Mayra Calvani's Blog - Posts Tagged "writing-a-mystery"

Verlin Darrow is currently a psychotherapist who lives with his psychotherapist wife in the woods near the Monterey Bay in northern California. They diagnose each other as necessary. Verlin is a former professional volleyball player (in Italy), unsuccessful country-western singer/songwriter, import store owner, and assistant guru in a small, benign spiritual organization. Before bowing to the need for higher education, a much younger Verlin ran a punch press in a sheet metal factory, drove a taxi, worked as a night janitor, shoveled asphalt on a road crew, and installed wood flooring. He missed being blown up by Mt. St. Helens by ten minutes, survived the 1985 Mexico City earthquake (8 on the Richter scale), and (so far) has successfully weathered his own internal disasters.

Book: Blood and Wisdom

Website: www.verlindarrow.com

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/author/verlindarrow

INTERVIEW:

Q: Congratulations on the release of your latest book, Blood and Wisdom. To begin with, can you gives us a brief summary of what the story is about and what compelled you to write it?  

A: Here’s a blurby description: When Private Investigator Karl Gatlin takes on Aria Piper’s case, it was no more than a threat—phone calls warning Aria to either “stop doing Satan’s work” or meet an untimely demise.  But a few hours later, a headless John Doe bobs up in the wishing well at Aria’s New Age spiritual center near Santa Cruz.  Aria had ideas about who could be harassing her, but the appearance of a dismembered body makes for a real game changer.  And what Karl Gatlin initially thought was a fairly innocuous case turns out to be anything but.

Dispatching former rugby superstar and Maori friend John Ratu to protect Aria, Karl and his hacker assistant Matt are free to investigate a ruthless pastor, a money launderer on the run, some sketchy members of Aria’s flock, and warring drug gangs.  With his dog Larry as a wingman, Karl uncovers a broad swath of corruption, identity theft, blackmail, and more murders. But nothing is as it seems, and as the investigation heats up, Karl is framed, chased, and forced to dive into the freezing water of the Monterey Bay to escape a sniper.

Against the backdrop of a ticking clock, Karl races to find answers. But more murders only mean more questions—and Karl is  forced to make an impossible choice when it turns out Aria’s secret may be the most harrowing of all.

Blood and Wisdom fell out of me once I got going—telling me what sort of novel it wanted to be. The reason I sat down to see what would happen if I began a PI mystery was that the genre draws on my strengths—plotting, dialogue, and understanding people. The themes are simply the things that matter most to me.



Q: What do you think makes a good mystery? Could you narrow it down to the three most important elements? Is it even possible to narrow it down?

A: Well, obviously, an important element is managing the mysterious/suspense element so the surprises make sense in hindsight, even though they weren’t discernible at the time. Another feature of a successful mystery is appropriate pacing. It’s easy to go too fast when plot is driving a genre, and it’s also easy to bog down in exposition when a complex story can’t stand on its own. Lastly, I need to care about what happens to the main characters, which usually means I need to like them. In real life, I don’t necessarily enjoy being around people who are mixed-up in crime and violence, so an author has to do some work here.

Q: How did you go about plotting your story? Or did you discover it as you worked on the book?

A: I’m a fairly extreme example of a seat-of-the-pants plotter. I start with one major event and a small cast of potential characters. In Blood and Wisdom, a body is discovered on the property of a spiritual teacher’s compound, and there’s a PI who gets involved. That’s all I started with. From there, one thing leads to another, often driven by dialogue that seems to fall out of the characters’ mouths. Everyone gradually defines themselves as I write myself into and then out of dilemmas and seeming dead ends. I’m at my most creative when I’ve put myself directly behind the eight ball.

Q: Tell us something interesting about your protagonist and how you developed him or her. Did you do any character interviews or sketches prior to the actual writing?

A: Karl embodies a lot of the same traits as myself, which is handy. I’m psychological-minded, and by virtue of writing suspense, I also see the world as a profusion of tangled power cords that require sorting and deciphering. So I created a protagonist who thinks the way I do—up to a point. He’s ignorant about a lot of metaphysical stuff that I’m well-versed in, but I still remember what it was like for me to stumble onto it. I’ve never done stand-alone character sketches. My imagination is a counter-puncher, not an initiator.

Q: In the same light, how did you create your antagonist or villain? What steps did you take to make him or her realistic?

A: More than one reprehensible character lurks in the pages of Blood and Wisdom, and they all stem from real experience. As an experienced psychotherapist, I’ve worked with, heard about, or ran from narcissists, sociopaths, and psychotic people. My villains, I think, come across as real as a result.

Q: How did you keep your narrative exciting throughout the novel? Could you offer some practical, specific tips?

A: I think that employing dialogue that announces something intriguing is a good tool for creating a cliffhanger chapter ending.  In a PI mystery, too, you need periodic action, and this needs to be something original, or at least interesting, aside from how it moves the plot forward. I think it’s also important to write a series of mysteries within the big mystery--small puzzles that get worked out gradually.  The reader needs to yearn for answers on a regular basis.

Q: Setting is also quite important and in many cases it becomes like a character itself. What tools of the trade did you use in your writing to bring the setting to life?

A: This is a weak spot for me in a rough draft. Since I’m working on the fly to develop characters and resolve the plot, I don’t do much with setting besides naming it, so I need to go back and flesh it out later. Even then, I have to work hard at this. I have trouble imagining detailed settings (I’m hopeless when I try to write science fiction), so I adapt places I’ve spent time in, and try to focus on the sensory experiences available there.

Q: Did you know the theme(s) of your novel from the start or is this something you discovered after completing the first draft? Is this theme(s) recurrent in your other work?

A: The same themes sneak into all my books, even when I try to keep them out--how people change. What underlies ordinary reality? Why do people commit crimes? How does love develop out of trauma? I set out to write a straight PI mystery, but my damned characters kept injecting extra depth into everything.

Q: Where does craft end and art begin? Do you think editing can destroy the initial creative thrust of an author?

A: No, I’ve never experienced good editing interfering with the creative process--quite the opposite, actually. Any book that becomes more readable, more coherent, and tighter serves creativity better.

I don’t feel I’ve ever crossed over from craft to art, personally. And that’s fine with me. I’m a big fan of craft.

Q: What three things, in your opinion, make a successful novelist?

A: Perseverance, insight, and craft.

Q: A famous writer once wrote that being an author is like having to do homework for the rest of your life. Thoughts?

A: Yup. It’s a curse and a blessing--like everything else. The difference between my happiness quotient when I’m engrossed in a project or I’m not is marked. I need to write to make my life work. If I were designing myself, would I choose this scenario? Probably not. But I could say that about tons of things, and were I completely in charge, in the long run, I’m sure I’d be a big mess.

Q: Are there any resources, books, workshops or sites about craft that you’ve found helpful during your writing career?

A: I’ve mostly worked out things on my own, by writing a lot of manuscripts, the majority of which were unmarketble--for good reason.

Q:  Is there anything else you’d like to share with my readers about the craft of writing?

A: Trust your subconscious. It knows more than you do about some aspects of writing, and it has your best interests at heart.