A serial killer stalks Pittsburgh,
re-enacting the history of human sacrifice and martyrdom, attacking
religion by attacking the religious.
David,
Who are your influences?
My mystery novels are direct pastiche of
the Nero Wolfe novels by Rex Stout. I also like Raymond Chandler, Dashiell
Hammett, Ed McBain, and Janet Evanovich. As a kid I loved the Ellery Queen
stories, and of course Edgar Allen Poe and Arthur Conan Doyle. I also consider
Dan Brown an influence and in some ways Kurt Vonnegut and Michael Crichton.
When did you begin writing?
My father was a huge reader. He’d come home
from the library with six or seven novels and he’d read one a night at the
kitchen table. Quite a feat considering he only had one eye. So to impress him,
I began writing stories when I was around eleven or so. For some reason, my
writing focused on sci-fi for a long time, but eventually I drifted toward
mysteries and crime fiction.
How do you come up with your stories,
characters, character names, POV, etc?
A lot of times, I’ll be influenced by a
dream, believe it or not. Other times I’ll read something or watch a movie or
TV show and imagine a different outcome. If that idea germinates into something
I think I have to tell, I’ll start writing.
As for characters and character names, I
try to base characters on actual people so that they come across as more real,
but often as I write them they’ll start to take on individual personality
traits in my head – which is good. It makes them seem more real. For minor
characters I’ll often use a character name generator on the Internet, but for
more significant characters I use baby name sites and look up names that have
certain meanings, or I use mythology or Shakespeare or some other reference
source.
Do you work from an outline?
Most of the time, I do, but how much of an
outline depends on the story. When I am writing one of my mysteries I
definitely use an outline, and that will start out as numbers for the chapters
which I’ll then work backward and forward until I get to the middle. I do that
because I have to know how the story ends and how I am going to get there. Usually I write one or two sentences for each
chapter, but if it’s really complicated I’ll work out more for each chapter
before I start writing. Then sometimes the outline will change as I write if
the story shows me a better path.
Tell me about your favorite scene in your novel(s).
The narrator in my stories is a recently
divorced woman in her mid-thirties. Early in the first book, I have a scene
where she and the detective are investigating at a Catholic school and she
begins flirting with a male teacher on the playground. Then he realizes she’s a
reporter and thinks she’s there to write an article on the arsenic in the
lumber on the playground. So he becomes defensive and as she tries to assure
him she’s not there for the playground story, she’s there about the accused
priest; he again becomes defensive and insists the priest wouldn’t do what he’s
accused of. The scene plays out as if it’s all about how inept she is at
flirting, but she inadvertently and unwittingly winds up getting evidence the
detective later uses to solve the crime.
Can you tell us a little about your writing philosophy?
Can you tell us a little about your writing philosophy?
A lot of writers will say to write
something every day. I don’t do that. I write when the mood strikes. I also
often put off writing until my deadline (when I have one.) For some reason,
only writing when I fell pressure to finish makes the work better.
Have you ever tried writing in any other genres?
I used to write sci-fi. I liked it because
I was a Gene Roddenberry and Ray Bradbury fan. I enjoyed being able to put
social commentary disguised as alien worlds into a story. A lot of my stories had to do with paradoxes
and heavy plotting and deception. It naturally just morphed into writing
mysteries.
Do you have any interesting writing-related
anecdotes to share?
As I mentioned, a lot of my story ideas
come to me in a dream. The idea for my first Lupa Schwartz novel came that way.
I dreamt I was visiting a priest in his office and he got called away for a
moment leaving me alone by his desk. I noticed a compact and picked it up. It
was silver and I opened the compartment just as the priest came back into the
room. He shouted for me to stop, and as he slowly recapped the device he told
me it contained tainted oil he used to anoint dying people during last rights
to put them out of their misery. I woke up, and the plot for Extreme Unction
was born.
Do you listen to music as you write?
When I do listen to music it’s usually
classic rock or blues. A lot of times I write in silence. The voices in my head
and I are having a conversation, after all, and we don’t really need the
distractions.
This novel will be released in March 2015. While you are waiting for it, start the Lupa Schwartz Mysteries canon with the first in the series Extreme Unction.
Extreme Unction: When
an autopsy finds traces of the banned insecticide Chlordane in the anointing
oil on the corpse of a local big-wig, Pittsburgh police bring Lupa Schwartz, an
outspoken non-believer, into an investigation focused on a well-liked local
clergyman. Worried that the police are
planning to use him as a political fall-guy, Schwartz coerces Cattleya Hoskin,
a magazine reporter with a connection to his family’s past, to chronicle his
process and squelch any misgiving that his world-view influenced the outcome.
Suspicion in the
case is focused on Fr. Coneely, an outspoken euthanasia advocate who had
earlier made the mistake of telling the family of the now-dead man that,
hypothetically, he could safely apply poison-laden oil to their suffering
father during last rites, and nobody need be the wiser. Was Mr. Hanson the
willing victim of a mercy killing, or was a lapsing insurance policy the real
motive for one of Hanson’s five children to taint the oil?
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| J. David Core ~ Goodreads author |
Visit J. David Core
Read my review of Shared Disbelief
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