Interview with Robert Crawford
Today I am interviewing Robert Crawford, author of historical mysteries, Tatterdemalion,The Doll Maker, Gods of our Fathers, and The Misanthrope’s Manual, to name only a few.
Thanks for speaking to me today, Robert. Tell us a little about yourself? Perhaps something not many people know?
That’s such an open-ended question, I’m not really sure I know how to answer that. Like you, I was largely raised overseas (my Dad was in the Air Force). We lived in Germany and Italy and all over the east coast of the US. After my Dad retired and went to work in the private sector, we settled in Massachusetts. During that time, I contacted Rodney Dangerfield at his old nightclub on 2nd Avenue with a page of jokes. He called my house a couple of weeks later and asked me how long it would take to write him another page of jokes. A couple of weeks later, he bought some off me.
What made you want to become a writer?
God, why does any writer want to become a writer? At the time, it wasn’t something I could then and maybe even now quantify and articulate. I guess at the most fundamental level it’s all about the universal human need for self-expression. When I discovered Keats toward the end of high school and began acing my final tests and quizzes, I got the idea that this was something to which I could devote my life. So I wrote poetry, got a little published then in 1996, after two and a half years doing both, I abandoned poetry and went to writing novels full time. That same month, I got my first literary agent so I guess that had something to do with my gradual decision to leave Parnassus behind me.
Could you tell us a bit about your most recent book and why it is a must-read?
THE RIVER NEVER SPEAKS is actually based on the Jayme Closs kidnapping and double murder of December 2018. Like many, I was horrified by the facts of the case and overjoyed when the child escaped her captor. But as with so many other novels based on the headlines, as a novelist I found it easy to write by simply asking myself, “What if…?” over and over, which is where the real tension comes that often distinguishes real life from well-crafted fiction. I imagined Jayme Closs as an adult (Just as Stieg Larsson created Lisbeth Salander by imagining a grown-up Pippi Longstocking). What would she do? Well, she’d become a cop and, with the resources of a police department at her disposal, she’d investigate her parents’ and brother’s murders and her own kidnaping. It were those constant, “What ifs…?” that led me to create Meghan McNamara, my fictional analogue of Jayme Closs. So the book itself is full of twists and turns that I’d like to think the reader won’t anticipate.
What is the most unethical practice in the publishing industry?
Literary agents and making them mandatory instead of elective. I’ve lost a lot of friends over the years because of my pungent thoughts on literary agents but I have many, many good reasons for saying what I do about them. They by and large do not fight for their clients, will constantly pass on books they think will meet the slightest resistance from acquisitions editors and they fail at their jobs literally 90-95 % of the time (an annual industry standard). And when editors at these publishing houses say, “Nice property you got there. Be a shame if nuthin’… happened to it” unless you get an agent to rep it, then that’s a protection racket and ought to be enforceable under the RICO statutes. Prior to 1980-1985, when this collusion between publishing houses and literary agencies became widespread and standardized, authors were able to approach editors with their work, negotiate their own contracts and manage their own careers. Now we’re told we’re too stupid or naïve and need to have an agent do these things. But since we’re the ones writing the books, it’s obvious to me that our pragmatism and intelligence hasn’t atrophied one iota since agents were artificially made primary gatekeepers. Sadly, many younger writers think having an agent is absolutely indispensable and a godsend. It is not. That’s just how they position themselves. But getting treated like garbage by literary agents (who, again, fail at their jobs almost all the time) is a big part of the reason why self-publishing and the empowering democracy it brought to publishing, took off 12-15 years ago. It’s either that or let it collect dust in a desk drawer for decades.
Does writing energize or exhaust you?
I suppose it’s a largely a matter of how well it goes. If you’re pushing yourself to make a certain word count and if you have to practically pull the words out of your head with pliers, then it can be exhausting. But when I create an exciting, original new character or toss a couple of thousand quality words in first draft, it can have an energizing effect. I’ve always said, when my writing goes well, I’m well.
What kind of research do you do, and how long do you spend researching before beginning a book?
It really varies depending on the subject matter. They say, “Write what you know” but if we were to stay true to that, no one would write historical fiction. For TATTERMDEMALION, which was about an American team of amateur investigators chasing down Jack the Ripper, I had to do research at various depths on literally scores of different subjects and topics, starting with the Ripper murders themselves and the socio-economic and political conditions of the time. I had to research the lives of my characters (Buffalo Bill, Annie Oakley, Frank Butler, Freud, Arthur Conan-Doyle, Sitting Bull, TP O’Connor, Frederick Abberline, etc.). I had to research the chemical properties and volatility of nitroglycerine, what carriages were around in 1888 London, the production of Jekyll and Hyde, which led to period photographs of the Lyceum Theater in London’s West End, and its business manager, an unknown author by the name of Bram Stoker. I bought books when I needed more in-depth information, watched Ripper documentaries and did much of my research on the internet. Many authors feel the need to devote six to 12 months immersed in research before even jotting down a word and I feel that’s just such a waste of time. I do the research, for the most part, when and where I feel I need to, such as into the provenance of a certain word or phrase.
Of all the characters you have created, which is your favorite and why?
That’s a toughie because I love all my series characters. Scott Carson speaks to me and always had as a fully developed character. In November 2012, the month I began TATTERDEMALION, he’d sprung from my head almost Athena-like. That depth has been enriched with the sequel, THE DOLL MAKER, which takes place about 5-6 months after the end of the first book. But Mike Flannigan, my MC of AMERICAN ZEN, my first protagonist to speak in first person, which was a hugely liberating experience for me, also speaks to me because he’s my idealized version of me if I was a popular political journalist. Plus, he’s also funny as hell and, like me, is almost unforgivably liberal. But Meghan McNamara presently appeals to me because, moreso than most people, she’s like an iceberg, with 90% submerged and inaccessible to those she does not know well. She was kidnapped at 13, held hostage and raped for over five of those years before her horrifying escape so she has her share of issues. At first, she doesn’t come across as a very likable character but I’m banking that the reader will begin to admire and even love her for her tenaciousness in going after the bad guy as she loosens up. In subsequent installments, she’ll reveal more of herself, although her narrative is told through third person.
What’s the most difficult thing about writing characters from the opposite sex?
To be honest with you, it’s not difficult at all. That’s not to say that women largely aren’t a mystery to me as they are to almost all males. But a writer deals in human nature. That’s the biggest tool in our toolbox. Every writer understands what interests humans more than anything else is other humans, even if they’re fictional. This was why decades ago in a survey, publishers realized readers wanted more character-driven and less event-driven novels. So, over the course of my life, I’ve been observing female behavior and think I have it pegged to the point that I can make them bad-ass heroines without making their femininity seem strained or artificial. When I describe a woman reacting to something a man does, I’d like to think I’m relating to personal experience or observation.
Have you read anything that made you think differently about fiction?
Oh yes. Caleb Carr’s THE ALIENIST and THE ANGEL OF DARKNESS. Those two books alone showed me the potential of prosody in popular, commercial fiction. Same with Thomas Harris’ SILENCE OF THE LAMBS and HANNIBAL, which is gorgeously written, in my opinion.
What are the ethics of writing about historical figures?
Be true to their character or as much as possible. Try not to portray them as something they were not. Act as if your only readers will be their descendants who largely have a better idea of what their ancestor was like than you. Would you offend them or not? I studied the life of Buffalo Bill, for instance, and it was almost like creating a new character but I had some history as my guide. So I brought Bill back to life according to how and what he was like plus as he would have to be to help propel the plot. I think he came across as a fully-realized historical character. Same with Annie Oakley. She’d had have to be a hard-as-nails badass to make it in a male-dominated world. But I also had to acknowledge her more tender, feminine side, as well.
What have you put most of your effort into regarding writing?
Probably plotting because I admit, it’s my one big weakness. Very rarely do I have the denouement fully-realized in my mind from the start. God, if only all of them could be like that!
What was your hardest scene to write?
Two death scenes. One in AMERICAN ZEN in which I had to kill off a major character (but the rest of the book would’ve been utterly impossible without that death). The other was Mary Kelly’s death scene (Actually, the scene where Scott Carson, who was romantically involved with her, discovers a murder took place at Miller’s Court.). It took seemingly forever to write that scene of discovery and at first I thought it was because I was drawing it out, wasting time to keep from writing about it. But reading back the first draft to myself that day, I realized it was exactly the way it had to be presented in a plausible way. Both were tough on me emotionally.
How long on average does it take you to write a book?
There’s no set time frame. My hostage negotiation thriller, THE TOY COP, which also features a female protagonist, took me the better part of 14 years. My latest one, THE RIVER NEVER SPEAKS, took me two months to draft (even though it’s 139,000 words). I find, like Isaac Asimov, the older I get, the faster I write.
What projects are you working on at present?
Well, you know the answer to one- Even though I’ve started several Scott Carson novels and a novella that I’ve yet to finish, the one on which I’ve been working exclusively since mid-March this year is entitled HOLLYWOODLAND and it’s what I call a “direct sequel”. It picks up exactly where the penultimate chapter leaves off after that denouement. So it spans from 1888 to 1924, about a decade after the dawn of Hollywood and Carson finds an old enemy from the past isn’t done with him just yet. There’s also another Carson novel that’s about 95% complete entitled, A GAME OF HANGMAN, an 1895 novel in which Carson and his friends chase a serial killer who’s literally playing a game of Hangman with human body parts. That one, about 126,000 words in its slightly incomplete state, also took me just two months to write a couple of years ago. And, of course, there are other sequels and series that lounge around in various glorious states of incompleteness.
What do your plans for future projects include?
I’ve largely just answered that question but I’ll expand on it a bit. Another series I’d launched in 2015, about eight months after I published TATTERDEMALION, was entitled GODS OF OUR FATHERS. Some idle researching on my Android into the history of the Boston PD led me to the fascinating story of the Anthony Burns arrest and trial, which took place in Boston in 1854 at the same moment the Boston Police Department was created. My main character, Vesey Van Zant, is a biracial policeman and former slave light enough to pass for white. His iron-clad devotion to enforcing the law and loyalty to his black side are always at odds in the book. I’m nearly done with that sequel, BLUE BLOOD.
But since you ask about future plans, I’ve always been a sucker for crossovers. Since all the pertinent characters live in the mid-late 19th century, I’ve already launched a couple of crossover novels. The aforementioned A GAME OF HANGMAN involves Carson, some characters from the Carson universe, meeting the characters, now decades older, in Van Zant’s late 19th century Boston. I’ve also begun another crossover entitled OVERSEER, in which Det. Angelo Delmonico, introduced in THE DOLL MAKER, meets Van Zant for the first time in 1888 during the events of TATTERDEMALION (so, sans Carson, obviously). It’s Delmonico’s first case and Van Zant’s final one when horribly whipped and flensed bodies of Civil War veterans are found in both Delmonico’s New York and Van Zant’s Boston. Think of it as a 19th century version of SE7EN.
Where can we find you, and your work, online?
All my published works to date can be found here at my Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/Robert-Crawford/e/B008MMC2P4/ref=dp_byline_cont_pop_ebooks_1