Author Meet & Greet: Hank Phillippi Ryan

Last night, I had the privilege of meeting Hank Phillippi Ryan, author of the best-selling books The Other Woman and The Wrong Girl, among others. She is currently on tour promoting her newest release, The Wrong Girl, and lucky for me, one of the stops wasn’t too far from my house. Unlike last weeks author event, this was much more intimate – there were only 7 of us there, plus the staff of the book store.

I had recently read The Other Woman (review coming soon) and really enjoyed it. The Wrong Girl is the next in Hank’s Jane Ryland series, although as she mentioned last night, you do not need to read the books in order. I was happy to hear that as of now, there will be four books in this series…with the third scheduled to be released next fall.

Hank started the night out telling us about herself. Having just read my first book by her, I didn’t know much about her background. She was, and still is, a journalist, now working as an investigative reporter for an NBC affiliate up in Boston. As a little girl, growing up in rural Indiana, she and her sister used to ride their ponies to the library and she always got out mystery books. Since a young girl, she’s always loved a good mystery and that love has certainly stayed with her.

Being in journalism for 40 years, she’s heard her fair share of stories and has used some of those ideas as threads in her books. For The Wrong Girl, she bases her story on the idea that someone would purposefully match the biological parent with the wrong child…what would happen? She says that both writing and reporting are about telling a good story. It doesn’t matter if it’s non-fiction, as in the case of her reporting, or fiction, as in the case of her books, as long as you can tell a good story, you are set. But, every once in a while, it’s nice to make up the facts for her stories.

With her latest book, The Wrong Girl, just published, she’s on the big tour across the country. You can find a listing of all the events here at her website. She will also be doing a twitter chat with Literary New England and She Reads Online Book Club on September 25 from 8-9 pm…be sure to join us for that as there might be some giveaways!!! We’ll be using the hashtag #LNEChat.