renovating our house in New Orleans before we ever had kids, and my husband was up there pounding the board upside down. And I’m watching him, and I just imagined him losing his grip on this big board, and it come crashing down, and it hitting him in the head, and blood flying, and me screaming. It’s like, why do you think these things? I know it’s the dark gift.”

Spindler is The New York Times bestselling author of “Breakneck,” “Copycat,” “Killer Takes All,” “See Jane Die,” “In Silence,” “Bone Cold” and “All Fall Down.” Her novel, “Breakneck,” also has made it onto the International Bestseller list.

Spindler showed a hint of modesty when asked if she ever had thought she would become a New York Times bestselling author, replying, “Once I was really in publishing and had published a lot of books, then you start hoping, and wishing, and praying. It’s something you work for, but gosh, no, not at all.”

Although Spindler said she did not expect to grace the bestseller list with her presence, her assistant had an idea on how Spindler achieved the goal.

“The best part of Erica’s work is the characters she creates,” said Spindler’s assistant for two years, Evelyn Marshall. “In a few lines, you feel like you understand them.  She pinpoints just the right details to bring them to life.”

Spindler was not always a writer, though. Before she was “bitten by the writing bug,” she earned her bachelor’s degree in art from Delta State University in Mississippi and her master’s in art from the University of New Orleans.

Spindler met her husband—whose name she guarded—at Rock Valley College in Rockford, Ill. before heading to Delta State University. Then, a trip to New Orleans had both herself and her husband ensnared in a cultural web of fascination, which ultimately led to her family becoming denizens of the New Orleans area.

“My husband and I traveled to New Orleans to see the King Tut exhibit at the New Orleans Museum of Art,” Spindler explained. “Without advance tickets, we had a choice: Spend our day waiting in line or sightseeing. We chose the latter and fell head over heels in love with the city and have been in the area ever since.”

After attending the University of New Orleans, Spindler began working as an art professor at Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond, La., from 1982-1988.

In June 1982, Spindler came down with a cold. Most colds are insignificant, but this particular sickness led Spindler to the local pharmacy for some medicine. The cashier dropped a Nora Roberts category romance novel into her bag, and that moment proved the catalyst for her career as a writer. This one novel would press the power button on Spindler’s writing machine.

Spindler said she does not remember the title of the novel that ignited her writing torch, because she did not know then that it would be “informative” for her life.

Asked why she became a writer other than her fortuitous encounter with a cold, Spindler said her writing was also compelled by “a love of reading. I was always a tremendous reader. (I was) one of those kids that was under the covers with the flashlight, and I was supposed to be going to sleep on a school night.”

Spindler began writing category romance novels following her bout of sniffles, but was soon hungry for something more in-depth than a love story. Her first break-out suspense novel, “Red,” made an international leap, which soon led to the words being lifted from the pages and translated into a television series.

“Red” was made into a daytime television show in Japan, as well as into a graphic novel.

“The publisher starts pursuing international venues for publication,” Spindler explained, “and someone in Japan saw it, read it and wanted to turn it into this graphic novel. First, it was serialized in a women’s magazine over the course of like 35 weeks. Then, it was so popular that they turned it into books. And then they turned it into a daytime drama.”

Asked if she ever watched the show, Spindler’s mouth moved into a smile that lightly painted soft wrinkles on each side of her eyes.

“I’ve watched a little of it,” Spindler confessed. “It was a hoot. It was very, very funny, because the book starts out in the Mississippi Gulf and then goes to southern California. And this started out in rural Japan and then moved on to Tokyo, and it was all in Japanese. It was very different.

“They sent me there (Japan) for a tour. When the daytime drama came out, they re-released the book, and they sent me over there to tour. It was really great. It was probably the most exciting and interesting thing that happened to me in my career, and the most unexpected. I mean, who expects that?”

Although Spindler said she is sticking with suspense, she conceded that she added some romance back into in her latest published novel, “Blood Vines.”

“I’m kind of doing a little bit of a turnaround, and I did a little bit with ‘Blood Vines.’ The books have gotten much more ‘CSI,’ and with ‘Blood Vines’ I purposefully pulled back, and I added a romance again. So, it’s a subplot. The main plot is the mystery—the suspense part—but there was the subplot of the romance again.”

Spindler said her stories, including “Blood Vines,” were ignited by her own real-life experiences.

“They usually are sparked by something that actually happens to me in real life,” Spindler said. “In ‘Blood Vines,’ we went out to Napa Valley for the first time. It was just gorgeous. We were there in February when the vines are all dormant, and it was like these rolling hills of twisted, bent crosses. It looked like graveyards. It was like a cemetery to me.

“We were at a winery and the vintner said, ‘What do you do?” And I told him. He said, ‘Oh, you know there’s a lot of ways you can kill a person in the wine-making process.’ So, for me that was like—cha-ching!”

For her research, Spindler visits the places in which her books are set. She has written books set in her home state of Illinois as well as in the Crescent City.

“’Break Neck’ and ‘Copy Cat’ were both set in Rockford, Ill. where I grew up,” Spindler said. “And New Orleans is a great place. The South is a great place to set a book because there’s so much atmosphere. The culture’s fascinating. New Orleans, particularly, just has so much atmosphere, and it’s such an interesting city, and people like to read about it. It’s unique.”

Spindler is currently working on a book set in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina about a stained glass restoration artist. Although the official title is not decided, Spindler said possible titles include “On Edge” and “On the Edge.”

“The main character is a stained glass restoration artist who lost everything in Hurricane Katrina, including her husband,” Spindler explained. “Her entire life is blown to bits. She spent the last six years kind of piecing the windows back together and her life. Then, at the opening of the story, someone comes into her life that’s going to blow it to bits again.”

Like all her story ideas that come from some type of personal experience, Spindler created the story for this novel after reading a Sept. 19, 2009, article in New Orleans’ The Times-Picayune.

“It was a little clip about a stained glass restoration artist and the work she did and what it was like after Katrina when all these windows are blown to bits,” Spindler reminisced.  “She talked about how being a restoration artist is kind of like being a detective, because you have some of the pieces, but not all the pieces, and you have to fit them together, and you have to maintain historical integrity of what you’re restoring.”

Spindler said she actually got in touch with the woman in the article, Cindy Courage of Attenhauf Studios, in New Orleans, and used her story as part of her research for the novel.

Although Spindler is a full-time writer, she said she is delving back into her art roots.

“I’m kind of getting back into it in a hobbyish kind of way,” she said. “It’s fun. I don’t even have enough time to do what I want to do. It would be fun to do a little bit every weekend, but I don’t really have that much time. It’s interesting because they’re really quite awful. They’re just silly little things. I’m not pursuing it academically or professionally.”

Her right brain apparently augments her overflow of creative juices. Spindler may channel some of that left-over energy to dip her paintbrush once and again, but she said she has found her raison d’être in writing.

“I wanted to try my hand at writing one (a novel). The moment I did,” Spindler said, “I knew I had found my true calling.  Goodbye paint and brushes, hello pen and keyboard.”