Q&A with Jack Heath

From my Q&A with Jack Heath, author of The Missing Passenger:

How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?

I'm trying not to overthink it. The Missing Passenger was first published in Australia as No Survivors, but that title was deemed too dark in the midst of a pandemic. But both titles express the premise, sort of - a plane crashes into a house, and while looking for survivors, the hero discovers that the plane is empty. The pilot and all the passengers have vanished. Hopefully both titles make readers curious enough to pick up the book.

What's in a name?

Jarli was originally a First Nations character. During the editing process, the publisher suggested that those aspects felt artificial, stapled on - like token diversity rather than sincere. They were right, so I removed the explicit references to this aspect of Jarli's background. But I wanted to...[read on]

Visit Jack Heath's website.

Writers Read: Jack Heath (April 2020).

My Book, The Movie: The Truth App.

The Page 69 Test: The Missing Passenger.

Q&A with Jack Heath.

--Marshal Zeringue