‘Getting Mine’ Result of News Addict Femling’s Fix

A self-described “newspaper addict” who needs her “daily fix,” Costa Mesa author Jean Femling says a story about a Los Angeles scam involving false automobile accident injuries inspired her latest Orange County mystery.

“It was a ring that was broken by the insurance people, an undercover investigation,” said Femling. “It’s the kind of thing Moz would be doing.”

In “Getting Mine” (St. Martin’s Press; $18.95), Femling’s feisty insurance claims investigator Martha (Moz) Brant suspects that a Newport Beach cocktail waitress involved in a rear-end collision has faked her back injury. But before Moz can confront her, the waitress suspiciously dies of a drug overdose. The sometimes perilous trail leads Moz to a kinky doctor, a physical therapist and a lawyer--the same kinds of “players” in the Los Angeles auto accident scam Femling read about in the newspaper.

As a writer, Femling finds newspapers an invaluable source of inspiration.

“Heavens, you find out about people you’d never know about otherwise,” she said. “It gives you little glimpses into other peoples’ lives, emotions and behavior. I think a lot of writers are drawn to writing because we have this great thirst to live all kinds of lives, which we can’t do realistically, and I think the newspapers supply that.”

“Getting Mine” is Femling’s follow-up to the 1989 debut of claims-investigator Moz Brant in “Hush, Money.”

The book’s title, Femling said, refers to the fact that “everybody in the ring wants something: They want money, but each one has a kind of goal, a special part of their life they want to really satisfy.”

Even Moz, who is motivated by her employer’s offer of a hefty reward to any agent who can provide proof of insurance fraud, craves something only money can buy: To move out of her apartment above a three-car garage and buy a small two-bedroom house in rural Silverado Canyon.

“Moz wants that place in Silverado Canyon, which is more than just a place but a vision of a way of life,” said Femling. “It’s country: It’s another world, and it’s the idea that you can have both--your life in the city and the variety (found in city living) and have this wonderful retreat. I think a lot of people have that dream.”

Femling, who works full time as a computer trainer for Coast Community College District and writes on weekends and holidays, is now working on a suspense novel. But, she promises, “the one after that is going to be a ‘Moz.’ It’s going to involve Moz with an older woman who was involved with the Resistance in France in World War II.”

For that one, however, the idea wasn’t inspired by a newspaper article but by Femling’s French-born husband, Marcel, who is a former member of the Resistance.

Santa Ana author June Triglia Casey is continuing her cross-country collaboration with her cousin Joan Triglia in Pittsburgh. “Flowers of Betrayal” (Onyx Books; $5.99), a story of “passion, shame, deceit and murder,” is now in bookstores.

Like their first collaborative effort for Onyx in 1990 (“Bound by Blood”), the new paperback novel involves a ruthless Mafia family.

In the process of writing about their Italian heritage, the two authors maintain that they have created a new genre: The Mafia romance.

In a sense, says Casey, she is writing for her late father, who was ashamed of his Italian heritage.

“Sometimes I think he would have been horrified by the novels Joan and I are writing--all the emotional scars we’ve bared to the world,” she says. “What I would have wanted him to see is that the books are a heartfelt homage to our family’s past, an honest if painful coming to terms with the good and the evil that coexisted. The family survived. Our novels are a celebration of that triumph of spirit, a sort of bloody valentine to those who went before us.”

The second issue of Animal House, “the magazine for lovers of domestic and wild animals,” is now available.

The Cypress-based free publication offers what senior editor John Chadwell says is “a new kind of pet magazine with a different look and a different slant on animal-related stories.”

The May issue features stories on animal inns, companionship between animals and patients, pets as “stress busters,” animal actors and the efforts of Wildlife Waystation in Los Angeles County to rescue abandoned, injured or abused exotic and native California animals.

Featured on the cover of the May issue is Thor the Boar, a Vietnamese potbellied pig.

Says Chadwell: “We like to think of ourselves as the People magazine of the pet world.”

Animal House is available through veterinarians, pet stores and Albertson’s supermarkets. For more information, call (714) 894-8405.