Interview with Jonathon King http://www.jonathonking.com/

Jon: I guess the first thing I'd like to know is if you felt any pressure writing the second book after winning an Edgar Award for the first?

Jonathon: Hey, nice softball for the first question. Because of the timing, my second book was already finished and proofread before Edgar night. So, no pressure from that corner. That Edgar list is way too intimidating to even glance through. But I'll admit I feel some pressure each time out. Soon after Blue Edge caught a buzz I asked Laura Lippman if she had any advice for a rookie. She was very kind and at the end of her list, she said the only thing you really have to do each time is write a better book! Thank you, Laura. But she's right. It's a new game for me, and a challenge to do it better each time. That's where the pressure comes from.

Jon: It seems to me that authors who have a background in reporting are very disciplined in their writing. Would this be true of you?

Jonathon: I never suffer writer's block. If you're a working journalist, you've got a story deadline nearly every day. If you don't hit deadline, you're out of a job. So I'm disciplined in that I can sit down and write, every day. Even if I know I'll have to rewrite and rework, I can sit down and get words down. When I took two months away from my day job to write Blue Edge, I tried to set myself up for this new writing experience; fiction, for the first time in my life. I thought my approach would be different. But within the first week I fell into a pattern of getting down 1,400 words a day and for the next 50 days I never let myself fall below that, no matter how many hours it took. I'm not sure if that's disciplined, or anal, but I repeated it for the next two books.

Jon: Why did you wait so long to try your hand at fiction?

Jonathon: Confidence and courage. I love reading good writers and I was, and still am, in awe of what a good writer does with words. It took me 20 years of learning to write to gain the confidence in my own skill to attempt a novel. Even after I'd done dozens of magazine pieces and hundreds of storytelling newspaper accounts, even after I was comfortable using dialogue and foreshadowing and scene description in my nonfiction, I was scared of stepping into fiction. Finally in 2000 I was able to put those two months of vacation together and my wife said: 'Go away and write this book!' I still had my job. I had my families' support. All I was gambling was failure and I guess I'd finally found enough courage to play that hand. But before I start beating my chest, I'll also admit that no one saw the manuscript until Michael Connelly graciously gave it a read. With his endorsement, I had the guts to send it out.

Jon: And what made you choose the mystery/crime genre?

Jonathon: James Lee Burke showed me how poetic and literary the genre could be. Mike Connelly showed me how intriguing and human it could be. James Crumley showed me how down and dirty it could be. John D. MacDonald showed me how relevant and entertaining it could be. And Pete Dexter, whose extraordinary talent doesn't fall in the so-called crime genre even though it always holds that element, showed me how real and reflective of reality it could be. A few years ago when I started talking about doing this someone repeated the line 'If you're going to write a book, write the kind you love to read'. But hell, that was in me all along. The reading made me love it. I never considered writing any other kind.

Jon: As a bit of a rookie, is there anything about the mystery community that you find surprising?

Jonathon: The network is incredible. I thought the newspaper grapevine was plugged in because that’s what we do, ask questions, live on gossip and speculation and then try to verify it. But at my first Bouchercon in D.C., I was stunned by how tight and supportive and knowledgeable mystery people are. I didn’t have to ask for advice; people I’d just met handed it to me. And it was good advice. I still learn something about the publishing business every day, from authors, booksellers, editors, and they’re all mystery people. When Blue Edge came out, I started getting emails from writers I’d admired for years. It’s a grand club we’re in, and I’m honored to be a part of it.

Jon: Working as a reporter on the crime beat has got to have been interesting. What are some of the stranger things you saw as a crime reporter?

Jonathon: Tipped by a narcotics cop in Philadelphia, I showed up at a bust at a motel and knocked on the wrong door: The seller’s. Before I could knock twice, the barrel of a cop’s 9mm was pressed against the back of my head. When they opened the door, my Sergeant friend was on the other side. “Sorry, man. Gave you the wrong room number. We’re still trying to snatch up some buyers.” The feeling of a cold nickel pressed into the back of your head is not soon forgotten. While doing a story in a prison near Daytona Beach, I witnessed an inmate going berserk, throwing feces at the guards through his barred cell door. I watched an extraction team rush him, zap him with a 50,000-volt stun shield, and then drag him to a medical wing. While doing a human smuggling story in Haiti, I was in the most squalid slum in the world and watched several women try to give their infant children away to the orphanage priest I was with. In 2002 a suicide jumper from the seventh floor of a parking garage hit the sidewalk ten yards in front of me. I ended up interviewing the one man who tried to hold onto the jumper before he slipped from his grasp. In 1999 I followed up on a Miami boy who killed his mother and 7-year-old brother when he was 12. I visited the Va. high school where he had matriculated from the nearby psychiatric hospital and watched his new friends hug him at his graduation as the senior homecoming king and 3rd ranking student in the class. As you can see, my idea of “strange” may be skewed, but those are things that stick in my head. I also think those experiences fit my writer’s desire to create characters, rather than just stringing actions together.

Jon: What do you think is more difficult, the first draft or the editing after it’s done?

Jonathon: I think both stages have their creative parts and tedious parts. My first drafts are written during my vacation in isolation and in longhand. The best part of that stage is taking long afternoon walks to figure out what’s next, where the story is going to go. The difficult part of that stage is the cramping in my hand. I do my editing when I’m back at my day job and most of it is accomplished in the morning before work and on weekends. I start by putting my pencil scribbling into the computer. By doing it that way, I have a chance to rewrite every line, and pretty much do. That can be tedious, but I also get the chance to go back into the story, to foreshadow and bulk up major plot shifts and give more rhythm to the book. That I consider fun.

Jon: How did you go about creating the character of Max Freeman? Were there certain characteristics you wanted to include?

Jonathon: The Philadelphia shooting scene that creates Max, by changing his life forever, I’ve had in my head for years. I even tried to write it out once, not as part of a book, but just sort of doodling out some words. His isolation comes from all the great mystery men I’ve read. Sam Spade, Philip Marlowe, Travis McGee, Harry Bosch, John Rebus. I knew I wasn’t going to put him in some dusty, second-floor office over a dry cleaner with his name on the pebbled glass door, but I knew he’d be a loner. And before anyone says the loner looking for truth is an outdated character, consider the timeline those five names represent. I also gave Max some characteristics of real cops I’ve known over my career as a journalist. His wound is Tommy Gibbons’, his unflappable demeanor is Dennis Gavalier’s, ect. His coffee habit is mine; I’m addicted since I started working the 11p to 7a shift at the Daily News. His grinding is something I think we all share, whether we admit it or not. The rest of him I can’t explain. Most of him evolved during the writing and the guy is getting more complicated all the time. You all are learning more about him in every book. I’m doing the same thing, only a year before you get to see it.

Jon: Another question similar to the last, did you plan from the outset to place the series in the Everglades?

Jonathon: Yes. I’ve been fascinated by the Glades since coming to South Florida in 1984. I’ve done stories there, talked with old timers there, hung out with DEA guys watching loads of marijuana dropping from the sky there. I’ve been canoeing, fishing, frog gigging, gator spotting and snake hunting there. It is also a place that is as unique and mysterious as any place in the country and always will be because it’s difficult to access. The populated places of South Florida have always been in conflict with the Glades and I think there are always great story opportunities in conflict. But in my second book, A Visible Darkness, the crime isn’t in the Glades, and Max does not spend all of his time there in that novel and finds he can’t keep his nose out of in the city. He gets back to the Glades in the third book, Shadow Men, but I think that’s the way the series will go, in and out of the muck in both venues.

Jon: How do you avoid distractions when you write?

Jonathon: When I wrote the first draft of Blue Edge, I was able to put two years worth of vacation together in January and February of 2000. I went to my father-in-law’s cabin in the mountains of North Carolina and wrote every day, about seven hours each day. My family was home in Florida, and no one ever comes to the cabin door in winter. I have repeated that ideal setting for the first drafts of the other books. When I get back home and do the rewrites, I can’t avoid distractions. I have two young kids and a job. But focused immersion isn’t as necessary for me at that stage.

Jon: Do you think your writing might be different if you didn’t have kids?

Jonathon: The Blue Edge centers around the abduction and killing of children from the suburbs that are built on the edge of the Everglades. Those crimes are at the heart of the book. Max quits the cops in Philly because he kills a young teen in a robbery attempt. I’ve done dozens of news stories about bad things happening to children. But in the book and in those stories, I won’t let myself write graphic descriptions of crimes against kids. I don’t need it, and I don’t think the readers need it or want it. I think most of us make a gut check whenever we hear of a child being victimized whether you’re a parent or not. So, no, I don’t think my family situation ever changed my writing. That said, I’ve told my 10-year-old daughter she’s not allowed to read Blue Edge for at least a couple more years.

Jon: What kind of things do you do to relax?

Jonathon: Having a catch with my son seems to be the most relaxing thing I do lately. I gave up being a baseball fan after the 1985 strike, only four years after the '81 walkout. I swore I'd never spend another dime on the sport until they started respecting the fans. But there is nothing like throwing a ball with a seven-year-old, the smile on his face when he snowcones a catch, the simple feeling of physical human physics without any purpose but enjoyment. We could go for hours in an evening on the beach.

Jon: What would you pick as your favorite crime or mystery television program?

Jonathon: "The Wire" and "Law and Order" Jon: Can you give a hint about what's in the next book?

Jonathon: "Shadow Men" takes Max back into the Everglades, and reintroduces a favorite character of mine from Blue Edge. The requisite crime takes place 80 years ago during the building of the Tamiami Trail, the first road to cut through the swamp from Tampa to Miami. The harrowing road construction fascinated me while I was researching a piece on 100 years of development in South Florida. An unknown number of workers died in that project, blown apart by dynamite, attacked by gators, literally sucked into the muck and drown by nature. So I fictionalized the fate of one man and his teenage sons, and then pulled Max in to find out how they died. As usual, humans are involved in the most callous causes of death.

Jon: What's the best advice you were ever given about writing?

Jonathon: Show, don't tell. When I began in journalism, I swallowed that old saw that reporters were "the eyes and ears of the public." To me that meant taking the reader along with me, to the accident scene, the homicide scene, the mayor's office, the fisherman's gunwale, the crack addict's corner. In my best journalistic writing, I use description and quotes and detail that take the reader with me to places they will never see or hear or stand in. I try to carry that same lesson over to fiction writing. Show them the story, don't just tell them what happens.

Jon: When you read what makes the difference between a good book and a great book?

Jonathon: Same as above. When a book holds my interest and gives me an insight or spins a puzzling tale, it's a good book. When a story vicariously takes me to a place I can see, makes me feel like I'm unraveling the riddle, shows me the insides of the characters by their actions, that's a great book.

Jon: What was the last live music performance you saw?

Jonathon: Diana Krall. I love her music and I took my 10-year-old daughter, who was in her third year of piano lessons. I wanted her to see how much fun it can be to play in front of an appreciative audience, and that she won't always be plunking at scales.

Jon: What's something that is always guaranteed to make you laugh?

Jonathon: My son has the most incredible, unfettered and natural laughter, that I defy anyone not to laugh when they hear him start.

Jon: Is there anything you always wanted to do and haven't done yet?

Jonathon: I'm gonna cheat here and see if someone with contacts reads this and makes a dream come true. I want to sit down for an evening of conversation with James Lee Burke, Russell Banks and Pete Dexter. I don't know that I'd have anything to add to the discussion, but what a night!

Jon: What is the one thing always in your refrigerator?

Jonathon: Coffee creamer. Max takes it black, I need the edge off.