Guest Post Dietrich Kalteis (screenwriter, short stories and crime fiction author)

Why did you start to write?

I have always had my nose in books. When I was a kid, I read everything from Dr. Suess to the Hardy Boys, to the adventures of Huck and Tom. The images created for me were magic. Stories have always taken me to new places and on great adventures. This inspired me to create my own stories. It just seems like a natural progression.

When did you start to write?

I drafted a novel when I was about sixteen and kept the longhand pages in a shoebox under the bed. I wasn’t serious enough back then and never took it past the shoebox stage, but I always felt I’d come back to writing one day.

How did you become an author?

Five years ago, my wife convinced me it was time to close my graphics business and start writing full time. I guess she’d heard me say it often enough, that one day I would write. So, that’s what I did.

What was your first published piece? Where was it published?

I polished a short story I started about twenty years earlier. It’s called Early Monday and was published at Joyful! It’s a story of a man coming to terms with raising his young son alone. Next up, I wrote one called Bottom of the Ninth. It’s about a cheating wife who fakes her own kidnapping and a husband who doesn’t want her back. It was published in One Cool Word. Getting those early pieces published was very encouraging.

How often and when do you write?

I write every day. I start early and write till about noon, often returning to it in the afternoon or early evening. Mornings are generally best for me, I’m more focused and energetic then.

Reflect on your writing process.

I start with a spark of an idea that intrigues me. Sometimes it’s based on something I read, heard or experienced, other times it’s just from my imagination. For me, there has to be some element of humor to the story. From there, I do whatever research is needed and check facts. Then, I draft a very basic plot outline and develop my characters and just start writing, letting the characters drive the story. After a first draft, I go back and edit, adding depth and taking out anything that didn’t work. I might edit a couple more times until I feel it’s ready to send out.

What did you do before embarking on your writing career? Was it an asset to your writing?

I was a commercial artist for many years, so coming up with concepts and ideas is nothing new. That work also required a strong visual sense, and now, I’m creating pictures with words; so, yes, all of it has certainly been an asset.

What inspires you?

Reading something I can’t put down. As far as crime fiction goes, greats like Leonard, Ellroy and Higgins are always inspiring and always worth more than a single read.

Parting words

Well, I plan to keep on writing and having fun with it. And lastly, I want to thank you for inviting me to be your guest, Leanne. All the best.

 (Thank you, Dieter. I enjoyed reading about your author journey.)

Buy this book

Ride the Lightning

Seattle bounty hunter Karl Morgen goes after Miro Knotts on a skipped bond, finding the dope dealer wrapped around an underaged girl at a rave. Dragging Miro in the hard way gets Karl’s license revoked and Miro off with only a suspended sentence.

Finished in Seattle, Karl finds work as a process server up in Vancouver. To Karl, it seems the kind of place where people settle things with middle fingers instead of guns, the kind of place a guy could get used to. But he soon finds out otherwise.

After ducking a drug sweep by escaping north of the border, Miro seizes an opportunity to settle his score with Karl. And Karl finds himself immersed in the city’s underbelly of two-bit criminals, drug dealers and gangsters, eager for another crack at the scumbag who had his license revoked.

“Dietrich Kalteis will be deservedly compared to Elmore Leonard, but he is an original voice. Ride the Lightning is a great story filled with wonderfully flawed characters.”

– John McFetridge, author of Dirty Sweet and Black Rock.

“…it sustains a breakneck pace without sacrificing character to action, or action to character. Kalteis made me care about his cast of lowlifes, screw-ups and marginals.”

– Peter Rozovsky, Detectives Beyond Borders

Read the full review in Detectives Beyond Borders

Dietrich Kalteis's short stories have been widely published, and his screenplay Between Jobs was a finalist in the 2003 Los Angeles Screenplay Festival. 

Visit him at: http://dietrichkalteis.blogspot.ca

www.facebook.com/dietrich.kalteis

Guest Post Author E R Brown

Marc Emery and me, or

How do you research a subject like grow-ops, when you don’t smoke weed?

My book, Almost Criminal, is about a young man who is seduced into the grow-op business. As one online reviewer put it, it’s a view “into the BC drug trade through the eyes of Tate, a brilliant teenage screwup.”

In every reading I’ve given, and every author Q & A session, one subject is certain to arise. Even my mother asked, “How do you know so much about marijuana? How much research did you do?” At least she was nice enough not to use that nudge-nudge, wink-wink tone of voice.

So, I’ll state this again, just for the record: I don’t smoke. Not cigarettes, cigars, pipes; not tobacco or cannabis or any of the products derived therefrom. There was a time when I did, but that time has passed.

But yes, I did research the subject. It took time, but I established an arms-length relationship with someone “inside” who checked facts for me. My home library grew to include titles like Bud Inc. (Ian Mulgrew); The Cannabible (Jason King); and Marijuana Grower's Handbook: Your Complete Guide for Medical and Personal Marijuana Cultivation (Ed Rosenthal and Tommy Chong). If you want advice on how to set up the plumbing for a basement grow-op, just ask. If you want to know the difference between varieties of pot, I’ve got the breakdown from Alaskan Thunderfuck to Vietnamese Black.

My book is a crime novel. It’s not about marijuana, it’s about crime and society, and how my protagonist makes it through. It’s neither pro-pot nor anti-pot. Which brings me to Marc Emery, Canada’s self-proclaimed Prince of Pot, who’s serving a ten-year jail term in a US federal prison near Yazoo City, Michigan. When I was seeking “advance readers” - people who might write a nice blurb to go on the book’s cover - I thought of Marc.

It took some digging (more research!) and some help from Marc’s wife, but I managed to reach him. Marc was happy to read the book. “I have time on my hands,” he wrote. As a result, my name is now in the federal corrections system’s CorrLinks database.

Marc was enthusiastic until my protagonist makes his first visit to a grow-op. The experience I described was not right, he said. I described a teen’s somewhat smart-ass reaction: Tate is not impressed. Marc complained that a grow-op is “sexy, the smells are wonderful, spicy, peppery, pungent.” He implied strongly that it was a near-religious experience.

Now, I know what a grow-op smells like. It’s earthy and damp, and the fertilizers are either chemical or, um, natural. Spicy and peppery wouldn’t be my words. I’m sure that, for Marc, visiting a grow-op is a near-religious experience. But he’s an activist, and he has an agenda that is wrong for my story. I think that, if I were strongly pro-pot (and engaged in the kind of "research” that people jokingly ask me about) my novel would not be the same.

Marc didn’t blurb my book. But he was helpful: he found technical errors that my previous source had missed, for which I’m grateful. He also described a technique for packaging marijuana so it’s undetectable at the border. I didn’t include that in the book. Research is one thing, but I didn’t feel like telling any casual reader how to beat the cops.

I’m sure my mom would agree.

E.R. Brown is a Canadian writer of crime fiction. His first novel, Almost Criminal, was published in April 2013. An award-winning advertising copywriter, he worked as a stagehand, recording engineer, technical writer and chandelier cleaner before settling down and writing for a living. His short stories have been published in literary magazines and broadcast on CBC Radio. He was born and grew up in the Montreal area,  and now lives in Vancouver.  

book: Almost Criminal (Dundurn, 2013) ISBN 978-1459705838
website: www.erbrown.com

Booklist review (starred),  May 2013

Almost Criminal: Tate MacLane is too smart for his own good, a sort of misguided prodigy. Prematurely graduated from high school, he was tossed out of university (“socialization issues”). Now 17, he’s working at a coffee shop in Wallace, British Columbia, a “hopeless corner of nowhere” and dreaming of finding a way to get back to Vancouver and back to school. Along comes Randle Kennedy, a marijuana grower. Until the drug is legalized, he’s growing medical weed, and the Canadian cops tend to be lenient if they know you’re in the medicinal side of the business. But make no mistake: Randle’s a drug dealer. And young Tate is now working for him. When Tate discovers the truth about the life he’s wandered into, he knows it will take more than his keen intellect to get him out safely. Tate is a fresh narrative voice, and Randle, who could have been a fairly stereotypical drug-dealing villain, has surprising depth; he’s even a weird sort of father figure for young Tate. If you took a gritty crime novel and a coming-of-age story and squashed them together, you might get something very close to this excellent book.


Rick Mofina (bestselling author of the Reed and Sydowski series):
E.R.Brown hits it out of the park – great characters and storytelling evocative of Elmore Leonard.

Robin Spano (author of the Clare Vengel Undercover series of novels):
ALMOST CRIMINAL is a wildly fun read. The concept is original, characters are vivid and fleshed-out, and the story surprised me at each turn, with its unlikely teen hero turning conventional morals upside down. E.R. Brown is an exciting addition to the Canadian crime scene.

Guest Post: About Robin Spano's radio interview

On Canada Day, CBC interviewer ‘Kevin Sylvester (spoke) with…four of Canada’s most exciting new mystery writers…

Robin Spano…author of two novels featuring Clare Vengel, the latest being Death Plays Poker…

Hilary Davidson…author of 18 books and two mystery novels involving the travel writer, Lily Moore, the latest is The Next One to Fall

Deryn Collier ‘author of the just-published mystery novel Confined Space.’

Ian Hamilton ‘author of a very successful series of mystery novels featuring forensic accountant Ava Lee. There are three in print; the latest is The Wild Beasts of Wuhan. The fourth is due out this fall.’ (From The Sunday Edition web site)

Robin, I have a few follow-up questions inspired by the interview.

(Robin Spano's website)

-You spoke about being interested in writing mysteries because you saw it as a way to combine art and science. Please explain further.

RS – Like a science, mystery writing has laws that govern its logic: you need clues & red herrings in the right balance, careful pacing to keep the action moving forward, and the final reveal should be both a surprise oh my god moment and a natural ah, of course conclusion based on the seeds you have planted.

But writing is also a creative process. You have to let go of logic and allow characters to run around freely while they sort out who they are and how they react to each other. You have to open yourself emotionally, let your characters be as dark and twisted – or as sweet and tender – as they like.

I find the formula comforting, because science has always come more naturally to me than anything emotionally open or artistic. But with each book I write, I feel myself letting go of the reins a bit more, blending more creativity in with my science – and as result, with each novel I feel a lot closer to finding characters who breathe like humans.

-You spoke about your feelings toward your central character as being similar to the feelings a mother has for her child. You said that you were interested in watching Clare Vengel grow up. By these comments it appears that character development is very important to you. For you as the author, is it as important, less important, or more important than solving the actual crime itself.

RS – You're dead right: the most exciting part for me is watching Clare grow. The crime is the backdrop – it's Clare's challenge, her motivating force to acquire new skills and shed her emotional barriers in order to solve the case. But it's Clare's growth arc that is front and center for me.

-How do you map the character development that will occur during the novel?

RS – I don't map it as much as I like to throw Clare curve balls. In Death Plays Poker, I sent her undercover as a spoiled trust fund princess because I thought she had too much of a reverse snobbery chip on her shoulder as well as an unfounded loathing of feminine fashion. When the case ends, she hasn't adopted all of her high-maintenance character's ways, but she contemplates refreshing her manicure and figures it's okay to keep a bit of pink in her wardrobe.

It's important to me that Clare matures as a cop in each book. She's young and makes a lot of mistakes at first – some of which repeat themselves, but most of which she learns from.

And there's her love life. At the beginning of the series, Clare doesn't trust men, so she sleeps with a lot of them, telling herself that that's how she maintains control. She wants to fall in love, but her impulse is to push someone away when they get close to her. A couple of men – Kevin and Noah, particularly – manage to break through Clare's cold front, forcing her to ask herself what she wants and why she might be resisting. I had a lot of fun with the romance angle in Death Plays Poker.

-Please share tips on character development.

RS – Know your character's flaws. Pretend they're your friend or family member and you want to help them get past those flaws to live a happier life. It's pretty rare that the solution is to tell them directly how to fix their problems. In fact, it's usually life that has to throw them a curve, and someone grows based on their reaction to the challenge. So my answer is to throw your character that curve. Watch them react. Help guide them in their reaction toward learning to be stronger.

-I have to ask. You said you were angry when you began to write your first novel. What were you angry about? Was the situation eventually resolved? Was writing the novel an effective form of therapy?

RS – My husband owned a pool hall and I was helping him run it. It was a fun club – we're still friends with lots of our customers and staff from there – but by-laws came in and taxes went up and it got harder and harder each year to make a living. Other business owners in Toronto felt the pain just as severely – several closed, and others moved to the suburbs where taxes were lower. I blamed the politicians for the conditions (and I still do, to a certain extent) but I think my real frustration was that I felt like Sisyphus – working my ass off night and day and going nowhere real. My husband was less frustrated because he loved the work itself – he loves people, he loves business, he loves challenges. So while he would have liked the bar to be making more money, he was happy to have a job where he enjoyed going to work each day.

Which is exactly what happened for me when I started writing. I loved opening my file called “Dead Politicians” and getting to work. As soon as the fictional mayor was dead on my fictional page, I felt like I was connecting to my own goals. Toronto's political climate hadn't changed, but my rage finally had an outlet – and that outlet was the springboard to the career I now love. So I wrote a very lighthearted first novel, probably because I was ebullient with joy that I'd found a way to stop pushing that damn rock up the hill.

-Do you often use your writing as therapy?

RS – Yeah, I've never had a good therapist so I had to turn to fiction. Ha, but seriously, yes: fiction does help me resolve issues.

- Does your life often inspire your writing?

RS - Yes, but in surprising ways. Most recently, it's my little nephew in Toronto who I can't get out of my head. (And I like him in my head, so this works.) I find him crawling into my fiction all over the place.

-You said that a sense of justice was an important element in a mystery. Please expand on this concept.

RS – It's one of the formula factors – you need to tie the loose ends, answer all the questions that you raise. It's like a contract with your readers: they're entering the story knowing that you – through your protagonist – will make things right in the end. The murder will be avenged and the bad guy will go down.

-Would you ever consider writing a literary novel or in writing in any other genre other than mystery? Why or why not?

RS – Right now I'm happy writing crime fiction because I love the challenge of plotting as much as I love character development. I'm playing with a techno-thriller now – similar to a mystery in many ways, but with more action and suspense.

But if an idea came to me that didn't want to hang on a crime plot, I'd run with that, too. I love reading literary novels – especially writers like Jessica Westhead and Angie Abdou, who make literary reading as fun as any genre book – so I don't see why I wouldn't one day try to write one.

-You mentioned that you were about to read the novel The Professionals. Please give us a short review.

RS – Owen Laukkanen's writing is extremely skilled – he has a creative writing degree from UBC, and it shows – and the novel's concept is fun and original. Owen takes ordinary smart, college-educated people and shows how they could become hardcore criminals almost without realizing it's happening. And he does it in a page-turning way. Highly recommend.

-What was the best and least enjoyable part of being interviewed on CBC radio?

RS –    The best: being with three good friends & a fun host and chatting books.

            The worst: listening afterwards and thinking, man, I could have said that better.

-How did you find Kevin Sylvester as an interviewer?

RS – Fantastic. He was warm, smart & funny, and he made us feel relaxed. He asked questions that made me think.

Thank you for visiting my blog.