Today I'm thrilled to welcome author Christine Carbo to Do Some Damage. Christine and I, after passing by one another at several different conferences, finally had a chance to officially meet and talk at Left Coast Crime this past March in Reno. And I'm so glad because now her Glacier Mystery Series is one of my favorite things going (The New York Times agrees, calling her writing "stunning ... it's in depicting nature's drama that Carbo's writing thrives.") The fourth in the series, A Sharp Solitude, comes out Tuesday. It's not your typical crime fiction series - here's Christine to tell you why that is . . .
WHAT’S NEXT?
As a new writer who knew so little about the business when I
first entered it, my initial instinct was to get a book – one book – on
the shelves. To be published, I had
considered most of my life was about getting an agent, selling a book, and
finally seeing the one book with my name on it sitting on bookstore shelves.
So, earlier in my life, after writing two non-genre novels that I didn’t try
very hard to get published, I decided to get serious and write The Wild Inside. I was
thrilled beyond words to imagine my book making it that far.
hat I love to
read. I wrote a mystery and tried my hardest to see my dream through. When
things began happening, I was giddy with excitement. I flew from Montana to New
York City to meet my agent and the two editors who had both made offers on my
debut, The Wild Inside. I
was thrilled beyond words to imagine my book making it that far.
Then, within fifteen minutes of conversation of each meeting
with the editors, each one asked me, What’s
next?
I was completely unprepared for the question. Because I had
concentrated on simply publishing one book for so long, I had not considered
how I would follow up. But once I began contemplating it, one of the first
things that came to my mind was how much I enjoyed Tana French’s approach to
her Dublin Murder Mystery Series. I loved the concept of plucking a
side-character from one book and developing that character’s point-of-view in
the next. When I write, I tend to follow the advice of Michael Connelly when he
says that “the best crime novels are not how a detective works on a case; they
are about how a case works on a detective.”
And although Michael Connelly has written one character over
an entire traditional series, the sentiment also applies particularly well to
the ensemble series, in which the author can focus on a dramatic event or theme
in the protagonist’s life and play out his or her full character arc. In my
first book, The Wild Inside, once I teased
out the central dramatic theme, the protagonist’s character arc had been
completed and it seemed like it would be hard to revisit the same character in
a follow-up novel without him feeling a bit flat. I began to think that the
best approach to additional novels for me were ones that felt like stand-alones;
but I knew I needed to appease my publisher in terms of having continuity. Where
I live and how crime butts up against the wild is what my agent and both
editors loved. So I decided to establish my setting, which is Glacier National
Park and its surrounding area (titled the Glacier Mystery Series), as the
common thread. The best way to achieve this was to follow that ensemble series
formula, and I’m so glad I made the decision to do so because it's worked
really well for me.
I am amazed at authors who can make one lead character
fascinating to follow through an entire series. I would have a lot to learn if
I tried to follow the traditional formula, and I hope to try at it some point,
but so far, through the ensemble approach, I’ve been able to develop a strong,
dramatic sense of place and explore fascinating new characters with each book.
My first features a lead detective from the Department of the Interior who is
called to Glacier to investigate a serious crime; however, Glacier is the last place he wants to be because he
witnessed his father get mauled and killed by a grizzly bear while camping
there one night when he was a teenager. While he is in Glacier, one of the law
enforcement officers helps him with the case. It is this character that I
spotlight in my second book which involves a fictional therapeutic wilderness
school located near Glacier. In my third, I pluck the county forensics’ team
leader who has helped out in both the first two. It involves a missing boy from
one of the campgrounds, so the local resident FBI agents are involved as side
characters. It is one of these characters that I pull to star in my fourth, A Sharp Solitude, which comes out on May
29th.
Going this route has not only allowed me to delve into
different characters and various traumatic events in each of their lives, but
it has enabled me to avoid the Cabot Cove syndrome of tripping over dead bodies
in Glacier. The world I create around each of these players expands and allows
me to explore all sorts of problems people might encounter in differing
factions of law enforcement. I have had to do a bit of research with each one,
but I enjoy learning about the various branches of law enforcement around the
area I live. Lastly, it allows me to write stand-alones while working within the
continuity of a series, which is where I presently feel most fulfilled as a
writer. Therefore, readers can start anywhere they like, just like in French’s
series, but they don’t have to feel like they’ve lost out on anything crucial involving
the main character by not reading earlier books.
So, if you’re in the position where someone is asking you, What’s next? consider the ensemble
series. It’s a great way to write stand-alones while still tapping into the fan
base that organically grows a series.
Christine Carbo is the author of an ensemble series set in
and around Glacier National Park. Her books include The
Wild Inside (2015), Mortal Fall
(2016), The Weight of Night (2017)
and A Sharp Solitude (2018, Atria
Books). She is a recipient of the Womens’ National Book Association Pinckley
Prize, the Silver Falchion Award and the High Plains Book Award. After earning
a pilot’s license, pursuing various adventures in Norway, and working a
brief stint as a flight attendant, she got an MA in English and taught
college-level courses. She still teaches, but in a different realm as a Pilates
instructor. She and her family live in Montana. Find out more at
ChristineCarbo.com. A Sharp Solitude is available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or your local independent bookseller.
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