Behind the Series

One of the great things about writing (and reading) crime stories is that you get to live through characters who take exciting and dangerous risks that most of us would never even consider. Choosing to sneak into the apartment of a violent psychopath at four a.m. while he’s totally cracked-out and busy shouting into a mirror is not for me. Nobody’s jammin’ a gun in my face -- if I can avoid it. Except things wouldn’t be complete without a little humor dumped into the mix. Let’s see… maybe Mr. Crackhead gets bored with the mirror thing and decides instead to practice his karate side-thrust kick into an old, green duffle bag stuffed to the gills with dirty laundry and crammed into his bedroom closet. Naturally, it’s the same closet where our heroine sits crouched and hiding behind a bagful of smelly underwear. Umph!

Life is a real trip for these imaginary people. In creating Saylor Oz, we wanted someone vulnerable, yet headstrong and comical. Making her a sex therapist meant she would also be compassionate, non-judgmental and smart. On the fun side, she’d like to talk about sex. On the serious side, she’d be someone willing to approach taboo subjects and confront puzzles around the darker things in life -- including murder.

We love buddy films. So we decided to do one in paperback. Enter Benita Morales, Saylor’s best friend and roommate. She’s a financial analyst with a punch. While investing money is her trade, her real passion is boxing. Inside the ring this lean, muscular Nuyorican beauty had no problem living up to her namesake of “Binnie The Bitch.” Needless to say, her temperament is a bit different from her warmhearted therapist friend’s. Maybe that’s why they’re always bickering over little things like what’s the best way to handle a guy pressing himself against you on a crowded subway car. Saylor would give him a nasty look and say, “Stop that.” Whereas Benita prefers to give him a nasty left hook and say, “Consider yourself stopped.”

Regardless of their differences, their underlying loyalty and willingness to lay down their lives for each other always prevails in the end. Saylor and Benita keep sticking their necks out and nearly losing them every time. But when it comes to dealing with the city’s dark side, these two girls from DUMBO never give up.

Dreams and goals play a huge part in a person’s life. And for every dream fulfilled, sadly there are a million broken ones. BABYDOLL taps into ideas about people striving to make a name for themselves, and forgotten people who might as well be nameless. It looks at how far many will go to get their wishes. And how some react when it all goes up in smoke. 

Of course, with Saylor at the helm, things always have a way of turning into a walk on the wacky side.

In BABYDOLL, a story that touches on some of the more ugly regions of being a fashion model, Saylor deals with an unusual array of interesting new characters. In her hunt to find a killer, Saylor accidentally ends up being part of a young genius designer’s madcap plan to tweak the fashion world’s traditional concept of beauty. As a result Saylor not only rocks this time around -- she rules -- the world of fashion. Except, will she live to enjoy it?

This is not the first time Dr. Oz has found a connection between sex appeal and murder.

One theme that runs throughout APHRODISIAC is the idea that most people have a deep down wish to experience what it is like to be irresistible to the opposite sex. None of us is perfect, and in a society that is inundated with super gorgeous media celebrities, that idea can plague even the most sensible, intelligent women (especially if you add in some major disses from high school). Like our protagonist, Saylor Oz.

Saylor also loves fragrance, a trait that will carry through all the books. But takes center stage in APHRODISIAC. Do aphrodisiacs really exist? Hard to say. Certain kinds of bees must think so, since they gather fruit and floral scents to create perfumes that attract mates. Fragrance and sexuality have been connected since ancient times, from the rites of early fertility goddesses to Cleopatra, the Kama Sutra and Japanese geishas. There are records of perfume recipes inscribed on four-thousand-year-old cunieform tablets. Even the word, which comes from the Latin per fumus, means “through smoke.” Our sense of smell is the only one of our sense that bypasses our conscious mind and connects directly to our limbic system where emotions and sexual impulses emerge. Yep, pumpkin pie really did come out on top for sexually arousing men in a clinical study by the Smell and Taste Treatment and Research Foundation in Chicago.