Dorian Box's Blog, page 11
March 1, 2015
Q and A with Dorian Box
Sunset on the Intracoastal in Hollywood
By Amy Holland
Q. First things first, is “Dorian Box” your real name?
A. No, it’s a pen name.
Q. Why no real name?
A. Writers use pen names for a variety of reasons. In my case, it was wanting to keep my professional life separate from my fiction-writing life.
Q. And your professional life is as a professor?
A. Yes.
Q. You’re a prolific publisher in your nonfiction “real life.” Lots of books and articles. Mostly academic, correct?
A. Where footnotes rule.
Q. Oh, joy. Not exactly Book Club material, eh?
A. It’s the kind of stuff that once you put it down, you can’t pick it back up.
Q. Now comes Psycho-Tropics, which goes to the other extreme. There’s a lot of crazy action. It seems like something surprising happens in every chapter and there are … what do we have … fifty-four chapters? Was that an intentional decision?
A. I love suspense and worked hard to build it, but there might have been an unconscious element as well. “Tornado brain,” as a friend called it.
Q. Somehow all the craziness fits together at the end.
A. [Laughs] It seems to. I hate plots with gaping holes in them. If I spot a really big plot flaw in a book or movie, I can’t enjoy it, even if it has a lot of other good qualities.
Q. Psycho-Tropics is set in Hollywood, Florida.
A. Where I grew up. They always say, “write what you know.”
Q. Where exactly is Hollywood?
A. Sandwiched between Fort Lauderdale and Miami on what they call the Gold Coast.
Q. How many thrillers have been set in Hollywood, Florida?
A. [Laughs] I’m not sure. Not very many. Probably none.
Q. How much of what you describe about Hollywood and what happened there is real?
A. The plot is fictional, of course, but the overall vibe and milieu of growing up in South Florida during the eras spanned by the book are, I think, very real. So is the beach orientation. Diving, fishing, surfing. Hollywood has changed a lot over the years, but the beach is still hard to beat.
Q. Some reviews compare your writing style to Carl Hiaasen. Is that an accurate comparison?
A. It’s an overly generous one. He’s one of my writing heroes. But I can see where Psycho-Tropics, with the South Florida setting and culture combined with all the wacky characters and events, would evoke a Hiaasen-esque image.
Q. Did his writing influence you?
A. I hope so! I instantly connected with his books from the first ones. I think it was in Skin-Tight where he had a seven-foot guy on a surfboard with a weed-whacker for an arm. What’s not to love? I’ve always enjoyed absurd, outrageous characters and humor. Catch-22 is one of my favorite books. I love Elmore Leonard. My mom was a journalist in South Florida and introduced me to him when I was a kid. But while the humor and wacky characters and antics are definitely there, Psycho-Tropics goes beyond that. At the heart, strangely enough, it’s a love story. It also contains some very dark stuff, which you would never find in a Carl Hiaasen book.
Q. Good lead in to the next question. Without giving too much away, you had to make the protagonist, Danny Teakwell, a sympathetic character that readers could root for even though he has a pretty dark cloud in his past.
A. One of the main themes is redemption and I tried to frame that from the beginning. I think most people have some dark hour in their past–whatever it is–that they wish they could go back and fix.
Q. What about you? Do you have a dark hour?
A. Probably more than one. None as bad as Danny’s. How about you?
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