What He Left Behind: A Police Procedural

What He Left Behind by Benjamin Bradley

Author Interview + Book & Author Info + Author Pet Corner!Don’t miss any Author Interviews! Click the link here.What He Left Behind

In this town, everyone has a secret they’d kill to keep.

Oak Hill, North Carolina is a sleepy community where nothing exciting ever happens, a town so tiny it has no room for secrets. So when a stranger is found murdered in a cornfield, Detective Grace Bingham is forced to partner with Jacob Sawyer―a big city detective who broke her heart and fled the town years prior―in order to uncover the explosive truth.

As Grace ID’s the Jane Doe, her identity points toward their tragic case from fifteen years ago and the powerful Dockery family. Grace and Sawyer race to piece together their case, armed with new evidence for the first time in decades, even if the town has turned against them. After all, everybody has a secret they’d kill to keep.

“Bradley’s latest is a good pick for readers who enjoy in small-town police procedurals.” —Library Journal​

“This whodunnit expertly weaves the dangerous secrets of past and present in small-town Appalachia, delivering a jaw-dropping conclusion that’s well worth your time. Bradley has the goods, and I can’t wait to see what he cooks up next.” —Scott Blackburn, author of It Dies with You

To purchase What He Left Behind, click the following link: ComCat Books.What He Left Behind Author Interview With Benjamin Bradley

 

What He Left Behind is set in Oak Hill, North Carolina. Tell us about the town and why you chose it for your latest release.

Oak Hill is a fictional town that is an amalgamation of many small towns across North Carolina, particularly out west.

I wanted to create an environment where there was an insular community that’s forced to grapple with the idea of outsiders among their citizens. One reason that I chose to base it in a fake town rather than a real one was just to avoid the possibility of getting details wrong, like road names and directions, which can often get muddied as the edits pile up.

 

What He Left Behind centers on Detective Grace Bingham and Detective Jacob Sawyer. What would you like readers to know about them and their dynamic?

Grace, in all of her thirty-plus years of life, has never moved out of Oak Hill. Sawyer left when he was eighteen, only to return almost twenty years later.

I wanted to put those opposing experiences in contrast and force them to work together, and it doesn’t hurt to add in that they were high school sweethearts that didn’t work out. At least initially…

 

Tell us about your road to publication with What He Left Behind:

It was a journey, but it always is. I wrote the first draft a few years ago and after letting it sit for a bit, dove into edits.

It was a big manuscript sitting at over 110k words, but I thought that with the right partner, it could shine. I spent about 18 months in the query trenches and had some great conversations with feedback and a few revise & resubmit requests that didn’t pan out.

Eventually, I submitted to CamCat and found an incredible champion for the manuscript in Helga Schier. She saw the potential, gave me incredibly insightful edits, and the rest is history!

 

What’s one thing you learned in the editing process for What He Left Behind that will stick with you for future manuscripts?

Trusting the reader. It’s a common one, but it took multiple rounds of edits for it to really hit home.

We want so badly for our readers to “get” the story that we can over-explain or make hints obvious, but in reality, readers are wildly smart. Often, they’ll put together pieces before you even realize and instead they’re ten steps ahead of you. I think that makes our job as a writers even easier, because we can test the limits!

 

How did working with AmeriCorps impact your writing?

AmeriCorps gave me such a unique glimpse into different parts of the country, both in the people I worked alongside and those that I met in our service projects.

As much as I thought I knew the world prior to AmeriCorps, I really saw how unique everybody’s experiences are and how that can really change how we see the world. The other perk is that I have a great database of names to pull from when I need a character!

 

What are you working on now?

I’ve been exploring what it would look like to bring the world of What He left Behind into a series, with Grace as the central character.

I have a draft of a second in the series and an outline for the third, which I plan to discuss with my team later this spring.

 

Words of Wisdom for aspiring writers:

The rush is self-imposed. There is such a strong wave of advice for writers out there that is all about publishing as much as you can and as quickly as you can. There’s an impatience with the process and instead a drive to hit publish as much as possible.

I think that only applies to you if you want it to. As urgent as your story might feel, it will find people when the time is right, and if it’s not getting love from publishers or agents, that doesn’t mean it’s done forever or that your story isn’t good. We writers can beat ourselves up for every little thing, timing shouldn’t be one of them.

Great Advice!Author Pet Corner!Harper and Fox!

 

 

 

Harper the dog, and Fox the cat.

What He Left Behind Author Benjamin Bradley

Benjamin Bradley is a member of both Mystery Writers of America and International Thriller Writers.

He’s the author of the Shepard & Kelly Mystery series through Indies United Publishing House and his short fiction has appeared in literary magazines including Reckon Review and Flash Fiction Magazine.

He works in public health and homelessness and lives in Raleigh, North Carolina with his wife, their cat Fox, and their dog Harper.

 

Learn more about Benjamin by clicking any of the following links: Instagram // Facebook // SubstackElena Hartwell/Elena Taylor

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