Dana’s gone off and left me the keys
to the place, asking me to do a guest spot — and that’s a true honor.
I’m not sure the best way to work this, but first I’ll find
his liquor cabinet, then I’ll just get comfy and ask myself some
questions.
So here goes:
Is there a central idea or thread that runs through your
books?
Small-time crooks can lead to big-time misadventures.
What attracts you to writing the kinds of stories you
write?
I like letting unwitting characters loose in uncertain
situations, letting them tell it from their own shaky points of view, with me
just following the action and seeing how it all ends up. It makes for
fast-paced action, dark humor, mixed with unexpected twists, and accented by
the heavy thump of ill-luck.
Tell us about your writing routine and how you approach
the craft.
As for routine, I get up early most mornings and I start
writing. Coffee must be involved, and I’m not sure how many words I get to the
gallon, but it’s my fuel of choice at that early hour. And I’ve always got some
music playing.
There’s no word count that I shoot for. Sometimes I crank
out a lot, other days I only write a few pages, and as long as they’re good
pages, then I’m happy with that.
I often write the first draft in longhand. It’s a mess to
sort out with margin notes, scribbles, circles and arrows, but there’s
something natural about writing by hand. For the subsequent drafts and any
major edits, Mac beats pencil every time.
Mostly, I don’t plan out the stories before I start writing.
I rely on instinct. A single idea for a scene kicks it off, leading to the
next, and I write my way to the heart of it as more ideas keep coming along. By
working like this, I end up with something much better than anything I could
have pre-planned ahead of time.
What’s one thing you’ve learned since you started
writing?
I learned from the first Bouchercon I attended — where I met
Dana and his lovely wife Corky — to always have an elevator pitch ready. A
well-known Canadian author came up to me before one of the panel discussions
and asked what my debut novel was about, and I gave him the
deer-in-the-headlight look and stumbled on with, “Uh, um …”
Since then, I’ve learned to always have a pitch ready. In
fact, here’s the one for the new book, Cradle
of the Deep.
Getting into bed with the wrong guy can get you killed.
Wanting to free herself from her boyfriend, aging gangster
“Maddog” Palmieri, Bobbi Ricci concocts a misguided plan with Denny, Maddog’s
ex-driver, a guy who’s bent on getting even with the gangster for the
humiliating way in which he was sacked.
Helping themselves to the gangster’s secret money stash,
along with his Cadillac, Bobbi and Denny slip out of town, expecting to lay low
for a while before enjoying the spoils.
Realizing he’s been betrayed, an enraged Maddog calls in
stone-cold killer Lee Trane. As Trane picks up their trail, plans quickly
change for Bobbi and Denny, who now find themselves on a wild chase of
misadventure through northern British Columbia and into Alaska.
Time is running out for them once they find out that Trane’s
been sent to do away with them, or worse, bring them back — either way, Maddog
will make them pay.
Is there a point about the new book you’d like folks to
be aware of?
Mainly that it’s published by ECW Press, will be released on
November 3rd, and available in print, e- and audiobook formats.
How did you come up with the story idea?
The initial idea stemmed from a short story I wrote a couple
of years earlier about two protagonists, Bobbi and Denny, who bump into each
other in the middle of the night, each trying to rob the same gangster’s house.
For Bobbi it’s the crime boss she’s been seeing, a thrill at first, but now
she’s seeing him as a total bore. After discovering where he hides his stash of
cash, she started getting ideas. For Denny, it’s revenge for being sacked as
the crime boss’s driver — fired in the middle of a downtown street — kicked out
of the car while beautiful Bobbi sat watching from the back seat. Denny had
heard rumors that the old guy kept a lot of cash hidden in his big house, and
he gets ideas of his own.
The short piece wanted to become longer, so I let it evolve,
and more scenes just kept coming as I wrote — like the naked people in
Whistler, and the car chase over the thin ice of a deep lake. A dead-end
northern town where the locals don’t pay taxes and shoot at anyone speeding
down their main drag. There’s a crazed war vet buzzing the treetops of the
hinterland in a water bomber. A grizzly beating up a Ford Cortina, and a stone
killer sent by the gangster to hunt down the pair.
I was in Oakland while I was still working on it, and I saw
a piece of art depicting tattoos of ancient mariners. One of the images had the
words “In the Cradle of the Deep” woven around an anchor and chain. I loved the
phrase and it just worked so well with the story, and I knew I had my title.
Well, Dana’s nearly out of scotch, and that’s about it for
me. If you pick up a copy of the book, I do hope you enjoy it.
And thank you again to Dana for letting me sit in. It’s
always fun dropping by.
(Editor's Note: It's always a pleasure to have you, Dieter. The book sounds like great fun. I'm looking forward to it.)
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