Katherine Tomlinson, editor of Dark Valentine magazine, has been a working writer since she was 16. She worked for city magazines coast to coast (and in Hawaii) and her freelance work has appeared in newspapers and magazines throughout North America. She has written for television and feature films as well as webseries. Her film adaptation of Killing Suki Flood is in pre-production. She is a contributor to the great series Drunk On The Moon, based on Paul Brazill’s brilliant invention, Roman Dalton, the werewolf detective, to which I also contribute with Getting High On Daisy.

Katherine met me at The Slaughterhouse, where we talked about Valentines and Noir.

Do you think most Valentines have a heart of darkness and why is Noir embedded in Romance?

Since the holiday we celebrate as “Valentine’s Day” began as the feast day of a martyred saint, I’d say, yes to that.

I’m not sure that Noir is embedded in Romance, not the way that Romance and darkness are entwined in a Gothic tale like Dracula, but lust is certainly a component. Too many people confuse lust and love. And of course, the word “love” has been devalued and redefined by pop culture to the point that it’s now synonymous with “obsession.” When I was a journalist, I interviewed a lot of celebrities who’d had frightening encounters with fans who “loved” them. Lust and obsession make for a dangerous combination in real life, but are absolutely necessary for noir fiction.

Who are your literary influences?

I was a journalist before I wrote fiction and I was pretty serious about that career path by the time I was in high school so I read a lot of nonfiction as a teen. I was (and am) a big fan of John McPhee, who is one of those people I call “literary alchemists.” He can take the most mundane subject and turn it into prose so fascinating you don’t even realize you’ve just read an entire book about an orange grove in California (Oranges ) or a street market in New York (Giving Good Weight). I read a lot of war reportage, memoirs of men and women back from the fronts of a dozen different conflicts.

My father was in the army, so war was not an abstract concept in my family. Michael Herr’s Dispatches, a kind of gonzo romp through the Viet Nam war, is still one of the best books I’ve ever read about that misbegotten military adventure. Anthony Swofford’s memoir of the first Gulf War (Jarhead) is also riveting. I admired David Halberstam, Frances FitzGerald, and Gloria Emerson. I read a lot of history and also popular science, especially the books by Tracy Kidder, who wrote The Soul of a New Machine. I really admire non-fiction writers whose prose reads like fiction. Among my favorite writers are Erik Larsen, Sebastian Junger, Ben Macintyre, and a Washington Post writer named Michael Leahy, who was based in Los Angeles back when I worked for Los Angeles Magazine.

As far as influences on my fiction—it’s a little more complicated. Both my parents were voracious readers—my mother read mysteries, my father read history—and I grew up reading everything I could get my hands on. My family lived in Germany and France when I was a child, so television wasn’t part of my life until I was around 12 or so and it never really became a habit for me. Still, somewhere along the way I saw The Twilight Zone. I’m sure my love of twist endings was influenced by Rod Serling.

The only thing my parents didn’t want me reading was comic books but they didn’t care if I read the good stuff or trash otherwise. I ended up reading both. I was in honors English classes, so I read the greats of American literature and then I moved on to the English writers everyone is expected to know and in between I read mysteries and gothic romances and science fiction and fantasy and horror.

Lots and lots of horror. A lot of what’s now called “Speculative Fiction.” Anything by Tanith Lee or Stephen King or Harlan Ellison. I’d finish Pride and Prejudice and pick up The Stand and then read a Louis L’Amour western I’d found at the used book shop for a quarter. It was all good. And it was a great education for someone who ended up a genre writer. I can deconstruct a literary work with the best of them (I was once hired to write a study guide to Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness—you can find it on Amazon.com.) but I’m probably never going to write a story like “The Swimmer,” you know?

Still, along with my geek creds and the genre reading, I also have a lifelong love of Shakespeare—the precise way he used language, the gorgeous words that are now obsolete, the way he used his dialogue to develop his characters. I keep waiting for a Shakespeare Noir anthology to go along with all those fairy tale noir stories I’m starting to see.

What did Kurtz mean by his closing words in a novella that was later considered the leitmotif of war and global acquisition and do you think the subsequent interpretation of Conrad’s book was accurate or merely part of propaganda?

Ah, I see I’m going to have to prove I know how to talk the talk.

All right, let’s say it’s a trick question, because I don’t necessarily think that what Kurtz meant by his oft-parodied last words in Heart of Darkness is the same thing that Conrad meant. And I also don’t think that Conrad necessarily meant for his readers (or his characters) to know either.

There are a lot of theories about what Kurtz’s last words—“The Horror. The Horror.”—mean. One of the themes of Heart of Darkness is ambiguity—or more precisely, obscurity in the sense of the opposite of clarity—so I don’t think there’s any one right answer.

I do, however, disagree with those who think that Kurtz was some sort of “deathbed conversion” in which he suddenly saw all the horror that the company had brought down on the Congolese. Looking at the character through my own 21st century sensibility, I see Kurtz as an agent of what we now call the “One Percent,” the people who believe that the world’s riches are meant for them and them alone, and that leaving them in the hands of others is simply a waste, “leaving money on the table,” you might say. Kurtz is variously described as “going native” and “going rogue” but for me, he’s simply trying to consolidate his power and secure his position. At the end he’s not looking at the havoc he and his masters have wreaked, he’s mourning the bad choices he’s personally made.

He was a man who wanted to be a god and when his subjects turn on him, he is vexed by the situation. His sense of entitlement can’t grasp the rejection. His dying vision is filtered through the lens of his own personality. He has a vision of the coming chaos without his guiding white hand at the tiller and speaks a prophecy. I don’t think he was crazy at all, I think he was pissed at the lack of appreciation being shown to him, especially since he viewed himself as superior to the natives.

So that’s what I think Kurtz meant. But I think Conrad meant the words literally. And despite some modern-day criticism that paints the author as a racist, I think his anti-colonial, anti-imperialist message is pretty clear. And he clearly holds individuals to account for their actions, mindful that we all have the capacity for evil in us, and that what might be seen as righteous behavior is actually the behavior of someone who has not yet been offered the right temptation.

Is the interpretation of Heart of Darkness valid or propaganda? Depends on your definition of “propaganda,” I would say. Is it misleading to reveal the cruelties of colonialism, particularly in the Congo ? I don’t really think you can argue that. But no literary work exists in a vacuum. That is why I’d teach the novella as part of an inter-disciplinary unit in which students also read history for context. I would have them read Adam Hochschild’s searing King Leopold’s Ghost first and then near-contemporary works like Vachel Lindsay’s poem “The Congo” and Mark Twain’s scathing satire King Leopold’s Soliloquy.

What do you make of the rise of E Book?

What I make of the rise of the ebook is … a second income.

Although I’m working on a novel right now, what I have to sell at this point is my short fiction. Traditional publishers aren’t looking for collections of short fiction from unknown writers. There’s just no profit in it for them. But ebook publishers are eager to showcase writers who aren’t yet household names and that’s good news for readers as well as writers.

Would I like to have a three-book deal with Simon & Schuster? Sure. Would I like to sell as many ebooks as Amanda Hocking? Yes, please. Which circumstance is more likely to happen to me? Which situation offers me more validity as a writer?

For die-hard defenders of traditional publishing, it’s a “perceived value” issue that’s based on a flawed premise—that any traditionally published book is going to be better than any indie published book. But once you ask a die-hardist to define “better,” their arguments fall apart. “Better writing,” they’ll say. Really? So all the print books with one and two-star reviews are better than the Kindle books with five-star reviews? “Better editing,” they’ll insist. I beg to differ. One of the ways legacy publishers seem to be saving money these days is by skimping on the copy-editing. (Or is there no one in New York who knows the difference between “you’re” and “your?”) “Better covers,” they’ll finally offer in desperation. To which I reply, “Not necessarily.”

Writers working with traditional publishers have very little say in cover design. Historical romance writers in particular often see their work packaged with covers that don’t actually reflect the period in which their novel takes place. The website Smart Bitches Trashy Books is always ragging on cheesy covers. Indie publishers have total control over their covers and the results are often fantastic. (Compare the cover of G. Wells Taylor’s Bent Steeple with Karl Edward Wagner’s Where the Summer Ends and tell me which one is “better?”

I’m not the first to compare what’s happening in the book industry to what’s happened to the movie industry but it’s an apt comparison. My “day job” is working as a freelance story editor for movie production companies. I read a couple of scripts a day and many of them are fantastic. Many of them are better than any movie you saw last year. And many of them will never sell because the big movie companies can only make so many movies a year and they’re going to go with the sure thing, the movie that makes sense economically. (As my old boss, actionmeister Joel Silver used to say, “They don’t call it show art.”) When indie filmmakers came along, they were marginalized at first too. And then audiences started taking notice. And suddenly indie filmmakers had their own film festivals. And suddenly a romantic comedy like My Big Fat Greek Wedding that cost $5 million made $369 million. And how many big-budget movies tank every year. (John Carter, I’m looking at you!)

So, to bring it back to ebooks…I am happy to have a way to get my stories in front of people who might enjoy them without having to do the dance of submission (both literally and figuratively). As someone says in the movie Honeysuckle Rose, “I did it for the love, but I was not above the money.” My stories have been out there making money for me since 2010. I’d still be waiting for that book contract if I’d gone the traditional route.

What is your greatest fear?

Blindness. I am diabetic and before I was diagnosed, my retinas were damaged by internal bleeding. My vision will never be 20/20 again but thanks to an experimental drug, my sight will not deteriorate further. If I hadn’t been lucky enough to get into the drug study, my life would be profoundly different right now. I worry about what will happen when the study ends next year. The drug costs $2500 a shot. I am dosed every month. I don’t have health insurance.

I also worry about nuclear conflict in the Middle East, but when it comes to the kind of fear that comes upon you in the middle of the night and leaves your heart pounding, it’s all about me.

Tell us about your novel.

Three years ago I wrote a story for Astonishing Adventures Magazine called “Tired Blood” about a vampire so old he had developed dementia. The heroine of the story, Kira Simkns, was a reporter whose beat was paranormal crime. I fell in love with Kira’s world and kept coming back to it in short stories.

I knew there was a longer tale in there, but I was intimidated by the thought of writing a novel since my sweet spot for stories seems to be around 1500 words. Still, I kept fleshing out my ideas, creating characters like a vampire history professor who only teaches night classes, and a werewolf clan that runs a security company.

I developed a backstory for Kira, deciding that her mother had been turned into a vampire while she was pregnant, which made Kira what I called “a misbegotten.” I decided I would call the novel, Misbegotten, and kept writing short stories set in my urban fantasy version of Los Angeles.

I collected some stories set in that world and released L.A. Nocturne: Tales of the Misbegotten. The reviews were good and almost every one said, “I want to see the novel.” I did too, but instead of buckling down to finish it, I kept writing short stories. When Christopher Grant published my story “Sex Crime,” (about a succubus sex worker) on A Twist of Noir, the story got fantastic feedback and again, a call for the novel. I published another collection of Misbegotten stories in March (L.A. Nocturne II) and then promised myself I wouldn’t write any more Misbegotten stories until the book is finished.

I’m closing in on 50K and hope to have it finished by September. Joy Sillesen of Indie Author Services whipped up a cover for me as an incentive. It’s already up at her site, along with the cover for the upcoming Drunk on the Moon anthology. It’s a lot of fun and I think fans of Urban Fantasy will like it because I’ve worked hard not to recycle the same old tired tropes. There are no sparkly vampires or tattooed werewolves but there are goblin gangsters and murderous mer. I’m having a lot of fun with it. I just need to FOCUS.

If you were to give advice to yourself as a younger woman what would you say?

Don’t go out with Vincent.

No. Wait. That’s a story for a different interview.

I think I’d say, “Don’t get so caught up in making a living you forget to make a life.” I’m a full-time freelancer and in the freelance world, it’s feast or famine. When there’s work, I find it hard to turn it down. I love L.A. but it’s a very expensive city. I’ve managed to develop a balance between earning a living and finding time to write my own stories but it took me much too long.

Do you think cynics are men and women for whom their romanticism has failed?

No, I think most cynics are people who never believed in anything in the first place. I tend to agree with Oscar Wilde that cynics are people who know the price of everything and the value of nothing.

Crime fiction probably couldn’t exist without cynical characters, but in real life cynics and their relentless negativity are just energy vampires. People whose map of reality is defined by cynicism are often the staunchest defenders of the status quo they so disdain because they’d rather complain about it—or feel superior to it—than take action to change the situation.

I’m also not that crazy about cynicism’s second cousin—snark. I love a good snark like writer Dakota Cassidy’s hilarious live-snarking the Miss America pageant on Twitter. Dakota’s a former beauty queen and isn’t being mean. Catty yes, but not mean. It’s the people who seem to feel the need to be the smartest person in the room who annoy me. We’ve all seen book reviews that are more about the reviewer scoring points than about the actual book.

Romanticism will fail you.

Bad things happen to good people.

Life isn’t fair.

Get over it.

Graham Greene said writers have a piece of ice in their hearts. What do you make of his observation?

So we’re all in thrall to the Snow Queen until the sliver of ice melts?

I’d say his observation was true. I think inside every writer is an observer that never quite engages completely, that’s always evaluating experience in terms of “material” in a way that would sound shockingly cold-blooded if admitted out loud. Christopher Isherwood famously said, “I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking.”

I’d like to think I observe things with a more conscious attitude but I’d be ashamed to admit the number of times I’ve seen or heard something awful and thought, That would make a fantastic story.

What’s a nice girl like you doing writing such dark fiction?

First of all, compared to Matthew Funk and W. D. County, two writers I admire tremendously, my work is light pink with sequins on it. But this is a question that I’ve been asked before, usually by someone who’s just found out I don’t like movies advertised as “intense.” (That’s usually code for extreme violence or extremely unhappy subject matter and either way, I’m not interested.) “But you kill kittens in your stories,” they say. (Of all the things I’ve ever done in any of my stories, killing a kitten in an episode of NoHo Noir got me the most grief.)

My family takes my writing in stride, probably because they know I’d never kill a kitten in real life. My brother did once ask me if a story was autobiographical. I’m not sure whether he was relieved or appalled to find out it was not and that I had made it up. My aunt, a Methodist minister, reads everything I write and takes the sex and the violence and the profanity in stride. Sometimes she even leaves good-humored comments. I appreciate that.

I think writing dark fiction is my way of processing life in order to stay sane. I have a friend who’s in a near-constant state of outrage over any number of things, all of which are outrageous. I admire his passion but worry about his emotional state of mind. I’m afraid he’s going to stroke out one day over some idiotic thing a politician has said. Life can infect you with sadness or madness or rage. Writing is a way of purging that infection. At least, it works for me.

Thanks for the conversation Richard, I’ve enjoyed it!

Thank you Katherine for a brilliant and informative interview.

Links:

Kattomic Energy blog

NoHo Noir blog

L.A. Nocturne at Amazon US and UK

L.A. Nocturne II at Amazon US and UK

See all Katherine Tomlinson’s books here

Follow her on Twitter @storyauthority and @nohonoir

Larry Sweazy has written numerous Western novels. His titles include The Scorpion Trail, The Badger’s Revenge and The Cougar’s Prey. His first mystery novel The Devil’s Bones was published in March 2012. Larry met me at The Slaughterhouse where we talked about the American frontier and notions of justice.

You’ve written a few Westerns. How much do you think the idea of the frontier still applies to the American psyche?

The westward expansion was the only migration of its kind. So it’s an origin story, and as with most origin stories, ours does not sit squarely on the surface of everyday recognition. Noted Western author, Jory Sherman, puts it this way: “The West is like the Garden of Eden, a memory now embedded forever in our DNA. We, who write of the West, serve as memory keepers who pass along our indelible heritage to future generations as did the storytellers of old.”

The spirit of the West lives exists in our daily attitudes as we, as Americans, look to continually to expand our freedom, even at great personal cost. I think Westerns, and the ideas of the West, of starting over, of forging on in search of new opportunities, of reinventing one’s self, are still highly relevant in the modern world. Of course, there’s a dark side to the westward expansion, and I think that should be explored, and faced with honesty, as well. A society cannot grow unless it faces the sins of the past–and that, too, makes the frontier, and all that came with the pursuit of it–relevant.

Revenge is a key theme in Westerns. Do you think revenge is lawless justice?

I think our perception of justice is much different now than it was 130 years ago. Trials were often held in the matter of a day, with an hanging following the next day–or the same day–if it came to that. Revenge, however, hasn’t changed all that much. Revenge can be a motivation for a crime, and justice may have nothing to do with a legal outcome, so unless there’s a specific case, I think I’d be remiss in passing judgement, or giving you a yes or no answer. Do I use revenge as a plot device in my westerns and mysteries? Absolutely.

Do you think Zane Grey’s Riders Of The Purple Sage is still a classic? And if so why?

Honestly, I’ve never read it so I couldn’t really say. Zane Grey is certainly a most often the name associated with classic westerns. But writing, and books, were different when he was at his height as a writer than they are now. Our visual libraries are different. They’re much deeper than the readers of the early 20th Century. Writers like Grey are are often criticized for “purple prose” but I think that assessment is wrong. He was writing for his audience of his time. He was describing landscapes and people in deep detail because they didn’t have the details from TV or the movies to fill in their imagination like we do.

Do you think Star Trek is a sci fi Western?

Yes. Gene Roddenberry actually pitched Star Trek as a Wagon Train in space. Science Fiction is a natural companion to westerns, considering space is “the final frontier.”

Tell us about your latest thriller The Devil’s Bones.

The Devil’s Bones takes place in the tomato fields of Indiana, and the town that sits in the middle of them. Indiana is the third largest producer of tomatoes in the country, and the fictional town, Dukaine, is also home to one of the tomato canneries in the state.

The story starts out with the abduction of an eight year old boy, and spans 19 years into the future when a small skeleton is exposed in pond after a long drought. Everyone in town thinks the skeleton belongs to the boy who disappeared, Tito Cordova, who was half-white, half-Mexican. The marshal of the town is drawn to the pond by a note, and is shot, after he discovers the bones. His deputy, Jordan McManus, is with him, and becomes a suspect in the shooting. To clear himself, and find out what really happened to Tito Cordova, Jordan is forced to dig into the past of the town, and his own family, to clear himself. There are plenty of people with reason to stop Jordan, and keep the past hidden.

Is there a particular incident that has changed your life and influenced your writing?

When I was 37 I had a four inch blood clot in my right arm. The doctor said we had three possible outcomes–kind of like the old Let’s Make a Deal show, I had three doors to pick from. Door number one: They dissolve the clot, and I go back to my normal life. Door number two: The clot goes to my brain and I live with diminished capacities. Door number three: I die.

Happily, I got door number one, and after a long year of recovery, I realized that I didn’t have an infinite amount of time to try and make my dream of being a published writer come true.

Who are your literary influences?

It’s a broad range, I think. A.B. Guthrie, Jack London, Jack Schaefer are pretty obvious influences. But you could add Pablo Neruda, William Carlos Williams, and Raymond Chandler to the list of writers no longer with us who I admire and study. Currently, Loren D. Estleman is an influence. Stephen King, too, for the sheer force his career and output. And you can add to that list Dennis Lehane, James Lee Burke, and Joe R. Lansdale.

James Lee Burke writes great Southern Gothic. Do you see anything of the Western in his writing?

I think a lot of modern mysteries reflect western attitudes and sensibilities. This is not an original quote, I don’t remember who said it but, “the only difference between a PI and a gunslinger is that the PI drives a mustang and the gunslinger rides one.” Current thrillers with the lone wolf hero, I’m thinking of Lee Child’s Jack Reacher, could also be western figures or gunfighters. So, really, I don’t think there’s any escaping the influence that the western has had on mystery fiction, or science fiction, or any of the other genres. I said this recently and it applies here. Westerns are very much like jazz: It is the only literary genre that America can truly claim as its own.

What are you working on now?

I’m finishing up on The Gila Wars, the sixth novel in the Josiah Wolfe, Texas Rangers series. It will be out May, 2013.

Do you mind being pigeon-holed as a western writer or mystery writer?

It never occurred to me that I was ever anything other than a writer until I started publishing. It never ceases to amaze me that publishers believe that a western writer can’t write anything other than westerns. I realize it makes it easy for them to fill a slot, but most of the writers I know and admire, can easily navigate between two or three genres. A.B. Guthrie wasn’t a western writer, he was a writer. Readers come to expect a writer to stay within a genre, too, and I also understand that. But as an artist, as a writer, I think it serves the reading public, and publishers, well if the writer is willing to takes chances with their work. That’s what The Devil’s Bones was for me. A chance. And the end of a journey. I wrote that novel before I ever sold my first western.

Thank you Larry for an informative and balanced interview.

Links:

Pick up a copy of The Devil’s Bones at Amazon US and UK.

Check out also The Rattlesnake Season at Amazon US and UK

Visit Larry’s website and blog.

Follow him on Twitter.

Linda Rodriguez is a thriller writer as well as a poet. Her novel Every Last Secret won the Malice Domestic Competition and will be published by St. Martin’s Press 4/24/2012. She received the Elvira Cordero Cisneros Award and the Midwest Voices and Visions Award. Every Last Secret was named one of April’s must-read books by B&N’s mystery expert. In addition to all her other activities, Linda is vice president of the Latino Writers Collective.

She met me at The Slaughterhouse where we talked about plotting and economics behind crime.

What function do you think secrets perform in peoples’ lives and are they linked to the politics of plotting?

I think secrets are vital in both peoples’ lives and in plotting. There are few of us who can live in any comfortable way without some secrets, at least in certain situations with certain people. Writers, in particular—though perhaps I should extend this to all creative artists—walk through their daily lives with a secret world going on inside their heads. Yes, some of it will make it onto paper to be experienced by others, but only a portion of that secret world will ever be shown to others—and that’s as it should be.

Secrets are a creative force in our lives. If we allow them to get out of control, they can also be destructive, of course, but to a certain extent, they are essential if we are to preserve our individuality. When I read about, or watch in real life, one of those great passionate love affairs where the two people usually end up so devastated, I often think it’s because they wanted to know, to be, to possess the other person so completely that there could be no separation, no secrets. Humans have secrets, and that’s healthy.

As far as plotting goes, secrets are a writer’s best friend. Every character has secrets, even when it seems as if he is completely open and frank. Often, the character will have secrets from himself and end up confronted with a resentment that he’d never consciously realized he harbored or a desire that he could never admit, even to himself. Those secrets kept from himself and the secrets kept from others help to fuel conflict within the novel, as well as helping to develop complexity within the characters, their relationships, and the plot.

Who are your literary influences?

I’ve been a huge reader all my life. I suspect most writers are. Many more of these writers than I can mention, or even recall quickly, have left their imprint on me and on my writing. I think literary influence is always hard for the writer to pinpoint. I know who was most important to me as a reader, who inspired my writing, and who I tried to learn from, but a critic might pick out others than these as the influences of which my writing reeks.

For me, the strongest influences are probably Charles Dickens and Virginia Woolf. I’ve gone back to them again and again since early childhood, and I always learn more. Fyodor Dostoyevky and William Shakespeare come in right behind them. Of modern writers, the great Chickasaw writer, Linda Hogan, still influences me in fiction and poetry both. Joyce Carol Oates, Toni Morrison, and T.C. Boyle have had a real impact on me as a writer. Rudolfo Anaya and Sandra Cisneros have both been important to me. Ursula LeGuin and C.J. Cherryh have been lifelong loves in science fiction. In the mystery genre, Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, Raymond Chandler, Ross MacDonald, Josephine Tey, John D. MacDonald, Patricia Highsmith, Tony Hillerman, P.D. James, Sara Paretsky, J.A. Jance, Elizabeth George—all are writers I return to again and again. Nancy Pickard is a special kind of influence. She has been a friend for many years, and of course I’ve read and reread her work, but she also leads a small ongoing group at our local Sisters in Crime branch where we dissect different types of successful mysteries in great depth and detail. I learn something new from this every month and apply it to my own work.

Poetry has played a large part in my life and education. I’m a poet as well as a novelist, so poets have influenced the way I think about words and use them in both poetry and fiction. Whitman and Dickinson, of course—and the language of the King James Bible. John Donne. Denise Levertov has played a seminal role in the way I look at language. William Carlos Williams, H.D., the list goes on too long.

When I stop to look at it, I realize I’m just a Frankenstein’s monster made of bits and pieces of all the millions of books I’ve read throughout my life. Just a thread from this one but a larger chunk from that one and perhaps Dickens’ hand, Woolf’s eye, Morrison’s knee, and Levertov’s tongue, sort of like that.

Graham Greene said writers have a piece of ice in their hearts. What do you make of his observation?

I think in a simplistic way it’s true. All good writers stand apart from the world and observe to a certain extent. But that’s not (or shouldn’t be) a stance of looking down on the world and the people in it, not even in the name of “irony,” which too often merely masks contempt. That part of us that holds apart and asks how this (or he/she/it) works, how this feels, what does this look like, what memory does this smell bring back, what emotion does this music cause, that part of us makes us writers.

On the other hand, I think good writers have to have an affinity for people in their hearts, as well. I don’t mean that they have to like people, but they must be able to empathize with very different people and understand what things might look like from the perspective of these different folks. It’s only with such empathy or affinity that writers can create characters who aren’t all Mary Sues or cardboard cutouts and cartoon creations.

Do you think the West has different notions of death and therefore drama to the rest of the world and why?

None of your questions allow simple answers, do they?

I think that, if a society and culture believes in rebirth on the wheel of life as we learn and progress, it will be a fundamentally different society and culture from one that believes that one shot is all we get and there is a scorekeeper in the sky who decides at the end whether our deeds have earned us everything we could want in the skies forever or everything we most fear in the dark, fiery bowels of the earth forever.

I think in the West we have a simplistic, linear concept of death and life and drama. This constricted paradigm is why death of the individual becomes the ultimate tragedy in too much Western drama. The best of our writers overcome this limited view and move beyond into complexity and paradox and unpredictability, but it’s definitely a limitation that Western writers have to transcend.

Tell us about Every Last Secret.

Half-Cherokee Marquitta “Skeet” Bannion thought she was leaving her troubles behind when she fled the stress of being the highest ranking woman on the Kansas City Police Department, a jealous cop ex-husband who didn’t want to let go, and a disgraced alcoholic ex-cop father. Moving to a small town to be chief of the campus police force, she builds a life outside of police work. She might even begin a new relationship with the amiable Brewster police chief.

All of this is threatened when the student editor of the college newspaper is found murdered on campus. Skeet must track down the killer, following trails that lead to some of the most powerful people in the university. In the midst of her investigation, Skeet takes up responsibility for a vulnerable teenager as her ex-husband and seriously ailing father wind up back on her hands. Time is running out, and college administrators demand she conceal all college involvement in the murder, but Skeet will not stop until she’s unraveled every last secret.

Linda Rodriguez’s debut novel introduces a unique and capable heroine. With its intriguing cast of characters and complex mystery, Every Last Secret is sure to delight traditional mystery fans.

That’s what the jacket copy says for Every Last Secret. It’s the first in a series with Skeet Bannion as the protagonist. I like Julia Spencer-Fleming’s categorization of “traditional mystery-thriller” as a description. Every Last Secret is, indeed, a traditional mystery set in a small town, but the small town is right outside a big, dangerous city, and there’s a little darker edge and suspense to this character, this book, and the series as a whole.

Is there an incident that has changed your life and influenced your writing?

Well, two things that have happened to me in recent years have certainly changed my life and influenced my writing career. In 2009, I met and became friends with the great writer, Sandra Cisneros and she talked very seriously with me about how she respected my many efforts for the literary community in my home city and elsewhere in the country, but she thought I should cut back and concentrate on my own work for a while. I went back to an unfinished novel and completed it. Then, in 2010, I received the Midwest Voices and Visions Award from the Alliance of Artist Communities and the Joyce Foundation. This consisted of a one-month residency at Ragdale, one of the oldest and most famous of the American artists/writers colonies. It also included a $4,000 unrestricted stipend. During that month at Ragdale, I not only completed the proposed book of poetry that had won me the award but did all the revisions on Every Last Secret and sent it off. Of course, the results of those two events have changed my writing career completely.

If you’re talking about something that has truly influenced my writing itself, I would have to go much further back—into my childhood. I normally like to pass over my childhood with a joke that it made Mommie, Dearest look like a fairy tale. That usually stops any further questions. The truth is that my childhood was a nightmare of emotional, physical, and sexual abuse at the hands of a father who was a sociopath (he would go out and rape women, get arrested, and the U.S. Navy would move us to another state overnight so he wouldn’t be prosecuted–repeatedly) and a mother who had a complete breakdown from the strain of living with this man twice her size who slammed her into walls and beat her during her continuous pregnancies. I was the oldest of six children and filled the parental role that neither of our parents did, thus having no childhood of my own. When I was twelve, both parents had deserted us, left town. I kept us going for about a month until the authorities found out, and we were placed with relatives. Books were my salvation throughout my childhood.

I have seen real evil, though. I’m the daughter of a monster who both loved me and gravely injured me. I find that the common ironic distance of much literary fiction doesn’t work for me. I’ve seen too much of what’s going on outside of those safe MFA enclaves. I made a promise to myself when I was quite small that I would never be a victim again, and I would never be a villain like my father. My life and my writing have been a long experience of trying to find a successful way to live without giving into either of those extremes. It is certainly why I’m drawn to crime fiction.

What are you working on now?

I am just finishing final revisions on the second Skeet Bannion novel, Every Broken Trust, and working up the characters and background for a new grittier urban mystery/thriller series. I have finished final revisions on my newest book of poetry, Dark Sister, and will be sending that to a publisher who asked to see my next book of poems. I recently wrote a short story for Kansas City Noir (Akashic Books, forthcoming), and I have two short story ideas that didn’t work for that anthology that I’d like to write and send around to crime fiction journals. Short stories don’t come naturally to me. I’m essentially a long-form writer (or very short, i.e., poetry), but I like the challenge of trying something that’s difficult for me. I’m also doing ongoing research and planning for a big, complex novel about the Vietnam War’s effect on my generation at home and overseas.

In my head, I’m also cleaning up and decluttering my home, which has become a disaster zone. In actuality, most of that is going to have to wait—quite a while. But I will—someday.

How much crime do you think is economically driven?

I think a great deal of crime is economically driven. The crime of the poor certainly is. I live in the poor, African American section of Kansas City, Missouri. As a city, we have many more homicides per capita than New York City, a much larger metropolis. In my area of the city, we have a much higher per capita rate of homicide than in the city as a whole. This is not a surprise since this is the poorest area of the city, and this city is much poorer than New York.

As the United States has swirled into a depression (because, from where I sit so far away from the protected enclaves of Washington and Wall Street, that’s what this has been), I’ve watched houses around me repossessed, including my next-door neighbor’s. I’ve watched as so many hard-working people have lost jobs. I’ve watched as these same hard-working people desperately and futilely tried to find jobs to support their families. I’ve watched despair, frustration, and rage—and the feeling that no one in power cares—set in.

This past Christmas season was our largest for car break-ins and house burglaries. If you have nothing for your kids, you get more than a little desperate. Our food banks throughout the metropolitan area run out of food early in the month and have to turn people away. When you can’t feed your family, you get desperate. More families are homeless than ever before, often living in cars. When you can’t even give your family one room to shelter in, you get desperate.

These are the perfect conditions for crime—the indifference of the wealthy and powerful, devastating despair, frustration that none of your efforts to make a legal living work out, and rage at the system that’s taken your hard work and dumped you and yours on the trash heap. Add the highest incarceration rate in the world to that. With only 6% of the world’s population, the United States has 25% of the world’s prisoners, mostly men of color, African American, Latino, Native American. Private prisons are a growth industry here, as is the slave labor they provide. Yes, it’s the chain gangs again.

Large parts of urban and rural America have become a laboratory experiment to see what happens when you provide the perfect environment for crime to flourish. Under those circumstances, as you might suspect, crime flourishes.

The crime of the rich, which is not just flourishing but growing exponentially, is another matter. That’s propelled by sheer greed and is reclassified as “free market enterprise.” Best not get me started on that.

Tell us about your poetry.

First of all, my poetry is not in fashion right now. I work very hard to make sure my poetry will be accessible, and that’s highly frowned on in academic circles. I hope the reader will pick up all the richness below the surface of the poem, but even if he doesn’t, I want the reader to be able to navigate the surface of the poem without wondering, “What was that even about?” I don’t believe poetry should be just for the chosen few in the academy. So right there, I’m out of step with the larger poetry community.

Secondly, my poetry is feminist. The women in my poetry are usually not shrinking violets. I’ve written poems that celebrate women claiming their own power, poems about domestic violence and abuse and about divorce and passionate love affairs. I’ve written lots of poetry about passionate love and sex. I don’t think anyone who read much of my poetry could come away feeling that I hate or dislike men, though.

Along with the feminist strand running through my poetry is another of heritage and family. I carry several different heritages inside myself, and they inform my work, as does the Eurocentric academic system within which I was trained.

What’s something no one asks you?

About my animals. I rescue animals. Although I have only one large dog and one cat right now, I’ve had as many as five cats and a dog. Always they have either been living on the streets a while and are in bad shape or they are scheduled for immediate euthanasia, if I get them from the pound. Usually I stay to one dog at a time since I usually rescue big dogs that no one wants to mess with. I’m kind of a fanatic about it. I’ve seen too much of what happens to animals that are not spayed and neutered, so I’m a big opponent of those people, usually guys, who don’t want to neuter their dogs. (It’s like they have their pet’s genitals all mixed up with their own.) And the ones, again usually male, who think treating a dog cruelly will make him a better guard dog. It just makes the dog erratic and difficult to place in a home when bozo finds that he’s actually made his dog “mean” and gets rid of him. Oh, and don’t even get me started on the idiots who insist on keeping and breeding large, wild, predator species, such as wolves, coyotes, lions, tigers, bears. Aren’t you sorry you asked?

Thanks for having me here, Richard.

Thank you Linda for an insightful and brilliant interview.

Bio:  In addition to her novel Every Last Secret, Linda has had two books of poetry published: Heart’s Migration (Tia Chucha Press) winner of the Thorpe Menn Award for Literary Excellence and finalist for the Eric Hoffer Book Award, and Skin Hunger (Scapegoat Press). Besides her affiliation with Latino Writers Collective, she is also a member of Wordcraft Circle of Native American Writers and Storytellers, Kansas City Cherokee Community, International Thriller Writers, and Sisters in Crime.
Links:
Visit Linda’s website here.
Follow Linda on Twitter.
Pre-order a copy of Every Last Secret at Amazon US and UK and Barnes & Noble.

Here’s what’s being said about Every Last Secret:

“Fans of Nevada Barr and Sara Paretsky will relish Linda Rodriguez’s stellar debut. Her sleuth, Skeet Bannion, is a keeper. Every Last Secret is a triple crown winner; superb writing, hell for leather plotting and terrific characters.”–Julia Spencer-Fleming, New York Times bestselling author of One Was a Soldier

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

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

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

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

“Murder on a college campus, plenty of bad people, and all kinds of puzzles to solve. Linda Rodriguez has written a highly enjoyable procedural introducing a rough and tender heroine, Skeet Bannion.”–Kathleen George, author of The Odds and Hideout