Why Don’t You Publish a New Book Every Year?
I’ve had a few good breaks when I could publish every year. And I’ve had periods when writing wasn’t possible for me. It’s never been a lack of desire on my part, and I don’t offer this as an excuse as much as I do a recognition of the challenges I’ve had to face and overcome. Most of them, beyond my family issues as a teen, come down to a single day when I was twenty-four years old, a horrific car wreck, and the injuries I received that sometimes make writing difficult for me even now.
The Blow Felt Like 'Forever.'
And in a sense, it was. I woke up twenty minutes later to find myself trapped in the wreckage, and what was left of the VW bus pointed in the opposite direction and on its side. A crowd of people had gathered, but were staring at me from a distance, I guess because they thought I’d been killed. All I really remember is being overwhelmed by the fear that the gas tank was going to explode. I kicked my way through the windshield, probably in some sort of hyper adrenaline state because kicking out a windshield isn’t an easy thing to do.
Walking Away
Not many people walk away from a rear-end collision with a tractor trailer. And as you might expect, my life changed in a significant way. I was painfully aware that my journey had just been rewritten. All of a sudden, it wasn’t an open road ahead. My story came with an ending, and I could see it now. While recovering I was lucky enough to meet Walter Tevis (The Hustler, The Man Who Fell to Earth, The Color of Money). Walter was teaching at the university and nice enough to mentor me through the process of writing my first screenplay. I’ve gathered since then that he was writing The Queen’s Gambit at around that time, so the help he gave me has even more meaning now than it did then.
These Challenges . . .
. . .and the burn that came with them, have been so much a part of my life that I wanted to make them a matter of record. If you take a closer look at my second novel, The Dead Room, you’ll notice that the civil case attorney Teddy Mack is working on before the first murder, is my accident. It’s a watered-down version because I didn’t think anyone would believe the real story. Gone is the horrible ER doctor at Washington Hospital who refused my admission without a thorough examination or x-ray, the truck driver from McCormick Spices who lied to the state police about brake failure then raced off, the firefighter who broke down my hotel room door at 5:00 a.m. and the memories I have of standing in the parking lot watching my wing of the hotel burn down, waking up the next day in a new room but paralyzed because severe neck and back injuries take a day to set in (a fact the ER doctor just happened to forget to mention), being nursed for several more days by two very kind women working at the hotel who were students from a local college.
I Could Go On . . .
. . . because the real fallout from a concussion takes about ten years to show itself. But let me just say this: I look at every book I’ve ever written as a gift. The idea that I’ve published even one novel amazes me. When I wrote The Dead Room, I was well versed in the genre and had a sense that it was an important offering. My editor did too and was shocked when I turned her down on a five-book deal. I turned her down because I wasn’t sure how long things might last for me. But after all that’s happened, things have lasted, and with a few interruptions here and there—the Lena Gamble novels and Matt Jones thriller series prove my point to perfection. I’ve always been lucky.
Frequently Asked Questions, Part 2
Here's What Happened.
It was a bright summer day in August, and I’d gotten an early start. I was on my way to beginning graduate studies in film and fine arts, heading west on I-70 through Pennsylvania with all my worldly possessions packed into a VW bus. It was sometime after lunch in the heat of the day. Traffic had been reduced to a single lane for construction but was moving. And then suddenly the tractor trailer in front of me slowed to a stop. Another tractor trailer had been following me all day, and so I checked the rearview mirror. I looked away, then turned back. The truck was hurtling toward me like a freight train at full speed. I only had three or four seconds to react. Just enough time to jam the stick shift into first gear, pop the clutch and grab hold of the wheel. That’s it. Three or four seconds.