Vicious Cycle by Jaime Parker Stickle
Author Interview + Book & Author Info + Author Pet Corner!
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Vicious Cycle
A former reporter gets a new spin on life in this gripping debut from author Jaime Parker Stickle, whose psychological roller-coaster ride set in sunny Los Angeles tackles motherhood and murder.
New mother Corey Tracey-Lieberman wakes up to nightmarish news: two teenage girls found hanged in a nearby park. Even more unsettling is how the news casually casts the tragedy as the result of increasing street crime, as if the victims’ lives didn’t really matter.
Corey knows better. In the six years she’s lived in Highland Park, she’s seen gentrification but no uptick in criminal activity. A former broadcast journalist, she knows all about spin—and not just the media kind. She now teaches spin classes in the neighborhood, between caring for her nine-month-old son and battling postpartum anxiety.
When police efforts fall short, Corey launches her own investigation into the hangings, flexing her idle sleuthing skills with baby in tow. And after a third murder strikes too close to home, she knows she’s onto something big.
An emotional gut punch tempered by belly laughs, Vicious Cycle is a tour de force certain to thrill all readers.
To purchase your copy, click the following link: Amazon
Vicious Cycle Author Interview with Jaime Parker Stickle
Vicious Cycle is set in the iconic city of Los Angeles, specifically Highland Park. Tell us about that community and why you set your debut there:
There is so much to say about Highland Park. First, it is one of the oldest neighborhoods in Los Angeles, specifically it is Northeast L.A. It is filled with multi-family homes and neighbors that feel like relatives.
Some of the homes are so old, you cannot change a thing about them because they are a part of the historical preservation of the area. My home there was built in 1901!
The windows always leaked when it rained, but most notably, it was far enough away from a fault line that no earthquake ever caused it any damage. The fruit trees in the neighborhood are abundant, and the sidewalks are always littered with the overripe fruits. It’s mom and pop restaurants, the best food, and it’s a truly bilingual neighborhood. It is a cultural epicenter.
Vicious Cycle centers on new mother Corey Tracey-Lieberman. What would you like readers to know about her that we might not get from the book description?
That is such a great question. I want readers to know that she is my love letter to women. Women’s ability to show up for everyone even when we can barely show up for ourselves is something that is so overlooked in our culture. I’ve had husbands write me after reading the book to tell me it meant so much to them – seeing their wives, sisters, mothers represented authentically touched them. And, I’ve had more mature women tell me the book was important to them because they weren’t allowed to talk about the brutal reality of postpartum anxiety out loud. They were silenced and scared and had to keep trucking on.
Often experiencing the postpartum anxiety with every pregnancy/every child. Honestly, that is what I set out to do with Corey. I want every single woman to know they are seen, heard, loved and courageous as hell. That’s what readers should know, they are embarking on an adventure with someone who won’t let them down.
Vicious Cycle uses both tension and humor to create a dynamic thriller, does that combination come naturally? Or did you have to work harder at one aspect than the other?
Oof, yes, that does often come naturally. I have always found humor in very tough situations. I have also lost a lot of friendships and familial relationships due to some, let’s say, more conservative personalities – that are humorless.
Of course, I’m much better now at knowing who my people and audience are … but humor is how I have dealt with a lot of tense situations in my life. I think about law enforcement and their use of gallows humor and that must stem from somewhere further back in humanity, right? They weren’t born police officers, they were born human and to deal with situations that are fraught, our brains turn to humor as a coping mechanism.
If I am ratcheting up the tension, I need to break that with humor that feels natural to us as humans.
Vicious Cycle is the first in a series. The second book launches in August. Tell us about the road to publication and the experience of having that second book coming out this summer:
I like this question because I think a lot of aspiring debut authors need more information in an ever-changing industry.
First, I knew I wanted to write the Corey in Los Angeles series as a trilogy. That is how we pitched it when my agent and I went on submission. That led to a two-book deal, which was everything I could have hoped for. But book two was not written yet and it needed to be ready to release within a year following book one, my debut. So, there were a lot of playdates scheduled between my husband and son. In fact, we took a one-week RV vacation (NEVER AGAIN) and I sat in the tiniest RV with my giant golden doodle and my loud jack-rat terrier and typed and typed and typed while my son and husband played at the beach.
They came home tan I came home even fairer than I was when we left. That’s the deal with a series; you need to be ready to get that next book out for readers who are (fingers crossed) waiting on bated breath. You do not want to disappoint your readers, your community, or your publisher. And, yes, I also have a full-time job, I’m a professor. So, there were a lot of all-nighters.
My students were not complimenting me on my beauty in class, it was more – “Professor Stickle, when did you last sleep?”
In addition to writing thrillers, you are a podcaster. Tell us about The Girl with the Same Name and Make That Paper:
I love podcasting. It incorporates all my passions into one medium – writing, performing, community, teaching.
When you produce podcasts there is a lot of teaching, trust me. My partner and I started with the show Make That Paper. It was our way, an actor and a writer, to give back to artists. We wanted to feature their hard work and labor while celebrating and promoting their art. The show talks about all the side gigs and day jobs we work as creatives in order to pursue our artistic dreams. Once we mastered the technical parts of the medium, I was ready to put my other passion on the frontline – investigative work – and we dove into investigating the murder of a woman that shares my name, Jamie Stickle.
We were the only two Jamie Stickle’s for decades. If someone heard about her death, inevitably they would call my parents to see if it was me. Hence the name, The Girl with the Same Name. It’s really a story that honors who this woman was in life versus the memory of her gruesome, unsolved, murder. That was and is always important to me.
I want to honor women.
What are you working on now?
I am working on a standalone novel—same genre, thriller with loads of strong women. What I can tell you is it was inspired by the song “Goodbye Earl,” by The Chicks. I am very excited to write this book and there has been a lot of studying for the past year of tarot card reading, crystals, as well as the law.
Those are the little hints I’ll tell you. And, if readers want to join me on my tarot studying for the book – they can join me on my Substack, @JaimeParkerStickle.
Words of Wisdom for Aspiring Writers:
Let it all go. Let go of the perfectionism, the what ifs, the comparing to other authors and their online presence. Try to encapsulate yourself in nourishing relationships with friends – new ones, old ones, and most importantly ones that will register on Netgalley to leave you a glowing, early review when you call. It’s hard and the space between your debut and launch of book two can be grueling. You may spiral – it’s okay, I did too. Hang in there.
Great advice!
Author Pet Corner!
YES! My babies are my world (including my human son, promise!).
Tilly – The Queen Grump is our beautiful giant baby chameleon. We are obsessed with her, and she tolerates us at best. I don’t know how a lizard did it, but she absolutely stole our hearts.
Beeker – Is the heart of our family. He’s our jack-rat terrier who found us when he was a stray. He marched into our open door and refused to leave. True story. We had to put a leash on him to get him to go outside and fourteen years later it’s still true. He won’t step foot out the front door without a leash on. My baby boy. He knew I was pregnant before I did. He never wanted to sleep in our bed, then one night he made the leap onto our mattress and laid his body across my abdomen. A week later I took a test and found out that after two years of trying, I was pregnant.
And then, our baby boy Elton. He’s a golden doodle we adopted from a young family who couldn’t keep him due to difficult circumstances. He is crazy and floofy and such a lover. I don’t remember him not being a member of our family, honestly. He’s four now, so he’s just started listening to us—when he wants to. Ha!
We lost both our baby girls, Polly and Pickles. We rescued them from the shelter on the same day. They were extremely hard losses for us as a family, but their passing ceremonies were beautiful and we’re so glad we got to call them ours for fourteen years.
Vicious Cycle Author Jaime Parker Stickle
Jaime Parker Stickle is the author of Vicious Cycle and Take Hart books one and two of the Corey in Los Angeles series. She is a writer, actor, podcaster, and professor of film and TV at Montclair State University.
She is the co-creator and cohost of the true crime podcast The Girl with the Same Name as well as the hilarious podcast about side hustles, Make That Paper. Jaime lives in Los Angeles with her husband, son, two fur babies and a chameleon named Tilly.
Instagram: @JaimeParkerStickle
Substack: https://jaimeparkerstickle.substack.com/
Website: https://www.jaimeparkerstickle.com/
