Author Biography | Interview | Books by this Author | Read-Alikes
Jeff Abbott is a suspense novelist. He is published in twenty languages and has been a bestseller in the US, the UK, Ireland, France, Germany, Australia and Portugal. His novels Panic and Collision have been optioned for film and are in script development.
Abbott is a three-time nominee for the Mystery Writers of America's Edgar Allan Poe Award and a two-time nominee for the Anthony Award. His novel, Panic, was also nominated for Best Novel for the Thriller Award. All of his Whit Mosley suspense novels have been honored with nominations for major writing awards. His other books include The Only Good Yankee, Promises of Home, Distant Blood, Black Jack Point, Cut and Run, The Last Minute, Downfall, and Inside man.
Abbot's short stories have been anthologized in collections such as Best American Mystery Stories and The World's Finest Crime and Mystery Stories.
Abbott graduated from Rice University with a degree in History and English, and worked as a creative director at an advertising agency before writing full-time. He lives in Austin.
Jeff Abbott's website
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Q: What influences have there been in your writing?
A: First my grandparents, who were great Southern-style
storytellers. My grandmother was a 2nd-grade teacher for 37 years; she
introduced me to books and taught me to read at an early age. (I wasn't
extra bright - she was just a fantastic teacher.) In terms of other
authors, you can't raise yourself up to your idols, but I think I've
been influenced most by the short stories of Eudora Welty and the novels
of John D. MacDonald, who are decidedly a mismatched pair. But both
brilliant in their own ways.
Q: How long have you been writing?
A: I wrote a "novel" (I use the term loosely) in high
school. Handwritten, about five hundred pages. Truly horrible. But I had
always written, usually stories revolving television shows I'd like to
have seen. I never formally studied writing but I got serious about it
in 1992, and my first novel was published in 1994.
Q: You've moved from writing more traditional mysteries to more
mainstream suspense. Why?
A: It was a ...
Idealism increases in direct proportion to one's distance from the problem.
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