Elise Hart Kipness on Her Thriller "Close Call" Set at the U.S. Open

The Thriller "Close Call"

• 📚 "Close Call" is the latest novel in the Kate Green series, featuring high-stakes drama set against the backdrop of the U.S. Open tennis tournament.
• 🎯 The plot involves two top female tennis stars preparing for a match, with one being kidnapped and the other receiving threats from the kidnapper.
• 🏆 The book has achieved bestseller status, recently named a USA Today bestseller.

Tennis as a Dramatic Setting

• 🎾 The author, Elise Hart Kipness, has a personal connection to tennis, having grown up attending the U.S. Open and covering it as a journalist.
• 💡 She describes tennis as a uniquely dramatic and solitary sport, making it an ideal setting for thrillers due to its inherent rivalries and high stakes.

Long Island Influence

• 📍 A significant portion of the story unfolds on Long Island, a place deeply important to the author's upbringing in Great Neck.
• 🎭 The diverse socioeconomic landscape of Long Island, from the extremely wealthy to those living paycheck to paycheck, provides rich material and tension for the narrative.

From Journalism to Fiction

• ✍️ Kipness leverages her background as a broadcast journalist, bringing a sense of immediacy and present-tense storytelling to her fiction.
• 🔑 She aims to take readers behind the scenes to places not typically seen, like the creaky elevators at Madison Square Garden or the interview rooms at the U.S. Open.
• 💡 This approach allows readers to experience exclusive settings, such as where Kate interviews one of the players, mirroring the author's own interview experiences.

The Writing Process

• ☕ The author finds joy in the writing process, often working from bed with coffee and a lap desk, living vicariously through her characters without the need for extensive preparation.
• ✅ This allows her to combine the best of both worlds, enjoying the creative output without the daily demands of her former profession.