Kim asked Lisa Marie Rice:

Where did you get the idea for Midnight Promises?

Lisa Marie Rice I knew I wanted a woman on the run vibe, but I also knew I wanted the woman to be smart and resourceful. The fall of communism has been in the news recently because it is the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. I worked in Berlin a lot in the 1980s and the Wall was a palpable symbol of the horrors on the other side. I remember exulting when it fell. I'd been thinking about how people have sort of forgotten about the threat of nuclear bombs these past few years because there are many other things to be scared about but the Bomb? That's the Big Kahuna, the extinction-level event that hasn't happened yet, but still could. We should still be worried about nuclear bombs. I'd been reading articles about former Soviet scientists relocating to the West. I wanted a woman who'd had many names, many identities and I wanted a guy who was absolutely certain about who he was.

There. that's an inside look at a writer's brain. Inside our heads are bits of newspaper articles read a long time ago, the story of a friend of a friend of a friend that has lingered for a long time, how would a man feel who'd lost his entire family on 9/11, what would be the psychology of a woman who grew up under the Witness Protection Program. Voilà! MIDNIGHT PROMISES was born.

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