L’interview took place last August at the Carolina Coffee Shop in Chapel Hill, NC, right before UNDERWATER was released.I had just dropped off my daughter at college and was planning a Launch Party for my new Suspense novel. The interviewer was fellow Tar Heel Lucy Hood, who had studied in Spain just a few years after I returned from my year abroad in Montpellier, France on the UNC program there.
Fast forward to January 2014, and you have Lucy’s article, Time Travel, in the current edition of the Carolina Alumni Review!
You’ll find a lot about my first novel MAKE THAT DEUX, which Lucy and I discussed that morning, a little about UNDERWATER, and a few things about me (including a recent photo).
While MAKE THAT DEUX takes you back to the 70s (think: American Hustle, Argo and the Bee Gees), UNDERWATER is set in current times. It takes place in Atlanta and New York, with a scene or two in France.
I’m not a big “time travel” person when it comes to the movies, when that means the characters can go back and forth in time and try to alter or fix things that happened, then deal with the ramifications. But one movie that does it well, in my opinion, is the not-so-famous film that came out in 2000, called The Family Man starring Nicolas Cage.
In the movie, there was a boyfriend and a girlfriend, and one of them was going to spend time in Europe for a great opportunity, and then they…
Well, it’s a romantic, sweet story, just like (but different from) MAKE THAT DEUX. But if you want to take a different journey, filled with conflict, betrayal, despair and deceit, go deeper and dive into UNDERWATER.
You may have a hard time coming up for air.
JULIA MCDERMOTT 
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