Literary Mystery Novelists--Rebecca Cantrell

Rebecca Cantrell's A Game of Lies is the third book in her series about German reporter/sometime spy Hannah Vogel in the days of Nazi power leading up to World War II. In it, Hannah must return to Berlin from her exile in Switzerland to cover the 1936 Olympics and smuggle out dangerous information her former mentor has discovered about the Nazis. Cantrell brings the paranoid streets of Berlin to life during the Olympics, temporarily whitewashed of their antisemitic graffiti to fool the international press but still immensely dangerous for anyone who was not a solid Nazi. In Hannah, Cantrell has a protagonist who is not a professional spy but instead has to fumble her way through frightening circumstances where even old friends can turn against her with only her innate courage and her contacts in Berlin's underworld to help her.

Cantrell's fourth book in the series, A City of Broken Glass (set during Kristallnacht), will be published in July 2012 and is highly anticipated by all who have read her first three books. Here is the link for A Game of Lies, and here is the link to pre-order A City of Broken Glass.

Rebecca Cantrell Bio


A few years ago Rebecca Cantrell quit her job, sold her house, and moved to Hawaii to write a novel because, at seven, she decided that she would be a writer. Now she writes the Hannah Vogel mystery series set in Berlin in the 1930s, including “A Trace of Smoke and “A Night of Long Knives.” “A Trace of Smoke” was considered by major cable networks as a television series.

A faded pink triangle pasted on the wall of Dachau Concentration Camp and time in Berlin, Germany in the 1980s inspired “A Trace of Smoke.” Fluent in German, she received her high school diploma from the John F. Kennedy Schule in Berlin and studied at the Freie Universität in Berlin and the Georg August Universität in Göttingen before graduating from Carnegie Mellon University.

When she visited Berlin in the summer of 2006, she was astounded to discover that many locations in her novel have been rebuilt and reopened in the last few years, including the gay bar El Dorado and the Mosse House publishing house.

Her short story “Coffee” appear in the “Missing” anthology, and her short story “On the Train” will be in the “First Thrills” anthology in June 2010.

Her screenplay “The Humanitarian” was a finalist at Shriekfest 2008: The Los Angeles Horror/Sci-fi Film Festival. Her screenplay “A Taste For Blood” was a finalist at the Shriekfest 2007: The Los Angeles Horror/Sci-fi Film Festival.


As of this writing, she lives in Hawaii with her Ironman husband and son.

For those new to your series, can you describe the Hannah Vogel mysteries? What was your inspiration for this series? How would you describe A Game of Lies to someone who has not read any of your previous novels?

The Hannah Vogel mysteries explore the world of 1930s Berlin through the eyes of a crime reporter trying to bring out the stories of those trapped there.

My inspiration was Berlin. I lived in Berlin in the 1980s and one thing the 80s in Berlin had in common with the 30s was that everything was going to change. The Wall was going to come down. The two halves of Germany were going to be reunited for the first time in forty years. But, like Hannah in the 1930s, I didn’t know it. History and history in the making were right there. History was in the brand new buildings plunked in the heart of an old European city because the last buildings there got leveled by Allied air strikes in World War II.  History was in the Wall that separated my West German side with free elections and democracy and McDonalds and Radio Free Europe and discos playing American music  from the East German side with Communism and aluminum money and Russian TV shows.  The future was in the Wall coming down and what came after.

Everything was there. Who wouldn’t want to be become a novelist after that?

What’s “A Game of Lies” about? Berlin in 1936, of course! For the duration of the Olympic Games, the Nazis are pretending that Berlin is not the cruel and oppressive city they have made it. They have taken down anti-Semitic posters, re-opened gay bars, and stopped beating up their citizens in public. But it’s a thin veneer of tolerance.

Hannah travels to this newly festive Berlin to write a story on the games and to smuggle out secret documents. At the stadium, soon after she is reunited with the famous reporter Peter Weill, her mentor and ersatz father, he dies in her arms. The next day his beloved sister is found dead too. When the Nazis cover up both murders, Hannah determines to reveal the story they died for.

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 have a complicated writing process I don’t really recommend to anyone. I wrote about it on Timothy Hallinan’s blog (http://www.timothyhallinan.com/blog/?p=1018). The short answer is that I write 50 pages, outline, write 50 more pages, rewrite the outline (back to the beginning and forward to the end), write 50 pages…repeat.

On a typical day, I drop my son off at school and get to my local coffee shop by 8. I order tea and sit down and write until I’ve hit my page count. If I’m lucky, that’s by lunch. If I’m not, I don’t get to eat until after I get my son at 2.  Most days, I get lucky.

What projects, literary or otherwise, are occupying you at the moment?

I just finished “A City of Broken Glass,” the fourth Hannah Vogel novel. It’s set in Berlin in 1938, where Hannah has been transported against her will shortly before the pogrom that would come to be known as Kristallnacht.  I have some ideas for #5, which I’m tentatively calling “A Time of Night and Fog” and hope to set in Palestine in 1940 or so. Plus I’m working on something I’m not allowed to talk about (tease!).

Who were your literary influences growing up? Are there any authors (living or dead) that you would name as influences?

I read all the time and I read everything. I think the sheer volume of what I read precludes me from listing any one particular author. I loved different writers at different times. For the Hannah books, I’ve read a lot of Philip Kerr, Christopher Isherwood, Joseph Roth, William Shirer, and Victor Klemperer. I just finished “In the Garden of Beasts” by Erik Larsen and loved it.

What inspired you to write your first novel?

I think my first novel was about a set of identical twins living in Arizona who hated each other. It was 60 pages long hand and I wrote it when I was 12. I was living in Alaska at the time and think I wanted to spend some time someplace warm and Arizona was a good as anywhere.

My first published novel, “A Trace of Smoke,” was inspired by a fading pink triangle I saw on the wall of the Dachau Concentration Camp. My German host brother was gay, and seeing that triangle there brought home the reality of those who were imprisoned and died for being who they were. Fifty years earlier, he would have been in that camp. Scary stuff for a teenager to think about, and it never really let go of me. “A Trace of Smoke” was a way of showing that.

Do you belong to a critique group of other authors. Do you find it helpful? In what ways?

I belong to a critique group called Kona Ink. The members are Kathryn Wadsworth and David Deardorff (know for their award-winning garden book “What’s Wrong with my Plant?”), Judith Heath (soon to be known for her terrific YA fantasy novel “Scarstone”) and Karen Hollinger (who just gave birth to twins so is known right now as “Mommy”). It’s a terrific group of intelligent, dedicated writers who don’t let me settle for anything but the absolute best in my work and theirs. Their insights and critiques have been an invaluable part of my work and life as a writer.

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?

Read. Read. Read. Reading is where you learn about story, and where you learn to love story. Turns out it’s not daydreaming. It’s research.

Write. Write. Write. Put words down on the page as often as you can. Written words are better than spoken words. Don’t talk about the piece. Write it down.

Have fun. That whole tortured writer myth? Way overworked. I know a lot of happy and well adjusted writers. You don’t need to drink, do drugs, engage in complicated sexual dramas or perform other high risk acts to become a writer. You can simply enjoy doing it. You don’t have to act like every edit is a cut that wounds your soul. You can view them as ways to help your work read better, clearer, and more true. I love to write. I love to edit. I love to cut and add and re-vision. It’s not always easy, but I have a really great time. And so should you. Otherwise, why bother?

What has been the hardest part about being a writer? What is the most surprising thing you’ve learned in your writing career?

Promotion is the hardest part. It takes me out of the room where I’m all alone with my characters and my words. This leads right into the biggest lesson, the one that keeps coming back to me again and again. What matters most is you and the page. You alone in your head with your characters. You dreaming the world into existence.

Monday in the series, Books of Interest by Writers of Color, I'll take a look at the iconic Chicano writer, Rudolfo Anaya. and while you're here, check out the website I've added on and let me know what you think of it.

Don't forget to shop at an independent bookstore in person or online today on Small-Business Saturday. They are the lifeblood of literature today. Let's keep them around! Have a terrific end to November!

EVERY LAST SECRET Available for Pre-Order

The first Skeet Bannion novel, Every Last Secret: A Mystery, will be published on April 24, 2012. For those in Kansas City, save that date. The book launch, co-sponsored by the Kansas City Public Library and Rainy Day Books, will take place 6:30 pm, Tuesday, April 24, 2012 at the Central Library, 14 W. 10th Street.

For those friends of mine elsewhere who are attending the Malice Domestic national conference two days later, I'll be signing the book there, so I'll see you in Bethesda.

Here are links for pre-ordering Every Last Secret, if you're so inclined. I would truly appreciate it if you did pre-order and tell your friends about the book since the pre-orders and early buzz will help determine the future of the book.

Indiebound

Powell's

Amazon


Barnes & Noble

Every Last Secret got some great blurbs from wonderful writers.

“Every Last Secret offers that rare and startling thing in the universe of thrillers: a truly fresh voice. Rodriguez's tale spares nothing. Skeet is an all-too-human heroine, and we just want more, more, more.”--Jacquelyn Mitchard, #1 national bestselling author of The Deep End of the Ocean and Second Nature: A Love Story

 

“There's a new cop in town and she has smarts, courage, and a good heart. Mystery readers will find a new favorite in Chief Skeet Bannion.”  --Nancy Pickard, bestselling author of The Scent of Rain and Lightning

“Linda Rodriguez has created a captivating female detective with a mind for justice and a heart for those who’ve been unfairly treated.  Skeet navigates university politics and a nest of deadly secrets to find the truth, even when it means investigating people she cares about.”--Carolyn Haines, bestselling author of Bones of a Feather

"Rodriguez’s debut is an action-packed ride featuring an intriguing heroine you won’t quickly forget."—Sally Goldenbaum, bestselling author of The Wedding Shawl

I have been so impressed with my editor and and the other staff at St. Martin's Press. They worked hard to give the book its beautiful cover. My editor's suggested revisions have all been on-target and helped to make it a stronger book. So far, this has been an excellent experience.

Another Books Status Report

I'm recently back from a period of traveling interspersed with too-short times at home trying to dig out from under the email avalanche and other chores. This was my last bout of traveling until next spring, so I will be able to bring this blog back to its normal schedule with the Writers of Color series on Mondays and the Literary Mystery Novelists series on Fridays, supplemented by occasional posts on my life and books. I'll start with an update on the three books my mind is most concerned with right now.

I'm returning to the second Skeet Bannion book, Every Broken Trust, which only needs the last few chapters written to finish the first draft. Then, a short break and revisions before I turn it in to my agent and editor. As usual, there have been some interesting surprises pop up along the way, changes to plots, characters who become more or less important than planned, relationships morphing in ways I'd not expected. I'm excited to get back to work on it.

The first Skeet Bannion novel, Every Last Secret: A Mystery, will be published on April 24, 2012. For those in Kansas City, save that date. The book launch, co-sponsored by the Kansas City Public Library and Rainy Day Books, will take place 6:30 pm, Tuesday, April 24, 2012 at the Central Library, 14 W. 10th Street.

For those friends of mine elsewhere who are attending the Malice Domestic national conference two days later, I'll be signing the book there, so I'll see you in Bethesda.

Here are links for pre-ordering Every Last Secret, if you're so inclined. I would truly appreciate it if you did pre-order and tell your friends about the book since the pre-orders and early buzz will help determine the future of the book.


Indiebound

Powell's

Amazon


Barnes & Noble

Every Last Secret got some great blurbs from wonderful writers.

“Every Last Secret offers that rare and startling thing in the universe of thrillers: a truly fresh voice. Rodriguez's tale spares nothing. Skeet is an all-too-human heroine, and we just want more, more, more.”--Jacquelyn Mitchard, #1 national bestselling author of The Deep End of the Ocean and Second Nature: A Love Story

 

“There's a new cop in town and she has smarts, courage, and a good heart. Mystery readers will find a new favorite in Chief Skeet Bannion.”  --Nancy Pickard, author of The Scent of Rain and Lightning

“Linda Rodriguez has created a captivating female detective with a mind for justice and a heart for those who’ve been unfairly treated.  Skeet navigates university politics and a nest of deadly secrets to find the truth, even when it means investigating people she cares about.”--Carolyn Haines, author of Bones of a Feather

"Rodriguez’s debut is an action-packed ride featuring an intriguing heroine you won’t quickly forget."—Sally Goldenbaum, author of The Seaside Knitters Mystery Series

I have been so impressed with my editor and and the other staff at St. Martin's Press. They worked hard to give the book its beautiful cover. My editor's suggested revisions have all been on-target and helped to make it a stronger book. So far, this has been an excellent experience.

The third book I mentioned at the top of this post is Dark Sister, my next book of poems. Dark Sister is based on teachings and memories of my Cherokee grandmother and a look at history through the prism of my family. I wrote the first draft of this book during a wonderful stay at Ragdale. During the editing process, I was able to go on a research trip back to Tahlequah, OK, where I'd not been since I was thirteen, courtesy of a research grant from KC ArtsFund. I'm now finished with it, pleased with the individual poems and with the book, so I will be sending out individual poems to journals for publication before submitting the book manuscript for publication.

With all three books in various stages of "completion," life is pretty exciting--busy--around here. After a time of travel that has included warm receptive audiences and the making of new friends, I'm looking forward to settling back into the harness of daily writing. So here's to health and happiness and high daily page totals for all of us!

Books of Interest by Writers of Color--Luis Alberto Urrea

I started this blog series as a service to all the people, many of them librarians and teachers, who wanted to know about talented writers of color beyond the ubiquitous ultra-famous writers, such as Sandra Cisneros and Toni Morrison, the established writers that everyone knows about. In recent months, however, I have come to realize that, with the exception of those two fabulous and famous writers and a few others, such as Alice Walker, even the established writers of color, those with big publishers and major awards, are too often unknown to literate, educated people who aren't in the literary game. This came as a shock to me, but of course, books and literature have been my life for most of my life.

Consequently, I'll be stopping now and then to look at a writer everyone should know but may not. Since I recently did a "creative conversation" with Luis Alberto Urrea at the 20th annual Alliance of Artists Communities national conference, I decided to start with him--because we had such fun together and such a wonderful reception, because he has a major new book coming out this month, and because Urrea is definitely one of the writers everyone should know.

Urrea writes with the lyrical language of a poet, even when he writes hard-hitting investigative nonfiction about the broken immigration system and the tug-of-war that is modern border policy. His impeccably researched historical novels about Teresita Urrea, the Saint of Cabora and Mexican Joan of Arc, have been described by critics as magic realism as a convenient classification, but it is really the lyricism of the poet applied to the novel that leads them to this label--and his obsession with transformation, which can be found in all of his writing. I find myself wondering what label they will give the novel he is currently working on about his white East Coast ancestors.


Here is the link to pre-order Queen of America, the second of those books about Teresita, one of Urrea's own ancestors. I've linked to Indiebound so you can pre-order from independent bookstores.

Luis Alberto Urrea, born in Tijuana to a Mexican father and American mother, is the author of 15 books of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. Urrea has been named to the Latino Literature Hall of Fame, been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, won the American Book Award, the Lannan Literary Award, the Kiriyama Prize, the Christopher Award, the Colorado Book Award in Poetry, and even the mystery field's highest award, the Edgar. The Devil's Highway has been optioned for a movie.

Urrea grew up in San Diego and graduated from the University of California-San Diego with an undergraduate degree in writing. He served as a relief worker in Tijuana, a film extra, and columnist and cartoonist before teaching expository writing and fiction workshops at Harvard.  After graduate studies at the University of Colorado-Boulder, he taught at Massachusetts Bay College and was writer in residence at the University of Louisiana-Lafayette.He is currently professor of creative writing at the University of Illinois-Chicago.
WORKS
Poetry
The Fever of Being (West End Press)
Ghost Sickness (Cinco Puntos Press)
Vatos (Cinco Puntos Press)

Short Stories
Six Kinds of Sky (Cinco Puntos Press)


Novels
In Search of Snow (University of Arizona Press)
The Hummingbird's Daughter (Little, Brown, and Company)
Mr. Mendoza's Paintbrush (Cinco Puntos Press) graphic novel
Into the Beautiful North (Little, Brown, and Company)
Queen of America (Little, Brown, and Company)

Nonfiction
Across the wire: life and hard times on the Mexican border (Anchor Books)
By the Lake of Sleeping Children (Anchor Books)
The Devil's Highway (Little, Brown, and Company)

Memoir
Wandering Time: Western Notebooks (University of Arizona Press)
Nobody's Son: Notes from an American Life (University of Arizona Press)

Literary Mystery Novelists--John Lescroart

After much traveling and then a couple of days chauffeuring my friend Sherwin Bitsui around Kansas City before and after his remarkable poetry reading at The Writers Place, I'm getting back on my regular schedule with this blog. Today, we have a real treat in the Literary Mystery Novelists series with John Lescroart.

Lescroart has been called a national treasure for his writing skills, and his latest novel, Damage, offers evidence for that claim. As he does in many of his novels, Lescroart examines serious societal issues in this book. In Damage, those include the power and wealth that allows a segment of the population to flout laws and escape punishment for their crimes and the legal system that caters to this powerful elite at the expense of ordinary citizens.This stand-alone novel offers the sharp humor, rich characterization, and complex storyline that fans have come to expect from Lescroart. His novels are beautifully crafted, and he's reaped the rewards of his artistic labors with multiple stays on the New York Times bestseller list.
Damage will be out in paperback at the end of December, and Lescroart's newest book, The Hunter, will launch in January. Here is the link to buy Damage.

John Lescroart Bio

John Lescroart is the NY Times Bestselling author of twenty-two novels, including most recently DAMAGE (January, 2011), the latest in the San Francisco based Dismas Hardy/Abe Glitsky series.  Libraries Unlimited has included him in its publication “The 100 Most Popular Thriller and Suspense Authors,” his books have been translated into twenty languages in more than seventy-five countries, and his short stories appear in many anthologies. 

John’s first novel, SUNBURN, won the San Francisco Foundation’s Joseph Henry Jackson Award for best as yet unpublished novel by a California author, and DEAD IRISH and THE 13^TH JUROR were nominees for the Shamus and Anthony Best Mystery Novel, respectively; additionally THE 13^TH JUROR is included in the International Thriller Writers publication “100 Must-Read Thrillers Of All Time.”  HARD EVIDENCE is named in “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to the Ultimate Reading List.”  GUILT was a Readers Digest Select Edition choice.  THE MERCY RULE, NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH, and THE SUSPECT have been major market Book Club selections.  THE SUSPECT was also the 2007 One Book Sacramento choice of the Sacramento Library Foundation, and was chosen by the American Author’s Association as its 2007 Book of the Year. Each of the last several of John’s books have been Main Selections of one or more of the Literary Guild, Mystery Guild, and Book of the Month Club, and DAMAGE made Entertainment Weekly’s “Must List.”    

Outside of the book world, John loves to cook.  His original recipes have appeared in Gourmet Magazine and in the cookbook “A Taste of Murder.”  (He also wrote the forward to Francine Brevetti’s paean to the famous San Francisco eatery Fior d’Italia entitled The Fabulous Fior:  100 Years in an Italian Kitchen.)   

John and his wife, Lisa Sawyer, live in Northern California. 

 

 

For those new to your series, can you describe the Dismas Hardy mysteries? Since you hadn’t originally intended this to be a series, how did you develop the series once you knew you wanted to do more Dismas Hardy books?

Dismas Hardy was a character who would not leave me alone.  I first used the name in my very first (still deservedly unpublished) novel, which I wrote in college – I loved the combination of the name of the Good Thief on the cross next to Jesus somehow connected to The Hardy Boys.  As I began my career, such as it was, I came out first with a literary novel, SUNBURN, and followed that with two Sherlock Holmes pastiches.  When I finally decided to write about a modern hero, a largely still undeveloped, but well-named Dismas Hardy was there waiting for me.  In the first of the Hardy books, DEAD IRISH, I thought I had a good character arc for a stand-alone novel, but never dreamed that Dismas would still be in my life twenty-some years later. 

The initial impetus to continue the character as a series came from my publisher, Donald Fine, who liked DEAD IRISH and Hardy a lot, and who wanted a sequel.  For a young writer hoping to keep getting published, this was a godsend moment.  I knew Hardy and liked him, and I figured he could have another adventure, so I wrote THE VIG. 

Then life intervened.  I got spinal meningitis and spent eleven days in a coma.  In the wake of that, and my survival, my day job as a legal word processor became unbearable for many reasons.  I wound up moving to Northern California from LA and didn’t write a word for perhaps sixteen months – a very long dry spell for me.  But by the time I started writing again, I knew what I wanted to do, which was move Dismas Hardy into the professional law business with a big, perhaps important book.  This was, of course, a huge challenge since I wasn’t a lawyer, but I did a lot of research and wrote HARD EVIDENCE, the first of the Hardy “legal thrillers.”  That book did poorly in the US, but sold for six figures in Germany and Japan and gave me the impetus to start another Hardy book in the same vein, and that book, THE 13^TH JUROR, turned out to be my first bestseller. 

            Ironically, because of the lag time in publishing, I didn’t know that THE 13^TH JUROR was going to be a hit, so I abandoned Hardy for the next two books and concentrated instead on Hardy’s cop pal Abe Glitsky.  So by the time the next true Dismas Hardy book, THE MERCY RULE, appeared, I had a much larger San Francisco cast of characters and was beginning to see the possibilities of the universe that all of my characters inhabited together, and I’ve been expanding those possibilities ever since. 

 

How would you describe Damage to someone who has not read any of your previous stand-alone novels?

            Damage has some legal elements, but they are decidedly in the background of the story.  I purposely created it as a more or less stand-alone novel.  Every now and then, when I’ve got a franchise character such as Dismas Hardy, I find it refreshing to let him rest somewhere off the page while life goes on in his greater universe.  So Damage features some of Hardy’s colleagues, notably Abe Glitsky and Wes Farrell, who get caught up in the release of convicted murderer Ro Curtlee through a technicality.  Ro is a very bad person.  His parents are rich and manipulative, and horrible stuff starts happening again within a day or two of Ro’s release from prison.  Glitsky and Farrell are constrained by their jobs and their consciences, while Ro just begins to run amuck.  And because of these elements, and also the creation of the character Sheila “Heinous” Marrenas, the novel has a tremendous propulsive force, or narrative drive, which was a blast to work with.  And as a stand-alone, it’s a great way to introduce new readers to the general neighborhood.

What's your writing process? What is a typical writing day like for you? What are your writing habits?

            I’ve been extremely fortunate to have been writing under multi-book contracts now for at least fifteen years, so my life is about as “organized” as those of people who work steady jobs.  I get up at around 7:30 (when my two children still lived at home, it was 6:00), then read the paper and have my coffee.  Next I’m off to my workout club where I sweat for about an hour and a half.  I’m usually at work at my office – I don’t write at home – and answer emails and real mail and generally put off writing as long as I can – I call it “sorting my socks” --  until around 1:00, when I start writing pages.  I don’t have a daily limit until I get to January or so (my books are always due to the publishers by June 1), but after January I write usually about seven to ten pages a day, finishing my first draft by about mid-April.  Then I do my own personal revisions and rewrites, work with my own personal editors, and hand in the finished book, after which I do another set of revisions based on the comments of my agent, the genius Barney Karpfinger and my real editor Ben Sevier, one of the very best.  Then I incorporate Ben’s suggestions, edit the galleys and start the process for the next book, the outline for which I hand in on September 1.   

You turned to full-time writing after a near-death experience, and that led to your great success. Do you regret not having made that transition earlier?

            Well, it wasn’t as though I was sitting there before the spinal meningitis hit me thinking that I was just passing the time writing mid-list books.  All the while, I was trying to write the kind of books that would give me a living in literature, but somehow had not discovered the “voice,” or the formula, or the techniques, to reach a big audience.  I’ve thought a lot about the question you’ve asked, above, and I’ve come to believe that though it seemed to take a very long time before I had any real success (I was forty-six when THE 13^TH JUROR hit the bestseller list), it’s been for the best.  I learned a lot in the early days, gained real confidence in my abilities, and was able to handle the “trappings” of success without becoming too weird – although of course my friends would tell you that I’ve always been weird.  So while it might have been nice to have had a breakout book in my twenties or thirties, I don’t spend any time worrying about that. 

Who were your literary influences growing up? Are there any authors (living or dead) that you would name as influences?

            My main influence – the person who just knocked me out from the very first – was Hemingway.  This is not, of course, to say that my work reflects his in any meaningful way, but I was deeply affected by his style and basic approach to life and literature right from the git-go.  From there, the list of influences goes on, since I was by any standard a reading geek.  I adored Albert Camus and Mark Twain in high school.  In college, I essentially majored in Lawrence Durrell and the Alexandrian Quartet  -- still highly recommended!  After college, I drifted into what I’d call pleasurable, as opposed to “English major” reading – Rex Stout, Arthur Conan Doyle, John D. MacDonald – and found that I loved it!  Finally, in my thirties, I became enamored of the Aubrey-Maturin series by Patrick O’Brian, phenomenal stuff.  And all along the way, I tried to remain sensitive to “new” voices, no matter if they were already well-established or even dead, as they presented themselves to me – Agatha Christie, PD James, Elmore Leonard, Nelson DeMille, T. Jefferson Parker. 

You wrote your first novel in college. What inspired you to write that first book? Had you always wanted to be a writer?

            I guess the short answer to this question is “Yes.”  I was a voracious reader from an early age, and just could never quite envision doing anything else for a living that would be meaningful.  This is really funny considering the dozens of jobs I wound up doing until I could get my writing to support me, but that’s the way I always felt.  As for that first college book, which I presciently entitled “No Promise,” I had already started telling friends and family that I was going to be a novelist, and I figured that meant I had to actually write a novel, or maybe even more.  (Although in my youth, my fantasy was that I would just write a few novels, maybe three or four, and then after that I would just be a “famous novelist.”)  So I sat down and started writing and pretty soon had a pretty bad novel.  But you know, a pretty bad novel is still a novel, and it was someplace to start.

Do you (or have you) belong(ed) to a critique group of other authors. Do you find it helpful? In what ways?

            The only critique group I’ve ever been a part of was a creative writing class at UC Berkeley back in 1969.  Jackson Burgess was our teacher and he told our class of about twenty students that only one of us was going to make a living as a professional novelist.  Then he told us who that student was and it wasn’t me.  So after that, I decided I would let the market, and neither my peers nor my instructors, decide who was good enough to be published.  I knew that I was going to be published because I wasn’t going to quit until that happened, and I didn’t stop learning and trying until it did.  (And I like to think I’m still learning.)

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?

            My advice to young writers is simple:  read all you can and write all you can.  There is something to be learned in almost everything you read – whether it’s a fluency or felicity of language or something you know that you’ve got to avoid at all costs.  Read, read, read, every day, and write, write, write, every day.  There is no substitute – okay, you can take a few days off sometimes, but make reading and writing part of your everyday life.  It’s okay to read what you like, of course, but it’s also a good idea to push yourself to read something that doesn’t appeal at first encounter.  Only then will you be able to define what you like and don’t like, what you want to emulate, what you want to avoid.  And eventually your own personal voice will begin showing up and you’ll recognize it and then, eventually, hopefully, be able to control it.   

What is the most surprising thing you’ve learned in your writing career? What has been the hardest part about being a writer?

            The most surprising thing to me is that writing is a full-time lifelong commitment as well as a career.  When I was young, I really thought that I’d write one book that everyone would read (think STONE MOUNTAIN or THE DA VINCI CODE), and then I’d be a famous writer and that would be really cool.  In reality, of course, most working writers write books, and then we write other books.  It’s a continuing process, and we’re always learning, trying to get better, recommitting, because sometimes it’s very, very difficult – not just the writing itself, but the search for the next great idea, the frustrations of the business side, the obstinacy of your characters, the search for the mot juste.  It doesn’t really get much easier in a day-to-day sense, though to real writers this very difficulty makes it an enthralling, challenging adventure. 

The hardest part about it all?  In the face of criticism, cynicism, jealousy, ignorance, and apathy, it is incredibly hard to remain brave enough to create your own worlds and characters, and to believe in them absolutely.  And the way to conquer this hardest part?  Make your worlds and characters so real that they cannot be denied by the critics, the cynics, the jealous and the ignorant and the apathetic.  Or by yourself.   

Monday, we'll return to the Writers of Color series with an in-depth look at Luis Alberto Urrea, and we'll be back to our usual schedule. Have a happy weekend with lots of reading pleasure!