An Interview With Terrence McCauley

 Terrence McCauley and I have been friends since we shared a panel at the Albany Bouchercon in 2013. He’s an even better person than he is a writer, and he’s a damn fine writer with a range that encompasses crime, thrillers, Westerns, and whatever he puts his mind to that day. He recently accepted a position with Wolfpack Press, a growing force in the industry, which gave me an excuse to catch up with him. (“Excuse” as in “He’s a person I’d interview just to bullshit with him but space doesn’t really allow for that.”)

 

One Bite at a Time: Hi, T-Mac. It’s been a while. It’s good to see you here again. You recently took a position with Wolfpack Publishing. What’s the new gig and how did it come about?

 

Terrence McCauley: It’s always great to hear from you, my friend. I when I reacquired my rights to my previously published books, Wolfpack was interested in breathing new life into them. New covers, a new marketing plan and a chance to add to the existing stories I’ve told. I was impressed with the team they have in place at Wolfpack and told them I’d be happy to help them in any way I could. As we began talking about ideas, we all decided it would be a good idea for me to take on the responsibilities of Director of Public Relations. I did it in the public sector for twenty-five years, so I had a lot of transferable skills that prepared me for the role. They’re a fine bunch of people and I’m honored to be working with them.

 

OBAAT: I’ll confess, Wolfpack was under my radar until I read your hiring announcement. I checked the website and saw authors there who have considerable juice. Tell us a little about the company, such as what its goals are, and how it plans to achieve them.

 

TM: The company was started in 2013 by Mike Bray and L.J. Martin. It has quickly grown into a powerhouse in the publishing industry. They company is proudly built on publishing new and classic western novels and will continue to do so. They have recently expanded into Young Adult titles with their Wise Wolf imprint and Mystery/Crime/Thriller novels through the acquisition of Rough Edges Press.

 

Their goal is simple in all the genres they publish. To give readers the best fiction available for an affordable price in both digital and, in their newer publications, print format.

 

When they announced the acquisition of Rough Edges Press, we sent notices to every writing organization we could think of to let them know we were open for business and eager to give under-represented voices a chance at publication. That commitment was one of the main reasons why I agreed to work for them and I’m excited about the future, both for my work and for the work of all the writers who join us.

 

OBAAT: This is a great opportunity to get your books consolidated under a single umbrella. Was that part of your consideration when taking the job, or was it a serendipitous benefit? Were there any problems with getting the rights?

 

TM: My westerns are still being published by Kensington, where I have a spinoff series coming out next year. Wolfpack acquired all my Terry Quinn, Charlie Doherty and University Series novels. They’re also publishing the new Doherty novel, The Wandering Man, and the new University novel, The Moscow Protocol. I had already signed with them for several weeks before we discussed the possibility of me joining the team. I was lucky that everyone involved agreed that Wolfpack Publishing was a better home for the kinds of novels I’ve written and want to continue to write. So, Kensington is home for my westerns and Wolfpack/Rough Edges Press is home for everything else and I couldn’t be happier. 

 

OBAAT: You write in as many genres as anyone I can think of. What are you working on now?

TM: Right now, I’m finishing up a western novel, then will switch over and write a prequel to Prohibition I’ve tentatively titled The Duke Of New York. It’ll be about Terry Quinn in the days after he joins the Doyle mob and how he helps that mob grow in power and prestige. It’ll take place in the same timeline as The Wandering Man. My goal is to write three books apiece that lead up to the events in Prohibition and Slow Burn respectively.

 

I got the idea for those novels because a lot of people have told me they were interested in Quinn and Charlie’s backstories. The Doherty books are in first-person, so I get to show that world from his jaded perspective. Quinn is third person, but anchored in his point of view, so the reader experiences the story from his place in it.

 

I’ll also continue The University Series with as many books as Wolfpack wants to publish.

 

OBAAT: You recently began both a blog and a podcast, both of which I keep tabs on. (And encourage readers to do the same.) What prompted the decisions to do both, and how is it working out for you? Do you enjoy one more than the other?

 

TM: Both are fun in their own ways. I did it because I realized a lot of people did not know that I write in other genres. Fans of my westerns often suggested I write suspense. I was happy to tell them that I have and show them my other books. That’s why the podcast is interesting for me because I cover my approach to each book I’ve written. I talk about the struggles I faced writing each western and how I overcame it. I plan on doing that with all my books in the hopes that writers can hear it and learn from what I went through as I wrote across genres. No book is written in a bubble, and I think others can learn from what I did right and what I did wrong. The podcast also taught me some new skills, which is always good.

 

The blog allows me to mouth off about topics that are top of mind. I like to discuss something current, such as conventions, then add another topic like protecting yourself as a writer.

 

OBAAT: I looked at your website while preparing for this interview (I do prepare for interviews), and it’s beautiful. I see your name next to the copyright notice, so I have to ask if you did it yourself. (Note to Maddee James: No worries. I have no thoughts of changing web teams.)

 

TM: I had done my original website by myself, but after I left my state job more than a year ago now, I decided to invest in my writing career. I worked with Krista Rolfzen Soukup at The Blue Cottage Agency about ways I could enhance my online presence. She suggested Corey Kretsinger of Midstate Design to build it out. Together, the three of us worked on creating something unique. I wrote the content and created the logo. That much I can take credit for. The rest was a team effort and I recommend Krista and Corey to anyone who’s looking to refine their digital presence.

Terrence McCauley, Author of Dark Territory

Among the highlights of my writing career was a Bouchercon panel assignment in Albany circa 2013. (Editor’s Note: The Oxford English Dictionary has called to complain about the use of the word “career” to describe my writing activities, to which I say, “Bite me, you Limey gobshites. I got your Brexit right here, pal.”) Moderated by the lovely and talented Peter Rozovsky, it included Eric Beetner, Mike Dennis, Jonathan Woods, and today’s guest Terrence McCauley. I’d read Terrence’s book Prohibition and was delighted to run into him in the booksellers’ area before the panel, where we chatted and he gave me a copy of another of his Prohibition-era books, Slow Burn. We became friends and remain so even as I have come to understand there’s nothing the prick can’t write well, from period crime novels to techno-thrillers to crossovers of the two and now, Westerns. We’ve talked about his previous writing before, so today we’re going to focus on Westerns.

One Bite at a Time: Your Prohibition- and pre-World War II-era books are well received, as is the University series of techno-thrillers. What took you over to Westerns?

Terrence McCauley: I’ve always had a love/hate relationship with the genre. On the one hand, I love the true history of that time in our nation’s history. The drama, the danger, the rawness of it and the wickedness, too. I never liked how it was portrayed in movies or television shows because I think they whitewashed a lot of things and flat out lied about the way people lived back then. Like the whole showdown on Main Street at high noon. Those kinds of things didn’t happen very often, if at all. I wanted to write a western that was closer to the kind of story I wanted to see. Almost every type of story has been told about the west, all the way from the unrealistically patriotic movies of John Ford to the equally unrealistic revisionist history of later years. I wanted to tell a story that was about people, not stereotypes. People seem to have liked it.  

OBAAT: I haven’t had a chance to read Dark Territory yet, but Where the Bullets Fly is a fascinating mix of modern sensibilities and sensitivities while also serving an homage to classic Western tropes. Was that the plan, or did it just come out that way?

TM: I wrote the kind of story I wanted to see, but rarely did. The western expansion was a far more diverse time than people realize and I wanted to write a story that showed that diversity without pandering to current audiences seeking diversity where there was none. For example, there weren’t many women gunfighters, so I don’t have such characters in my westerns. But the women weren’t shrinking violets, either, and I write the same type of strong female characters in my westerns as I do in my other books. There were, however, black lawmen at the time, most notably Bass Reeves among others. My Billy Sunday character harkens back to that. After introducing him as an essential character in Bullets, I have him branch out even more in Dark Territory and in the third Mackey book, tentatively titled Blood Warrant that I’m working on now. I plan on continuing to add more realistic, diverse characters to the mix in my westerns because I always seek to avoid stereotypes and want to keep my work as interesting for me and for the reader.

OBAAT: How hard was it to fall into a style that suited a Western after writing the University series? I know The Fairfax Incident came between but that’s closer to the University than to a Western.

TM: I’ve found it to be more restorative than anything else. It keeps me from getting stale. Too many books of the same type in a row tend to bore me and I deserve better. So does my audience. That’s not to say I’m done with the University Series or Charlie Doherty or Terry Quinn or James Hicks or any of the characters I’ve created. Far from it.

But I enjoy the challenge of changing up tone and setting of my stories. Writing about the 1930s for me is like a bowl of ice cream. I love every second of it and I love it more with each passing page. Fairfax wasn’t an easy book to write, but it was a joy to do it.

Writing about Hicks and the University Series has become easier as I’ve grown more familiar with those characters and what they can do.

Westerns are a different pace entirely. Everything took longer back then and present special challenges. One couldn’t just pick up a phone and call. They couldn’t hop in a car or board a plane and get from point A to point B quickly. Even the shortest trips took the better part of a day at least and required planning. Horses needed to be fed and tended to. They got sick and injured, too. Death was always just a cold or an infected cut away. It was a deliberate time and only deliberate people survived it. So, in some ways, my westerns are different from the rest of my work, but there are also many similarities.

OBAAT: What or who are your primary influences as a writer of Westerns?

TM: The movies played a huge role in my interest in westerns, just as they played a role in my interest in the 1930s. But, like the 1930s, once I began doing research into the actual era, I found a world the movies only scratched.

However, my first real interest in westerns came from a short story I had to read in high school called, “The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky”. It was a story that broke all of the expected tropes in westerns and showed me that there was much more to the genre than I had seen in the movies.

But the movies that had an impact on me were huge. Yes, The Searchers is flawed and could have done with a sharper editor’s blade, but several of the scenes in it were iconic as was the ending. (The book is excellent, by the way, and differs from the movie in several key areas.) The Outlaw Josey Wales was right up there with another anti-hero and epic scenes filmed by Clint Eastwood. 

OBAAT: You and I have known each other as members of the crime fiction community since we shared a Bouchercon panel in Albany in 2013. I know you’ve been to at least one major Western conference. What are they like? Similarities? Differences?

TM: I attended the Western Writers of America conference in Billings, Montana in 2018 and absolutely loved everything about the experience. I love Montana, the scenery and the people. The convention was much smaller than Bouchercon, but fantastic. People who think the genre only encompasses books about cowboys and Indians and bandits and sheriffs really need to take a look at the number of categories they have for the Silver Spur Award to see how wrong they are. The amount of scholarship in that community is so deep, it’s almost impossible to believe. Sure, they cover western history and fiction, but they also cover modern subjects as well, such as organized labor and environmental issues facing the west. People’s political views were all over the map, too, and they didn’t mind welcoming the bald guy with glasses and the thick New York accent into the fold. They couldn’t have been nicer to me and my wife, Rita, and I’m proud to be a member of the organization.

To the contrary, I’ve seen a lot of bitterness and piety in the crime fiction community lately and it saddens me. There’s a mob mentality that seems to spring up right before a convention that creates a nasty undercurrent throughout the event. A controversy is born, sides are chosen and armies of right and righteousness take to steed and charge into battle.

At least on Facebook and on blogs and on Twitter, anyway.

It’s a trend that’s not fair to conference organizers, volunteers or to attendees. Unfair accusations get thrown around like they don’t mean anything, but they do. We have to be mindful of people who seek to burn things down simply to have the joy of licking the ashes. The ruins be damned.

For example, last year’s Bouchercon was dominated by the #MeToo movement and respect for women. It’s a just cause that can never receive enough support or attention. Anyone who believes it’s not a problem that deserves to be stomped out wherever it takes place is a fool. Some attendees even wore stars on their name tags to show they cared and could be a safe space for women who needed help. My wife and I even volunteered for the program, but no one got around to giving us a star. We kept an eye out anyway.

But the luster of those stars dimmed when it actually came time to actually do something about defending female attendees or female staff members of the hotel. One particular participant was on a drunken tirade the entire weekend and none of the brave souls with stars stepped in when he was nasty to women or to female staff members. Many members of this star force probably remained quiet because a) the offender was a friend of theirs and b) because the guy who drank actually posed a physical threat. Posting one’s commitment to defending women on line is one thing. When faced with a raving drunk who could knock you on your ass? Well, that’s different. It’s far safer to stay in the crowd and sip your pilsner and talk about your training than actually putting it into practice.

The drunken offender was obviously going through a lot and needed some kind of assistance. But I abhor grandstanding phonies who either brag about their bravery online only to shrug when it’s needed. I hold people who use a crisis they helped to create as a way to sell books in particular contempt. “Take a stand against predatory men and fight for women.” Great idea. Sign me up, until: “And the best way you can tear down the patriarchy is to buy my book right now.” Huh?

There have also been a lot of ugly accusations thrown around concerning racial diversity in our genre. I’ve had good friends smeared on both sides. Their motives have been questioned and it’s horrible. But good things come out of turmoil and I’m glad to see a dedication to increasing the diversity in our gene. It won’t happen immediately and we can’t get there soon enough, but I’m glad many members of our community are taking steps to moving it in the right direction.

My take on controversies at conventions is simple. If you see or hear of someone stepping out of line or doing something horrible, do something. Call them out on it directly, or get someone else to do it. Demand answers. You’re entitled to them. If not, then remain content to talk about craft beer and social injustice and stay in the corner where you belong while the people who are actually trying to improve things do their work.

OBAAT: Dark Territory followed Where the Bullets Fly by only six months. Is this a sign of a permanent shift toward Westerns? Two books you got ideas for at once and had to get off your chest? Or do Westerns seem to come quicker for you?

TM: Where the Bullets Fly was actually written ten years ago before I was published. I had it on my computer for a long time while I waited to see if the genre might rebound. When my agent asked me for a list of all my work, I figured he’d ignore the western. To my surprise, that’s what he focused on. The good people over at Kensington were interested and they bought it. They asked for Dark Territory so quickly because they knew I was in between projects at the time.

Writing about the west comes quicker to me now than it did when I started Bullets. I know these characters now. I’m comfortable with them and the world they inhabit. Writing about Aaron Mackey and Billy Sunday and the evil James Grant is easier because I know them now, but it’s by no means easy. I try to make each book a bit different than the last, so each work presents its own new set of challenges.  

Favorite Reads: October

Mom is nearing the end of her rehab stint (“home” to assisted living on Thursday) and work has been six different kinds of goofy so my reading time has deteriorated. The good news is that most of what I did get to read was first-rate.

Where the Bullets Fly, Terrence McCauley. Hard to believe he’s my friend. Wide as his talents range, I should hate him. He’s such a nice guy I don’t, but such a good writer I’m still tempted. As with his Prohibition-era crime stories and his University techno thrillers, McCauley makes it all look easy. This is a Western that pays homage to the glory days of the horse opera while clearly written in the revisionist period we’re in now, with awareness that was lacking in the 50s and earlier. This is harder to pull off than it looks (I should know, or my Western would have been done a couple of years ago) and McCauley does more than pull it off; he succeeds.

The Hook, Donald Westlake. Speaking of writers who seem to be able to anything they want and make it look easy, there’ Donald Westlake. Not a Richard Stark/Parker novel, and certainly not a Dortmunder, The Hook is a twist on Strangers on a Train, where a writer who’s successful but blocked hooks up with a writer who’s fertile but can’t get a contract; together they put one over on the blocked writer’s publisher. There’s a catch, though, and given my reference to SOAT you can probably guess what it is, but the complication is completely original and Westlake’s set-up is so masterfully done it doesn’t matter that you’ll see the end coming a chapter or two ahead of time. By then you’ll be wondering less “what” than “how,” and the pace at which the “how” is revealed will fill you with dread.

A Conversation With Terrence McCauley

Terrence McCauley may not write about white hat good guys, but he is one. We’ve been friends since sharing a panel at the Albany Bouchercon and hit it off right away. (To give you an idea of the kind of person he is, he handed me a signed copy of his book Prohibition the first time we met. Past experience shows first acquaintances are more likely to present me a restraining order.)

Terrence is probably best known for his University series of techno-thrillers that includes Sympathy for the Devil, A Murder of Crows, and A Conspiracy of Ravens. He also writes a connected series based in Prohibition-era New York, of which The Fairfax Incident is the new release.

One Bite at a Time: Terrence, there’s a lot of stuff I want to say and ask about this book, but let’s not forget the most important part of any author interview: Give us a taste of what The Fairfax Incident is about.

Terrence McCauley: It's a noir/spy tale set in 1933 New York City that involves Charlie

Doherty - a disgraced former NYPD detective - who is hired by a wealthy woman to prove her husband's obvious suicide is, in fact, a murder. I'll give away too much of the plot if I say much more than that, but believe me when I tell you that things get awfully complicated very quickly. It doesn't take long before the bullets fly, the intrigue deepens and the bodies begin to pile up.

OBAAT: Charlie Doherty has risen above your other 20^th Century characters to become the protagonist in Slow Burn, The Devil Dogs of Bellau Wood, and now The Fairfax Incident. What is it about Charlie that appeals to you?

TM: I've spent an awful lot of time writing about Charlie. He also appears in my novella Fight Card: Against The Ropes. I love the character because he's the most human of my protagonists. He doesn't have a code. He has a gut instinct and a pang to do the right thing for reasons of his own. He doesn't have many morals, really. He's as corruptible and as flawed as the rest of us. That's not because he's a bad guy or an intentional anti-hero. It's just the way he is. He's a product of his time, just like all of us are, and his time happens to be the early part of the twentieth century. I often write his stories in the first person, which is a great way for me to set up the world in which I write. I know some people yawn or roll their eyes when they see a book is set in the 1920s or 1930s. They figure it'll just be another hats-n-gats rehash full of tough talking guys and dames with lively banter and long legs. I've never written to stereotype and Christ help me if I ever do.

Instead, I describe the times through Charlie's perception of things. Setting my stories back then isn't just an excuse to write pastiche or write Chandler fan fiction, but to relate real-world events in a fictional context. It's fun to write that way and, based on several early reviews, people really enjoy this character.

OBAAT: Doherty is the classic and perfect mix of the world-weary and cynical private eye. One line describes him better than anything else in the book, and even that is his description of someone else: “For a man who didn’t have many good qualities, Wendell Bixby had more than most.” It’s a great line on two levels: describing Doherty by what he thinks, and just outstanding writing that captures the period flawlessly. On the other hand, your University thrillers are as fast-paced and contemporarily written as anything out there. How are you able to switch back and forth.

TM: The expected pacing of each genre I chose helps. For example, no one picks up a 1930s novel expecting breathless action. Sure, I could write one, but it would throw the reader and pull them out of the world I'm looking to create. In contrast, if I start a Hicks book with a long set-up about why he's working on an assignment, I'll lose people before I even get them interested in the book.

As period fiction is often set in a world we've never experienced, I think a reader appreciates a little extra time spent on justifying the world-building that goes on at the outset of the story. That world needs to be subtly re-enforced throughout the book because it's easy for the reader to forget the time period of the setting. Historical references and some choice lingo can help.

When writing the University novels, I drop in plot points here and there while keeping the action moving. I intentionally avoid too much exposition because I don't want to slow down the book. As the stories are set in modern times, I also keep the descriptions and backgrounds of the characters to a minimum because I want the reader to make their own connections to the characters. I've received some criticism for this minimalistic approach. There's merit in that. People have said they'd like to know more about the past of my characters to help explain their motivation.

Frankly, I haven't come up with a way of doing that without it appearing like writing or a data dump. And since I want to avoid stereotypes, I didn't want to have a scene where one character is reviewing the file of another, filling in the reader on the character's past. Can it be done? Sure, and it has been done plenty of times. But since I'm trying to do something different, I have to take chances. Sometimes they pay off and most of my readership agrees. Sometimes they don't and I try to change things up a bit in the next book. Those who have read the University series starting with Sympathy For The Devil see a clear change in minimalist storytelling to a more expanded and explained motivation for many of the characters. Instead of showing who they are simply by their actions and motivations, I'm a bit more blunt about it. The criticism has been good for me and better for the books. I think each new book is better than the one before it.

OBAAT: The story revolves around the death of an insurance magnate named Walter. Any tribute here toward Walter Neff of Double Indemnity?

TM: I hadn't thought of it that way. If there is, it certainly isn't intentional. I wanted to write about a wildly wealthy man who wasn't very well-known. A wanna-be Astor who wasn't quite there and never would be. Oil or railroad barons were too sexy for Walter Fairfax. So, I made him an insurance executive. His wealthy obscurity also made it possible for the events in the book to transpire as I wrote them.

OBAAT: You do as well as anyone I can think of in evoking the period, in this case just before World War II. The scene in the New York Athletic Club had me seeing the characters in black-and-white as if in an old movie. I wasn’t around then and you’re substantially younger than I am. What kind of research did you do?

TM: I watched lots of documentaries about the time period. I wanted to get a sense of how

people moved and dressed and spoke back then. Some movies give you a sense of that, but only a sense. People didn't roll their r's or speak with a slight British accent in the way actors do in old movies. We have diction coaches to thank for that one. Not everyone sounded like Cagney or Bogey or Raft, either. Charlie certainly doesn't. He's tough without being a tough guy. He's not a hero, but he's no coward either. To paraphrase the Bard, he doesn't seek a fight as he is, though as he is, he won't run from one.

As I've stated in several other interviews, my grandmother was born in 1902, so I grew up hearing stories about how things were back then. Subsequent research has made me love the period even more.

OBAAT: You’ve shown you can handle techno-thrillers and period pieces with equal aplomb. I know you’ve also done a Western. Tell us a little about that.

TM: I've always had a warm place in my heart for westerns because they tend to reflect the soul of the nation at the time they're made rather than reflect the time in which they are set. For example, 1930s westerns had the romantic lead and the damsel in distress. In the 1940s, they were detectives with cowboy hats and six-shooters on their hips. In the 1950s, television killed any authenticity the genre could ever hope to have, but it was popular, so what do I know? The movies of the 1950s began pushing the limit, though, with Anthony Mann and some John Ford westerns showing a darker side of the genre. A revisionist movement spread through the genre in the 60s and 70s where cowboys, save for Clint Eastwood, could've easily been hippies rather than denizens of the old west. Boundaries of the genre were pushed by wandering esoteric westerns that asked more questions than they answered. The 1980s saw more action-oriented westerns like Silverado and the 1990s more realistic tales like Unforgiven, Tombstone and others. Lately, the anti-establishment western has enjoyed something of a resurgence.

With all of that in mind, I wanted to try something different. I wanted a straight-up oater that told a good story people could relate to and believe. In short, the prosperous town of Dover Station, Montana finds itself under siege by a band of renegades and thieves. It's up to Sheriff Aaron Mackey and Deputy Billy Sunday to stop them and free the prisoners they have taken hostage.

The first draft was more Deadwood than Gunsmoke and the publisher asked me to tone it down by quite a bit. I wanted to depict two lawmen doing the right thing, leading by example and showing themselves ready to go to any lengths to uphold the law. It's a typical McCauley story with Gray Hats vs. Dark Blue Hats rather than white hats v. black hats. I did a fair amount of research on how life was back then and wanted to write a novel that reflected that reality as much as possible. For example, those showdowns at high noon? Didn't happen. The shopkeepers cringing while bandits robbed the town blind? Not as often as you might think. Like one man I interviewed in Arizona a few years back told me, "You're not going to spend months riding out here in all types of weather, where damned near anything could kill you, just to stand there and let some son of a bitch shoot at you or steal your stuff without a fight.” It made sense to me and helped me increase the dose of realism in my story.

OBAAT: Thrillers, period pieces, Westerns. Is one more fun to write than the others? Do each of them feed different part of your Muse?

TM: I've always loved the period pieces best because they have the benefit of hindsight to draw upon for inspiration. For example, the first Charlie Doherty novel - SLOW BURN - was loosely based on elements of the Getty kidnapping. THE FAIRFAX INCIDENT discusses the very real presence that the Nazis unfortunately had in this country in the early 1930s. My fear with westerns is that people who don't already read them have a preconceived notion of how they'll turn out. The strong, silent cowboy ready to defend the school marm against the hired gun. That's not the kind of stuff I write, but I may suffer from that kind of genre bias. The same goes for the spy thrillers. If I make it too technologically based, the stories won't age well. Writing about anything too current is always risky because the subject matter could be outdated by the time the work sees the light of day.

That's why I try to make sure all of the work I do is character driven. Current events may come and go, but good characters stand the test of time. Just look at LeCarre and Deighton. Their work still holds up because their characters and humor remain interesting even the world is a much different place than it was when they wrote their books.

A Conversation with Terrence McCauley

I discovered Terrence McCauley and his writing when we shared a panel at Bouchercon Albany on noir vs. hard-boiled fiction. We hit it off right away and I quickly discovered he’s a great foil for discussing a wide range of literary topics, as he someone who actually thinks about the things his books are about instead of settling for a good story well told. (Not that I’m implying a good story well told isn’t important. It’s the most important thing, but it’s also just the entry point. Readers should expect/demand that just to buy the book.)

Terrence is the author of the University series of novels featuring James Hicks. Of his new book, A Conspiracy of Ravens, no less than Reed Farrell Coleman says, "In our new reality, Terrence McCauley’s A Conspiracy of Ravens is not far from the realm of possibility. He hits all the right notes while creating a simultaneously entertaining and frightening scenario. Read it." (A Conspiracy of Ravens is the third book in the University series, to be released by Polis Books September 19.) He also writes a series of books set in Prohibition-era New York that includes Prohibition, Slow Burn, and the upcoming The Fairfax Incident.

Terrence started an enthusiastic discussion in Facebook a few weeks ago about heroes and villains, right about the time I got word I’ll be on a panel covering heroes and anti-heroes at Bouchercon in Toronto. One thing led to another and here we are, chatting about exactly those subjects.

One Bite at a Time: In your mind, what’s the difference between a hero and an anti-hero?

This man is NOT an asshole.

Terrence McCauley: To me, the anti-hero is the character that does what he or she is going to do anyway to serve their own purposes. They just happen to be for good. A hero, often in my opinion misdiagnosed as the protagonist, seeks to do the right thing for the cause which he or she serves.

OBAAT: You write the much-acclaimed University series of thrillers. Where does your main character, James Hicks, fall in this spectrum?

TM: In Hicks, I sought to create the anti-Bond. Hicks and the University do what they feel they need to do to protect the interests of the West. Sometimes that puts them in direct conflict with their own government who isn't sure of what the University is or what it's trying to accomplish. He spends a good amount of time in Sympathy for the Devil and A Murder of Crows combating his own government as much as the terrorists seeking to attack the country. This is why I would call Hicks an anti-hero.

OBAAT: We had an interesting conversation on Facebook a few weeks ago about Vic Mackey from The Shield. Vic trod a very thin line between anti-hero and villain for the show’s entire run. You know what he’s willing to do when he shoots a cop in the pilot, yet by the time Forrest Whitaker tries to take him down you can’t help but root for Vic. How does he managed to do this, and what is it about him that makes him a villain in the end?

TM: Secretly, everyone likes a bad guy. Who would you rather hang out with in Deadwood? Dudley Do Right or Al Swearengen? Vic Mackey is compelling because he does a lot of good while he's doing so much bad. He's a conflicted character and therefore believable. We can relate to him in a way we can't really relate to a hero like Superman. We're not perfect, hence the reason why so many people like Batman. To borrow from another medium, people related to Oprah because she faced a lot of the same struggles her viewers had faced. Poverty, weight problems, professional problems and, finally, success. Megyn Kelly has said she wants to be the next Oprah. A thin, blonde white woman who looks like a model? I don't think that'll go over so well because her audience can’t relate to her. In many ways, she is what many of her audience will never be. In Vic Mackey, we could relate because he was as flawed as the rest of us. We knew he was bad, but he was relatable.

OBAAT: You have a way with anti-heroes. Both your Prohibition Era novels, Prohibition and Slow Burn, are filled with characters who embody many admirable traits but are by no means heroes. Charlie Doherty from Slow Burn is a particular favorite. Truly a corrupt cop, he still does the job so it comes out right. Terry Quinn in Prohibition is a mob guy through and through, but his loyalty to Archie Doyle is moving, and reminds me in some ways of Ned Beaumont in The Glass Key. You mentioned a minute at what attracts you to such characters. What makes you so good at writing them?

TM: I always try to create believable characters, whether they're anti-heroes or villains or heroes. I make them believable by not allowing myself to write cookie-cutter characters. In my University series, Roger Cobb does horrible things to people, yet my readers tend to like him because they can relate to him. Same thing with Doherty and Quinn. They're products of their respective times and have their own motivations for doing what they do. Quinn has no problem murdering someone, but he's loyal to Archie. Doherty went into the Van Dorn case looking for blackmail money, but he gets won over by the family and the case. James Hicks is cold-blooded and distant, but he acts in what he feels are the best interests of his country and our way of life. They're complicated characters who aren't perfect and aren't flawed in the ways readers have come to expect in literature. My characters are all perfectly flawed and I wouldn't want them to be any other way.

OBAAT: I’ll tell you why I’m asking this in a minute, but can a hero become an anti-hero?

TM: Spoiler alert here, but Vic Mackey went from being hero to anti-hero to villain. The reason why it worked was because of consistent, strong writing. The seeds for his evil turn were planted from the very first episodes of the series and came to bloom in the final two episodes of the show. He was always the villain. We just never saw it. That's why I consider the ending to be the best ending of a series I've ever seen. It fit perfectly. It took a stand. It was believable.

Circumstances in a story can change so that a hero can become an anti-hero, but it has to be done well and it has to be done over time lest the writer be accused of jumping the shark. It can't be sudden and it can't be contrived. But if it's planned for over time, then I think it can be achieved. To use the comparison with another TV show, I think you're starting to see that in Homeland.

OBAAT: The reason I asked—and the reason I’m so glad to hear your answer—is that’s what happened to my PI character, Nick Forte. He starts out as a Chandlerian hero, doing the right things and trying to do them in the right way. Each book wore him down as things didn’t work out the way he wanted them to until now he’s reached the point where if he decides someone has to go, they go. Period. The thing about Forte that’s completely different from Vic Mackey is that I didn’t realize what I’d done until I was four books in and took a few years off to work on another series. Have you ever had a character evolve on you like that, even within the course of a book?

TM: Sure. Doherty evolves big time in Slow Burn and even more so in the upcoming The Fairfax Incident. James Hicks, over the course of three books, evolves into a character the reader can understand. With Hicks, that was by design. In Sympathy, I spend a lot of time introducing the reader to the world and technology I've created. I show who the protagonists and antagonists are and kept the backstory and motivations to a minimum. In Crows, the reader learns more about the University and sees a more human side of Hicks. I folded it into the plot of the book, rather than blatantly show you who he is and where he's coming from. In Ravens, readers will see a much more personal side of Hicks than they've ever seen before. My beta readers have all given me wonderful feedback on Ravens because they feel the evolution is believable and fits with the story. My goal is to continue this evolution in future novels and I hope to have the opportunity to keep the University Series going both during the current day and in the University's past with Charlie Doherty.

OBAAT: I know you’re a fan of the TV show Justified. Where did Raylan Givens fall on your personal hero/anti-hero scale?

TM: I love Raylan, but I'd classify him as a hero. Sure, he broke the rules, but not enough to make him a criminal. He was good with a gun, maybe too good, but all of his shootings were, indeed, Justified. Great character. Great performance and skillful writing made the show one of my favorites. But Vic Mackey is in a class by himself.

All Things in Moderation

I had the good fortune to serve as a moderator in both conferences I attended this year, Bouchercon and Creatures, Crimes, and Creativity. I’ve been going to writer’s conferences since 2004, and pretty much annually since 2008. I’ve been on panels at either Bouchercon or C3 or both every year but one since 2012. In that time I’ve been lucky to work with moderators who were uniformly excellent and also had differing styles. It was only natural I’d want to try my hand one day after seeing how effortlessly Sandra Parshall, Peter Rozovsky, Jim Born, et al pulled it off for me.

It ain’t as easy as they make it look.

I have no doubt there are moderators who don’t think twice about getting up in front of a couple of hundred people and asking a handful of writers questions off the tops of their heads. We’ve all seen them and can probably identify them. By and large they’re the shitty moderators. The panels roam, the questions either don’t give the writers anything to talk about that’s informative and entertaining (a good panel is both), or is so vague no one knows what to do with it. I’m sure some people can pull it off. I’m sure I’ve seen a panel or two where that happened. I’m also sure there are moderators out there right now who do this and think they pulled it off. They’re probably wrong.

Preparation is important because there’s going to be a lot of stuff going on the moderator has to keep track of. “How much time is left” may be the most obvious, and it’s close to most important when considered in conjunction with other elements. Sure, there’s a volunteer there to tell you when you have 10 minutes, five, two, clear out there’s people waiting. What do you do if you’re 25 minutes into a 50-minute panel and you’re three-quarters of the way through your questions? Even worse, what if you’ve been coming up with questions more or less off the top of your head, realize you’re running out of ideas, look at your watch and realize you still have half an hour? I saw this happen at Bouchercon—I won’t say in which panel—and the moderator depended on the audience to fill the last 20 minutes. That’s not right, and it’s not fair to anyone.

In addition to tracking time you’re also gauging the audience. Anyone who’s done a reading, sat on a panel, or given any kind of public performance knows not all audiences are created equal. If a certain type of question is dying, change up. It’s probably a good idea to have at least half again as many questions as you think you’ll need, covering different aspects of your topic. That allows you to switch off if what you thought would be clever just lies there and rots.

It’s also important to know your panelists. Not necessarily personally—though that never hurts—but their writing. A good moderator should probably read at least one book by each panelist, but at the very least should be familiar with their work through reviews, synopses, and excerpts. Specific questions may present themselves, but you’ll also know what kinds of questions will work better for the group as a whole. Another benefit to this relates to the previous paragraph, except in reverse: a line of inquiry goes well and you run out of related questions. Then is a good time to go with the flow. The last thing you want to do is to get everyone in a good mood—your panel is revved up, the audience is revved up—and you decide to talk about something else. Buzzkill.

This year’s Bouchercon was my first moderator gig. Five writers (including one good friend, Terrence McCauley, yay me) including multi-bestseller Heather Graham, so I knew there would be a decent crowd. I polled a few moderators I’d seen before and thought did a good job—including the Master of Moderation, Peter Rozovsky—and started my research and working on questions several weeks in advance.

One panelist had to pull out due to an illness in the family. I felt bad for him, but the panel was not in danger. I had plenty of material. Stepping onto the dais I learned another panelist had taken ill and was missing.

Now I’m down to three. Fast math in my head. Fifty minute panel. Enough questions to allow five panelists to speak for half again that long. (So I hoped.) Only three panelists. Should still come out to about 45 minutes. Leave five to ten minutes for audience participation and I’ll be fine.

Then the real benefit of preparation made an appearance. Our other panelist—a fine writer and nice man based on our conversation in the Green Room—had never been on a panel before, got nervous and vapor locked. It happens. I’ll not name him as I don’t want to embarrass him, and after the event I felt badly for him. During the event I mostly felt bad for me, wondering what the fuck I was going to do to fill the time.

Some say luck is where preparation meets opportunity. In my case it was more like where preparation met Heather Graham and Terrence McCauley, both of whom stepped up to give more expansive answers as time went on. Shared a few anecdotes tangentially related to what was under discussion.

Therein lies the biggest lesson I learned: be generous with your panel and they’ll reciprocate. Take the time to make your best effort to understand their work and ask questions to help them put their best feet forward and they’ll carry you. The more attention the moderator can place on the panel, the better.

And should my third, nervous panelist read this: I’ll do a panel with you again anytime.

Twenty Questions With Terrence McCauley

I first met Terrence McCauley at the Albany Bouchercon when we shared a panel with Eric Beetner, Mike Dennis, Jonathan Woods, and the Master of Moderators himself, Peter Rozovsky. I’d read Terrence’s 1930s-era book Slow Burn and loved it. He was gracious enough to give me an autographed copy of its companion piece, Prohibition, a story that put me in mind of The Glass Key in several ways.

Life has been good for Terrence since his karma got the prestigious King Bump™. Polis Books published his first techno-thriller, Sympathy For The Devil, in July 2015 and republished both Prohibition and Slow Burn. July 2016 will see the sequel to Sympathy For The Devil, A Murder Of Crows.

In his free time Terrence wrote a World War I novella, The Devil Dogs of Belleau Wood, published earlier this month by Down and Out Books. Sales proceeds go directly to benefit the Semper Fi Fund.

Terrence has had short stories featured in Thuglit, Spintetingler Magazine, Shotgun Honey, Big Pulp and other publications. He is a member of the New York City chapter of the Mystery Writers of America, the International Thriller Writers and the International Crime Writers Association.

A proud native of The Bronx, NY, he is yet another example of a writer who has married better than he deserves. We do have that way about us.

One Bite at a Time: Tell us about The Devil Dogs of Belleau Wood.

Terrence McCauley: It’s a novella about the iconic battle that gave the United States Marine Corps its modern reputation for toughness and determination that it so richly deserves. I’ve always been fascinated by that war, by the complicated politics of the era that caused it in the first place and how it was truly a war that affected the entire world. A plethora of archival footage and first-hand accounts make the Second World War far more accessible to us now, but the horrors of the Great War should never be forgotten. It was a conflict that was fought – at least in the beginning – with Victorian strategy, but modern day weaponry. The two clashed with horrific results.

Since I prefer to write all of my stories in the same fictional universe, I wanted Belleau Wood to reflect the wartime experiences of Charlie Doherty, the corrupt NYPD detective from my previous novels Fight Card: Against the Ropes and Prohibition. In my third novel, Slow Burn, Doherty takes center stage and the story is told in the first person. He finds himself investigating a murder in a flop house that ultimately involves one of the most powerful families in New York City. His narrative reflects his jaded world view, which was shaped in part by his involvement in the Tammany Hall machine, but also his experiences as a Marine in the Battle of Belleau Wood. His training as a much younger man helped him weather the storms of change that are sweeping through New York City at the time Slow Burn takes place.

Charlie’s also been one of my favorite characters, so I wanted to delve a little deeper into his war time experiences. This novella is the result.

I’m also glad that the publisher, Down and Out Books, agreed that the proceeds will go to a wonderful non-profit organization known as The Semper Fi Fund. I didn’t receive an advance to write the story and I won’t be receiving any funds from sales. The money goes straight to an organization dedicated to helping those who have sacrificed so much for us. I encourage everyone to visit their website: http://www.semperfifund.org to learn more about this group and their wonderful mission.

OBAAT: Before we get too far down the road, let’s get this part out of the way. Most of this blog’s readers are Americans, which means we probably know dick about the Battle of Belleau Wood. Personally, I know it was the first major American engagement, and took place during almost the entire month of June 1918 as part of the German spring offensive, but I only know that because I looked it up prepping for this interview; before that all I could honestly say was, “World War I.” Tell us a little about it, and why you chose this battle for your setting.

TM: I chose this battle and this war for a couple of reasons. The first is due to the point you’ve already made: it’s a largely forgotten battle. Marines know about it of course, as do historians and military history enthusiasts, but most people never even heard of it. I know I didn’t know about it until I began researching The Great War on my own several years ago. When I decided to write about Doherty’s war experience, I knew I wanted to have him participate in a key battle in the war and when I learned more about Belleau Wood, I knew it would be the perfect way for me to show the reader how Doherty became Doherty. It would also be a way to introduce the battle to a new generation of people who had never heard about it before.

I only ask people to keep in mind that my work is a novella and a work of fiction. I strive to make sure the details are correct, but this book is in no way a history book. I don’t mention specific divisions or squads because I didn’t want to get bogged down in the minutia of such an important event. I wanted to capture the essence of the battle, told from one group’s small perspective of a much larger battle. I encourage anyone who wants to read more about the battle in depth to check out Dick Camp’s excellent work by the same title: The Devil Dogs of Belleau Wood. It’s a captivating and authoritative read.

OBAAT: You received no advance and will not take any royalties for Devil Dogs, sending everything to the Semper Fi Fund. Tell us a little about that, and why you chose to forego all proceeds to help them out.

TM: Although I never served in the armed forces myself, I admire those who have. I always wanted to show my appreciation for their sacrifice by more than just thanking a vet or cutting a check. The Semper Fi Fund seemed like a logical choice. They don’t spend their donations on commercials or lavish events. Instead, they focus their money on helping the veterans who have given so much in service to our country. I’ve always said that one may not support the war, but we should always support the warriors.

OBAAT: I’ve been in the tank for Charley Doherty since I read Slow Burn when I learned we’d share a panel at the Albany Bouchercon. You had him well established in the Prohibition-era New York milieu. What made you decide to look at his earlier life rather than continue on?

TM: Charlie is a tough, jaded guy who is actually the linchpin between my Prohibition-era work and my spy novel Sympathy For The Devil. He’s the least likely person you’d expect to have such importance, but that’s how it played out. He’s not especially tall or rugged. He’s not Mike Hammer or Jack Reacher. He’s not Sherlock Holmes either. He’s just a man who has been worn down by life’s circumstances and sees things as they are, not as he’d like them to be. I used Belleau Wood as a way to show the reader how Doherty became the man people like in the later works. I’ve actually written a sequel to Slow Burn called The Fairfax Incident, which shows what happens to Doherty after the events of Slow Burn. It serves to bridge that gap I mentioned earlier between my Prohibition-era work and the modern spy world I begin in Sympathy For The Devil.

OBAAT: Doherty is a well-defined characters in Slow Burn. It’s safe to say he’s the man he is in that book at least in part because of what he saw and endured in France. Was it tricky to write for a character who had to come out a certain way for a book that’s already been written?

TM: It wasn’t difficult because I already knew him so well. In Prohibition, he was worldly and jaded and corrupt. He was tired and grasping at straws while the reformers were threatening to take away his livelihood. But he first sees the murder/kidnapping case in Slow Burn as a way he can get influence with one of the wealthiest families in New York City. Maybe get something he can use to blackmail them for some easy cash. But he isn’t so far gone that the tragedy of the murder and kidnapping on this wealthy family failed to reach him. He’s a survivor in Belleau Wood and he’s a survivor still in Slow Burn. I hope readers will eventually get the chance to see him evolve further in more novels. I just need to find someone who’d like to publish them.

OBAAT: Did moving your setting to World War I France pose any special challenges? Any unexpected delights or serendipitous discoveries?

TM: The battle itself was a discovery. I’d always heard about it in passing, but the more I researched this battle, the more I realized what the people who lived through it endured. Not just those fighting it, but those who lived around it. I paid the historical aspects of the battle due attention, but dwelled more on the human impact of it. I’m not a historian and never pretended to be. I’m a storyteller and that’s what I tried to do here.

OBAAT: How long did it take to write Devil Dogs start to finish?

TM: It took me about a month from start to finish. Once I got going, I poured right through it. I knew I wanted to tell it in a tight time frame, so that helped. It’s a kinetic story where one scene builds on another as Doherty and the other survivors realize retreat is just as deadly as advance, so they decide to advance. It feels like I wrote it in a blur.

I was fortunate enough to have a friend who had served in the Marines who agreed to read the story for me. His input was essential to making sure I knew the difference between a trench knife and a bayonet and I employed proper terms where necessary.

OBAAT: How did Devil Dogs come to be published?

TM: I had written it for a publisher that has since ceased publishing. I was fortunate enough to know Eric Campbell at Down and Out Books and asked him if he might be interested in it and he was. He was also completely supportive of my desire to make sure the proceeds went to The Semper Fi Fund. He agreed it’s a great organization that does important work. Eric’s been a pleasure to work with.

OBAAT: Your first three books (Fight Card: Against the Ropes, Prohibition and Slow Burn) are set in 1930s New York; your most recent (Sympathy for the Devil) is a modern techno-thriller. Whatever time period you choose, you always put the reader dead square in it. How much research goes into this, and what do you consider to be the key elements that need to be conveyed to the reader? What tricks—sorry, techniques—do you use to keep that from becoming too heavy-handed?

TM: My writing teacher Wesley Gibson always reminded me that I was writing a novel, not a textbook. No one wants to read a textbook. Concentrate on the story and add just enough detail so that the reader feels they’re in competent hands, but don’t dwell on it.

Details are important to me, but not at the expense of the story. Like they say in politics: never let the truth get in the way of a good story. I often allow historical events to frame my fiction, not hinder it. Prohibition and Slow Burn reflect social and political realities of their time. I even employ facts like the fall of the Irish mob and the rent riots and the beginning of the Great Depression to shape the narratives of those novels. In Sympathy, I use a lot of near-technology that may or may not exist to advance the story and help the characters do interesting things. I try to get out of the way between the reader and what’s happening on the page. A little reference they can hang their hat on usually helps make the experience more enjoyable.

OBAAT: You mentioned before the only book you outlined was Prohibition and that was a less than gratifying experience. (Your father said of the outline, “It’s as long as a whore’s dream and just as pointless,” which is a line you really need to work into a book sometime.) Did you write Devil Dogs without an outline, as well, and did the foreign (in more ways than one) setting give you any trouble along those lines?

TM: I began researching the battle and quickly became overwhelmed. I also knew I’d probably never get all of the facts straight and was bound to have the wrong unit in the wrong part of the battle. I was worried about having someone pop up after it was published and slam the accuracy of the work in a bad review. That’s when I remembered what Wesley taught me and realized I’m writing a story, not a history book. So, I decided to keep the historic details to a minimum and accentuated the human elements I wanted the reader to experience.

In short, I learned just enough about the battle to be dangerous and plowed ahead with the kind of story I wanted to tell.

OBAAT: We spoke about process last time. Did you have to change the manner in which you work to accommodate some of the research required for Devil Dogs? For instance, you’re typing away and realize you have a nice scene going and have to stop mid-stream to find out how such a situation would have been handled in 1918?

TM: I was fortunate enough to have some great input on that from my friend the marine. He was kind enough to point out where I was wrong and what tactics/weapons weren’t around in 1918. It was an invaluable resource to have. But, as is my custom, I didn’t throw in so many references that it bogged down the story or wrecked my plans.

OBAAT: This is where I like to ask who your favorite authors are, but we know that from your last visit. (Unless your tastes have changes dramatically, in which case it’s like I don’t even know you.) Donald Westlake/Richard Stark, Robert B. Parker, Richard Matheson, James Grady, and Ben Coes were mentioned. Then you said, “Of course, there’s always Ellroy. As flawed as some of his later work has been, no one gets in my head like him.” What is it about James Ellroy that gets in your head?

TM: His narrative. The cadence of his story and the way his characters work. He focuses on the darkest elements of our humanity, which happen to be the same elements that most of us share. If I read too much of his work, especially AMERICAN TABLOID or THE COLD SIX THOUSAND while I’m starting something new, I find his style creep into my work in a way that no other author does. I have to be careful about that, especially when I’m writing a story set in the 1930s. I want my work to be as unique as I can make it, not fan fiction.

OBAAT: You had to figure that last question was a set up. Do you see any Ellroy influence in your own work?

TM: I sure do. I’m still a huge fan of Ellroy the way some people bow at the ankles before Stephen King and others. But the more one reads his work, the more one can see they all think the same way and have the same thoughts throughout his books. Cops, crooks, men, women. That doesn’t make it any less enjoyable for me, but it does make me take greater pains to make sure that I don’t do the same thing in my work. (And no, I’m NOT comparing myself to him or his talent in any shape, way or form. I should be so lucky!)

But, the similarities that run throughout all of his later work are reasons why I do my best to do something different in each novel or short story. I never want to tell the same story twice. Fight Card: Against The Ropes showed the death of a dream that led to the events in Prohibition, which covered the fall of a criminal empire. Slow Burn shows the aftermath of that fall. Sympathy For The Devil introduces the reader to my vision of a techno-spy while the sequel A Murder Of Crows fleshes out the world in which those spies operate.

If I’m ever fortunate enough to be given the opportunities to write prequels to any of my work, I’ll change it up just as much as I do in my work where I advance the timeline.

OBAAT: Since we sort of on the topic, do you see a specific style in your writing? I mean, you’re too good to have written Prohibition-era novels, and modern techno-thriller, and a war story as if they were the same, but what consistent elements are in all your work?

TM: If there’s one comment element in all of my work, it’s struggle. Struggle against changing times (Prohibition) or against reform (Slow Burn) or against those who seek to destroy Western civilization (Sympathy For The Devil). That’s a general theme. As for my writing style, I always try to make the character essential to what’s going on around them. You may not like them. You may detest what they do, but if you give me a chance, I’ll keep you interested enough to keep reading about them.

OBAAT: Last time you mentioned some grief you took from Hemingway fans for your short story, “For Whom No Bell Tolls.” Any other feedback stories you’d like to share?

TM: After Sympathy came out, I got a ton of feedback about people who loved the supporting characters. They liked how it wasn’t a typical spy story with a lot of different types of people with different types of motivation. A lot of people enjoyed the pacing of the story and found it believable, which was great to hear. Some told me they wanted the female characters to play more of a central role. I made sure they did in the sequel A Murder Of Crows, which is due out from Polis Books in July 2016.

Last week, I was at an event at the East Meadow Public Library where about twenty-five strangers came out on a cold night and talked about the characters in Sympathy like they knew them. You know what? They did. And that makes all the hard work worthwhile.

OBAAT: Is anything going on with the Western you mentioned last time you were here, The Devil’s Cut?

TM: Yep. I’ve changed the title because that would’ve been three “devil” titles in a row, so I’m calling it Vengeance At Dover Station. It may change if my agent and I can sell it, but I’m working on it as we speak. I’m about two-thirds of the way through it and hope to have it done by the end of February.

OBAAT: What do you know now you wish you’d known before you started to get work published?

TM: The power of the short story. I wish I had tried writing them earlier because writing them helped me tremendously in structuring scenes and narratives.

OBAAT: You’re establishing a footprint in the industry. Do you have anything specific that you want to say to your readers?

TM: I thank everyone for the positive and negative criticism I’ve received. I found something constructive in all of it, even if it wasn’t so positive or particularly accurate. All I ask is that you leave a review wherever you can for whatever books you read as reviews really do help with rankings and sales online.

OBAAT: What’s the best book you’ve read since we spoke in July? Don’t think about it, just blurt it out, and see if you can tell us why that one came to the top of your head.

TM: Rumrunners by Eric Beetner stands out. That guy is as good as he is prolific, which is saying something because he churns out a shitload of product every year.

OBAAT: What are you working on now?

TM: I’m trying to finish up I, then it’s on to the third University novel. I’m not sure what I’m going to call it yet, but it will advance the plight of James Hicks and his University team as they go further down the rabbit hole to uncover the people threatening our way of life. I also ask people to keep in mind that I’m not writing a trilogy. There are many more books – and many more facets – of the story left to write, so stay tuned.