Given your academic pedigree (the MFA, published stories in Ontario Review), what drew you to crime fiction?

I got psyched about crime fiction while at UNCW. I took a crime fiction class and a saw a lot of film noir, so there was never any razor-wire fence between my academic and my aesthetic stomping grounds.

Yeah, there's some truth to the divide between academic "literary" fiction and beach "commercial crime" fiction, since nobody would accuse James Patterson or the Kellermans of being "literary," and nobody would call Dom DeLillo or Lorrie Moore "commercial." But my heroes shred that line: Vladimir Nabokov, Joyce Carol Oates, James Ellroy, Michael Chabon, Denis Johnson, Tom Franklin. These folks tell page-turning tales of crime and mayhem, but they've got deep character, rich language, and rebel story structures. So I'm looking to these guys for my inspiration, generally.

Still, I was surprised when an actual police detective entered Pyres. I'd written a hundred pages before I realized I'd be tossing around that particular convention. I resisted some, but Investigator Hurd is tougher than I am.

But do you think there's still a bias in academia to exile genre fiction to some kind of literary ghetto?

I can’t speak for all of academia, but it sure as hell wasn’t that way at UNC-Wilmington. I got Hammett, Chandler, Highsmith, Jim Thompson. For films I got Scorsese, Mamet, Wilder, Coppola. My writing teachers: Bob Reiss writes crime books under the name Ethan Black, Clyde Edgerton writes commercially popular fiction. My mentor, Wendy Brenner, was probably the most conscientious about actual literary quality, but she mainly wanted me to avoid cliché and observe the world uniquely. She didn’t care about genre, just good writing. Plus she loves Jacqueline Susann.

Some folks I’ve mentioned, like Tom Franklin and Michael Chabon, came from writing programs. So did Donna Tartt, Dennis Lehane, and Jonathan Letham. A writer who goes through a program ought to be profoundly influenced by its teachers, I figure—otherwise, what’s the value? Each program is unique, and Wilmington happened to mold and encourage me this way. Besides, how could we be all highbrow at UNCW while episodes of "Dawson’s Creek" were being taped outside our classroom windows?

You've mentioned JC Oates, and I note that you have published in Ontario Review.  Can you expand a little bit about her influence on your work?  I think a lot of readers of crime fiction sometimes wonder what they should think of her.

A reader should feel no differently than how he feels, right? This is my feeling:

She’s one of the greats of American literature. Them, Wonderland, The Tattooed Girl, Because it is Bitter and Because it is My Heart, We Were The Mulvaneys—brilliant. Violence instigates these plots, but Oates’s novels expand far beyond genre. Genre is tropes—tidbits of convention. Oates adds fresh ingredients to the tropes. Recognizable conventions draw us in, but the fresh stuff transports us. Lesser writers write skeletal summaries that slavishly obey conventions, books that you read like you’re running a race. Oates mines her characters deeply. She lingers, and you read her like you’re exploring a haunting foreign city.

Years ago, I sent a story to "The Ontario Review" because I knew she and her husband Ray Smith published it. Having read her work, I knew we shared some sensibilities—a penchant for the macabre, for a “hypnotic” prose style, for upstate New York as a setting, and for exploring character psychology to an unsettling depth and intensity. What I didn’t expect was how supportive and generous Joyce and Ray have become. They’re publishing three of my stories, nominated me for a Pushcart Award, given me a blurb for Pyres. They kick ass, those two.

You mentioned in an earlier message that the arrival of Hurd was a bit of a surprise for you.  How did you envision the book initially?  Was this an abrupt turn of events?  What changes in your thinking resulted?

At the novel’s core is fifteen-year-old protagonist, Lucia Moberg, whose father is murdered.  I wanted to explore her grief, fear, guilt.  But when this mist of emotions became an actual story, I had to face reality: there’s going to be a cop in this book.  I was reticent for two reasons: I didn’t want to drag around detective genre clichés, and I didn’t know squat about cop work.  But I researched, got confident enough, gave her a try.  She took off.

Eventually there was a third protagonist: Tanya, the pregnant girlfriend of a bad guy.  These three women gave the novel the balance and the scope I was aiming for.  They’re a triptych, an homage to the male triptychs James Ellroy explored in The Big Nowhere and LA Confidential. But they’re all women in my case—a nod to the female-centric movies by Swedish filmmakers Ingmar Bergman (Persona, Cries and Whispers, The Silence, etc.).  

Derek:  You’ve been fortunate to be part of the inaugural class of Killer Year.  How did that come about for you, and has it given you a leg up that you might not have had?  Has your publisher stepped up for your book a little more than they might have without the Killer Year affiliation?

Summer ’06 I got an email from a publicist at Little Brown who was a UNCW alumna. I didn’t know her, but she’d read about my book, heard about Killer Year, figured KY and I might jive. I wasn’t plugged into the mystery/thriller community, so I had no clue. I contacted Jason Pinter, one of the KY founders, and off we went. My alma mater was looking out for me.
A year later, 90% of what I know about marketing and publication comes from Killer Year. I have these great friends at KY, and I’m with International Thriller Writers and the mystery/thriller scene as a whole. I’m an introvert; I wouldn’t have done it myself. I’ve got great blurbs from two of my KY brethren, a great mentor in Doug Clegg, and I got to crash Thrillerfest this year. The Killer Year anthology is coming out from St. Martin’s Minotaur in Feb—short stories from us and some of our mentors, edited by Lee Child.

The Killer Year concept is self-promotion through team effort, so our pub companies have stayed out of it, mainly. St. Martin’s has had a modest but respectable plan for my book, and KY hasn’t changed that in the least. The exception of course is the upcoming antho, through which SMP has shown true solidarity with our efforts. What plans they have for the antho I don’t know yet.

Its existence is surprise enough for me. An MFA program community is inevitable because you’re thrown together by circumstance—but these thriller/mystery writers, they seek each other out, and they’re supportive, generous, social. You look at the sick things we write about, you wouldn’t expect. Killer Year has dragged me out of the basement, since I’m sort of a loner, an introvert. I’ve got to credit them for that. •