Growing up as an only child I kept myself company by reading stacks upon stacks of books and using my mind as a stage where characters talked to each other. As I stood in front of the bathroom mirror, I was the puppet master as these characters interacted and engaged in various conflicts. At the time, this was a form of entertainment. It wouldn't become apparent until years later that telling stories was my destiny.
My burgeoning writing career began with a school project at age 6 when I put together my first book – about a family of mice. I illustrated it with colored pencils, then sandwiched it between pieces of cardboard covered with an orange paisley swatch of fabric my mother had given me.
As I dabbled in journalism in high school and college, I found that it opened up a part of my brain in an entirely different and exciting way. I loved tracking down stories from points A to B to C to D. It was like solving a puzzle, just as a detective would solve a case. But it was more than that. I also enjoyed the opportunity to share my revelations and discoveries with others in story form.
Unwilling to live in the boondocks, I refused to go to a small town to work at a small paper. Instead, I chose to use my writing skills at a job in public relations at a cruise line in San Francisco, pushing aside my earlier interest in abnormal psychology and the quirkier, more creative aspects of life.
When I realized the corporate world was not for me, I began to seek a higher truth -- not just any facts, but important relevant facts, the ones that would make a contribution to my community and foster societal change. I ended up choosing the balance and objectivity of newspapers over the positive spin world of PR, marketing and advertising, even though it meant I had to live and work in the middle of nowhere for a while. This was all well and good until I wanted to go even deeper, which in journalism, generally means longer. In the ever-changing world of newspapers, one thing has seemed to remain constant: Editors always think shorter is better. Thus, my conundrum. Luckily, by this point, I’d found another outlet -- fiction.
I had continued to make up funny little stories here and there, but hadn’t taken the practice very seriously until the late 1980s, when I picked up creative writing again more as a hobby, really, hoping that someday it might turn into something more. I joined a writing workshop in Northampton, Massachusetts, and quickly found it made for a much-needed escape from the sweatshop mentality of speed-writing as many as four stories a day for the Springfield Union-News. I wrote a series of short stories in that workshop, one of which eventually evolved into my first novel, Naked Addiction. As an investigative journalist, I kept an eye out for the more complex and dramatic stories – the most bizarre or tragic deaths and the public figures whose questionable actions evoked my investigative curiosity. I wrote about such things as Michael Jackson’s original molestation charges and addiction to painkillers, the lifestyle of the Heaven’s Gate cult and strippers’ laundered political contributions to San Diego City Council members. Over time, a symbiotic relationship formed between my fiction and non-fiction writing skills and the topics fed into each other.
Along the way, I also became somewhat of an expert in addiction through professional and family experience – alcohol and methamphetamine in particular, suicide, mental illness and the family dynamics and pharmacology involved. These would become themes in my books.
Because newspaper jobs and deadlines can be so demanding, I had only weekends to spend writing and rewriting that novel. I had committed myself to learn about the publishing world, and so I did that, taking hope from the encouraging developments that occurred in between the rejections.
My writing worlds finally converged when I was able to take a series of news stories that I had written about the Kristin Rossum murder case and expanded them into what would become my first book, POISONED LOVE. (I must point out that I have always maintained a clear separation between fact and fantasy.)
In August 2006, I signed a contract for my second non-fiction book, and, when the editors at The San Diego Union-Tribune said they couldn’t give me a second leave, I quit my secure, full-time, 401K-contributing job and took the leap, a big risk some of my colleagues said they wouldn’t take.
But it all turned out just fine.
While I was writing that next book, my agent called out of the blue, and during a pleasant conversation about nothing in particular, I asked if he had good news for me. He said we’d gotten an offer on my novel. It had been so long since we’d originally sent out the manuscript that I’d let go of my dream, for the moment anyway, so I almost thought he was kidding. He wasn’t.
It only took 17 years.
Thankfully, I’d already written a solid draft of the sequel.
While I was working on TWISTED TRIANGLE: A FAMOUS CRIME WRITER, A LESBIAN LOVE AFFAIR AND THE FBI HUSBAND'S VIOLENT REVENGE, I also signed a contract for my next non-fiction book, BODY PARTS, about serial killer Wayne Adam Ford. I turned in the manuscript only days before the release of TWISTED TRIANGLE, a crazy but entirely factual account of a kidnapping, an attempted murder and a love triangle between two married FBI agents, Gene and Margo Bennett, and novelist Patricia Cornwell.
Perfect timing.
As one of my editors would say: Onward.
JUST THE FACTS:
Born: Caitlin Lisane Rother in Montreal, Canada.
Immigrated: to the Santa Barbara area of California as a toddler before packing up and moving to San Diego.
Education: Bachelor’s in psychology from the University of California, Berkeley; master’s from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.
Resume: During my 19-year career as a daily newspaper reporter, I worked briefly at States News Service in Washington, DC, then at the Berkshire Eagle and the Springfield Union-News in Massachusetts, (where author Tom Wolfe also worked, but not at the same time). Returned to the West Coast to work as a full-time freelancer for the Los Angeles Times in Ventura County. Became a staff writer for the Daily News in Los Angeles before returning to San Diego to join the Union-Tribune staff. Also was published in Cosmopolitan, the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, and the Boston Globe. Am now teaching feature writing and creative writing at UCSD Extension in La Jolla, Calif.
Switched gears: Resigned from the Union-Tribune in September 2006 to write books full-time.
Newest non-fiction book: BODY PARTS (Kensington/Pinnacle) comes out March 3, 2009. This is a psychological look at the life of long-haul trucker Wayne Adam Ford, who was convicted of murdering four women during rough sex, dismembering two of them, and then turning himself in so he wouldn't kill again. Still claiming the women’s deaths were accidental, he is on Death Row at San Quentin prison in California.
Coming out in paperback: TWISTED TRIANGLE (Wiley & Sons/Jossey-Bass, April 20, 2009) former FBI agent Margo Bennett’s exclusive story about the attempt on her life by her ex-husband, former FBI undercover agent Gene Bennett. The Bennett case received international publicity due to Patricia Cornwell's romantic involvement with Margo after the two met at the FBI Academy at Quantico. Rother is the first to tell Margo’s exclusive story.
Upcoming non-fiction book: WHERE HOPE BEGINS (Simon & Schuster, September 15, 2009, co-authored with Alysia Sofios), the inspiring true story of how Sofios, a TV reporter in Fresno, risked her career to help female survivors of the Marcus Wesson family recover from a cult-like life of abuse, incest, polygamy and the murder of their nine children.
First book: POISONED LOVE, the authoritative account of the Kristin Rossum murder case, released in July 2005 by Kensington/Pinnacle, which nominated the book for an Edgar award. Now in its fifth printing.
First novel: NAKED ADDICTION, a thriller about sex, drugs and police detective Ken Goode’s investigation into the murder of young beauty school students near the beach in San Diego. (Dorchester, November 2007)
Media appearances: Featured on dozens of television and radio shows, including the nationally syndicated radio program, “America at Night” and a documentary about the Rossum case, “Women Who Kill,” which is still airing on the E! Entertainment channel. Has appeared in documentaries on the Rossum case and other murders on several episodes of "Snapped," a crime series on Oprah Winfrey’s Oxygen Network, and also was interviewed live on the FOX News Channel’s "On the Record with Greta Van Susteren" about the murder of Scott Peterson’s grandfather in San Diego some 60 years ago.
Honors: Nominated in 1998 by the Union-Tribune for a Pulitzer Prize for a story about a depressed teenager who died after lighting himself on fire behind a WalMart. Won three awards in the annual Best of the West contest, which judges stories from major metropolitan newspapers in thirteen western states. Also won five awards for a narrative that tracked the progress of all five recipients from a 12-year-old organ donor, including a Best Feature award from the Associated Press News Executives Council and a Best News-Feature award from the Los Angeles Press Club.