Schwegel - Biography

Biography

Theresa Schwegel was born in Algonquin, Illinois, to Don and Joyce Schwegel. She attended Loyola University, where she graduated Magna Cum Laude with a Bachelor's degree in Communication. After graduating, she took a job at a local television-commercial production company, which sparked her interest in the film industry. She later moved to Orange County, California, to attend the Graduate Film program at Chapman University as a Screenwriting major. While in California, she wrote script coverage for a Hollywood production company. She also founded a local theater company in which she produced, directed, and acted in plays by David Mamet, among others.

Schwegel's first novel, Officer Down, began life as a screenplay. Searching for a subject for her Master's Thesis, she struck on a friend's account of an affair with a married police officer. Schwegel was both perplexed and fascinated by her friend's predicament: "I couldn’t reason with her; I couldn’t understand her. But I had to write about her. The mystery: how could someone so smart be so incredibly foolish?" Though Schwegel was primarily interested in exploring why an independent, intelligent woman would carry on an affair with a obviously untrustworthy man, her thesis advisor, Academy Award-nominated screenwriter Leonard Schrader, urged her to expand the law-enforcement angle of the story.

Using her friend's experience as a jumping-off point, Schwegel recast the story as a noir thriller, focusing on a hard-drinking beat cop—Samantha Mack—who discovers that her married lover—Detective Mason Imes—is a corrupt cop who is caught up in a drug ring. Developing the police-thriller aspect of the story necessitated heavy research into law enforcement and police culture. "The truth of the matter," Schwegel wrote later, was that "I was not a cop. I did not know any cops. I did not know anything about cops, with the exception of a few vague memories of the TV show “Crime Story.” I had no clue about procedure; I didn’t know the difference between a Sergeant and a Lieutenant." Through the course of rewriting both the screenplay and the novel versions of Officer Down, she immersed herself in the world of law enforcement. After selling the book, she wrote, "My proudest moment since St. Martin’s took on OFFICER DOWN was when my editor informed me that some people at the house asked if I was a cop."

Schwegel shopped the screenplay version of Officer Down to Hollywood, but quickly became disillusioned. "In my experience, Hollywood ranks spec scripts a few points lower than scratch paper. Even if you know someone who knows someone (which I did), the odds don’t fall in your favor." Schrader encouraged her to rewrite the story as a novel, and Schwegel warmed to the expanded possibilities the form offered, later explaining, "In screenwriting, you don’t write about the couch unless the hero has a gun tucked between the cushions and his nemesis has just taken a seat... In a novel, I can describe the couch. I can tell you that the hero thinks it’s comfortable. I can tell you the hero’s ex-wife insisted on buying the too-expensive couch and now the bad guy is sitting on it, he thinks of her—the woman who got him into this mess… and on and on. In other words, writing for the screen is an action blueprint; writing a novel is custom-building from the action."

Officer Down was published by St. Martin's Press in 2005, and won the Mystery Writers of America's Edgar Award for Best First Novel in 2006. Following the success of her debut, Schwegel has gone on to write a series of police thrillers, all set in the Chicago area and characterized by a gritty, unflinching sensibility. Of her predilection for "dark" stories, Schwegel has said, "I've always been a fan of noir, even in film school--the blacker the better for me. I just really am more interested in the underbelly, the underside of things." In 2008, she received the 21st Century Award for emerging Chicago-area writers, awarded annually by the Chicago Public Library Foundation.

In 2008, Schwegel relocated to Chicago. In addition to bringing her closer to her family (Algonquin is a short drive from Chicago), the move also served a practical purpose: "When I lived in California I’d return to Chicago and take photos so I could keep the images fresh," she later recalled. "It’s easier now that I’m in the city--all I have to do is look out the window." Her fifth novel, The Good Boy, will be released in November 2013.