Q&A with Scott Shepherd

 

 

Photo by Brad Mitchell Cohen

 

Scott Shepherd is the author of the new novel The Last Commandment, the first in his Austin Grant of Scotland Yard series. His other books include The Seventh Day. A longtime television writer, producer, and show runner, he teaches television writing at the University of Texas in Austin.

 

Q: What inspired you to write The Last Commandment, and how did you create your character Austin Grant?

 

A: This was one of those ideas that had been floating around inside my head for almost 30 years — and started off as a movie with the thought of having two fish-out-of-water cops working with each other, with the young NYPD cop falling in love with the Scotland Yard man’s daughter.  

 

I never wrote a word of it as a screenplay and I think that was a good thing, because back then, it was sort of conceived as a more oil and water/don’t get along relationship, but by the time I sat down to turn it into a novel, Frankel was less hardened and more insular, someone still getting over the breakup of his marriage.  

 

As for Austin Grant — at first thought, I was thinking of someone like a 60-year-old Sean Connery playing him in a film, and by the time I started writing the novel 30 years later, I kept thinking of the actor Edward Woodward at that age who I’d written for on The Equalizer back in the day — and he was the sort of proud but cerebral British fellow who I would tell that we weren’t working on the 4th of July because it was a holiday here in the US and he replied, “Oh, my dear fellow, we celebrate that holiday in England as well.”    

 

That sort of informed his sense of humor and it went from there.

 

Q: Did you do any research to write the novel, and if so, did you learn anything especially surprising?

 

A: I’m not a big researcher, I basically (as a good friend put it) like to make up stuff — so I really only do it where necessary. I did look at a chart of the hierarchy for both Scotland Yard and the NYPD to make sure I had both Grant and Frankel’s ascension to their ranks in place.  

 

The kind of research I found myself doing was when I came up with the ideas of certain locales for a couple of the murders — like the shut-down Neponsit hospital in Far Rockaway. Frankly, I decided to set a murder there because it’s where my brother-in-law’s from and he’s always saying how rough and tumble it was growing up there and I wondered if there was a cool place to set something.  

 

Likewise, when I decided to end up on the Matterhorn, I looked at some maps to figure out how to get everyone to the top and the ice palace was something I’d heard about, and then made it work for the denouement of the novel.

 

Q: Did you know how the novel would end before you started writing it, or did you make many changes along the way?

 

A: I didn’t know a ton when I started out, but I absolutely knew who the killer was, why he was doing it. But with the exception of the opening murder (in the book — #3) with the rock and roller killed in the alley and the final one, I had no idea what the other eight murders would be — but luckily had the idea of the Ten Commandments to give me a place to start and figured out things from there.   

 

Q: The Kirkus Review of the book says, "A serial killer seems to be taking his cues from Agatha Christie and Ellery Queen." Did you model the book on classic mystery novels?

 

A: I’ve read thousands of mysteries, starting in grade school, and taught a course for three years on The Detective Novel when I was an undergraduate at Stanford decades ago.  

 

The reading list was Poe, Doyle, Christie, Sayers, Queen, Stout, Hammett, Chandler and MacDonald — so I guess you could say that some of my plotting instincts are rooted in that classic literature.  

 

Then, I think I put the idea aside a couple of times over the years because of films or novels that had a similar structure — first it was Seven with the crimes being committed according to the Seven Deadly Sins, and then years later The DaVinci Code in terms of trying to follow a pattern/puzzle of clues from something classic to figure out the mystery.    

 

There was also a writer named Lawrence Sanders who wrote best-selling potboilers back in the day like The First Deadly Sin and then a series of books like The Tenth Commandment and The Fourth Commandment that were inspired by one commandment each — and that probably got me thinking what if there was someone killing people according to all 10.  

 

But in the end, the commandment trail is really an engine to provide a background for what is at the heart of the book and that is the relationships between Grant, Frankel, and Rachel.   

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I just turned in the sequel to The Last Commandment to Otto Penzler and Mysterious Press and it’s being copy-edited now for publication in July 2022. It’s called Till Death and takes place six months after the first book.   

 

The aim (and hope) is for this to be a long series of books, with one coming out each summer — and I’m already noodling around with what the third will be, and will probably dig in on that soon.  

 

At the same time, I’m working on a TV reboot of Stephen King’s The Dead Zone (a series I ran years ago) that we’re in the process of trying to get set back up.  

 

 And there are a couple of other ideas I have for different novels, but right now, I’m pretty revved up about getting the Grant and Frankel series up on its feet.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: Nothing particular comes to mind. I’d like to get my golf game out of the high 80s and low 90s where it’s been hovering during the pandemic, but I’m enjoying all the exercise it’s provided during that time and I’m nervously anticipating the response to The Last Commandment and I hope we get enough eyeballs on it, because I really would like to keep writing about these characters for years to come!

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb

Q&A with Michael S. Tobin

 

 

 

Michael S. Tobin is the author of the new book Riding the Edge: A Love Song to Deborah. It focuses on his relationship with his wife, including a six-month long-distance bike trip they took in 1980. He is also a clinical psychologist.

 

Q: You note that you started writing a version of this book in 1988. How did it change over the years?

 

A: Riding the Edge has gone through a number of iterations from its inception in 1988 until its 2021 grownup version. It’s taken 40-plus years for me to understand the seismic impact this brief, six-month journey had on Deborah, myself, and our relationship.

 

When I look back at the earlier versions, my voice was lacking authority and conviction. In this version, I wrote from my heart as well as my mind, driven by an inner necessity that I hadn’t experienced with the previous versions. Without giving away the ending, what happened to my wife inspired me to complete the book.

 

Q: How was the book's title chosen, and what does it signify for you?

 

A: The title, like the book itself, has evolved over the years. After toying with a number of titles that more or less conveyed the sentiment of the book, I landed on Riding the Edge. 

 

Riding because a significant portion of the story takes place during a 3,000-mile bicycle odyssey. The Edge in order to convey the sense of emotional, physical, and spiritual intensity that we experienced.

 

The subtitle, A Love Song to Deborah, came to me as an epiphany. I had been struggling to find a descriptive subtitle that would express the narrative arc. Everything I came up with, and everything that my friends and editor suggested, sounded uninspiring, safe, and heady. I wanted edgy and transparent.

 

So, in August 2020 I was in the midst of a guided psilocybin experience when the subtitle came to me. I immediately cried—for me, the only proof I needed that A Love Song to Deborah expressed the truth that had been eluding me. I shared it with everyone who had read the manuscript. They cried.

 

Q: What role do you see religion playing in the book?

 

A: Very little. This is not a book about religion. It’s a book about relationships: with ourselves, with one another, with the environment, and with God.

 

Judaism as an identity plays a significant role in the story, especially between Deborah, an Arab American, and me, a disconnected American Jew with an ambivalent relationship with being Jewish. I don’t address questions of religious observance.

 

Q: How would you describe the relationship between you and your wife?

 

A: Since you don’t specify a time frame, I assume you mean currently.  However, I’ll answer both then and now. Then being the six-month period from May through November 1980 when the story takes place.

 

Prior to our bicycle trip, we had been living together for five years. During that period of time, we completed our doctorates in psychology, created vibrant therapy practices, and were relatively affluent. However, there was something indefinable missing from our relationship with ourselves and with one another.

 

As John Steinbeck wrote, a journey has a mind of its own and heart that disrupts and our odyssey was no exception. The trip exposed the fault lines and strengths in our connection. 

 

When we were in Paris, the relationship began to unravel so quickly that an impulsive decision or a moment of jealousy might have ended it for good. A significant portion of the memoir focuses on how we came through a number of large and small crises to develop a true soul-to-soul connection.

 

My love, respect, and admiration for Deborah has grown through the years. She was and continues to be the most extraordinary person I’ve known. She’s taught me how to love, how to be the best version of myself, and how to accept with grace and dignity whatever life throws at us, and, at this stage in life, Fate, the Universe, or God has tossed us a few curve balls. (No more details since it’s how the book ends.) 

 

I am blessed to have spent the last 47 years with Deborah. Together we’ve raised four children and 14 grandchildren. She is my soulmate, life partner, and the only woman I’ve ever loved.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I have a very interesting writing style. I write stories in my head until I’m bursting. Then, when I can no longer contain the words, I let the keyboard express what my mind creates.

 

So, currently I have two ideas for future books. One is a wild idea about a sequel written in the style of Hunter Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas that borders on the insane. If I can pull it off, it will make for a dynamic, absurd, and inspiring story. 

 

The other is a novel loosely based on a real story of a Vietnam vet I knew, his parents, both survivors of Auschwitz, and his therapist, an uprooted Israeli traumatized by his experiences during Israel’s War of Independence.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: There’s a Talmudic quote that says, “What comes from the heart, penetrates the heart.” Riding the Edge, A Love Song to Deborah poured out of me from some inexplicably deep place. In fact, it was such a powerful torrent of ideas and emotions that the first version was 580 pages long. 

 

I wrote like I was tripping on a cocktail of steroids and amphetamines—unfiltered and raw. I had to learn to “kill my darlings” to find the story within the noise. Kind of like life itself where we struggle to discover a unifying theme among all the seemingly disparate facts that constitutes our lives. It’s how we create meaning.

 

My greatest wish is that Riding the Edge, A Love Song to Deborah inspires the reader in some small way to discover significance in his or her life. 

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb

July 29

 

 

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
July 29, 1805: Alexis de Tocqueville born.

Q&A with Glen Erik Hamilton

 

 

 

Glen Erik Hamilton is the author of the new novel Island of Thieves, the sixth in his Van Shaw series, which began with Past Crimes. He lives in Seattle.

 

Q: This is your sixth Van Shaw novel. Did you know from the beginning that you’d be writing a series, and how has he changed over the course of the six books?

 

A: Not from the very beginning. In the first draft of Past Crimes I was picturing Van as a bit more of an antihero--or at least a very unpredictable protagonist--and I wasn't even sure if he'd survive to the end. 

 

It only took about a third of a manuscript to realize that wasn't the character I wanted to create. Van had to be someone actively finding his moral center, as challenging as that might sometimes be. 

 

And I loved writing the supporting characters like Hollis and Addy Proctor and Luce. I wanted to visit them again, see them interact in different combinations, and have them evolve along with Van. 

 

He is most definitely changing. He's no longer the Army Ranger fresh from combat and uncomfortable with stateside life. But he's channeled that vigilance and dedication into extralegal—if not fully criminal—activities. Van knows he's at his best when dealing with trouble. The danger for him is that he might not be able to feel alive without those dangers.

 

Q: What inspired the plot of Island of Thieves?

 

A: There's a tremendous amount of foreign capital flowing into Seattle. As with any river, a sudden surge can be a godsend or a disaster depending on where you are on the shore. 

 

I wanted to explore that, and also to thrust Van into the world of the elite. He's got a chip on his shoulder where rich people are concerned. He'll sometimes tweak them just to prove he's not impressed. Maybe he's proving that to himself. 

 

I'm also fascinated by the maneuverings of corporations and governments when it comes to intellectual capital. Scientific innovations can be as valuable and as closely guarded as any national secret. And where there are secrets, there are spies. Where there's money to be made, there will be thieves. 

Q: Did you need to do any research to write the novel, and if so, did you learn anything that especially surprised you?

 

A: Being vague to avoid spoiling a major plot point: Looking for a MacGuffin that could be relatively portable, I foraged through a lot of articles predicting potential breakthroughs in chemical industries. It didn't take long before I was completely over my head. 

 

Fortunately, I have a friend who knows her way around a laboratory. She was able to walk me through the specifics and, working together, we solved a couple of feasibility questions and came up with a twist that was very viable for the real world and very fun, plot-wise. 

 

And I'm always researching crime. To answer what surprised me, it was not only how intense some agencies are in their quest to obtain an industrial advantage--by any means necessary--but how open a secret their efforts are. Everyone involved seems to expect at least some level of skullduggery.

 

Q: The Publishers Weekly review of the book says, “Hamilton’s fast-paced plot never loses its way despite numerous jaw-dropping twists.” What do you think of that description?

 

A: It's a nail-gnawing time, waiting for the first reviews of a new book. Island of Thieves especially so. The story required me to flex different writing muscles. It's the first Van Shaw novel written in third person, which allowed me to break away from Van's point of view to show what other characters are doing and thinking and what traps may lie ahead for our hero. 

 

I'm delighted that the twists surprised the reviewer and absurdly relieved that they found the book an exciting read.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: Our family is in the midst of moving back to my hometown of Seattle, so writing has been temporarily suspended in favor of packing boxes. Many, many boxes. 

 

But while my hands are busy with bubble wrap and strapping tape, my mind is noodling on a standalone thriller. Something fast and tightly focused. No more than six or seven characters. 

 

Once we've settled into the new place, I'm looking forward to burying myself in the writing for a month or three. That's usually how I fight through the first draft, letting the momentum and a rough outline carry me along. It'll be my first standalone and the first book I've written start-to-finish in Seattle, which feels right.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: Like most everyone else I know, I'm aching to get out into the vaccinated world. That most definitely includes mystery conventions, bookstores, writers’ conferences, et al. The conversations and camaraderie that make all those hours at the keyboard worth the effort. I want to engage with other writers in the Northwest, and more than that, I want to encourage others to join as well. 

 

So, for those of you reading this: if you've thought about beginning to write, or you're already writing but haven't tried a new path or group for a while, go for it. What better time than now? I hope to see you at a convention soon!

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb

Q&A with Derek B. Miller

 

 

 

Derek B. Miller is the author of the new novel How to Find Your Way in the Dark. His other books include Norwegian by Night. He lives in Oslo, Norway.

 

Q: What inspired you to write How to Find Your Way in the Dark, and how did you create your character Sheldon Horowitz?

A: Sheldon Horowitz was a minor character, in an unpublished manuscript that I finished in about 2004. It was my "September 11th" novel, which many of us wrote and few of us published. I'm thinking of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer, Don DeLillo's Falling Man, Jess Walter's Zero, and the like.

 

In it, there was a chapter called Sub-Zero about an illegal, nihilistic nightclub that started in a forgotten space almost under the Twin Towers that was accessible only through the closet of an antique dealer who lost a grandson in the attacks. That shop was owned by Sheldon and much of the story — his entire life, really — emerged from that single chapter. 

I elevated Sheldon to the main character of my next effort because my own work until then had suffered by milquetoast protagonists who were boring and passive. Strangely, my secondary characters were great. I think it's because I felt freer with them.

 

So as an effort to grow as a writer, I promoted Sheldon because he was bold and opinionated and had a rich story of his own. I then sent him to Norway, gave him a dead son rather than grandson, and then shoved a traumatized child into his hands and told him to save the boy because he couldn't save the other one. That became my debut novel, Norwegian by Night.

I've now written the prequel — How to Find Your Way in the Dark — because I wasn't done with Sheldon's story. I wanted to know more. I wanted to spend more time in his company.

 

I wanted to watch him get into and out of more trouble (and back into it), and I wanted to listen to his inner thoughts and watch him grow up to become the man he finally became in Norwegian by Night. It took me a decade, though, to find the story that would be the right vehicle for that experience. I finally did.

Q: How was the book's title chosen, and what does it signify for you?

A: Sometimes the name of a book pops right out and you know from the beginning. My science fiction novel, Radio Life, was like that. I knew immediately and Jo Fletcher, my editor, instantly agreed. So that was effortless. My Audible Original, Quiet Time, was like that too. 

 

Norwegian by Night took a little more time to settle. The working title was River Rats of the 59th Parallel but with Scandi-crime being what it was (not that I knew it at the time), this worked out better. 

 

The Girl in Green was a long discussion and I still don't love it though the book is very dear to me. The working title for that was The Long, Cold, Hard and Dark of It. I ended up using that for the title of a section. 

 

American by Day was easy because it was a companion volume. But every project has its own story.

In this case, I wasn't sure at all. My agent, Rebecca Carter, and my editors — Jaime Levine at HMH and Bill Scott-Kerr at Transworld in the UK — must have helped me generate a list of 70 titles. Eventually I got that list down to five and then we settled on this one.

 

The working title was Twilight Crimes, which I still like and it ties in well to the story, but it was important to step away from the crime genre's expectations and structures (and imperatives) and let this book sit more comfortably with historical fiction, literary fiction, and be "crime-adjacent" instead of a traditional crime novel because it isn't one.

 

I think it's an excellent title for a coming-of-age story in a time of terrible darkness. It's all about the light and the love and the humor of living. 

Q: Did you know how the novel would end before you started writing it, or did you make many changes along the way?

A: I never know how anything will end with one exception and that was Norwegian by Night, because the ending came to me while my son Julian was being born. That's a longer story.

 

Generally, I agree with Richard Ford, who said that the first time we write a story we write it forwards and the second time we write it backwards.

 

That's always felt right to me, because only after writing it do I understand what it's about, and then the second (and third, and fourth, and fifth…) writings are less "editing" and more like crafting the story to become what it truly is meant to be — what it's demanding to be.

 

People who don't do this — people like James Patterson who outline the whole thing and then "fill in the extra words" — are aliens to me, and I'm not convinced we're even engaged in the same activity. A book like this emerges and through terrible effort, settles. The hope is that it finds a place in the world where it belongs. 

Q: Did you need to do any research to write the book, and if so, did you learn anything especially surprising?

A: It was endless. Anyone who writes historical fiction and aspires to authenticity will know this.

 

The book was set between 1937 and 1937. It is set in rural Massachusetts; the Colt Armory in Hartford, Connecticut; a Canadian airbase in Halifax; a British airbase in Iceland; Grossinger's hotel in the Catskills; and eventually Manhattan.

 

There was the hurricane of 1938 which remains the biggest in American history. The rise of Jewish comedy. The life of the Borscht Belt. The workings of the Norden bomb site and the operational parameters of U-boats and various Allied bombers … it went on and on and on.

 

And that was the easy stuff because that just required reading the newspapers every single day over that decade and looking things up.

 

The harder part was understanding the mindset, opinions, philosophies, hopes, dreams, aspirations, premises, assumptions, beliefs, and motivations of people as they approached and lived through World War II, the Holocaust, challenges of immigration, assimilation, sexual pressures and expectations … I could go on. 

Surprising? Time travel is always surprising because it's a sort of in-dwelling in a foreign culture that feels familiar but often isn't. And also, many of our assumptions about the past are wrong so we're often jolted.

 

I think I was surprised by just how much we did know about the Holocaust from the daily papers (though the term wasn't used then). I think I was surprised by the depth of wide-spread agreement not to get involved in fighting the Nazis and to let Europe sort it out.

 

I think I was surprised at how distant all of it felt from the daily lives of people in the late 1930s who didn't consider any of it their problem. But, as always, I was also reminded of how directly our lives now are connected to theirs and how their lives were just as real and complex and multi-dimensional as ours. 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: My science fiction novel, Radio Life, was inspired by — and is in dialogue with — the classic 1959 novel by Walter Miller Jr. called A Canticle for Leibowitz. Both stories are post-apocalyptic, and both feature communities dedicated to collecting and preserving scraps of knowledge from the past for use again in some new kind of future. They are, however, stories with very different visions.

Miller was one of the aviators responsible for the destruction of the abbey at Montecassino in Italy in February of 1944. Montecassino was founded by St. Benedict and erected in 539 AD. It was one of the greatest repositories of art in Western civilization. It was later rebuilt and reconsecrated in 1964 with the original plans of the abbey that had been transported to the Vatican by the Germans in 1943.

 

All of this is on my mind right now as well as the experience of Italians during the war. A story is forming. 

Q: Anything else we should know?

A: Yes, and I'm going to toot my own horn here because we live in a world where "selfies" are now normalized so I'm not going to hold back.

 

Karl Marlantes, the author of Deep River and Matterhorn, said that “[o]ne of the most difficult writing tasks is to take on a dark subject with humor. Standup comics try often and often fail. Derek Miller has succeeded admirably. Reading How to Find Your Way in the Dark was downright fun …Upon finishing the novel, I was reminded of that famous spiritual clown of the 1960s, Wavy Gravy, who once said, ‘without a sense of humor, it just isn’t funny.’” 

I agree. Those people who know my work already understand that no matter how serious or intense the material I am committed to the pleasure and joy of reading this novel is a whirlwind of Sheldon Horowitz leading us from one adventure to another. I really hope everyone enjoys reading it as much as I enjoyed — at long last — writing it. 

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb

Q&A with Kim Fairley

 

 

 

Kim Fairley is the author of the new memoir Shooting Out the Lights. She also has written the book Boreal Ties. She is based in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

 

Q: Why did you decide to write this memoir, and how did writing it affect you?

 

A: When I was 24, I married Vern, who was 57. He was the third-generation owner of a hardware store in a small town and I had grown up in Cincinnati and then gone to school in California.

 

So the small town of Hillsboro, Ohio, felt like culture shock. Part of it was the experience of discovering that everyone was in everyone else’s business. But also, marrying Vern with such a huge age gap created weirdness. He was such a character. And those years with him were the best years of my life.

 

Since he died only five years after we’d met, when our kids were only 2 and 4, I wanted to bring him alive for them. So that was my initial motivation in writing the book. Once I started, though, I discovered that my story was much more universal that I had realized.

 

The whole experience of writing this book has changed my life.

 

Q: Did you need to do any research to write the book, or was it based mostly on your own memories?

 

A: A few years after my husband died, I moved away from Hillsboro, and the place remained frozen in my memory. I found that in a few cases, I needed to review old calendars and pore through old diary entries to be sure I was accurate with my timeline.

 

Also, with medical conditions that relate to my story (i.e. bipolar disorder, COPD, ADHD, and autism) there is so much more information available today than there was during the story’s timeline. So doing a bit of medical research also was important.

Q: How was the book's title chosen, and what does it signify for you?

 

A: Well, the most obvious reason is that when I met Vern, he had lost his 14-year-old son in a tragic gun accident. The tragedy had devastated him and ended his marriage.

 

But the book is a lot about talking, about the need—or the lack of a need—to talk. Vern wasn’t willing to talk much about his son. Whenever I pushed him to talk, he would smile and remind me to reread one of his favorite essays by Don Marquis called "The Almost Perfect State."

 

In the essay, Marquis describes his wish in old age to “recline in a wheelchair and bellow for alcoholic beverages;” to sit with his “feet in a bucket of hot water; a decanter of corn whiskey near at hand,” and a forty-five-caliber revolver at his side so he could “shoot out the lights” when he wanted to go to sleep.

 

In his essay Marquis seems to be saying to hell with the rules, that old age would entitle him to do whatever he damn well pleased. I realized at some point that by Vern’s not talking about his son’s death, and always referring to the Marquis essay, he identified with the sentiment and was doing his own version of “shooting out the lights.” So, the title seemed appropriate.

 

Q: What do you hope readers take away from the book?

 

A: The story is about dealing with the massive grief of loved ones when they are unwilling or incapable of dealing with that grief themselves.

 

I would hope that readers would come away with the understanding that talking is the only way out, that it takes courage and can be painful, but in the end is the key to moving past the grief and recovering a sense of equilibrium.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: My next book, Swimming for My Life, will be out in the fall of 2022. It is my childhood story about my sometimes dark, eccentric, and unconventional family. It’s also a peek into the world of competitive swimming in the early years of Title IX and a look at the backbreaking, and sometimes soul-crushing, work it actually takes to reach the Olympic level.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: Telling our stories versus keeping them to ourselves is an issue I’ve wrestled with most of my life. 

 

Recently I heard John McWhorter, the linguist and English professor, say on a television program, “When you tell people they can’t talk, what they do is they think and they get angry. Nothing will change that because you can’t get rid of what they’re thinking.”

 

This resonated for me in such a big way. I hope readers of my book will be encouraged by my story to speak out and not be silenced when it comes to facing a loved one’s grief. And even better yet, not be silenced at all! 

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb

July 28

 

 

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
July 28, 1866: Beatrix Potter born.