Today, it is my pleasure to introduce husband and wife writing team Diane and Dave Munson and their exciting new YA thriller, Night Flight. Welcome to both of you.
Thanks for interviewing us. We're excited to be here.
Your writing gives readers the inside scoop as courageous federal agents track down the guilty. What prompted you to write Night Flight, your recent thriller for Young Adults?
We are a husband and wife that write and travel the country meeting readers and speaking about God’s love in tough times. Because Diane is an attorney and former Federal prosecutor and David a former NCIS agent (before serving as an undercover Federal drug agent), we love creating heroes for readers to believe in. Our writing, though fiction, is inspired by our exciting and dangerous careers where God has protected us. This is especially true for David as he has traveled the world to bring criminals to justice.
One night we finished editing our last thriller,
The Joshua Covenant, and David became convinced we should write a novel using the teens from Joshua. Filled with tomorrow’s headlines, we reveal in Joshua what happens when CIA agent Bo Rider is assigned to our embassy in Israel. His wife Julia and their young teens, Glenna and Gregg, experience relics and riots in the tunnels of Old Jerusalem. As we wrote of the Rider family learning of God’s ancient covenants, we had such delight exploring the teen’s growing courage that we penned
Night Flight. It’s a high velocity adventure for young adults and adults who are young at heart.
Featuring Glenna and Gregg in
Night Flight gives us a chance to introduce teen readers to books their parents and grandparents are reading. It’s our attempt to bridge the generation gap. We have grandchildren and find the gap broadening as they embrace ipods, FaceBook, and technology many find intimidating.
Night Flight provides teens with an opportunity to read serious Christian suspense with the same characters and plots their adult family members are reading.
You call your novels “Factional Fiction” because they are based on your careers. Will you tell us what action in Night Flight is from your real cases?
We have fun weaving in the drama from David’s undercover work and readers find issues of adoption and child custody influenced by Diane’s family law cases. In
The Joshua Covenant, Bo Rider discovers things about his birth that even his parents didn’t know. In
Night Flight we highlight hero dogs that David worked with in his time as a Special Agent. These law enforcement dogs are trained to sniff out explosives, currency, and drugs. So when the Rider teens long for a puppy, their dad instead adopts Blaze, a mature Golden Retriever and Lab mix.
Action and suspense build because Glenna and Gregg don’t know their dad Bo is a CIA agent. So when Blaze confronts some crooks and the teens learn their dog has mysterious smelling powers, their imaginations kick into high gear. The teens are forced to take refuge at their grandparents’ home in Treasure Island, Florida. While there, they put Blaze to work stopping crime and Grandpa Buck involves them in more adventure. The whole family invests their lives in helping a desperate homeless girl they befriend in the neighborhood.
Though the action is intense, the Dove Foundation awarded this thriller “Five Doves”, their highest rating, for family friendly content, which is appropriate for all ages.
Does your writing contain a spiritual message?
Yes! As believers in Jesus, we enjoy writing suspense novels that show characters seeking freedom, justice, and truth. Some try to trap the guilty in their own strength. When they come across agents empowered by God in their lives, this causes them to dig deeper into the meaning of life.
Our novels appeal to non-Christians and Christians alike. We believe it is crucial to write realistic fiction that will keep even a non-religious person reading a God-honoring book. So in
Night Flight, the Rider teens experience how God is interested in their daily lives. When their non-Christian fellow student is threatened with a terminal illness, Glenna and Gregg are heartbroken. But after seeking God’s help in prayer, they concoct a plan to save his life using Blaze. Readers have told us they cannot stop reading until the last page and find the ending, “powerful!”
Your six adult novels stand alone and can be read in any order. What are you writing now?
When we completed our debut novel,
Facing Justice, we loved our main federal agents so much that we decided to keep telling their stories in each of our novels. Eva Montanna hunts down masterminds that fund terror after her twin sister is killed on 9/11. FBI Agent Griff Topping also appears in our subsequent releases. Through our pages, Eva and Griff become embroiled in a mystery involving the JFK assassination, Chinese espionage, and freeing a Sudanese woman trapped in modern slavery. In all of these adventures, Eva wants to help her grandfather write his WWII memoirs so we decided to finally give her that chance. Thus we are researching, interviewing Dutch Resistance survivors from WWII, and writing Eva’s family story involving a dangerous legacy. Stay tuned, because we have many surprises in store for our readers.
Where can we find your books?
Our books are available in print and eBooks. Autographed copies are available on
our website. Readers can find print versions at Lifeway and other Christian stores and both print/eBook versions are on
Amazon,
B&N.com, and
Christian Book.com. Fans of NCIS will enjoy signing up for the blog on our website, where we critique the NCIS show that airs on Tuesdays. Those who sign up to receive our email newsletter can participate in contests to win books, NCIS caps, and other fun items. May God’s blessings rain down upon you and His people.
When a millionaire drug-dealer wrote a memoir that became a movie staring Johnny Depp, Diane Munson decided the good guys wearing white hats should be the ones to write memoirs. A former Federal prosecutor, she knew the back story. She asked David, a former undercover DEA Special Agent, to join her in writing about David’s arrest of Johnny Depp’s character in Chicago and other criminals in what the Munsons call factional novels. Now, this husband and wife weave the thrills of back alley deals and major courtroom drama into international suspense novels.
Diane Munson is an attorney of more than twenty-five years who transitioned from writing briefs for judges to writing inspiring fiction for readers. David Munson was a Special Agent with the NCIS and with the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). As an undercover agent, he infiltrated international drug smuggling organizations. Diane and David have co-authored together six suspense thrillers: Facing Justice, Confirming Justice, The Camelot Conspiracy, Hero’s Ransom, Redeeming Liberty, and The Joshua Covenant. “Night Flight,” their newest thriller for young adults, released September, 2012.
