J.L. Abramo, Author of Homeland Insecurity

 

J.L. Abramo was born and raised in the seaside paradise of Brooklyn, New York on Raymond Chandler's fifty-ninth birthday.

 

A long-time journalist, educator, and theatre artist, Abramo earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Sociology and Education from The City College of New York and a Master of Arts Degree in Social Psychology from The University of Cincinnati. At Cincinnati, Abramo led the published research study Status Threat and Group Dogmatism (Human Relations, 31 (8): 745-752).

 

Abramo is the author of Catching Water in a Net, winner of the St. Martin's Press/Private Eye Writers of America Award for Best First Private Eye Novel; the subsequent Jake Diamond Novels Clutching at Straws, Counting to Infinity and Circling the Runway (Shamus Award Winner); Chasing Charlie Chan, a prequel to the Jake Diamond series; Gravesend; Brooklyn Justice; Coney Island Avenue (a follow-up to Gravesend); and the generational novel American History.

 

Homeland Insecurity is Abramo’s first book-length work of non-fiction.

 

He and I first met at the Shamus Award banquet in New Orleans, where we shared a table with the team from Down & Out Books. That’s the year Joe won for Circling the Runway, besting, among others, me. I was more than hapopy for him. He’s a good guy, a fine writer, and the book is more than a deserving winner.

 

Let’s talk about Homeland Insecurity.

 

One Bite at a Time: Homeland Insecurity is quite a departure for you. What made you dip your toes into the non-fiction realm?

 

J.L. Abramo: I had done a good amount of journalistic writing before trying my hand at fiction—and that experience has always influenced my novels.

 

In the Jake Diamond mystery series, there have always been references to events of the times—as well as mention of period music, movies, and the like.

 

In Chasing Charlie Chan, a novel taking place primarily in 1994, and flashing back to 1940s Hollywood and Las Vegas, there are a good number of historical events and real-life characters—the O.J. Simpson murder trial, Major League Baseball strike, the Charlie Chan films and the fate of Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel to cite several examples.

 

In my novel American History, as the title may suggest, more than ninety years of historical events are woven into the fictional generational tale of two feuding Italian-American families.

 

So, tackling strict nonfiction was not a tremendous leap—and was something I had probably been drifting toward for some time.

 

OBAAT: There were hundreds of murders in this country during the time frame from which you picked those you chose to write about. What made them special?

 

JLA: I first came across the Edgar Smith/Victoria Zielinski case when I found Smith’s book, Brief Against Death, at a yard sale. I had read other books that were written from within prison walls, and had always found them compelling. Smith had been on death row for more than 11 years when the book was published and he had managed to recruit an influential supporter, William F. Buckley Jr., as Jack Henry Abbott had done with Norman Mailer.

 

In 2003, Gerald Mason was arrested less than a mile from where I lived in South Carolina—accused of murdering two young police officers in California more than 45 years earlier.

 

Smith and Mason were born eight days apart in 1934, and both crimes took place in 1957.  These coincidences were what started me thinking about taking the cases together if I eventually decided to go ahead with a project.

 

OBAAT: You intercut actual events that occurred on the day things you focused on happened, or that took place in the intervening time since you last described your primary story. It’s highly effective for giving the reader a sense of the world at that time. What gave you the idea to do that, and how much research was involved?

 

JLA: These crimes took place when I was ten years old. To attempt gaining insights, I tried to look at these events in relation to the changes America was going through following World War II and throughout the fifties and sixties—the Red Scare; the new icons in music, film, and literature; the proliferation of crimes against children; serial killings; and the decrease of confidence in political leaders. I began seeing it as a story of how the murders may have affected the times and how the times may have perhaps instigated the crimes. That led to my decision to present these cases as I did—within the context of the time periods—relying on a considerable amount of research as well as on my own personal memories of growing up in those decades.

 

OBAAT: Court transcripts and police interviews figure prominently in the book. Court transcripts are a matter of public record, but how were you able to dig up police interviews from 65 years ago?

 

JLA: There was coincidence here as well. Guy Calissi was the Bergen County prosecutor in the Smith murder trial. Calissi was born in the same year as my father in 1909. He died the year my father died, in 1980. By the time I first came across the case, and ultimately decided to explore it, Calissi was gone.

 

However, he did have a son—born the same year I was born—and he was an invaluable help. Ronald E. Calissi had written a book about his father’s famous case—published in 1972—not long after Edgar Smith’s release from prison. He was able to supply me with the transcripts of police interviews from 1957, a transcript of the ‘infamous’ Q&A Assistant Prosecutor Fred Galda conducted with Smith, and full trial transcripts. The younger Calissi passed away in 2016.

 

OBAAT: You obviously had a well-formed idea when you started on the book. Did your research change your thoughts about anything, or solidify them?

 

JLA: After reading Brief Against Death I began, as Bill Buckley obviously had, considering Edgar Smith’s innocence. When I finally located Smith’s follow-up book, Getting Out, I was fascinated by how the legal system worked in this—and in many cases. For nearly fifteen years, Smith professed his innocence and remained on death row in Trenton, New Jersey. When he ultimately plead guilty to a lesser offense, Smith was immediately released.  As I continued to investigate, my thoughts and opinions about Smith changed considerably.

 

In the case of Gerald Mason, I was aware of the outcome before researching the background of the 1957 crimes—but my exploration changed my thoughts and opinions about the power of persistence in criminal investigation.

 

OBAAT: Did you discover anything in your research that surprised you beyond the routine surprises one expects when doing research, whether the surprise was pleasant or unpleasant?

 

JLA: There were great surprises but, to avoid what would be terrible spoilers, I will have to leave them to the readers of Homeland Insecurity to discover.

 

*  *  *

And we’ll leave you with this perfect setup to buy the book and see what it is Joe has been talking about. It’s a fascinating read.

 

Thanks to J.L. Abramo for taking the time to chat with OBAAT today. Best of luck with the book, Joe.

 

For more about Joe, please visit:

www.jlabramo.com

www.facebook.com/jlabramo

 

A Conversation with J.L. Abramo

I knew the name J.L. Abramo well before I interviewed him last year, but didn’t meet him in person until the Shamus banquet last fall in New Orleans, where he won for Circling the Runway. It’s always fun when someone with a reputation such as Joe’s turns out to be a true gentleman. He could not have been nicer about crushing my dreams, both of us nominated for the same award. Much as I wanted to hate him, I couldn’t pull it off. (It’s okay. Joe’s from Brooklyn. He understands that kind of humor.)

Joe was not only born in Brooklyn, but on Raymond Chandler’s birthday. (Must be something about July 23 and writers.) He is the author of Catching Water in a Net, winner of the St. Martin's Press/Private Eye Writers of America prize for Best First Private Eye Novel; the subsequent Jake Diamond novels Clutching at Straws, Counting to Infinity and Circling the Runway; Chasing Charlie Chan, a prequel to the Jake Diamond series; and the stand-alone thrillers Gravesend, Brooklyn Justice, and Coney Island Avenue, which is why he’s here today.

 

His short fiction has appeared in the anthologies Unloaded: Crime Writers Writing Without Guns; Mama Tried: Crime Fiction Inspired by Outlaw Country Music; Coast to Coast: Private Eyes from Sea to Shining Sea and Murder Under the Oaks, winner of the Anthony Award for Best Anthology of 2015.

It’s a pleasure to get to pick his brain again, and on the day Coney Island Avenue drops, when I know he has plenty on his mind.

One Bite at a Time:  Thanks for taking the time to chat today, Joe. It was a treat to be at the Down & Out table with you when you won the Shamus Award last year in New Orleans for Circling the Runway. How did it feel to win?

J.L. Abramo:  First, let me say, it is a pleasure to be back for One Bite at a Time. Talking with you last year about Brooklyn Justice was a treat for me—I admire and appreciate an interviewer who poses smart, challenging and thought-provoking questions and displays a familiarity with the work being discussed.  Does their homework. (Editor's Note: Aw, shucks. I told you he was a gentleman.)

Earning the Shamus Award for Circling the Runway was very special to me for many reasons. Circling the Runway was the fourth in the Jake Diamond series which began with Catching Water in a Net in 2001. (Although Chasing Charlie Chan, published in 2013, is related—the events in that novel taking place some years before the beginning of Catching Water in a Net—Jake Diamond plays only a minor role.)

Catching Water in a Net received the St. Martin’s Press/Private Eye Writers of America Award for Best First Private Eye Novel of 2000—and was published by SMP the following year.

St. Martin’s Minotaur gave me two more shots (Clutching at Straws, 2003 and Counting to Infinity, 2004) before deciding the Jake Diamond series, though well received by critics and readers alike, was not what they considered a money maker. I continued to write, of course, what other choice did I have—but the work seemed destined to remain out of the public realm.  And then, the net held water once again when Eric Campbell of Down & Out Books reached out to me and gave Jake Diamond and J. L. Abramo a second shot.  D&O quickly re-issued the three Diamond private eye mysteries.

Old and new fans kept asking if Jake would ever return. I wondered if after more than a decade away I would still know Jake and his regular band of cohorts. I found writing the novel was much like a reunion with old friends. (Re-reading the earlier books helped—reminding me how funny Jake could be.) 

Circling the Runway was the first new Jake Diamond novel published in nearly a dozen years (Gravesend and Chasing Charlie Chan preceding it) and earning the Shamus was an affirmation that the series was still viable after a long hiatus—and a validation by fellow private eye novelists that the work was worthy.  Earning an award decided upon by your peers is most rewarding.

OBAAT: You’re well-known for your Jake Diamond series. What made you switch to a police procedural when you wrote Gravesend?

JLA:  Actually, the seeds of Gravesend were sown before Jake Diamond.  It was a work which developed for many years and in its final incarnation was given a chance to see the light of day thanks again to Down & Out Books.

Gravesend is about people who happen to be police detectives or criminals or in the neighborhood.  I was writing about how lives intersect—often accidentally and sometimes unknowingly.  I was treating Brooklyn as a small town—which for all its size it had always felt to me when I was growing up in Gravesend.  Writing Gravesend was a return to the place of my origin—more a change of setting from Jake Diamond’s San Francisco to my hometown, Brooklyn, than a change from one sub-genre to another.  It was a chance to rediscover for—as T.S. Eliot put it—We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.

And although Gravesend is crime novel on the surface—the book evolved into its present incarnation when I finally understood what I was humbly attempting to explore—namely how the manner in which human beings handle adversity will ultimately define them as persons—good or evil—weak or strong—fair or unjust—loved or despised—admired or feared.

OBAAT: Coney Island Avenue is the sequel to Gravesend. Tell us a little about it.

JLA:  I never really planned to write a follow-up to Gravesend.  Gravesend was a very ambitious and personal novel—it had been developing for a long time—and I was proud of the work.  I feared it might be too hard an act to follow.  But I received lots of encouragement from readers who wanted to hear more about the characters and where they might venture—and I found myself wondering also—so I picked up where Gravesend left off and wrote a sequel which is a crime novel and also very much about parents and children.

OBAAT: It’s always interesting to talk with an author who switches between sub-genres as you do, probably because I do it myself. Do you take a different approach when working on a PI novel as compared to your procedurals?  I’ve thought for years that PI stories and procedurals are each uniquely suited to telling different kinds of stories. Police have to take whatever cases come to them—and they have to close them. PIs sometimes have a chance to look for closure.  Do you see fundamental differences in the genres?

JLA:  I think I approach all of my writing in the same way.  I begin with a scene, a situation, which stimulates my imagination and which I hope will draw the reader in—and what follows is the journey.

I see genre as the vehicle for that journey—the vehicle in which the writer is most comfortable—be it crime, mystery, science fiction, etc.

That being said, I agree that some situations are better served by different types of protagonists—some more suited to the private investigator, often working alone, and others more suited to a team of police investigators.

The Diamond novels tend to be lighter, less intense, more humorous due to his personality—although Murphy does provide comic relief in the precinct novels.) 

As a private investigator, Diamond may require or depend on assistance from friends and colleagues and Jake is often at odds with the SFPD—whereas the detectives of the Six-One count on and expect back-up from each other.

The private eye novel can get away with focusing on one case, but I see police detectives in a large city usually working a number of cases at once.

As you mentioned, police feel pressure to close a case—from the public, the city politicians and media—which the private eye may not have to face. Unless, of course, solving the case is a matter of life and death.

OBAAT: Moving back to Coney Island Avenue and the 61st Precinct, I’d be remiss if I didn’t ask your opinion of Ed McBain and his 87th Precinct novels and whether they had any effect on you.

JLA:  Ed McBain, NYPD Blue, Blue Bloods, Serpico—these and other books, TV and films involving police officers and detectives have always appealed to me and certainly inspire me to explore and conscientiously depict the kinds of challenges faced by law-enforcers both on the job and in their personal lives.

OBAAT: New York police stories tend to focus on Manhattan. What appeals to you about Brooklyn? I don’t mean that to sound like a pejorative. I like stories that aren’t set in the same old places.

JLA:  As I mentioned earlier there is a small town character unique to Brooklyn even though by population it would be the fourth largest city in the United States—and when writing a book that is character and dialogue driven what better place to set it than the Borough of colorful characters and speech.

This piece I wrote about my little town says it as well as I could: http://jlabramo.blogspot.com/2016/03/brooklyn-ease.html

OBAAT: Your 61st Precinct books are ensemble pieces. Do you have to plan differently when you have so many moving pieces?

JLA:  I have always loved classic literature—as does Jake Diamond.  Diamond is reading a classic novel in each book—one that has parallels to the story at hand.

I particularly enjoy books with a lot of individual characters—so I tend to write that way. I remember early on a reader saying he thoroughly enjoyed Catching Water in a Net but had trouble at times keeping the many characters straight.  As a reader, I was used to books with a large number of characters—Dickens, Dostoyevsky, Hugo—so I am good at keeping it all straight in my head as I read and write. But I tend to forget it is a lot to keep track of for some readers.  So, since Catching Water in a Net, I have included a Cast of Characters at the beginning of each book for back reference—and it seems to work.  And, also, perhaps my books are ensemble pieces because of my theatre background. 

I don’t really plan the number of characters—they just keep showing up as the stories progress.

OBAAT: Who’s your favorite character of the 61st Precinct ensemble?

JLA:  I like many of the characters—enough to have decided to bring them back—but if I had to pick one favorite it would be Detective Thomas Murphy.  Murphy is very Brooklyn.  He is funny.  He is tough and vulnerable at the same time.  He is honest and loyal.  And he has a dog named Ralph.

OBAAT: Do any of them give you trouble?

JLA: For the same reasons I like Murphy, he gives me the most trouble. He can be taken the wrong way if I am not careful. He has a Brooklyn sense of humor some might take as sarcastic and a Brooklyn cynicism some might consider defeatist.  But he is neither. 

It is Murphy who says: There are degrees of guilt, shades of innocence—and they all congregate on the same avenue—which is, to a great extent, what Coney Island Avenue is about.

Since I have spent a good deal of time in places outside of Brooklyn assuring people I wasn’t making fun of them and I really think the world is a pretty cool place, I know the dangers of being misunderstood—so I need to keep a close eye on Murphy to assure he remains a likeable and sympathetic character.

OBAAT: You’ve had quite a career as an author and obviously still going strong. Looking back, what do you find the most satisfying and what has surprised you the most?

JLA:  Most satisfying is hearing from readers that the work has affected them in some positive way—even if it is simply you made me laugh.

Most surprising is that they haven’t made any movies yet.

OBAAT: Thanks again for stopping by. It’s been a treat for me and I hope to see you in Toronto, if not before. Before we call it a day, what are you working on now?  Do you have plans beyond that, or are you strictly a one book at a time guy?

JLA:  I am working on a novel about two Sicilian families who bring their blood-feud from the old country to New York City and San Francisco in the early years of the 20^th Century and slug it out over the course of nearly 100 years.  Romeo and Juliet meet the Hatfields and McCoys.

What follows will be strictly up to my muse.

For more about Joe and his work please visit:

www.jlabramo.com

www.facebook.com/jlabramo

Twenty Questions with J.L. Abramo

J. L. Abramo was born in the seaside paradise of Brooklyn, New York on Raymond Chandler's fifty-ninth birthday. Abramo is the author of Catching Water in a Net, winner of the St. Martin's Press/Private Eye Writers of America prize for Best First Private Eye Novel; the subsequent Jake Diamond novels Clutching at Straws, Counting to Infinity, and Circling the Runway; Chasing CharlieChan, a prequel to the Jake Diamond series; and the stand-alone, thriller Gravesend.

Abramo’s latest work is Brooklyn Justice, which has already garnered high praise from respected sourses. Three-time Shamus Award (among others) winner Reed Farrel Coleman writes: “If grit, hard guys, and the rhythm of the mean streets is your thing, Brooklyn Justice has got them in spades and J.L. Abramo is your man.” From Michael Koryta, author of the Lincoln PI series: “J.L Abramo writes noir the way God and Hammett intended—tough, terse and smart. Brooklyn Justice is a great read with razor-sharp prose and a compelling cast. Nick Ventura is my kind of PI.” The Denver Review chimes in with, “In Brooklyn Justice, award winning author J.L. Abramo again demonstrates his firm grasp on the language and morality of his native streets, with as many surprises as there are casualties. An ideal follow-up to his acclaimed novel Gravesend.”

So what’s he doing here at OBAAT? Showing his success has not gone to his head.

One Bite at a Time: Tell us about Brooklyn Justice.

J.L. Abramo: Brooklyn Justice is ten months in the hazardous life of private investigator Nick Ventura.  It is about a man who know trouble—but not how to keep his nose out of it. It is a work of crime fiction which I have come to affectionately refer to as a novel in stories. There is no shortage of villains—including mob wise guys, professional hit men, corrupt businessmen, gold diggers, drug dealers, corrupt cops, gamblers, extortionists, vigilantes, street punks—but often circumstances, particularly the search for illusive justice, can lead righteous people to break the law and pose challenging questions about legality and morality. 

OBAAT: Where did you get this idea, and what made it worth developing for you? (Notice I didn’t ask “Where do you get your ideas?” I was careful to ask where you got this idea.)

JLA: I was invited to join a friend in Atlantic City, where I watched a high-stakes poker game.  The drama and urgency of the contest was fascinating and felt like an engaging way to begin a story.  It began as a short story that went too long but didn’t want to be a full length novel—what resulted was a novella called Pocket Queens.  When it was done the protagonist, Nick Ventura, would not let me go.  He drove me to write five short stories involving him.  Buick in a Beauty Shop, The Last Resort, Walking the Dog, Roses For Uncle Sal, and The Fist.  Following Pocket Queens, they appear sequentially, covering a period of less than a year, and featuring many recurring supporting characters.  Call it what you will.  A collection of shorter fiction.  A novel in stories.  Or simply Brooklyn Justice.

OBAAT: How long did it take to write Brooklyn Justice, start to finish?

JLA: The writing went unusually quickly—ten months in Nick Ventura’s life penned in only a few months real time.  In part, the quick result was inspired by the novelty of developing and making acquaintance with new characters—particularly Ventura who is much less inhibited than many of the protagonists in my other work.  There was also a thread running through the stories, weaving them together and driving the writing—legal justice and street justice are, in many instances, very different things.

OBAAT: Where did Nick Ventura come from? In what ways is he like, and unlike, you?

JLA: Nick Ventura is considerably more hardboiled than Jake Diamond, the private investigator in Catching Water in a Net, Clutching at Straws, Counting to Infinity and Circling the Runway. I suppose the character evolved from my subconscious interest in writing a more dangerous protagonist. Ventura comes from an Italian-American, working class background. He is loyal to his friends, intolerant of deceit and the exploitation of the innocent, and likes his scotch—most similarities between Nick and I end there. He is most unlike me in that he can be a great deal more physically violent.

OBAAT: In what time and place is Brooklyn Justice set? How important is the setting to the book as a whole?

JLA:   The book takes place, recent past, in the Borough of Churches—with a few sojourns to Atlantic City at start and finish. Brooklyn has that rare quality of being a big city with a small town element.  It is a borough which could be the fourth largest city in the United States—but it has always been defined by its neighborhoods and ethnic enclaves.

After three Jake Diamond mysteries, set primarily in San Francisco and Los Angeles, I felt compelled to write a Brooklyn story—to return to my roots.  The result was Gravesend, titled for the Brooklyn neighborhood where I grew up.  It was a more personal journey and Brooklyn was a very important character in that story—as it is in this book.  I am comfortable there—in much the same way Dennis Lehane is at home writing Boston and George Pelecanos is at home writing D.C.  Brooklyn is unique because it is Brooklyn—it is not like any other place—and it is a perfect setting for crime fiction because it has such a rich history of criminal activity.

As T.S. Eliot said—We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.  That was my experience in revisiting Brooklyn for Gravesend and Brooklyn Justice.

OBAAT: How did Brooklyn Justice come to be published?

JLA: Through the efforts of Eric Campbell of Down&Out Books.  Eric has been a long-time fan of my work—and a great fan of crime fiction in general. 

OBAAT: What kinds of stories do you like to read? Who are your favorite authors, in or out of that area?

JLA: I love the classics.  In the Jake Diamond books, Jake is always carrying around a worn paperback classic—A Tale of Two Cities, The Count of Monte Cristo, The Hunchback of Notre Dame—and the book he is reading is always tied into his story.  I enjoy crime fiction, and I find that many classics are also crime stories—Crime and Punishment, Les Misérables, Oliver Twist, The Woman in White. In what is referred to as genre crime fiction, I have always admired the work of Raymond Chandler, James M. Cain, Jim Thompson.  I do enjoy books that strongly make use of setting—I always learn something from a visit to Loren Estleman’s Detroit, George Pelecanos’ District of Columbia, Dennis Lehane’s Boston, James Ellroy’s Los Angeles, or Bob Truluck’s South Florida.  Other writers who have inspired me include Kurt Vonnegut, Ken Kesey, Norman Mailer, John Irving, and John Steinbeck.

OBAAT: What made you decide to be an author?

JLA: I have always needed to express myself in some artistic fashion—a drive I could never suppress.  As Van Morrison so eloquently put it, I can’t not write.

I eventually found I was more adept at writing than at playing an instrument or putting paint to canvas—though I certainly tried both. 

OBAAT: How do you think your life experiences have prepared you for writing crime fiction?

JLA: I grew up around many people involved with organized crime—it was everywhere at every level—and at times I had to depend on some of these people to protect me from collateral damage. My college studies in psychology and sociology always influence what I write—consciously or otherwise.  I have a Masters Degree in Social Psychology.  Social psychology adds another element.  Rather than looking at the individual or at society-at-large, it gives me perspective into the workings of smaller social groups and the dynamics of their membership—be it a mob crew in a Brooklyn social club, a detective squad in a police precinct, a group of strangers thrown together by life-changing events, or a group of friends helping each other get through a common struggle.

OBAAT: What do you like best about being a writer?

JLA: What I like most about writing is its privacy—but working completely alone has its dangers. Writing is a very solitary endeavor and it necessitates isolation from others during the process.  The danger lies in losing contact—not only with other human beings but also with the exposure to experiences needed as information for the work.  I have always tried to balance my artistic urges to include working with others in collaboration—acting in or directing a play, singing with a band, teaching a class.

 

OBAAT: Who are your greatest influences? (Not necessarily writers. Filmmakers, other artists, whoever you think has had a major impact on your writing.)

JLA: I have mentioned some of the novelists.  Great films have been influential—particularly crime films—White Heat, The Big Sleep, Touch of Evil, Double Indemnity, On The Waterfront, Mean Streets, The Godfather, Reservoir Dogs, Miller’s Crossing. And theatre has had a great influence—Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman and All My Sons, Tennessee Williams’ Orpheus Descending and A Streetcar Named Desire, Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh, Robert Sherwood’s The Petrified Forest, Sidney Kingley’s Detective Story.  And Shakespeare.

OBAAT: Do you outline or fly by the seat of you pants? Do you even wear pants when you write?

JLA: Each story starts as the beginning of a journey—destination unknown.  I begin with a situation—a scene—which confronts me personally with intrigue and which I think or hope will encourage the reader to jump onboard for the trip. If it is not interesting to me, I may as well watch television or whip up a dish of eggplant parmigiana.

Often, when I finally realize where the plot needs to go, I am on a path that will not get me there—so I need to backtrack to find the fork in the road I missed along the way. 

I usually wear sweatpants—to help absorb the blood and tears.

OBAAT: Give us an idea of your process. Do you edit as you go? Throw anything into a first draft knowing the hard work is in the revisions? Something in between?

JLA: I edit as I go and then edit and revise the manuscript as a whole a few times before presenting it to my publisher.

OBAAT: Do you listen to music when you write? Do you have a theme song for this book? What music did you go back to over and over as you wrote it, or as you write, in general?

JLA: I always listen to music while I write.  My preferences tend to rock music from the sixties, seventies and eighties.  Depending on what I am writing and where I am in the work it can be Genesis, The Kinks, The Band, George Harrison. While writing Brooklyn Justice, I found myself listening to a lot of New York-influenced music—Bruce Springsteen, Lou Reed, Paul Simon.  If there was a theme song for Brooklyn Justice it would be Dire Straits’ Private Investigation.

OBAAT: As a writer, what’s your favorite time management tip?

JLA: Write when you feel it—and if it is not related to what you are working on at the moment, write it down anyway.  Chances are it will find a place somewhere down the line.  If you don’t feel that urge, that need to write, don’t try to force it.  Go out into the street instead, look and listen, interact with people and your environment, experience something to write about.

OBAAT: If you could give a novice writer a single piece of advice, what would it be?

JLA: Understand why you are writing, what you hope to achieve personally—intellectually, artistically, psychologically, spiritually. And when it comes to determinations of success or failure—judge for yourself.

OBAAT: Generally speaking the components of a novel are story/plot, character, setting, narrative, and tone. How would you rank these in order of their importance in your own writing, and can you add a few sentences to tell us more about how you approach each and why you rank them as you do?

JLA: I feel a likable, believable protagonist can take you a long way—and it always helps to surround your protagonist with a diverse, engaging and well developed supporting cast.  I borrow a lot from characters I have known when writing characters. Plot is important. It wants to be somewhat original, present reasons for the reader to remain aboard, and remain clear if not predictable.  Plot was the most difficult aspect of the writing to master—it is more technical than intuitive.  It took practice.  A story-driving narrative is essential.  My writing is dialogue driven—it works for me.  I personally believe setting can be a character itself—writing West Coast, San Francisco and Los Angeles, should feel different from writing Brooklyn and New York.  Unless you are writing about a galaxy far, far away—the home of your story adds authenticity and color. Tone is always a consideration, and I find a need to alternate between lighter and darker.  The Jake Diamond novels feature a lot of wit and humor.  When his associate asks Diamond, Has anyone ever told you you’re a laugh a minute, he replies, I hear it every sixty seconds. The stand-alone work, Gravesend and Brooklyn Justice, are more serious—though they do have their funny moments.

You didn’t mention theme, which to me may be the most important element of the process—whether or not you recognized it going in and whether or not it dawns on the reader as well.  Theme is the subconscious inspiration, the self-learning experience, the bottom line.

OBAAT: If you could have written any book of the past hundred years, what would it be, and what is it about that book you admire most?

JLA: Ken Kesey’s Sometimes A Great Notion is, for me, a perfect novel.  Family, manhood, hard work, drama, romance, mystery, loyalty, deceit, jealousy, a larger than life protagonist, a specific and fascinating setting, conflict and resolution, human weakness and strength—it is all there, presented truthfully, intelligently and beautifully.  I won’t lie—I could never have written that book.

OBAAT: Favorite activity when you’re not reading or writing.

JLA: Getting out with a small circle of friends.

OBAAT: What are you working on now?

JLA: I am working on short stories to appear in four separate anthologies which should appear in 2016 and 2017.  I am putting finishing touches on the follow-up to Gravesend.  I am going back to an epic novel dealing with one hundred years of crime in America as seen through the intersecting stories of two feuding immigrant families.

Piqued your interest? To learn all you need to know about J.L. Abramo, check out his sites:

www.jlabramo.com

www.facebook.com/jlabramo