Online Author Interviews at Murder by the Book

by
Scott D. Parker

Sometimes, washing the dishes can lead to a book purchase. Oh, is that just me? Shrug. It still happened.

My wife's a great cook so she prepares most of our meals. Being the team player I am, if she cooks, I clean the dishes. It's never a problem because I'll always plug in the earbuds and listen to a podcast or a few minutes of whatever audiobook that's atop my To Be Listened To list. (Right now: the science fiction/spycraft novel The Bayern Agenda by Dan Moren).

But a little less than two weeks ago, as I moseyed over to the sink to wash up, I checked Facebook. I don't have notifications turned on, so to see what's going on over there, I have to literally tap the app and start swiping.

Right up at the top of my feed was an indication that Houston's Murder by the Book bookstore was live. Like many things online during this Covid-19 pandemic, it was an interview (Zoom meeting) between John McDougall and author J. Todd Scott.

Scott is one of those authors that has circled my radar for a few years. As a DEA agent, many of his assignments have been in west Texas and the American Southwest. More specifically, his books are set in the Big Bend region of Texas, a place I love for its stark beauty.

Seeing the interview was live, I ended up listening while washing the dishes. Scott is in many ways an author like myself. He's got a day job and writes a little bit each morning. But it was something very specific that made sit up and take notice. He mentioned a book he wrote that he liked and submitted to his agent. The agent liked it, but paused. You see, it wasn't really "on brand" for a J. Todd Scott novel. Scott said he marveled at the concept that he actually had a brand. He does.

That got me to thinking about my own brand. But that's a topic for a different post.

I enjoyed the interview so much that I called the store the next day and ordered a copy of Scott's first novel, THE FAR EMPTY. My son picked it up for me a few days later when he visited my dad. I started reading that very night. In only a few pages, I was hooked, making me wonder why it took me so long to get around to reading a J. Todd Scott novel. Dunno. Maybe the timing wasn't perfect.

But if there's a takeaway from today's post, it's this: if you are not following Murder by the Book's Facebook page, change it today. Follow their page and when you do, you'll have access not only to future live author interviews, but all the past ones you might've missed. That incluces the one from J. Todd Scott. (It's a little odd to have an author's last name be the same as my first name.) I couldn't figure out how to snag the actual link, but you can find it on 23 June 2020.

Then be sure to check Murder by the Book's webpage which has the events calendar with almost daily interviews. It's a great resource for all the time we're all spending at home, staying safe, and reading books.

Back to the classics with Beau

This week, Beau Johnson takes a quick look at some classic Neil Smith.

STEPPING INSIDE THE MIND OF A MONSTER

Buy "WHAT GOES AROUND" HERE

I’m known to most people for writing The Danny Bird Mysteries, and I’m really proud of those books, which have grown from a thing I didn’t think anyone would care about to a series that has people emailing me to demand the release date for the next one. <Spoiler: I’m still writing it>.

But a while ago, I wrote something different. Something darker. It’s about a man who is – at the very least – a sociopath, and possibly a psychopath.

 

Clarence is an errand boy-slash-enforcer for a gangster. He transports whatever needs transporting – drugs, money, women – and he does whatever needs doing, up to and including murder.

 

But Clarence has a habit. A preference. It’s not a weakness exactly, as it’s the one thing in his life he can totally control.

 

Well, most of the time.

 

Until one day his life his, work and his pleasures collide in a way you won’t see coming…

“What Goes Around” is published now as a Fahrenzine – a short self-contained story in a simple Zine-style book, limited to 100, hand-numbered copies.

 

Writing it was a strange experience. I’ve written violence before – I’m a crime writer, it goes with the territory – but to date the books I’ve had published have been told in the first person and through the eyes of Danny Bird, my everyman hero and all-round decent bloke.

 

So you might have thought that getting into the head of Clarence – a violent, misogynistic sociopath – would be a difficult experience. But I actually found it almost disturbingly easily. Clarence exists in a world where violence is currency, where murder is a business manoeuvre and where people have value only as long as they are of use to the powerful. A world where terror is normalised and where – when people end up dead – everyone simply shrugs, as though to say, ‘Shit happens.’

 

And that, to be honest, was easy to tune in to. In fact, tuning out of it – retaining my humanity, refusing to believe that some people are worth less than others – has been, for a few years now, the hard thing. If I wanted to know how people who lack empathy, decency and basic humanity look, how they sound, how they feel, I didn’t need to be a writer of fiction; I needed to be a documentarian.

 

Clarence is a self-centred torturer, a murderer and a rapist. I didn’t need to create him; I needed to switch on the TV and watch the people who lead the nations I once viewed as bastions of messy but vibrant civilised democracies leading their people into the darkness. They – and the columnists, Talking Heads and Twitter Trolls the world is awash with - gave me all the material I needed.

 

My work began when I dug a little deeper and tried to understand why Clarence was the way he was. It’s a short piece, and a pacy crime story rather than a psychological study, so there’s little room to expand on his background, but there’s one line – early in the piece – that I think explains a lot. For me, Clarence is what happens when people who have been made to feel small and helpless grow up and are given power.

 

And what happens to Clarence is - well, what happens to Clarence is something you’ll have to discover by reading “What Goes Around.” There are 100 copies of the book  and when they’re gone, they’re gone. No reprints.

Buy "WHAT GOES AROUND" Direct from the publisher HERE.