I started writing fiction in high school, long before I decided to become a journalist. Although I walked the halls of my school with a notebook and pencil in my hands, I wasn’t sure being an author was actually a job I could get once out of college. So, I decided to make journalism my major. I loved to write. I loved to learn interesting details of someone’s personal story. I loved to take a front seat to the action making history. And I loved the pressure of working under a deadline.
My career as a journalist allowed me to travel to Cuba for the historic meeting of Pope John Paul II and Fidel Castro. While reporting the personal story of one Tampa family, I met my husband. The priest who led the group to Cuba later married us. I had a front seat to the last shuttle flight from Cape Canaveral. I reported about the hot scene of a race riot, had sand blasting my face during live shots in hurricanes, and I’ve flown an F-16 with the United States Air Force Thunderbirds. Despite a thrilling and satisfying career reporting real stories, I never lost the desire to make more stories up and to give life to the characters that often started talking in my head. It was only natural that when I decided to get serious about writing fiction, I made my main characters reporters. I knew I could breathe authenticity into words and actions. I understand the logistics in a newsroom, the working relationships between reporters and photographers and, of course, the often-complicated relationship between employee and boss. I have worked with sources, broken stories, and tried to solve mysteries. So why not write about that.
My first three books were romantic suspense stories. A reporter goes out on assignment, stumbles on an even bigger mystery, runs into obstacles, but eventually falls in love while solving the case. Think James Bond movies on the page. I enjoyed weaving together enemy-to-lovers romantic tropes with the action and gripping twists of a true thriller. I even managed to incorporate that F-16 flight with the Thunderbirds into my first novel, Alive at 5. Cuba Undercover’s hero is modeled after my husband. My day job and night job often cross over.
Then my publisher came to me and asked if I could write a true thriller, one featuring a strong, but flawed, female character and a diabolical, but not stereotypical, serial killer? I love a good challenge and immediately said yes.
Thus began the journey of writing All the Broken Girls. I decided to focus on a Cuban American crime reporter named Mari Alvarez who is on a personal hunt for a killer who leaves a broken doll at every scene. She's about to become the killer's prey and she'll need more than the azabache charm her Abuela Bonita insists will protect her from evil. Rational homicide detective Tony Garcia needs more than a superstitious journalist's hunch there's a serial killer lying in wait in their West Tampa neighborhood. He needs proof. Working against the clock, Mari and Tony explore a hidden, Old World Cuban religion to break the case of all the broken girls.
Not only did I draw on my own experiences at crime scenes to write this book — which centers around clues dropped by a serial killer — but I also used my resources for research. For questions on law enforcement protocol and dialogue for my homicide detective, I reached out to the public information officer at the Polk County Sheriff’s Department. Carrie Horstman knew me as a local TV news anchor, and I believe that played a part in her being willing to read my book and look for what might be a factual error, like wearing a gun on your day off with or without the badge showing. Details like that are important because your readers may include members of law enforcement, and they’ll respect you if you took the time to get it right.
I also solicited the help of a professor of religion at the University of South Florida. Tori Lockler helped me fact check specifics on Santeria. Raising a family in the Cuban American culture, I knew about prayers and saints and the black azabache charm mothers often wrapped around their baby’s wrist. But I needed to authenticate the details because I do not actually practice the religion myself. Being a journalist gave me credibility when I reached out to Ms. Lockler.
I also think twenty-five years of fact checking my stories in the TV news world became a habit, and it’s now what I do as a fiction writer, whether it’s needed or not. I think that gives my writing an authenticity that my readers recognize. Because of that, it’s hard to tell sometimes where the facts and fiction divide. In fact, a reader once told me she believed everything in Alive at 5, except that scene where the main character flew in an F-16. How would I possibly be able to write about that?
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By day, Linda Hurtado Bond is an Emmy and Edward R. Murrow award-winning journalist. By night, she’s an author of James Bond like adventures and heart-stopping thrillers. Linda met her husband Jorge on assignment in Cuba, twenty-some years later they've raised a doctor, a nurse, a pilot, a paramedic firefighter, and an aspiring psychologist. A breast cancer survivor, she’s active in the Tampa community raising money and awareness. When not working, she finds time for her passions, her husband Jorge, world travel, classic movies, and solving a good mystery. Visit Linda at lindabond.com.
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