Author R&R with Brian Klingborg

Brian Klingborg studied Chinese folk religion at Harvard University before plunging into the publishing world, becoming a Sr. Vice President at an educational publisher. He’s penned books on Kung Fu and also wrote for the Winx Club animated TV series before recently turning his hand to crime fiction with his debut novel, Kill Devil Falls, from Midnight Ink.

The book follows U.S. Marshal Helen Morrissey, tasked with collecting a fugitive bank robber from a remote town in the Sierra Nevadas. She braces for a rough trip, but it turns out to be far worse than she imagined. After barely surviving a white-knuckle drive in what she suspects is a sabotaged car, she’s stuck in a virtual ghost town populated by a handful of oddballs and outcasts. But it’s not until her prisoner turns up dead that Helen realizes she’s in real trouble, and there are secrets buried below the surface of Kill Devil Falls—secrets worth killing for.

Brian stopped by In Reference to Murder today to take some Author R&R about writing his new novel:

 

In a roundabout way, authorial research is to be credited for my marriage.  But more on that in a moment...

Everyone is familiar with the old adage “write what you know.”  The point being, unless you are intimately acquainted with a subject, your writing will lack those small, yet crucial details which truly bring a story to life.  But what if you, for example, work in children’s educational publishing (like me) and want to write a noir crime thriller (again, like me)?  Then you’d better do your research!

My first novel, Kill Devil Falls, recently published by Midnight Ink, features a female U.S. Marshal who is tasked with collecting a fugitive from a remote town in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California.  The easy part of writing this book was establishing the setting.  I grew up in the general vicinity and went skiing in those mountains most winters.  In order to flesh out some specifics regarding driving routes and terrain, I used Google Maps.  Especially helpful were the Google Satellite and Street View features, which allowed me to visit actual locations and navigate their surroundings, complete with photographs.

The hard part was accurately describing what a U.S. Marshal does and how he or she does it.  After all, my closest brush with law enforcement thus far is being on the receiving end of a few speeding tickets.  Fortunately, I have a good friend who is a 20 year veteran of the NYPD and he was able to advise me on correct procedure regarding prisoner transport, Miranda rights, use of force, and even how to snoop around a suspect’s home without first obtaining a search warrant (claim “exigent circumstances”). 

My next book, The Knock Down, is an historical thriller set in New York in 1901.  It follows a prisoner as he travels from Sing Sing Prison up the Hudson Valley by train, then back down to Manhattan by tugboat, and finally through a seedy assortment of Lower East Side dive bars, brothels, gambling halls and opium dens.

My research kicked off with two excellent books which cover the 19^th century underbelly of New York in fascinating detail:  Lowlife, Lures and Snares of Old New York, by Luc Sante; and The Gangs of New York:  An Informal History of the Underworld, by Herbert Asbury.  I was also lucky to come across first-person accounts describing life in Sing Sing, both from the point of view of guards and inmates.    Background color was provided by various newspaper article archives, located through online searches.

With respect to period details regarding attire, furnishings and various personal accoutrements, again it was the internet to the rescue.   I discovered a treasure trove of scanned photos from early 20^th century catalogs and advertisements hawking men’s and women’s clothing, kitchen appliances, medicinal remedies and even hygiene products.   

In order to get the vernacular correct, I scoured various slang dictionaries, such as George Matsell’s The Secret Language of Crime, and my favorite, the 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue by Francis Grose, from which I borrowed fun phrases such as “hanging an arse,” meaning to hesitate, and a number of insults, curses and amusing euphemisms for, ahem, various body parts.

I was briefly stymied, however, when I attempted to find good source material on early 20^th century Hudson Valley train schedules and tugboat information.  Finally, I had the idea to approach enthusiast groups through internet blogs and Yahoo groups.  Trust me, if you’re looking for some arcane bit of data regarding planes, trains, boats, medieval weaponry, Mongolian throat singing, etc., there is a Yahoo Group or blog out there, somewhere, which will prove to be an invaluable resource.  I eventually tracked down some train and tugboat fans who generously shared insights that greatly enhanced the accuracy of my book.

As a reader, I’ve always loved stories that are told well, but also that teach me something.  Anything, really.  The daily routine aboard an 18^th century warship.  What the ancient Greeks ate for breakfast.  How Hong Kong became a British colony.

It was that last tidbit, gleaned from James Clavell’s Tai-Pan, which I alluded to above.  As a freshman in college, I met a young lady who had a poster of Hong Kong, where she had grown up, on her dorm wall.  I was the first person she’d come across at school who even knew where Hong Kong was, let alone details of its history and politics, and she was suitably impressed.  A few years later, we got hitched. 

 Now that, folks, is the power of authorial research!

 

You can find more information about Kill Devil Falls via Midnight Ink's website and can follow Brian on Facebook and Twitter. The book is now on sale from all major online and brick-and-mortar bookstores.

Author R&R with Brian Freeman

Chicago native and longtime resident of the Twin Cities, Brian Freeman, is an international bestselling author of psychological suspense novels. His books have been sold in 46 countries and 20 languages and have appeared as Main Selections in the Literary Guild and the Book of the Month Club. He is the author of The Cold Nowhere, a finalist for the 2014 Minnesota Book Award, Immoral, which won the Macavity Award in 2005, and Spilled Blood, the winner of the 2013 ITW Thriller Award for Best Hardcover Novel. He has also been nominated for many other awards, including the Edgar, the International Dagger, the Anthony, and the Barry.   

Brian's new thriller, Marathon, draws inspiration from recent events to paint a portrait of crime in an American city that is also a dark reflection of national politics. With echoes of the Boston Marathon bombing, when people’s lives were forever changed at the finish line, this timely novel addresses some of the defining issues of our time: terrorism, fear of the other, and the raw power of social media to shape the public’s understanding of events.

When an explosion along the Duluth Marathon racecourse leaves dozens of people dead or injured, Duluth PD homicide detectives Jonathan Stride, Serena Dial, and Maggie Bei get to work sifting the debris for clues as to who’s behind the bombing. Soon the investigation is taken over by the FBI, whose lead agent is certain the act has all the hallmarks of Islamic terrorism. Complicating matters, the social media feed of a conservative First Amendment activist immediately floods the community with rumors and unfiltered information about the bombing, and a young Pakistani immigrant becomes the target of a massive manhunt. But are the answers behind the Duluth bombing more complex than anyone realizes? And can Stride, Serena, and Maggie get to the truth before more innocent people are killed in the spiraling confrontation between the Feds and the Islamic community?

Brian stops by In Reference to Murder today to discuss research and writing his novels:

Location research means making your setting come alive on the page. Sometimes it also means getting chased down by a guy on a moped.

I’ve always believed that setting enriches the drama of a mystery. The location of each chapter should add depth and atmosphere to the characters and the story. That means capturing what I call the “six senses of place.” I want to give readers a “you-are-there” sensation, in which they’re dropped into every chapter like an invisible observer and can feel, hear, touch, taste, and smell the action happening around them. But place is about more than physical reactions. It’s also about the memories and emotions that a location evokes. What does it feel like to be there? Does it scare you? Does it remind you of a summer romance? Does it fill you with sadness, longing, laughter, or regret? Those are the extra dimensions of a setting that make it come to life for the reader.

For me, there’s only one way to capture that authenticity. I have to be there. If I can stand where my characters stand—and feel what they feel—then I can bring the reader along for the ride. So in researching each book, I scout locations the way a film director would. I use real places—real businesses, real parks and trails, real landmarks, even real homes. In fact, I get e-mails from readers who love to follow along using Google Earth and Google Street View on every chapter of the book.

Usually, this kind of location research is pretty straightforward. I do an outline for the book, but I leave the location of each chapter open—so that I can visit different neighborhoods hunting for the right location to enhance the drama of each scene. That’s true whether I’m in Duluth (with the Jonathan Stride series), San Francisco (with Frost Easton and The Night Bird), or other areas like Florida, rural Wisconsin, or Las Vegas.

I never really considered the fact that the process may look a little strange from the outside. There I am, hiking through cemeteries, farmlands, ruined buildings, and suburban neighborhoods with my camera and voice recorder, making notes on the “feel” of each area and blocking out how the action of the chapter will take place. It works—but sometimes people get the wrong idea.

When I was scouting locations for my Jonathan Stride novella Turn to Stone, I was in the small town of Shawano, Wisconsin. I wanted a scene in an upscale neighborhood, so my wife, Marcia, and I drove up and down a street near the Wolf River, taking pictures and assessing the various homes for the book. For us, that’s normal. However, as we were leaving the area, I noticed a man on a moped behind me. I didn’t really think anything of it—but then I turned, and he turned, and I turned, and he turned again. He followed me all the way to our next location site at a boat landing on the river, and he pulled up right next to my driver’s-side door.

It turns out that he owned one of those homes we’d been scouting, and his daughters had been playing outside and had seen Marcia taking pictures. Well, they were convinced we were “casing the joint” and were going to come back to rob them. So—in a nice display of “Shawano justice”—the homeowner hopped on his moped and laid chase.

Of course, at that point, I had to convince the man that I was an author who was planning to set a book in his area. I’m sure he didn’t believe me for a minute and was ready to call the cops—but fortunately, I had some bookmarks in the car, so I think I was able to convince him that we were on the up-and-up.

I guess not everyone wants to have their home turned into a crime scene—but some people feel just the opposite. In my book The Burying Place, I used a home in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, as the location for a kidnapping—and when the owners sold that house the next year, they mentioned in the MLS listing that it had been “featured” in the book! Apparently, fictional crimes can also drive up your property value. Good to know.

 

Learn more about Brian Freeman and his books via his website, or follow him on Twitter or Facebook. Marathon is available now through all major online and brick-and-mortar bookstores.

Author R&R with Sam Wiebe

Growing up in Vancouver, Canadian author Sam Wiebe read his parents' dog-eared copies of John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee books and Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe. But it wasn't until the end of grad school that he decided to try his hand at writing in the genre, hammering away at it until he came up with his first novel, Last of the Independents. That novel wound up winning the Kobo Emerging Writer Prize and an Arthur Ellis Award, and was also a Shamus award finalist. It also prompted a second novel and a stint as the Vancouver Public Library's writer-in-residence.

His latest novel continues the adventures of ex-cop Dave Wakeland, who is a talented private investigator with next to zero business sense and navigates by a moral compass stubbornly jammed at true north. Invisible Dead finds him with a fancy new office and a corporate-minded partner, but he's still drawn to difficult cases such as a terminally ill woman who hires him to discover the whereabouts of her adopted child who disappeared as an adult more than a decade earlier. It all seems run of the mill until the case takes him into Vancouver's terrifying criminal underworld—all to find someone the rest of the world seems happy enough to forget.

Sam stops by In Reference to Murder today to take some Author R&R about planning and writing his new book:

 

Invisible Dead takes place in Vancouver, in the world of survival sex work. Private detective Dave Wakeland investigates the disappearance of Chelsea Loam, a troubled woman with a history of addiction. The novel takes Wakeland from prisons to the streets to government offices, encountering professional criminals, captains of industry, and other dangerous people.

 

I’ve lived in and around Vancouver my entire life. I know aspects of the city pretty well. Others were entirely foreign to me, which necessitated reading books and reports—and then interviewing people to find out what didn’t get written down.

 

(Photo credit Mel Yap)

 

The novel is influenced by events in the city’s history, specifically its neglect of missing women, many of whom are indigenous. I wrote the first draft of the novel during the Oppal Commission hearings, a judicial probe into the city’s failures in regards to properly reporting missing women, and its lack of efficiency in catching and prosecuting the people responsible. Besides watching the hearings, I’d pay attention to the protests and the criticism of the process.

 

While the hearings were going on, I’d talk to friends who are involved in the affected communities, as well as journalists and documentarians. What struck me from those conversations was how much wasn’t in the hearings—the voices of victims and family members were often marginalized, while the official narrative was shaped by, well, officials.

 

The fact is, the city has never been forced to deal with its treatment of missing women. To do so would mean coming to grips with its history of colonialism, racism, poverty, and addiction. Add to that the gentrification which has rapidly made Downtown Vancouver uninhabitable to all but the very wealthy, and you have a perfect storm of neglect.

 

I wanted the novel to speak to that systemic violence. I didn’t want to write a serial killer story, or rely on the cliches usually employed to describe those in the sex trade . Most of all, I didn’t want to write a protagonist who was somehow above or removed from the problem. Wakeland, like everyone else, has to struggle with his own complicity.

 

(Photo credit Mel Yap)

 

Reading trial and interview transcripts, visiting prisons, and interviewing police officers, lawyers, and journalists, were all part of the research process. I visited the site of some of the atrocities, now turned into a quiet suburban housing development.

 

Still, it was talking with people involved in the community which gave the novel focus. Discussions about serial killers are usually framed around finding the (male) killer, often trivializing the (female) victims. I wanted to start the narrative with Wakeland visiting a killer in prison, a scene familiar to crime fiction readers.  From there, the story heads in a different direction. 

 

Above all, I wanted the story to be Chelsea’s, driven and informed by her, so that Wakeland’s investigation becomes her chance to speak, if only through her silence.

 

 Invisible Dead was released this week and is available via all major bookstores. You can learn more about Sam and his books via his website, on Facebook, and on Twitter.

Author R&R with Dana King

Dana King has been a finalist twice for the Private Eye Writers of America Shamus Award for A Small Sacrifice (2013) and again two years later for The Man in the Window. His novel Grind Joint was noted by Woody Haut in the L.A. Review of Books as one of the fifteen best noir reads of 2013. A short story, “Green Gables,” appeared in the anthology Blood, Guts, and Whiskey, edited by Todd Robinson. Other short fiction has appeared in Thuglit, Spinetingler, New Mystery Reader, A Twist of Noir, Mysterical-E, and Powder Burn Flash.

In Dana's new novel, Resurrection Mall, just released yesterday, development and funding of a new religious-themed mall in Penns River grinds to a halt when heavily armed assassins cut down five leaders of the town’s fledgling drug trade while eating lunch in the food court. The television minister behind the mall has associates not normally associated with a ministry, outside drug gangs may be muscling into town, and the local mob boss could have an angle of his own. The cops have this and all the usual local activity to contend with in a story that extends beyond the borders of Penns River.

Dana stopped by In Reference to Murder to take some Author R&R on how he went about researching and writing the book:

I try to do as little pure research as I can get away with. Part of this is sloth, part is a shortage of time, and a large part is a fear the book will read too much like a research paper. I’m constantly aware of the risk involved when the author tries to make sure the reader knows every damn thing said author knows about the subject at hand. That’s great if you’re writing non-fiction. It’s death for a novelist.

That said, I do a lot of reading and viewing and web surfing that fill the role of research but don’t fit the definition of actively looking for specific things. My Penns River series of police procedurals is a good example. I’ve been reading non-fiction about what it’s like to be a cop ever since I discovered Connie Fletcher’s wonderful series of interviews that began with What Cops Know in 1990. Fletcher went on to write five similar books on different aspects of police work. I’ve read—and re-read, and re-re-read—all of them.

Cop memoirs—first- or third-person, doesn’t matter—are great sources. I read them because they’re full of fascinating stories, but also because I’m immersing myself in how cops think, what they notice, common habits, and their manner of speaking. The hope is that I’ll gain a feel for cops as people. This should allow me to work in what I’ve learned in the best way possible: between the lines.

The books I read are rarely about specific cases, they’re about the cops and their lives and careers. A quick look at my bookshelf shows Edward Conlon’s Blue Blood, Gina Gallo’s Armed and Dangerous, William Roemer’s Man Against the Mob, Bo Dietl’s One Tough Cop, James Wagner’s My Life in the NYPD*, and Adam Plantinga’s 400 Things Cops Know, along with all six of Fletcher’s books, which I consider first-person because they’re basically transcribed bull sessions.

(* -- Wagner’s other book, Jimmy the Wags: Street Stories of a Private Eye, is not only full of the same kind of stuff from Wagner’s career as a PI, but might be the funniest book I ever read. I mean laugh out loud tears in my eyes funny.)

In third-person books, there’s Joe Pistone’s Donnie Brasco and its follow-up, Unfinished Business. (Way of the Wiseguy is Pistone’s spot-on look at how mobsters think and behave aside from criminal acts.) Del Quentin Wilbur’s A Good Month for Murder takes its cue from David Simon’s seminal work Homicide: a Year on the Killing Streets by following a homicide squad around and taking what comes.

Simon repurposed much of what’s in Homicide for his first two TV series, Homicide and The Wire. Therein lies a great research tidbit. Find out which fictional books, TV series, and movies get it right, and combine entertainment with research. Joe Wambaugh broke this ground with books like The New Centurions and The Blue Knight, leading up to his masterpiece, The Choirboys. Television shows from Hill Street Blues through NYPD Blue and The Wire and beyond show all aspects of cops’ lives, and how they view different situations, both on and off the job.

I have received few, if any, more flattering compliments related to writing than was inadvertently paid to me last year at Bouchercon when Colin Campbell, ex-policeman turned writer, turned to me during a conversation and said, “You were police, right?” No, not at all, but it made me feel I must be doing something right.

 

You can follow Dana via his blog, on Facebook, or on Goodreads. Resurrection Mall is available from Down & Out Books and all major booksellers.