Q&A with Mike McCrary

In Steady Trouble, Mike McCrary introduces us to Steady Teddy, an Austin bartender, floating casino manager, part time pimp, and amusement park princess. She finds a way for life to get more interesting when an offer to inherit a art of a millionaires wealth puts her in the cross hairs of the man’s greedy and murderous family. Even by McCrary’s standards this book does not let up. We talked to Mike about the novel and the character at its center.

Mike McCrary will be joining Rick Ollerman and Eryk Pruitt for an event at BookPeople next Monday, November 6th, at 7pm. Hope to see you there! 

MysteryPeople Scott: The forward momentum of Steady Trouble is relentless. What do you attribute this to?

Mike McCrary: Thank you. It’s not by accident. I think it’s a constant fear that I have, a panic even, that I will not entertain the person reading the thing. I simply don’t want to bore people. Perhaps to a fault.

I don’t want anyone who picks up any of my books to not be entertained. I’m sure it’s happened, for one reason or another, but I guess I want to make sure I do as much as I can on my end to keep the pages burning along and for people have a good time.

I write with the intent to entertain. Not to wow them about how I can describe trees and shit.

MPS: How did the character of Teddy come about?

MM: I knew I wanted to do something a little different from my other stuff. I wanted a character who was damaged, but in a different way than the usual crime / thriller badass heroes.

She’s not a raving alcoholic cop with a dead partner or disgraced hit man out to help the world be a better place. She’s was involved in a horrible attack during childhood that she doesn’t even remember because she suffered a head injury during the incident. Some characters might have taken that tragedy and folded up into a drug addict or turned it into an inspiration and become a lawyer or whatever, but this trauma molded Teddy into something different. Not a victim or a shining light of goodness, but something else.

She became a force of nature created in her own image. She’s carved out a strange life for herself, but all on her terms. I wanted readers to have sympathy for her but never pity her. That character setup also allows for a lot of great twists and turns because we’re learning about her as she learns about herself and a past that she didn’t know existed.    

MPS: Did writing a female lead make anything different?

MM: Not really.

I was very purposeful on how I created her. I didn’t take the story into places that I didn’t think I could do justice to. I also didn’t make it some male fantasy, sex tale with kinky shit on every other page. I made her a person who’d been through some tough stuff, but could handle it. I tried to think of strong women I’ve known, put them in that situation and tried to think about what they might do. It could have easily been a male lead, not to dump on my gender, but I thought Steady Teddy needed to be more than that.

MPS: Was there any challenge in writing for a lead of a different gender than yourself?

MM: Some, but the biggest challenges were from a technical side more than anything else.

Really it was just getting into the mindset of her each day before writing. It’s written in first person so I had to be aware of using words that associated myself with being female. After a few days it was pretty easy, perhaps more than I care to admit, but it wasn’t any different than taking on any other lead I’ve written. Once you get past the obvious stuff, you simply write the character. She’s a person involved in a situation, like any male character, and then you write to entertain. Not like I was typing things like, “Damn, my vagina is bothering me today.”

MPS: What draws you to protagonists who don’t follow the most virtuous path?

MM: More fun. More interesting. That’s probably the short answer.

I read somewhere that Superman is hard to pull off now because society today is too cynical to believe anyone is that pure and good. Maybe that’s true, maybe not, but I’ve always had a fascination with people that live and roam in the margins. We’re all a mess. We’ve all got our travels in the dark, some darker than others, so I think readers identify and like to explore characters that aren’t perfect or even vaguely close. The ones that are trying best they can, but keep falling short. That can’t get out of their own way. Much like all of us at times.

MPS: You are also doing your fourth Remo book. What can you tell us about it?

MM: Yeah, this will be the fourth and perhaps the last Remo for a while at least. It’s called Remo Went Off and will be out in November. I’m very happy with the way it’s turned out. I’m also very happy that I got to do the Remo series the way I wanted to. People have been very kind and seem to have great affection for the character despite the fact he’s pretty much an asshole.

If you enjoyed the other three then this one will not disappoint. There’s all the action, profanity, fun, jokes and insanity that I’ve had a blast writing. As I look at the four books as a set, it’s crazy to think the entire story only really takes place over a few days. Fun days for the readers, and the writer, but not so much for Remo.

Remo has been a fixture in my writing life, I owe the man a lot, and he’s been good to me. Despite what I’ve put him through.

Mike McCrary will be joining Rick Ollerman and Eryk Pruitt for an event at BookPeople next Monday, November 6th, at 7pm. Hope to see you there! 

Guest Post: Terry Shames on Sisters in Crime

We’re wrapping up our 30th Anniversary tribute to Sisters In Crime with essays from its members. We go to the president of the northern California chapter and MysteryPeople favorite, Terry Shames. Terry is known for her books featuring Samuel Craddock, an widowed police chief in a central Texas town. In her essay, Terry talks about being at one of the founding meetings of Sisters In Crime.

Thirty years ago two writer friends convinced me to attend Bouchercon in Baltimore. They told me I’d have a blast. As an aspiring mystery writer, I’d not only learn a lot, but I’d meet lots of mystery writers and fans. They were right. I met writers I was in awe of, and found them to be warm and friendly. I was in heaven. As a beginner, I soaked up not just the atmosphere, but the information I heard on panels I attended.

What I remember most about the conference, though, is that my friends invited me to tag along to hear writer Sarah Paretsky talk about an idea for a new organization that would be geared to supporting female crime writers. It was common knowledge that although half of crime writers were women, the lion’s share of awards, reviews, interviews, and buzz went to male writers. Sarah wanted to change that.

Sarah’s talk was inspiring. It wasn’t mean-spirited. There was no talk of men not deserving recognition. It was about women deserving a share of the goodies. There were men in the audience as well; men who came to cheer on women, who they thought deserved better as well.

I, along with most of the women there, signed up enthusiastically for the new organization, Sisters in Crime. How could I have known that thirty years later I would be president of our northern California chapter of what has become a vibrant national organization.

The value I have received from Sisters in Crime is immeasurable. I’ve met both women and men dedicated to the idea that when one succeeds, we all succeed. When I started writing in earnest several years after that initial conference, I heard about a sub-group of the organization called The Guppies (the great unpublished). This was a group of women writers who were determined to be published. They wanted to help each other by exchanging information, tips on agents and publishers who were eager to hear from new writers; conferences and workshops that were especially helpful. The membership also exchanged virtual hugs when someone was disappointed; advice; warnings of predatory people in the publishing field; and finally, high fives when someone had success. The membership also included seasoned writers who wanted to participate in giving unpublished writers all the help they could.

This has been my experience through the years with Sisters in Crime. The dedication to supporting sister writers succeed was not just an empty slogan. I see it play out daily, in the email list serve where people ask for advice and opinions, and receive thoughtful responses. When you ask a “sister” for help, there’s always someone listening and willing to step up. Members are eager to exchange manuscripts for mutual critiques. They alert other members to valuable workshops. They ask compelling questions about writing and publishing, and many members join in the conversation.

From that meeting thirty years ago to the present Sisters in Crime has grown to a national force for women in the crime writing field. I am proud to be a part of it. In fact, I have just completed a week long retreat with six other “sisters” whom I would never have met had it not been for Sisters in Crime.

Sophomore Triumph: Laura McHugh Strikes Hard in Arrowood

Laura McHugh is a writer to be delighted in—a crime author who both seems old to the genre while creating incredibly new and ambitious works of fiction adored by fans and critics alike.  Her debut novel, The Weight of Blood, won the International Thrillers Writer award, lining up McHugh with the toughest of her competition.  Ms. McHugh is known to be a night writer, and this comes through with many of her scenes in her two novels to date—including her most recent stellar accomplishment, Arrowood.

Arrowood is at once a dark tale of crime and corruption and a vivid family saga.  McHugh incorporates some of the best of her own locale and the history of her characters in creating one of the most vivid and suspenseful reads I’ve come across in quite some time. While The Weight of Blood is frankly flooring, Arrowood takes the idea of memory, family, and the unreliable narrator to such new heights it’s remarkable this novel even exists.

One immediately thinks of fellow-heavyweight Gillian Flynn’s Dark Places when approaching Arrowood’s premise. A young woman returns home after many years—and creating and cultivating many secrets of her own—only to be contacted by the leader of a group of people who try and solve murder mysteries, a man who believes he has solved the mystery of what happened to her sisters decades before. It’s a spicy premise but the similarities between these two great novels pretty much stop here.  Arrowood is a novel not to be defined by comparisons, defying all expectations inside its pages.

Arrowood is at once strikingly brilliant, incredibly frightening (so much it makes one seem vulnerable in the best and worst of ways), intriguing in its mystery and enchanting in its incredibly elaborate setting.  McHugh weaves a nearly perfect narrative, with a pitch perfect voice for the story, around a decades old mystery that seems both impossible and inevitable to be solved.  The reader learns early own how they will be completely satisfied with the conclusion of McHugh’s sophomore effort, if only because of Ms. McHugh’s writing abilities, so all-encompassing and wise-beyond-their-years.

Returning to the comparison between Gillian Flynn and Laura McHugh—and there really is no true comparison, these are two women who write in their own right, in their own way, in their own settings, in their own voices, with stories like loaded pistols ready to be fired right in their readers’ direction—the crossing of ideas and storylines, the telling of two similar stories by two completely different writers seems inevitable here.  Just as Gillian Flynn had to expose the murky, dirty side of one untruth, so Laura McHugh has to expose her own.  If anything is to be learned from McHugh’s novels, it’s that we know nothing, not the novel’s ending, not the novel’s twists and turns, and certainly not ourselves, either as the reader or the narrator.  But what narrator really knows their own story?

As for McHugh’s third book, little is known about the follow-up that can probably only be described as “epic.” Count Laura McHugh with other Lauras (like Ms. Lippman), with the Gillian Flynns and the Megan Abbotts and the Alison Gaylins of the world.  She deserves the credit that’s due to her, and any reader deserves the chance to find themselves lost in the pages of her novels.

Sisters In Crime: Guest Post from VP Noreen Cedeno

We continue celebrating the 30th Anniversary Of Sisters In Crime by posting a guest blog from The Heart Of Texas Members (a.k.a. HotSinc) with it’s current vice president Noreen Cedeno, who gives a candid look at the group events open to the public that occur on our BookPeople third floor every second Sunday of the month.

Sisters in Crime, NOT a Group of Female Ex-convicts

Sisters in Crime is celebrating its 30th Anniversary. Who are Sisters in Crime and what do we do?

Once a visitor inquired at our meeting: Is this a meeting for female ex-convicts?

Uhhmm, no. We are writers and readers of crime fiction. All writers and readers of crime fiction are welcome to join. Our meetings are open to the public. And yes, male members are welcome to join and be our siblings in crime.

Another visitor wrote to me after a meeting: “I was a bit surprised to find not a women’s political meeting but a mixed gathering for a talk on hypnotism!!”

Well, yes, our meetings are not women-only political rallies. We are here to support female crime writers in a variety of practical ways, but we don’t discriminate, so everyone is welcome at our meetings.

One way we help our writers improve their craft is by widening their knowledge base. Writers can’t research a topic that they don’t know exists, have never heard of, or can’t imagine. Conversely, some topics are so involved, attempting research leads to outdated or overwhelming amounts of information. Therefore, at some of our meetings, we strive to help crime writers improve their craft by succinctly presenting topics that may be useful in a story.

So yes, you might walk into a meeting on hypnosis presented by a psychologist. We’ve had presentations on poisons, drones, and what different caliber bullets do to the human body. We’ve had a JAG lawyer introduce us to the military justice system. We’ve had guest speakers from just about every law enforcement group we can find.

Accuracy and authenticity are vital in writing! Nothing annoys a reader faster than an author getting details wrong. The Austin Police Department Bomb Squad was particularly nice, bringing not only their dog, Dax, but also “det cord” and C-4 for us to pass around during their presentation. It’s easier to write accurately about something you’ve touched with your own hands or seen with your own eyes. Hearing about law enforcement directly from the officers and agents who work in the field exposes us to the language and look, and the concerns and personalities of the men and women who serve as first responders. Those details are invaluable to any crime writer trying to create authentic characters and accurate depictions of how law enforcement agents handle crime.

As I mentioned before, we welcome crime fiction readers too! Sisters in Crime is open to both male and female readers of crime fiction. Therefore, we try to present subjects our non-writing members will enjoy hearing about. Luckily, most crime fiction readers also enjoy hearing presentations by law enforcement officers.

We occasionally have authors as guest speakers too. These authors may be locally known, nationally known, or internationally known. Last year, through an arrangement with the national Sisters in Crime organization, we had Rhys Bowen come and speak about her writing. We will have local authors who are members read selections of their work at our October 8th celebration of Sisters in Crime’s Anniversary.
 

Other things we offer writers:

Sometimes we have presentations specifically geared toward our writers. Those topics have included everything from marketing strategies to producing audiobooks.

We provide a place for authors to meet each other and discuss problems or share news. Authors have found critique partners and fellowship at our meetings. Our local newsletter includes industry news, writing tips, and information about opportunities to submit work for publication.

Sisters in Crime helps writers succeed by providing them opportunities to present their work. We showcase our local members work at festivals and conferences. Here in Austin, that means we will have a table at the Texas Book Festival in November. I’m only discussing the local chapter benefits. Opportunities abound at the national level as well. I’ve sent books to large conferences that I otherwise would not have had any access to or ability to attend because Sisters in Crime solicited members’ work for the conferences. Sisters in Crime works to ensure their members have opportunities that they might not otherwise have. In fact, the benefits available at the national level would be a whole other blog post.

So, if you like to write or read crime fiction, mysteries, police procedurals, cozies, thrillers, suspense, hardboiled, noir, amateur sleuths, or private detectives, you are welcome to come to a Sisters in Crime meeting, usually held on the second Sunday of the month at Book People at 2:15 in the afternoon on the third floor.  You don’t even need to be a female ex-convict to come!

Q&A with C.M. Wendelboe

C.M. Wendelboe’s three novels featuring Lakota FBI agent Manny Tanno has made him a fresh voice in crime fiction. With Hunting The Five Point Killer, he introduces us to Arn Anderson, a former Denver police detective, whose job as consultant for a local television station takes him to his childhood home in Cheyenne, dealing with his past as well as the murders of several lawmen. I caught up with Mr. Wendelboe to talk about character, place, and his books.

MysteryPeople Scott Montgomery: Like Manny in Death Along The Spirit Road, you have Arn return to his boyhood home. What draws you as a writer for this situation?

C.M. Wendelboe: As Thomas Wolfe wrote, “You can’t go back home to your family, your childhood…back home to the escapes of time and memory.” Manny couldn’t force himself to go back home, and neither could Arn, though they both did, both returning to their boyhood homes by circumstances they fought to control. But in the end, circumstances neither resisted as much as they could have. As if each man secretly wished to return to their past. We all would like to go back home again, even if we publicly deny it. We’d all like that second chance, that opportunity to right wrongs, to take that fork in the road we should have taken back in the day. But which is too late for us now.

So Arn, like Manny, does the best he can in the present to do those things that he ought to have done back in the day. I like the idea of my characters confronting their own shortcomings, reflecting on how things might have turned out differently if only they had taken the other fork in the road. But they go on with their lives, knowing they can do little about those decisions that have ultimately forged them into who they are as people. Maybe I’m just suspicious of seemingly-perfect people.

MPS: What did using Cheyenne Wyoming as a location provide for you?

CMW: I wanted to set my contemporary series in a town brimming with western heritage, and Cheyenne definitely fills that requirement. Folks here represent what people think of the West:  still opening doors for others, men still tipping their hat to ladies, drivers pulling over to help a motorist stranded along the road. Cheyenne’s western history dates back to regional Army forts housing soldiers garrisoned to fight Indians, and the Union Pacific making Cheyenne “Hell on Wheels”, and road agents preying on hapless victims. And, as often as not, doing the dangle of death from a stout piece of hemp courtesy of a vigilance committee. But it’s also a place where many men and women go armed, and are prepared to use their weapon when they perceive a threat. Arn has to go about his investigations knowing at any time he may encounter someone armed who takes offence to sticking his nose into their business. So Cheyenne won out over many other town in the Rocky Mountain region.

MPS: While a decent guy, Arn is pretty damaged. What does a wounded
character allow you to do?

CMW: Hollywood is populated with beautiful people: they live in lovely mansions and drive exotic cars and verily shine with charm when out in public. People are drawn to that. But not as drawn to them as when we learn their perfect lives aren’t as wonderful as we thought. When we discover their flaws and their weaknesses, suddenly they are more like us. Human. Arn is a wounded character, which naturally makes him more interesting. We learn that his perfect life as a Denver Homicide Detective is marred by the premature death of his wife. And when Arn moves back to Cheyenne to take a consulting job with the local television station, we discover that the ghosts of his abusive father’s past and an apathetic mother long dead still haunts him. He’s just more interesting with these memories. More interesting with flaws and a painful past.

MPS: Several moments you write from the killer’s perspective. How did you approach those scenes?

CMW: I was a lawman for nearly forty years, and worked the street my entire career. This allowed me to come into direct contact with all manner of criminal. Occasionally, I would interview post-crime suspects that were genuinely sorry for what they had done. Most, though—including most murderers—felt no remorse, and deflected blame for what they had done upon their victim/s. Those interviews helped shape what direction I intended taking my story.

Rarely have I read tales spoken from a killer’s viewpoint, and had no guidance on how to go about it. So, used my knowledge of murderers to get into that role. When I needed to write those passages from the murderers’ point of view, it would take me some preparation to become the suspect’s voice. I would think back to this interview I had conducted, or that suspect telling me things about his crimes, and that’s when the words would begin to flow. These passages from the killer’s POV are short—two pages at the most and many shorter—because it was difficult for me to continue thinking like a sociopath or a psychotic. Perhaps I’ll get the courage one day to write an entire novel from such a point of view.

MPS: I’ve noticed all the Wyoming crime writers populate their books with characters that have some form of a sense of humor. Why do you think that’s an inherent trait in the people who live there?

CMW: When I was a just a young policeman working an off-reservation town in South Dakota, I was assigned with other local officers to respond to Custer, South Dakota, where the town had been taken over by Indian militants. As I sat huddled with other officers from around the state nervously waiting to advance on the rioters, an older deputy sheriff beside me began cracking jokes. I thought he was nuts to be joking at such a serious time. But soon I and those within earshot of the man began to relax, began feeling as if we would be able to perform our job there. The taut tension we’d experienced subsided.

As I write about lawmen—both active duty and retired—I know that an integral part of their world is humor. Much has been written about a policeman’s graveside humor and how disrespectful it is. Not so. Law officers frequently find things amusing at the worst possible times because that’s how they cope with the day-to-day nastiness they have to work around. Call it a defense mechanism for the mind. No one wants to be high on the roller coaster all day. Everyone wants to come down for a breather before the next hill is climbed.

MPS: You have two period books coming out soon, Backed To The Wall and Marshall and the Moonshiner. What can you tell us about those?

CMW: Backed to the Wall was fun to write. I’ve been an avid reader of period westerns since I was a kid, and wrote and published my first short stories in that genre. Writing book-length tales allows me to develop my character in ways that the shorts didn’t. One of those was man tracking. We’re led to believe that all western men were competent trackers. But that wasn’t the case. Like today, those folks who were track-savvy back in the “Old West” were much sought after. There are countless times where tracks were lost, false trails followed, bad men and renegade Indians alike allowed to make their getaway because those following had no track awareness. Not so my man Tucker Ashley. His claim to fame is that he’s an astute tracker, working for the Army when he’s not battling lice in a local lockup.

The story opens with Tucker fighting a hangover in such a jail when he learns a Lakota raiding party has abducted his love interest from her mercantile while Tucker was locked up. He makes his escape, and is hot after the Indians when an old enemy—Deputy Marshal Aurand Forrester—gets on his trail. Between Aurand’s fast gun and his gnarly posse and the Indians trying to kill him to get Tucker off their track, it is doubtful if he’ll survive either one in his pursuit of his woman.

Marshal and the Moonshiner is set during the Great Depression. It begins when U. S. Marshal Nelson Lane is called to the Wind River Indian Reservation in western Wyoming to assist local tribal police with a homicide. When Nelson arrives, he learns two neighboring ranchers had got into an altercation. One shot the other to death before fleeing to relatives in Oklahoma.

This was a time when the Bureau of Investigation (forerunner to the FBI) was in its infancy, and could spare no one to investigate crimes out west. Nelson must travel to Oklahoma, far out of his element in a large town. The local sheriff assigns Nelson his junior deputy, a Cheyenne Indian woman names Maris Red Hat, as Nelson’s liaison and partner in search of the fugitive. Soon, they’re caught up in local corruption in their pursuit of the murderer from Wyoming. If Nelson can keep himself and Maris from being killed, he might just find the murderer and bring him back to Wyoming for justice.

My Head is a Choir and All the Singers are Singing Different Songs: MysteryPeople Q&A with Joe Ide

 

• Interview by Director of Suspense Molly Odintz

Joe Ide burst onto the mystery scene last year with his debut Isaiah Quintabe mystery, IQ, a Holmesian puzzler set in South Central LA. A bunch of us quickly blazed our way through IQ – with its well-rounded characters, stylish action sequences, clever heists, weaponized pit bulls, and foggy-minded celebrities, what’s not to love?

Now Ide is back with the second in the series, Righteous, in which IQ and his reluctant side-kick Dodson go on a wild road trip to Vegas to try and rescue a deep-in-debt DJ and her doofus boyfriend after they mess with forces beyond their clearance level. IQ wants a chance to rescue his brother’s ex-fiancee’s wayward little sister, while Dodson just wants a break from home before his new baby is born, but both get more than they bargained for as gangs, gamblers and grim-faced traffickers all converge on the lucky-in-love, unlucky-in-gambling Vegas couple and their LA protectors. Interwoven are new developments in Isaiah’s understanding of his brother’s untimely death. 

Joe Ide mixes his choreographed action sequences with meditations on love, isolation, and friendship, for a surprisingly moving story that we’ve chosen as our MysteryPeople Pick of the Month for October. Thanks to Joe Ide and the folks at Mulholland, we got a chance to ask a few questions about the book and the series.

• Interview by Director of Suspense Molly Odintz

Molly Odintz: I loved the madcap adventure that Isaiah and Dodson take to Vegas. What was your inspiration for the Vegas setting and their road trip through the sleaziest of cities? What kind of research did you do for the Vegas parts?

Joe Ide: I wanted to take Isaiah out of the hood and put him someplace where he have to deal with new situations and different kinds of characters. The more he’s a fish out of water, the more obstacles he has to overcome. There’s that old adage, no conflict, no story. Putting it in another location is a challenge for me. How to use the enviroment to advance the story. Embarrassingly, I did very little research on Vegas. For me ( like Isaiah) the town is “Too bright, too loud, too colossal.” Also like Isaiah, I bought a dog for 99cents and it was as big as a cat. The visuals I took from photographs and videos. As an aside, my Mom loved Vegas. She enjoyed being up at two in the morning, going anywhere she wanted. She had secret pockets in her pants to keep to her money away safe and foil the pickpockets.

MO: Dodson’s romance is unlikely, but the story of his courtship makes his successful wooing of his practical girlfriend believable. Which came first in the writing process, Dodson’s part in Isaiah’s adventure, or his new romance?

JI: I knew Dodson would be involved. He’s Isaiah’s Dr. Watson after all. But I like characters with full emotional lives. I want them to deal with the same problems we all deal with – like relationships. Giving him a romance seemed natural and the book is structured in a way that I that I could write about it.

MO: Both IQ and Righteous initially destabilize the reader’s expectations with two seemingly disparate plots, but then bring them together at the end in just the right way. Do you have extensive outlines before you even start writing? How do you tie it all together?

JI: I start with vaguest idea for a story and then I ask myself questions: Where does this take place? Who are the clients? Who are the bad guys? What do the bad guys want? What are the major problems Isaiah has to confront? And so on, and while I’m figuring these things out I’m making vague, random notes. About a character’s looks or a possible scene or piece of dialogue or whatever occurs to me. Think of it as a pointillist painting. I’m putting dots on the canvas and after I have lots and lots of them, the canvas starts to take shape, and at a certain point, I have to decide, is this a book or isn’t it? I’ve thrown a few away and started over, but when I have the makings of a book, I start writing as fast as I can. If I don’t know something I skip it and keep going until I have the creakiest skeleton of a story with missing limbs. But when I’m done, I have a structure on which I can build. Subplots occur to me as I’m writing and become more dots until they’re little canvases themselves and I see ways to knit them together, things I didn’t know when I started. I’m always thinking ahead, asking myself, where will this go? How will it be resolved? I’m making the process seem much more linear than it is. My head is a choir and all the singers are singing different songs. It takes them a long time before they’re on the singing the same tune. I recommend my methods to no one.

MO: I’ve heard there’s plans for a TV series in the making (which I will absolutely watch and hopefully binge watch!). What stage is the planning at? Who are your ideal casting choices?

The TV world moves at its own pace. I don’t know what they’re actually doing and where they are in the process. Every time a production makes an advance, another compromise is made with the original material. It’s too aggrevating and time consuming to worry about that stuff. I’ll stick to writing books.

MO: So I love Sherlock Holmes, and I love that you’re inspired by the stories, but not beholden to them. In particular, at the end of Righteous (and I promise there are no spoilers in this question) Isaiah is helped not just by his grasp of logic, but by (it seems to me) perfectly timed random fate. How much do you draw on the Sherlock canon, and how much do you like to change things up?

I’m not conscious of drawing on Sherlock. His influence is mixed in with a dozens, hundreds of others, including my own life experience. I don’t really decide how much of this and how much that. It just comes out that way. That sounds simplistic but it’s not. It’s the result of everything that’s ever happened to me put in a blender until it’s all unrecognizable and poured on to the pages.

MO: You have a love of South Central LA drawn from your experiences growing up in the area – tell us about your setting. Which came first to you when you were developing the series, the character or the area?

Chicken and the egg. As you say, I grew up in the hood and I loved Sherlock Holmes. I read all fifty six stories and four novels multiple times. When I decided to write a book there was never any question it would be Sherlock in the Hood.

MO: You have such perfectly choreographed shootouts and fight scenes – how do you plan out the action in your books?

It helps that I was a screenwriter. A set piece in a movie is structured the same as a set piece in a book. It has three acts. Act one lays out the premise, the situation. Act two is the action playing itself out, escalating in intensity until the end of the act where all seems lost for the good guys. In Act three, the good guys rise again and justice wins the day. Maybe. Having that as a base, I start my planning by thinking about outcomes. What do I want happen during the sequence? How do I want it to end? Then I identify the players and what each of them wants. I pick a location that serves these purposes and then I play chess with the pieces. If so and so does this, what’s so and so’s response? How does so and so get from A to B? What’s the most surprising, creative way for these things to happen? Sometimes I draw annotated diagrams. It’s about being specific and patient. Again, the process isn’t close to being that logical or organized.

MO: Obviously Arthur Conan Doyle is one of your writing inspirations, but you seem to draw from a diverse array of genres, and your voice is all your own – tell us about your influences.

All the writers you’d expect. Walter Moseley, Elmore Leonard, Michael Connelly, Raymond Chandler, Don Winslow, James Lee Burke, Chester Himes, John LeCarre (spy novels are just crime novels in another country) James Ellroy, Dennis Lehane, Octavia Butler and on and on and on. Other kinds of books as well. Chris Cleaves, Donna Tart, Toni Morrison, Sarah Waters, Janet Fitch, Amor Towles, William Styron, Cormac McCarthy – also on and on and on and on. I like storytellers and interesting writing.

MO: Poor Sherlock. His love life is in shambles. Will he ever find love?

Yes, he will! But he will tormented, frightened and flummoxed, (like anybody else that’s in love).

MO: What’s next for the series? It seems like Isaiah’s resolved some of the lingering questions about his brother’s death and is ready for the bigtime in terms of investigations.

My original plan was for the characters to grow from book to book. In IQ, Isaiah is very isolated because of a tremendous burden of guilt. At the end of the book, he sets the guilt aside. In Righteous, he realizes he’s lonely and makes his first awkward attempts at reaching out. In IQ, Dodson learns that he and his girlfriend are having a baby. In Righteous, he has to deal with fatherhood. IQ3 will continue that growth. Of course, there will always be new bad guys and adventures but I don’t know as Isaiah ever take on really big investigations, ones of say, national importance. There are many other writers, like LeCarre, who do that way better than I could ever hope to. Isaiah’s cases will remain in the middle in terms of size. That’s where he (and I) feel most comfortable.

You can find copies of Righteous on our shelves and via bookpeople.com. 

MysteryPeople Q&A with J. M. Gulvin

J. M. Gulvin’s new novel, The Long Count, is one of our picks for October. Gulvin was kind enough to answer a few questions about this new series featuring Texas Ranger John Q.

• Interview by Crime Fiction Coordinator Scott Montgomery 

 

MysteryPeople Scott: Family is an element in both of your protagonists’ lives. What did you want to explore in with the idea?

J.M. Gulvin: You’re right, family is very important for this first novel and the rest of the series. My intention is to create as real a feel to the stories as possible so it’s important to me that all the characters are rounded enough that they could actually have existed. Family, dependents, loved ones and responsibility are all part of that. It’s been my experience during thirty years of travelling the west, that family is extremely important. I believe it is still an integral part of the make-up of the people that we’ve lost just little of in Europe and the UK. I wanted to be true to my understanding of the American spirit, particularly given the fact that I am not a native and am coming at these books from a different perspective altogether.

I don’t know anyone in the US (friends or business acquaintances) who don’t appreciate the fact that their nearest and dearest both present and past are an intrinsic part of their identity. Familial ties bind so much more tightly than any shared ideology and I find this whole sense of belonging fascinating. As a mechanism within the plot, it helps to establish context and character history. I learned very early that family isn’t just blood ties, however, it’s a bond that extends to friends, neighbors, and members of a given community. When I first went to Idaho in 1997, I saw how the 1534 inhabitants of a town called Bellevue, made sure that the rent and medical bills were paid for a man named Jeff Farrow, who had been involved in a snow mobile accident and took six months to recover. That sense of responsibility and purpose, of shared community and familial care, is exemplified in the personal response of ordinary Texans to the havoc wrought by Hurricane Harvey. I’ve tried to identify with this (in some small way) in the relationships forged between John Q and his friends and neighbors on the ranch in Wilbarger County.

MPS: You are a Brit who now lives in and writes about the American West. What draws you to it?

JMG: I used to own a cabin on a lake in southern Idaho but had to sell it for various reasons. As soon as I’m able I plan to buy something in Texas or New Mexico. As you so rightly point out I am drawn to the west and always have been. I grew up watching westerns and something about the pioneering spirit, the can-do – have-to, approach to life really struck a chord with me. The first book l I ever read was “Squanto Friend of the Pilgrims” and from that moment I was transfixed. I started to read western novels and then later Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, and various true-life accounts of mountain men who lived with Native Americans. A lot later I worked on a ranch close to the cabin where Vardis Fisher wrote “Mountain Man”, which was partial inspiration for the Robert Redford/Sidney Pollack movie “Jeremiah Johnson”. Prior to that I discovered Larry McMurtry and Cormac McCarthy.

That pioneering spirit I mention is still very much in evidence today and I see it in my American friends. I love it, the lack of cynicism, the zest for life; when it’s coupled with the landscape of Texas or New Mexico it just seems to draw me. What’s interesting is that I find writing about the west at my house in Wales UK, to be more inspirational than if I was on the ground. As you’ll know better than me the Texas I’ve tried to create is a landscape from fifty years ago so it’s very different now and I find the physical distance allows my imagination to overcome some of the hurdles of reality.

MPS: What I like about John Q is that he has a sensitive side and a less self assured swagger that you see in most portrayals of Texas Rangers. How did you go about constructing him?

JMG: Man, I could wax lyrical about this one. How long have we got? Seriously, I’ve been working on John Q as a character since 2009. Initially he was loosely based on Ed Cantrell a Wyoming cop in the 1970’s who was actually tried and acquitted of murder after outdrawing another cop Michael Rosa, in a Rock Springs prowl car. Cantrell was the inspiration but gradually John Q morphed into a much younger man and a Texas Ranger. I made the real life Ranger Frank Hamer (Bonnie & Clyde) his god-father deliberately to engender a sense of veracity. Ironically. I had no idea that there was an expression in the US “John Q public”, in the UK we say “Joe Public” and even my New York agent didn’t pick up on the connection. I really like the connotation, inadvertent as it is, because I’ve tried to make Quarrie “a man of the people”.

Having spent so much time developing both him and his relationships, I feel that I know him very well and hopefully that comes across. I gave him the background I did, his son James, Pious and all the folks on the ranch etc to make him as true to life as I could. Yes, he’s tough, and he’s good with firearms because I wanted that old west lawman feel; honesty, a moral compass and overriding sense of integrity. I wanted an unequivocal hero. No navel gazing, a “what you see is what you get” kind of Texan, but also someone who displays the level of humanity you picked up on. I know a lot of cops, both in the US and in the UK, from FBI agents, to county sheriffs, city detectives etc and – I think – that the nature of the job is such that one has to be able to see all sides of the story.

I chose Frank Hamer to be John Q’s godfather for a very specific reason. When WWII broke out Hamer wrote King George VI of England offering a personal bodyguard of retired Rangers in case the Nazis rolled into London. As a Brit, I was hugely flattered by that, and perhaps writing about Texas Rangers is some sort of homage. I don’t know why but there’s something about them as a law enforcement agency that just hits a note with me. That old west toughness, the ability to work alone in inhospitable terrain and extreme circumstances. It’s an important element of the book given how they evolved as a police service. It’s said they’ve been shaped by the enemies they’ve faced and that had to be part of the narrative, but it was vital John Q did not become a caricature hence the sensitivity you pointed out and his ability to empathise with not only victims but those he’s hunting. Hopefully it creates the kind of real-life feel that I mentioned above and it will be an enduring feature of this series.

MPS: How did you decide the period to be the early seventies?

JMG: I chose the 1960’s because at that time there was still much of the old west feel about the Rangers though they were evolving into the modern outfit they are today, and I was able to set that juxtaposition against a backdrop of massive social change in the United States. On a simpler note, though, I’m no lover of technology and computer deduction. I long for the silences that John Q can experience when he’s alone in his car with no cell phone and out of radio contact. One of the things that’s struck me since embarking on this journey however, is how so much of what’s happening today mirrors the time I’m writing about. Someone at the Edinburgh Book Festival pointed out the prescience of my narrative, and I think they have a point given the current political situation.

MPS: One thing that struck me about the book was it’s mood. Are you aware of creating that when you’re writing or is it simply the result of your writing?

JMG: That’s a really interesting observation. The mood is as important as the voice I use and the way I try to create a sense of rhythm within the narrative. To that end I do work on it, yes. It’s not subconscious, it’s a skill I’ve been trying to hone for a very long time in an attempt to bring as much originality to the page as I can. A lot of people pick up on it and again, the fact that I’m not American, and am coming at this from a slightly different perspective, might be part of why it is so apparent. Hopefully, that’s a good thing and the more I write the character the more that sense of mood will develop.

MPS: From what I can tell, this is your first crime novel. Did you draw from any other writers in the genre?

JMG: Actually, It’s not my first crime novel. I’ve written a few under Jeff Gulvin, all of which are available in the US through Open Road Media. This is the first in this series however, and the first under JM Gulvin. The truth is I don’t read a lot of crime and never have. In my youth, I read the masters Hemingway, Faulkner, Salinger, Steinbeck, etc because I wanted to be the best craftsman I could. They are my influences along with the genius of McCarthy. Rather than reading crime, I watch a lot on TV as some of the current US series are astounding. Steven Zaillian’s “THE NIGHT OF” for example, blew my mind for feel, atmosphere and subtlety of suggestion, and I devour anything Dennis Lehane is involved with. After a long day at my desk I find it easier to soak up something visual rather than sit down and read.

You can find copies of Gulvin’s latest on our shelves and via bookpeople.com. 

Sisters in Crime Turns 30: Guest Post from David Ciambrone

Even though the main goal of Sisters In Crime is to advance female crime fiction authors, it has a large number of male authors who benefit from the group. One member, David Ciambrone, is this week’s guest blogger to celebrate the organization’s 30th anniversary. Below, David gives advise to male writers writing female leads; something his Sisters experience has helped him in.

Male Authors Writing Female Heroines – How Can They Do It?  

Guest Post by David Ciambrone

I have gotten asked, if I as a male who writes female characters, have any advice for writers on how to create believable female characters while avoiding clichés.

My first reply is:

Write all your characters as human beings in all their complexity, especially the female characters.

That’s a good answer, although rarely easy to pull off.

A man writing male heroes is not too hard. But for guys to write believable female characters it can get tricky. First, men, for the most part, do not understand women very well. Second, females can be unpredictable and moody, and, at the same time strong, outgoing, affectionate, intelligent and sometimes sexy. Your female character can run a business, be a doctor or lawyer or a librarian and/or be a housewife and mother and a detective all at the same time. She has dreams and ambition. In most of my novels the lead characters are women. They are the main character or the semi-main characters.

So, after writing multiple mystery novels, here is my advice, such as it is:

Have a good critique partner who is a woman and willing to give you her womanly opinion. Listen and take her advice.

Know your audience. If the story will tend to be read by women, then you must try and make your female character believable to them. Give her qualities the women will like and maybe aspire to or wish they had. If your intended audience is female, make sure to include plenty of personal pronouns—“I,” “you” and “we”—and descriptive terms.

If you want to appeal to a mixed audience, watch out for instances in which the language skews toward your own gender. Make revisions to include a balance of wording that caters to the other sex as well.

Put enough women in the story so that they can talk to each other.

Have female characters in the plot as strong, intelligent, energetic participants, whether as primary or secondary or tertiary characters in both public and private roles within the story.

Have your female characters exist for themselves, not merely as passive adjuncts whose sole function is to serve the males.

Get to know your female characters in depth. Have a clear understanding of who they are and the role they play in the story.  They will write themselves.

In real life, women, act and react in a multiplicity of ways to the circumstances in which they find themselves. The female character in your story should, too. Make her believable. Give her and appropriate background, dreams, and ambition in her personal life.

Write stories that move beyond the idea of gender being the most crucial thing we know about someone or the root of their behavior. Being female in a “man’s world” can have its advantages. She has natural “weapons” she can use against male characters. Use them. Your heroine can act as brave, tough, intelligent, dynamic, or as daring as a man, then slip into a very feminine role. She can do this to gain whatever she wants or needs in the story. But above all, remember…she is a WOMAN. Do NOT sell your female characters short.

Remember, men like to accomplish things and women tend to focus on relationships. BUT, keeping that in mind, blur this stereotype and have your female character go after something with the drive and vigor of a man. In real life women do this all the time.

Because the author is male, it is highly recommended that he get to know multiple women, listen to them, engage with them and learn, as best he can, how they tick. I have melded a couple different women I know into each of my female characters. Each of the “real women” brought something to the fictional character that blended into a believable, standout, strong, loving, daring, spunky, engaging, female character.

David Ciambrone is an award winning, best selling author who has published 20 books, both fiction and nonfiction. He has also written columns for newspapers and business journals. Dave is a member of Sisters in Crime, (he is a sister with a Y chromosome). Latest of his Virginia Davies Quilt Mystery series released is Suspicious Threads.  www.davidciambrone.com.

MysteryPeople Q&A with Adam Sternbergh

 

• Interview by Crime Fiction Coordinator Scott Montgomery

I’ve often described Adam Sternberg’s The Blinds as if Sheriff Walt Longmire’s jurisdiction was Twin Peaks. The Blinds is a small Texas town that contains former criminals whose memories have been erased and and who’ve been given new names. The law is Sheriff Calvin Cooper who has to solve the town’s first murder that occurs after another resident commits suicide. I talked with Mr. Sternberg about building this world.

MysteryPeople Scott: The Blinds is such a unique novel. How did the idea for it come about?

Adam Sternbergh: The Blinds was the culmination of three different ongoing obsessions of mine: 1) The idea of the Witness Protection Program, and how you go about starting a new life after a life of crime; 2) the notion of insular communities that live by their own moral code, whether it’s the Western town of Deadwood or the Branch Davidian compound at Waco; and 3) the ongoing research into changing, or even deleting, certain memories for victims of trauma — and what kind of memories each of us would choose to change, or erase, if we could.

MPS: How did you tackle the challenge of building the town of the Blinds?

AS: In thinking about a community of this size — less than 100 people — that’s cut off from the world, I had to decide: What’s important to its survival? Would the town have a sheriff? A mayor? A library? A dance hall? What kind of things can people live without, and what is absolutely essential? A big part of the allure of the Blinds to me is this fantasy of being completely unplugged — in a sense, they’re free of all the online obligations and distractions that many of us (me, anyway) struggle with everyday.

MPS: Was there something you always had to be aware of as a writer when dealing with this community?

AS: I spent a lot of time thinking about what a community in which every member essentially arrives with little or no past would be built on. For example, what do people talk about? How are relationships formed? But I realized it’s not so different from many situations we find ourselves in, when we have to find common ground with people of various, or even mysterious, backgrounds. There’s mystery to not knowing someone’s backstory, but a kind of freedom to — you can be whoever you want to be, or whoever you can convince people you are.

MPS: Each member of the Blinds has to pick the name of a movie star and one of a vice president to come up with. Do you have favorite one you came up with for a character?

AS: There’s a minor character named Errol Colfax — a combination of Errol Flynn and Schuyler Colfax, our 17th Vice-President — and I really loved that name when I came up with it. To me, “Errol Colfax” was the proof of concept for the whole naming idea. Movie star names have a natural charismatic aura to them — whether its Humphrey or Errol or Marilyn — and the Vice President names tend to have a whiff of historical formality, like Colfax or Burr or Calhoun. So I really loved that combination —Bette Burr or Orson Calhoun.

MPS: While the book is literary in nature, it also has a style and tone that I associate with film and music as well. Are you inspired by media outside of novels?

AS: Absolutely. The book was definitely inspired by the look and feel of films from Unforgiven to No Country for Old Men. And when I was writing, for a stretch I listened exclusively to the Jonny Greenwood soundtrack for There Will Be Blood, which evoked a feeling I found really inspiring. I’m very interested in cultural mythologies — the rules and tropes and familiar elements that appear in different genres, and why they are resonant — and possibly no genre is more rich in that kind of mythology than the Western, whether it’s the old John Wayne films or the more modern, more bloody iterations.

MPS: I hope this doesn’t become a question you’re going to get sick of, but I am curious. What name would you pick for yourself in The Blinds and do you have any idea of what your crime would be?

AS: My publisher, Ecco, rather ingeniously put together a website, welcometotheblinds.com, that will automatically generate a Blinds name for visitors. On my first visit, playing around with it, I got the name Harry Harlow after a minute or so — a combination of Harry Truman and Jean Harlow — and I immediately wished I’d used that name somewhere in the book. Who knows? Maybe Harry Harlow will turn up in the Blinds in some future continuation of the story. As to my crime: We all have things we regret, or choices we wish we’d made differently. To me, the most appealing thing about a place like the Blinds is leaving those regrets behind — which is not an option we have in regular life.

You can find copies of The Blinds on our shelves and via bookpeople.com. 

Sisters in Crime Celebrates 30: Guest Post from Francine Paino

This October, Sisters in Crime celebrates its 30th Anniversary. We reached out to HOTSINC (Heart of Texas Chapter, Sisters in Crime) for a few guest posts to help our readers celebrate the work of Sisters in Crime. Our first post comes from Secretary of the Heart of Texas Chapter Francine Paino. You can celebrate with Sisters in Crime at BookPeople on Sunday, October 8th, from 2-4 PM on BookPeople’s 3rd floor. There will be cake. 

History, Mystery, and Crime for Women Writers

• Guest Post by Francine Paino

In 1986 forces in the universe converged and an idea materialized into reality through the efforts of Sara Paretsky, Phyllis Whitney and a host of women writers. Change was in the air. It was time for women to have a place at the table as crime and mystery authors.

In an impassioned speech before a conference of women writers at Hunter College in New York City, Paretsky expressed her concerns over the trend of women being portrayed as either vampires or victims. She had, in 1982, introduced the writing world to her lady investigator V.I. Warshawski, a believable protagonist with the strength and intellectual capacity to traverse the wicked streets and take on the ugly underbelly of society: the criminal class. And now another first for Paretsky. Time for women crime and mystery writers to band together to promote and support each other.

The cause was also advanced through the now famous letter written by Phyllis Whitney to the Mystery Writers of America, pointing out that women authors weren’t being taken seriously or nominated for awards. At first, her letter was dismissed, but Mystery Writers of America soon learned that these women were to be taken seriously. They would not be ignored.

Paretsky convened the initial meeting of interested women at the Baltimore Bouchercon in October 1986. A steering committee was formed and its members started a newsletter and organized information on publishing books. The ball wasn’t rolling, it was cannon shot, flying through the air reaching all corners of the country. Sisters in Crime was born.

Nancy Pickard, an original member and the first president of the national organization said it was scary. She described the hard work with no guarantee of success. It took determination and the belief that women crime and mystery writers had arrived in their corner of the women’s movement. They never wavered reaching out to as many women writers as they could contact through the mailing lists they assembled.

A short ten years later, in 1996, Elaine Raco Chase recalled that Publishers Weekly referred to Sisters in Crime as “ubiquitous.” She had to look up the word. It wasn’t an insult. It meant that Sisters in Crime were everywhere, and indeed they were.

The dream of these forward thinking women reached across the nation and arrived in Austin in the early 90’s. The Heart of Texas chapter was formed. The 1994 president, Betsy Tyson, a published author and member of the Texas Section-ASCE, one of the largest sections of the American Society of Civil Engineers, led the organization dedicated to the goal set out by the national leadership. They were “committed to helping women who write, review, buy or sell crime fiction.”

One of its stellar members, the late Barbara Burnett Smith, president of the national organization from 1999-2000 and an activist whose many accomplishments advanced the cause of the organization, was also dedicated to growing the Heart of Texas Chapter. After her untimely death in 2005, the Barbara Burnett Smith Mentoring Authors Foundation was established in her honor to uphold one of the major goals of Sisters in Crime: to support and provide mentoring to help budding writers, because in the words of Sara Paretsky, a founding member and the woman credited with starting it all, “you have to be alone to write, but being alone is very painful. An unsolvable condundrum,” but as a member of Sisters in Crime, you are not alone.

The Heart of Texas Chapter has been a base of support and encouragement for its writing members. It is also an open and welcoming organization for others, non-writers, readers, anyone interested in crime, both fiction and non-fiction, elements of what it takes to write and the informational lectures offered to all.

It’s been thirty years, not a long time in the scheme of life, but time passes, attitudes change, people grow and the Heart of Texas Chapter also continues to grow. It has opened its arms to brother writers in crime, as evidenced by the presidencies of Chuck Tobin in 2001, and Dave Ciambrone in 2011.

Under the current president, Helen Currie Foster, Sisters in Crime has had a great year bringing in fabulously interesting speakers with expertise in subjects ranging from drones to bombs, JAG lawyers, U.S. Marshalls and Cyber Security for the edification of members and the public; there is more to come.  

As we celebrate thirty years of Sisters in Crime, we can be proud of the company we keep from the founders to the current leadership, nationally and locally, as we continue advance the organization. Happy Thirtieth Birthday, Sisters in Crime.