This is my final post counting down to Malice Domestic 2012 in Bethesda, MD, April 27-29, and Greg Lilly is the last of my panelists for Have Gun Will Travel: Mysteries Set Out West. This panel will take place at 10:40 am in the Diplomat/Ambassador room of the Hyatt Bethesda, and as you've seen in the posts of the last several weeks, it features a set of remarkable panelists--led by me as moderator. So it should be lots of fun!
Greg Lilly is the author of four mystery novels. Scalping the Red Rocks, his most recent, is a fascinating novel about urban growth and runaway development full of colorful characters, but the locale of Sedona, AZ, is practically another character in the book and absolutely integral to the story. Lilly has a deft comic touch, at the same time offering plenty of drama and complex plotting.
Here is the link for Scalping the Red Rocks.
Greg Lilly
Bio
Growing up in
Bristol, Virginia and then living in Charlotte, North Carolina, the rich
storytelling tradition of the South pulled Greg Lilly into writing.
He first
turned to writing short stories after plot lines and characters emerged from
the technical manuals he wrote for a large family-owned corporation.
Greg Lilly is
the author of the Derek Mason Mystery series Fingering the Family
Jewels and Scalping the Red Rocks, plus the novels Devil's
Bridge, and Under a Copper Moon. He is a short story
writer, novelist, freelance writer, and former magazine editor. He writes and
lives in the tidewater area of Virginia.
For
those new to your series, can you describe the Derek Mason Mysteries?
What
was your inspiration for this series?
How
would you describe Derek Mason to someone who has not read any of your previous
novels?
Derek Mason is the gay outcast son of the powerful and
conservative Harris family of North Carolina.
He rebels against the seemingly straight-laced family while his digging
into the family history unravels hidden secrets and lies.
For 18 years, I worked for a large family business. The
legends and tales about the real life family inspired me to create a fictional
one and add an outsider to the mix who felt he was ostracized – but not for the
reason he thought.
Derek is brash, funny, smart, and a bit of a southern bad
boy. He usually speaks before his mind has had time to edit his thoughts.
What's
your writing process? What is a typical writing day like for you? Do you keep
to a set schedule? What are your writing habits?
I start with the characters. I know is odd for a plot-based
genre like mystery. Once I know the characters, which is nice to have the
sleuth established now, I put Derek in a setting and a situation. I know where the story starts and where I
want it to end, and then I let Derek and the characters fill in the middle.
I write for a living – the “paid-for” work is writing and
editing for monthly magazines, so I have deadlines throughout the month. I try
to set aside an hour mid-day to work on my fiction. This started when I worked for that
family-owned business in their Information Technology division. I spent my
lunch hour each day working on my first novels.
Writer’s block – I don’t believe in it. I don’t really have time because I have to
produce for the magazines. The books of
Natalie Goldberg, Anne Lamott, and Julia Cameron taught me early on that the
mantra was “Just Write.” Good or bad, I get something on the computer screen. I
can edit later – and I do, a lot.
What
projects, literary or otherwise, are occupying you at the moment?
The monthly magazines keep me busy. On the fiction side, I’m
working on a stand-alone novel that intertwines a storyline from the early
1700s with contemporary plots: an ancestor’s story that parallels the storylines
of her descendents.
Who
were your literary influences growing up? Are there any authors (living or
dead) that you would name as influences?
At a young age, I loved "The Three Investigators"
series by Robert Arthur (and others). I read all the ones our elementary school
library had. Then I started reading the Newbery winners like My Side of the Mountain by Jean
Craighead George. I wanted a llama.
Actually, in school, I didn't like to write because we had to. Also, the
teachers told us what to write. Not until college did I start to write for fun.
In my first job, I wrote technical manuals and guides. Characters and plots
started showing up, so I found a fiction writers group and joined.
Writers who inspired me include Tony Hillerman, Anne Rice,
Anne Tyler, Eudora Welty, Flannery O’Connor, Adriana Trigiana, David Sedaris,
Edgar Allen Poe. I seem to have an
amalgamation of Southern literature’s focus on family and land, gothic
relationships, literary themes, with a splash of off-beat humor and popular
serial fiction plotting.
What inspired you to write your first novel? Had you always wanted
to be a writer?
After college, my first job was with that large family-owned
company. I turned to writing short
stories after plot lines and characters emerged from the technical manuals I
wrote for computer systems.
I don’t think of myself as a writer, but really more of a
story teller. I remember making up
stories and dialogues for robins and crows hopping around the backyard before I
ever learned to write.
Do
you belong to a critique group of other authors. Do you find it helpful? In
what ways?
Currently, I am not part of a critique group. I would love
to find one that fits. That’s difficult to do.
While living in Charlotte, North Carolina, I was part of a critique
group that met every two weeks for years.
A few of the original five members held a 20th anniversary reunion a
couple of years ago, and it felt like we had never been away from each other.
The support and the honest critiques are what helped me the
most. Those two-week intervals and meeting deadlines were key to getting me to
finish my first novels. If I didn’t
bring in a chapter after a few meetings, I was asked: What’s happening? Why aren’t
you working on the novel?
We were all around the same experience level, all learning
together and sharing ideas. There was
mutual respect for each person’s work. That is how a successful group stays
together.
What
is your advice to aspiring writers? How important is it for a young writer to be
a reader? What would you recommend they read?
Writers need to write.
Learn the craft of writing. The
art of storytelling comes later. Read
books on plot, character, pacing, style, editing. Deconstruct favorite novels to see how the
story was plotted, how the characters changed, what their arc was from
beginning to end.
Some of my favorite writing and creativity books include: The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron; Writing Down the Bones by Natalie
Goldberg; Bird by Bird by Anne
Lamott; The Writer’s Journey by
Christopher Vogel; Self-Editing for
Fiction Writers by Renni Browne & Dave King; Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss; Woe is I by Patricia O’Connor.
Read good novels, not necessarily popular ones. Find books where the story sticks with you
long after you have moved on to other books – analyze those. Read what you want to write.
I thought I wanted to be a “gay writer,” but the genre
really didn’t interest me – stereotypical plots and one-dimensional characters
– at least of the ones I read. I decided
that I was more than that and my characters had more to offer than that. Don’t be afraid to change direction, to
broaden your definition of yourself.
What
is the most surprising thing you’ve learned in your writing career? What has
been the hardest part about being a writer?
The hardest: The process of marketing and selling
books. That is a completely different
set of skills from writing a book. The days of handing a book to a publisher
and starting the next one are long gone.
Each of us needs to be a businessperson – producing and selling
stories.
Most surprising: Writers are helpful and supportive to each
other. They may not have the time to
read and recommend revisions to new writers’ work, but that’s because they have
their own deadlines to meet. I think most writers would love to be in a
community to discuss writing and offer encouragement to each other if the
financial obligations of making a living didn’t get in the way.
For people who love to tell stories, to record them (on paper
or electronically) so they can be shared with others, being a writer is the
best occupation – paid or not. Published
or aspiring author, we are all writers who write because we love it.
And next Tuesday, April 24, my novel, Every Last Secret, launches at the Central Library, 14 W. 10th Street, Kansas City, MO, at 6:30 pm (reception at 6:00 pm). Very, very exciting! Right after this launch, I'll be heading out to Malice Domestic. Hope I'll see you at one or the other of these two events!
