Tim Chawaga is the author of the new novel Salvagia. He lives in Brooklyn.
Q: What inspired you to write Salvagia, and how did you create your character Triss?
A: In my non-writing life I work in tech, and by nature I am solutions-oriented. I wanted to write a novel set in a climate-changed future that was slightly less than dystopian, about individuals and small communities that were (slowly, barely) figuring out how to adapt, in an America that still isn’t set up for thinking outside the box in matters of urban development.
I was inspired by the work of Kim Stanley Robinson, whose work often feels like a literal futurist blueprint (and who must be frustrated that we, as a society, consistently fail to meet his increasingly lowered expectations for mitigating climate change).
I also love crime fiction, so I was also inspired by the work of John D. MacDonald, particularly his Travis McGee series, set primarily in Ft. Lauderdale in the second half of the 20th century. I can think of no better place to set a climate-change crime book than in one of the most low-lying, ill-prepared places in the country.
Travis, in addition to being an obvious inspiration for my own protagonist, Triss Mackey, is an avatar for MacDonald’s own thoughts regarding the environment and the business climate of Florida in the second half of the 20th century.
The crimes committed in these books often hinge heavily on the way real estate and business are done in Florida, and Travis/John D. understands these methods intimately.
Triss is like Travis in a lot of ways. He lives on a houseboat and so does she. He is a self-proclaimed “salvage expert,” and this is more or less also what she is.
But he debuts in The Deep Blue Goodbye pretty much fully formed—strong, intelligent, confident, clear in his job and the way he lives his life (he helps friends retrieve things that they’ve lost in exchange for half their value, and uses that money to take his retirement in installments).
The main challenge of writing Triss was that I needed to make her much more fallible—broke and untrained and scrappy and traumatized. The flooded future Florida of Salvagia is on the cusp of a development boom, but it isn’t here yet… it requires a character who is equally not yet in their prime, who can grow with it.
Realizing that, and learning to write the version of Triss that the story was actually asking for, was thrilling and difficult.
Q: How was the novel’s title chosen, and what does it signify for you?
A: Salvagia refers to “nostalgic salvage,” or decaying artifacts from our present, like shoes or silverware, pulled up from flooded buildings or shipwrecks and sold to collectors.
While a piece of salvagia does serve as the MacGuffin of the book, the importance of salvagia is an open question asked by many of the characters. Why is it so valuable? What makes one piece of salvagia more valuable than another?
It's an opportunity for characters to speak about how they view the past and what they value about it.
Triss is a salvagia diver and the only character who sees salvagia in its natural habitat. When asked what she thinks is valuable about it, she says, without really knowing, that salvagia “turns loss into beauty.”
Riley Ortiz, the son of the leader of a diaspora movement called Mourning in Miami, speaks about the ways in which all the factions of his organization use their shared history in Miami to consolidate power.
Maintaining a connection to the past for the purpose of achieving power or profit is a consistent theme of the book, and the idea of salvagia, especially as an object of monetary value, exemplifies this.
Q: As you mentioned, the novel is set in a future Florida—how important is setting to you in your writing?
A: Like I mentioned earlier, I can think of no better place to set a climate-change crime novel than South Florida. In addition to being low-lying and incredibly porous, Florida is uniquely suited to corruption and resistant to regulation. The Travis McGee books are just one installment of the rich crime fiction tradition of Florida.
Salvagia is set about a century into the future, so the Florida it depicts doesn’t have to be an exact reflection of Florida today, except in some fluid geographical terms. It’s a blank slate, and that’s part of its appeal to many of the characters that have arrived.
Lack of regulation often means corruption, building quickly and dangerously, but it can also lead to building experimentally, thinking outside the box. This appeal is central to the sorts of characters that populate Salvagia, both good and bad.
At the same time, there is an endless supply of Florida-related speculative questions for future books: What did Florida Man evolve into? Which Miami crypto bros went on to be governor? Which cults are big these days?
Q: What do you hope readers take away from the book?
A: I hope, first of all, that they find it to be an engaging crime novel set in an exciting world that they might like to spend time in.
Additionally, I hope readers resonate with the themes of found family, examples of technology empowering individuals and small groups, and the overall sense of people trying to find new, sustainable ways of living despite difficult conditions and oppressive institutions.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I am perpetually thinking of ideas for new books set in the world of Salvagia! And I am actually working on a sequel. I’m also in the middle of drafting a novel about credit card points and malicious, sentient airport lounges.
I’m perpetually Substack-curious, but have never pulled the trigger on actually starting one. I’d say you should be on the lookout for that, but probably don’t bother.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: In addition to reading most of the Travis McGee books, I did a lot of really exciting research for this book. To pick just one: The Last Dive, by Bernie Chowdhury, is a harrowing account of the dangers and thrills of technical diving, and I highly recommend it to anyone considering deep-sea diving who would love to be talked out of it.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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