I’d like to welcome Rebecca Saltzer to the blog for #WriterWednesday!

Most daring thing you’ve ever done: Quitting my job on Wall Street with no plans other than to take a trip to Europe and then come home and write a mystery novel.

Something you chickened out from doing: Trying to actually make a living as a writer. I went to graduate school instead, got my PhD in earthquake seismology, and saved some money before picking the writing back up.

Things you always put in your books: Independent, smart women. They’re fun to read about and are the type of people I choose as friends.

Things you never put in your books: Sex and gratuitous violence. For me, the interesting part of a murder mystery is understanding the motivation behind the crime and solving the puzzle of who did it.

Some real-life story that made it to one of your books: Murder Over Broken Bonds is loosely based on a real fraud I investigated when I worked as a bond analyst at a NY City investment bank. My second and third novels, Not Accounting for Murder and A Golden Opportunity for Murder, borrow from the Enron collapse and the 1963 Salad Oil Swindle, respectively. And, a drunk trader really did throw up after a company party, all over my coat and shoes.

Something in your story that readers think is about you, but it’s not: I’m occasionally asked if someone actually got murdered because of the fraud. (Not that I know of.)

Something you’re really good at: Recognizing when something doesn’t add up—it’s my protagonist’s superpower too.

Something you’re really bad at: Letting things go. If something doesn’t make sense, I will keep poking until I get to the bottom of it. On Wall Street, that saved traders from costly mistakes. That said, my husband would probably prefer if I applied it only to fiction.

Besides writing, what’s the most creative thing you’ve done: In college, I co-hosted a Friday afternoon news program on the local radio station with a friend.

A project that didn’t quite turn out the way you planned it: One time on the radio show, we managed to play two songs at the same time over the air. When we realized what had happened, we offered a free pizza to whoever could identify the two songs. Not a single person called!

Things to say to an author: Did the stuff you write about really happen when you worked on Wall Street?

Things to say to an author if you want to be fictionally killed off in their next book: Have you read (fill-in-the-blank-with-a-completely-different genre)…? Maybe you could write something more like that.

Your favorite movie as a child: ET. It was fun to watch his adventures after being stranded on earth and so sad when he had to leave!

A TV show or movie that kept you awake at night as a kid (or as an adult): A horror movie called Have You Seen the Children? My sister and I were in high school and my parents took a trip abroad leaving the two of us alone at the house. At 4 am the phone rang, and I leapt out of bed. As I ran to grab it in the other room, I kept thinking of the murderer’s creepy voice asking “Have you seen the children??????” It turned out to be my mother, calling from the airport during a layover stop to say hello.

My favorite book as a child: Charlotte's Web.

A book I've read more than once: Same answer— but the amazing part is that a few years after reading it, I actually met the author, E.B. White. He lived on an old farm on the coast of Maine and showed me the barn that inspired Wilbur and Charlotte. His writing spot was a small cottage apart from the house, with a view of the ocean — I still think about that when I imagine my own ideal place to write.

Words that describe you: Curious, analytical, and perceptive. I spent years on Wall Street learning that the line between ambition and greed is razor thin—and that everyone has something to hide. It's the theme running through my whole Wall Street Mystery series, honestly.

Words that describe you, but you wish they didn’t: Skeptical. I never believe the obvious explanation. My characters (and family) find this exhausting. Fortunately, my readers seem to appreciate it.

Hardest thing about being a writer: It’s solitary. You work for long periods of time, alone. To make sure I’m not writing in a vacuum, I link up with fellow authors through various writing organizations and belong to a critique group. It’s a great place to get candid feedback about which parts of the narrative work and, more importantly, which parts don’t.

Easiest thing about being a writer: Rewriting the story. You can’t do that in real life.

About Rebecca:

Rebecca Saltzer worked as a bond analyst on the trading floor at Lehman Brothers in New York City in the financial heyday of the eighties. Like the protagonist in her novel, she sometimes encountered fraud and other questionable business practices, except in real life, none of it led to murder. In 2021, Rebecca received the William F. Deeck-Malice Domestic Grant for unpublished writers. When she’s not writing, she enjoys hiking with her two rescue dogs and exploring the great outdoors.