Speaker 0 00:00:00 You are listening to right on radio on camp BI 9.3 FM and streaming live on the
[email protected]. I'm Liz hall and I'm Annie Harvey tonight on, right on radio, Liz old stocks to Eric, M Johnson and American journalists, novelist and outdoorsman, born and raised in Chicago. He now lives in Seattle where he writes about Boeing and the billionaire space race for writers news, whatever a happy thing falls is his first novel and on Josh Webber. In the second part of the show, we'll be featuring one of our legacy interviews, featuring a discussion with an author from the past and the show all the, some more. So stay tuned to write on radio. Hello, Eric, are you there? Oh, great. Great. Why don't you start with your reading.
Speaker 1 00:01:18 Great. Thanks for having me appreciate the introduction. So I am going to be reading, uh, two scenes from my book where the protagonist, who's a young, recent graduate, and he's working at an investment banking firm and he's increasingly confronting the massage and the racism and the greed and a toxic culture. And he starts confronting the other bankers and challenging them on it. And so these will be two examples of that. 3:01 PM. The Chicago Tribune reported a hostage situation at Ogilvy train station on Madison Avenue where Frederick's fails. Boss caught his train to the suburbs. Bail went to inform him Frederick's hostage situation, mad men with guns at Ogilvy. Frederick didn't even nod his head. Yeah. The trains are all backed up. Fredericks. There's a man slaying people in the train station. I think there were a couple of dead already. He's holding others hostage inside and emptied out corner bakery, right?
Speaker 1 00:02:22 Yes. I saw Frederick said, aren't you bothered by this bail said Frederick stopped typing. He made a quarter turn. So bale could see his pockmarked cheek twitching. There was always some wacko or fundamentalists shooting or blowing something up. He said, the question is, how will it affect me in a sense, of course, that has to be the most basic initial reaction to violence bail set. But don't you care that people are dying? People I never met. Frederick said yes, no man, I don't. I prefer they didn't, but I can't control anything in my life except my own actions. I just try to put my head down and get on with it. He swiveled around in his chair to face bale. Look, my dad was a road construction worker, paved roads and flag cars all around Dubuque. One day a maniac driver mowed down his entire work crew on route 20. He was the only one that survived was away on breaks. Finishing a cigarette afterward. He didn't donate blood or move to an ashram in India or even change jobs. He walked in the front door, sat down at dinner and said meatloaf again. Martha
Speaker 1 00:03:37 1:27 AM. The 15 books were correlated bound, stacked shimmering, and the glare of corporate fluorescent lighting. They both stood there, McAlester and bale with their arms wrapped around their chests, looking at their creation. McAllister was bail's other boss. All right, McAllister said, let's go through them. They'll grab the stack and plop them on the filing cabinet. McAllister stared at the larger pile of remaining books and grew irate over his assumption that bale was slyly, trying to offload work on a higher ranking associate. Don't be a Jew. McAllister said grabbing the remaining books and dumping them on bales pile. What the hell man? They all said, what the hell? What McAllister said, reaching for the pile without thinking bail swiped McAlister's arm away from the pile saying, why are you saying racist stuff? To me, McAllister shoved his arm down and stepped an inch from Bale's face.
Speaker 1 00:04:39 They all shoved him back. But McAllister quickly grabbed two fistfuls of bales shirt and flung them up against the filing cabinets, causing a green potted plant fall and shatter on the carpeting. They clawed at each other veins, jumping out over their Ruby skulls as they flailed and Kirsten Spitz, McAllister swung bale toward another cabinet, which he slammed into tearing his shirt from NAPE to waste both McAllister and Bell's eyes grew wide at the gashing sound and they instantly stopped fighting the Callister rested his poems on his knees, panting his bell grappled with the back of his shirt to appraise the damage. They took seats on the carpet beside each other. McAllister leaned his skull against the cabinet bale cracked his knuckles. They both knew the fight was about more than just a slur. The difference was that McAllister didn't care for bail. In that moment, it seemed as if all of American life boils down to an endless war between spitefully evil bastards and those trying to marginally disrupt their influence.
Speaker 2 00:05:43 Great. This is Eric Johnston reading some, um, excerpts from whenever a happy thing falls, his new novel. Uh, why don't you there's bail kind of goes back and forth between investment banking and wanting to be a writer. Why don't you talk a little bit about how you put that together and what your thoughts are about that?
Speaker 1 00:06:06 Yeah, absolutely. Um, so in the book, basically, he's when, when you first encounter him chronologically, he's in London and he's studying poetry and fiction and he's working at a newspaper and he's dating, he has a budding romance with a, with an amazing, beautiful, uh, precocious actress. And everything's great. And then his, his father issues him an ultimatum and just says, listen, look in life. You have to choose economic security. You have to take, take a serious job. You have to get yourself together. And the father's got some ulterior motives there that I don't really want to get into cause it gives away too much. But the bottom line is he's torn like a lot of young people onto these, this question of whether he should be following his passions or whether there's some sort of set specific, um, track that he should be on. That's going to give him a safer life.
Speaker 1 00:06:57 And so in the book structurally, I pivot between him at this crushing, stressful, dramatic tense job at the investment bank. And then I pivot to London where you see him in this other life and really enjoying himself. I mean, we switched back and forth as the tension builds to a sort of a climax. And then he decides, okay, the central tension in the book really is can he find a way to extract himself from this culture? Or is he at risk of actually becoming one of these people and separately, can he find a way to maybe change the culture and go and follow his passions? And so the drama builds and builds and builds until, um, he escapes one day and, and flees through his family's rural cabin in Michigan to sort of appraise the situation and figure out what he's going to do and how he's going to save his own life.
Speaker 2 00:07:55 And what exactly does the title mean?
Speaker 1 00:07:59 Whenever a happy thing falls. So it's actually, um, it's actually taken from a line in Roca it's, um, and we who I've ever, uh, who I've always thought of happiness as rising would feel the emotion that almost overwhelms us whenever a happy thing falls. And so it's a real component from the, from the do I know allergies. Um, and I was just always drawn to that because if you, if you're looking at the cover of the book, there's a picture of a dancer and he's executing, what's called the belong, which is one of the most incredibly athletic difficult moves in dance where you, the dancer appears to spend it in the air and the mom in the book named him after that dance move, because she really wanted him to muster the strength to get away from his father's toxic grasp. And so that's, that's where that comes from.
Speaker 2 00:08:52 Okay. Uh, now how do I ask this question and just like three parts to it. I'm curious how, you know, some like, yeah, really, you probably know about that being a journalist, how do you know so much about investment banking, but also is it based on your own experiences and what prompted you to write this book?
Speaker 1 00:09:13 Yeah, yeah. It's a great question. I think so, so definitely I, I, I graduated college and I studied economics in English and I, I just made a wrong choice. Personally. I chose, I chose a job working at an investment bank in Chicago. And so, you know, I mean, I have a, I am a journalist. And so even, even while I was at the bank, I actually kept a little notebook and was writing down some of the things that the colleagues would say. So I kind of a massive miss material. And, um, for me, actually, the, the, I was trying to think of the exact moment when I decided, you know, look, this is not for me. This is the wrong culture. And I want to, I want to be a writer. I'm passionate about writing. I love writing. And I was in the bank and it was, you know, on my 85th hour of work.
Speaker 1 00:09:59 And I got a call from a college friend who said that a guy we played soccer with on our team had died unexpectedly. One of these freak tragic accident. And one of the colleagues at the bank overheard this conversation and asked me about it afterwards. And, uh, I told them what happened to my friend and he just burst out laughing. And he just said, you know what, an idiot. And I literally grabbed my yellow legal pad, went directly to a bar, overlooking the Chicago river and wrote down what would become one of the first scenes in the book where McAllister, the associate comes into the office at 7:00 AM and finds bail, the protagonist, literally sleeping on the floor after pulling his third all-nighter and I became quickly disillusioned. But that world, um, you know, look, I, I still have friends in that world. I'm not here to say all bankers are evil.
Speaker 1 00:10:57 I'm not, I wasn't trying to write an opt-in Sinclair, you know, jungle type expos. But I do think, I do think that the industry, the financial industry, you know, is wrestling with a lot of the questions that we're wrestling with in America, gender pay, inequality, racism, uh, homophobia, um, you know, and these sorts of questions. And I was in that culture and I saw those things and I know that things need to change. And so, you know, look, um, I, I didn't last very long in that industry. I, I, uh, I actually quit in a spectacular fashion. I only a couple of weeks after I wrote the, those first few pages, I threw my phone into the Chicago river and then went right into the office of the head of investment banking. And I just said, listen, this is not for me, I'm out. And, uh, when I went and wrote the draft of my novel, and so I drew inspiration from it. And, um, you'll see a lot of that in the book. It's a true resting
Speaker 2 00:11:54 That you threw your phone away. My, one of my colleagues and I were talking about how, uh, we were talking about all the work that the, you guys did, the many hours that you put in. And, and, uh, we decided that because you always want to always has a phone with them that they're always on you, you never get a moment where you're away from from that. And so you can always be found and always called in to work another 20.
Speaker 1 00:12:20 Totally, totally. And as a journalist, you know, that you're always checking your phone. There's always another Twitter post. And I just think like, especially during COVID, I mean, we all just need to find ways to get away, you know, and get, get away from our technology. And I mean, I'm literally talking to you in the middle of Idaho where I drove from Seattle to go fly fishing. And, and I'm just, you know, like you said, I'm going to turn the phone off and spend a few days rowing down the river and that's it, you know? So, uh, it's, it's definitely, it's, it's weighing on people, you know? Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:12:52 Yes, it is a cool, totally personal question. Where in Idaho are you?
Speaker 1 00:12:58 I am actually in St. Maries, Idaho. Are you familiar with Northern Idaho?
Speaker 2 00:13:02 So I went to school in Moscow.
Speaker 1 00:13:05 Oh my God. Oh no. Okay. Well, so I drove to, um, St. Regis Montana. It's a fish, the Clark fork, but by the time we got there, it was like muddy. So we had to pivot and then we drove back and now we're in St. Marie's. So, yeah, no, it's gorgeous here.
Speaker 2 00:13:20 Beautiful. Uh, okay. Well, enough personal stuff,
Speaker 1 00:13:26 You didn't call it. Talk about fly fishing.
Speaker 2 00:13:27 No, no. The, uh, men in this novel are pretty sexist and racist and homophobic and cutthroat kind of like mad men on steroids is what made me think of, um, is it really that bad? It's really that bad?
Speaker 1 00:13:45 Well, look, I, you know, I wanted to take a journalistic approach to this novel. I, I, a lot of the characters are composites, but I drew on real-world experience. I, I absolutely, um, you know, exaggerated and embellished a few things for dramatic flare, of course. Um, and, and look, you know, I gave you kind of the, some of the worst characters, right? A lot of people in finance are just, you know, regular people, you know, putting in their time, trying to make a living, you know, families, all the normal stuff. But, um, you know, the strange thing about humans is, you know, it's the worst of us that, that sometimes has the biggest impact on the world. Um, the worst of us are filled with passionate intensity as the eights put it. And so, um, that I captured some of that, but look, I didn't want to write a sad book.
Speaker 1 00:14:39 I really don't want people to think that there was romance in this book and the character is on a journey to get away from this world. And he's got, you know, there's this romance that he has with, with the girl, he's got a, really, a best friend who is his moral compass, and he's helping him through plotting away out to do it. It's a redemption story, right? So bail at the end has to figure out a way to make things right. He has to get himself out of this culture and maybe there's ways that he can change the culture. And I don't want to give away too much, but he does figure out a way to have a meaningful impact there. And also there's a homeless man in downtown Chicago that he sort of be friends as he's watching this very materialistic, uh, greed, fueled life. And he starts to be fighting this homeless man. And he figures out a way to help him. And I, again, I, I keep kind of chipping away towards the end of it, but it's a green ending. It's a positive ending. And it's really hopeful.
Speaker 2 00:15:38 Yeah. It was kind of the hero's journey. Really. Absolutely. Um, so, uh, more on a, you level, a lot of, uh, novelists start out as journalists and vice versa. And I'm wondering what you like more,
Speaker 1 00:15:54 Oh man, that is a really tough question. Oh, well, listen, this is my, this is my first book. And I have to tell you that writing, it was, as everybody knows, it's a difficult process. It takes years and revisions and all that, but I will tell you that the last 40 pages pulling it all together in the way in the way that I did try to do, I'm just really proud of it. And I really think that it gave me such a great ceiling and I I'd love to do it again. Um, and so, you know, you don't, as a writer, you know, you don't always get that feeling. Um, you know, you write a story and it's great and you move on to the next one, but there's something about novel writing that is actually that's really special. Um, and just a personal story on that is, you know, I didn't grow up writing.
Speaker 1 00:16:44 I wasn't like the Truman Capote where I'm writing short stories. When I'm four years old, I was into, I was into sports and I, uh, you know, I was okay in school, but I never really got into reading and writing until later. And it was really my last two years of high school when I had, I had a wonderful teacher who really, really took me to task. And he said, listen, you have a voice and you have a story to tell, and you're wasting your own time and you're wasting my time. And I want you to take this seriously. And at the time we were reading, it was 20th century British literature. So we were reading, you know, Joy's portrait of the artist, a young man, we were reading Gates and I, and he really pushed me and ignited a fire within me on writing.
Speaker 1 00:17:28 And, um, the tragic part of it was, is that, you know, he helped me with my writing and we were friends and he actually died, um, my senior year. And so, um, I, it was a real, it was a real difficult period, but I thought, okay, he sent me on this path and, and, and I, and I almost, I, I'm just so glad that I got this done almost for him. And, and, and I, and I just, I'm, I'm definitely gonna keep, keep writing fiction, um, and journalism, as you know, I mean, it's, it's thrilling and exciting. And I get to write about Boeing and corporate crises, and I get to write about Eli Musk and rockets, and, you know, it's a, you know, I love all of it really, but I think fiction, I definitely have more to do on fiction.
Speaker 2 00:18:15 I'm curious, you talked about drafts and time and what, and a, how many drafts and how long did this one take you?
Speaker 1 00:18:25 So after I quit my job in banking in spectacular fashion, my now my wife, but at the time, my girlfriend and I, we moved to Zagreb Croatia, and I got to spend the year writing the first draft of this book. And I was living the total writer's life in Europe. Right. I was in the cafes and I was drinking in the clubs and I was spending all day reading and writing and, you know, smoking cigarettes and all that. And I came back to the States and I, and it was crazy. I immediately got an agent. I was, you know, in the throws of doing revisions. And then of course, I mean, nothing can be that easy in, in fiction. Uh, the agent decided to quit the big New York agency and, and none of the other agents were looking at to take on, on, uh, new writers.
Speaker 1 00:19:13 And so they, you know, I basically shelved it for a couple years and came back to it. And then, you know, I worked on it. Um, really, you know, I wrote another draft, so maybe, you know, a couple of three drafts, but it, it took a long time. Um, and you just have to stick with it. You know, everybody knows that. Right. But, um, you know, I found a great, great, I had a great, great editor in Mary was new ski, a Chicago journalist in another East coast editor, Victoria stall helped me get the book in shape and a great publisher. So it, it happens. You just have, it's really a grueling process, no matter who you are.
Speaker 2 00:19:47 What about the techniques? Do you get your butt in the chair every day? You go down to the cafe and smoke a few cigarettes. I mean, what, what is your technique to do the writing?
Speaker 1 00:19:59 Right. It's so funny. Cause I have the exact opposite experience now as a full-time professional journalist and a father with a four-year-old and an 18 month old and a wonderful supportive life. Um, and so I don't have the, I don't have the leisurely reading in the park type writing environment that I had one time. So I, you know, you carve out time whenever you can. You know, you, if an idea comes to you, you, you pull over and you type on your iPhone, you go for long walks, whatever you can do to find that time. Um, and I'm very lucky to do it and, you know, um, it's just a matter of, look, if it's a passion, if it's something, you know, I write because I'm compelled to do it, I'm obsessed with it. I can't not do it. And so it's, yeah, I'm kind of lucky in that way that I don't have the struggle to, you know, go on a big retreat or, or having to go get an MFA. I can just do it on my own time whenever I can.
Speaker 2 00:20:59 Yeah. I just want to go back and make a remark about something you said before. Isn't it amazing to have a good teacher?
Speaker 1 00:21:08 Oh my God. I mean, it's, I would say, I mean, I am in no position to give advice. I'm a first-time novelist and you know, you've talked to some very, very accomplished people, but I would, I have to say finding, finding people who are geniuses that you trust and whether that's a teacher, whether that's an editor, whether that's a friend, finding someone you can share your writing with and get feedback to get out of your own head. And, and, and that's, that's crucial. And I think also structure, I think it's really not set enough that, you know, literally if you can write out the framework of the structure of the story that, that you, that you want to tell, it just makes the writing process so much easier. I mean, the story might change. The characters are going to change, but if you know where you're going with it, it's like Bob Dylan said, I knew my song before I started singing. If you, if you can do that, that's the only other thing I would say.
Speaker 2 00:22:03 Cool. Well, we have a couple minutes left, just a couple. Uh, what have you got in the hopper next?
Speaker 1 00:22:10 Oh, in the hopper. So I have a, another idea for a novel. I've got some short stories I'm working on, but I have to say, I mean, fingers crossed I've a couple of production companies have, are reading it for potentially optioning it. So, I mean, I would love, love, love to write the screenplay or at least collaborate on it if I can. So, you know, it's, it's kind of, we'll kind of see, you know, but right now I'm just absolutely loving this moment. Right. Getting to talk to people like you and, and share it, share the book. I hope people like it. I hope it resonates with people and, and, uh, yeah.
Speaker 2 00:22:45 Cool. Well, we have to go. We've been talking with Eric Johnson about his novel, whenever happy thing falls. And it's been a wonderful conversation. Thank you so much, Eric.
Speaker 1 00:22:59 Thank you so much for having me really appreciate
Speaker 2 00:23:00 It. Daycare. And now this
Speaker 1 00:23:03 <inaudible>, she's so more under 30, she was pretty before someone decided to turn the left side of her bill into a bloody prepper, lump, no stunner, but pretty enough. And she worked hard at it. She has on a truckload of makeup for work and come right. Her nose and her chin would be little girl cute. Only to have that just becomes a long-term little starvation, her mouth hanging open, showing small bleach teeth and clotted blood is good, soft, and full with a group to the bottom lip that looks Witless now, but was probably appealing
Speaker 3 00:23:46 Yesterday under the three blended shades of eyeshadow horizon slid open, staring up into a corner of the ceiling. I say, I've seen her before. Steve's head comes up fast. Yeah. Where I'm not sure I've got a good memory. Steve calls it photographic. I don't because I'd sound like a tosser, but I know when I've seen someone before and I've seen this woman, she looked different than younger, but that could have been because she had more weight on her. Not fat. Exactly, but soft and a lot less makeup, careful foundation, a shade darker than her skin. Thin mascot. The end, her hair was Brown and wavy. Then don't open the clumsy twist Navy skirt suit. I touched two tight high heels that made her ankles wobble, grown up clothes or some big occasion, but the face, the gentle snub nose, a soft boop of the bottom, that those were the same.
Speaker 3 00:24:40 She was standing in sunlight, swaying forward towards me, palms coming up high voice of the trembling. Please. I really need a meat blank faced leg twitching with impatience thinking pathetic. She wanted something from me, help money, a list advice I wanted her gone. Steve says work could have been the blank face, took willpower on my own time. I would have just told her to get lost. He says, we'll run it through the system. As soon as we get back to HQ, if she came in with a domestic violence complaint, I never worked. DD would have had to be back when I was in uniform and I don't. I shake my head. I don't remember anything like that. I wouldn't have been itching to get rid of her. Not if she'd been getting the slots, the slit open eyes, give her face a sly, look like a kid cheating at hide and seek. Sorry.
Speaker 4 00:25:43 I'm sorry. Was that the end or are you going to keep going?
Speaker 3 00:25:46 Yeah. And that's the end. I didn't like, I didn't know until five minutes ago that you needed to possibly. So the first thing is that at all.
Speaker 4 00:25:53 Yeah, no, that's great. That's great. You've been listening to Tanya French reading from her new novel, the trespasser now out in paperback. She is also the author of in the woods, the likeness faithful place, broken Harbor and the secret place among her awards are the Edgar award. The Macavity, the Anthony, the Berry, the Los Angeles times award for best mystery thriller and the Irish book award for crime fiction. Ton of French. Welcome to right on radio.
Speaker 3 00:26:28 Thank you very much for having me on
Speaker 4 00:26:30 Tell us a little bit about the story before we go too far into it. Uh, it's uh, essentially a murder mystery.
Speaker 3 00:26:38 Yeah, it is. It's the now it's detective, I'm trying to Conway. Who's on Dublin's murder squad and she is not getting on. Well, there, she's kind of a tough cookie. She's hard edge. She's abrasive. She doesn't play well with others. And she got off on the wrong foot in the squad things spiraled from there. And now she's at the receiving end of a campaign of harassment. Everything from humiliating, pranks to straight out sabotage and she and her partner get a case that at first glance looks like a standard lover's TIFF. It's a young woman dead in her home next to a table set for a romantic dinner. For two, it looks like the boyfriend came over, something went wrong. He punched her at the end, but as they investigate, they find, they realize that one of their own squad is in way too much of a hurry for them to arrest the boys. Then close the case and move on and they have to figure out, is this just lazy policing or is it part of a campaign to get rid of Antoinette, to get her, to make such a huge mistake that she will be booted off the squad? Or is there something deeper, darker going on
Speaker 4 00:27:42 <inaudible> and essentially this is a character, a character study of two women. One is Antoinette Conway, and one is your victim. Aislynn Marie. And they, they both share a lot of similarities.
Speaker 3 00:27:57 Yeah. They share similarities, but also some major differences for both of them. They both grew up with, uh, an absent father and twin nets went missing when she will then go missing. But he did a runner basically when her mother was still pregnant with her and actually was, uh, vanished one day when Ashlynn was only 10, but they've dealt with that in very different ways. And when that has dealt with it, by deciding that there is no way that this fact is going to define her life in any way, the fact of her father, who he was, the fact that he's gone is not going to make any difference to who she is, what she does. She never even thinks about him. Whereas Ashlynn allowed her father's disappearance to define her life, everything that she was in did, but as the book continues until that's kind of forced to confront the fact that her father's absence has in fact defined the way that she relates to the world in ways that she didn't really want to admit to herself and that she's going to need to do something about that.
Speaker 4 00:28:55 Yeah. She seems to constantly be spoiling for a fight. And part of that is, as you mentioned, the, the harassment that she gets from the murder squad, but it seems that part of it is just this general anger at the world brought about by the disappearing father.
Speaker 3 00:29:11 She's very defensive, very defensive. And yet, as you say, constantly looking for a fight and part of it is that she's grown up, you know, the only mixed race kid in a very, very white environment, she's the only woman on male squad. But part of it's just her because of that early experience with her father, she's so determined that no one will ever define who she is, that she's constantly lashing out at people who aren't necessarily trying to do any such thing has this narrative in her head where she is the lone warrior fighting against enemies from all sides, you know, going down, fighting. And in the course of the book, she kind of asked to realize that that narrative may not be entirely consistent with the reality. It's not completely made up from scratch, but it may not be entirely what's actually going on.
Speaker 4 00:30:04 Yeah. And that's another thing that you bring up during the course of the novel. You mentioned this several times throughout the book that people create stories in their own heads. Of course, they're always the heroes of their own stories. And that plays a big role, not just for Antoinette, but for Ashlyn and for a number of other characters as well.
Speaker 3 00:30:23 Yeah. It's hard. That's kind of what the book is about the fact that we do create narratives of our own lives and what happens in those narratives don't completely match the reality. Do we try to adjust the narrative in order to match reality or do we try to force reality to adapt, to match the narrative? And what happens when that self creative narrative self-creating narrative gets completely out of control, it can be dangerous.
Speaker 4 00:30:50 And so you have, uh, initially the, uh, the, the, the boyfriend who is not really a boyfriend yet, he's just somebody that she started seeing this Rory who, who they haul in. And, uh, and they start essentially harassing him to try to get him to confess to this crime.
Speaker 3 00:31:12 Yeah. There at first, pretty certain, he was obvious as it gets, he was at the crime scene at the relevant time. He's the partner though, the boyfriend or girlfriend or spouse is always the prime suspect in anything like this. He seems like the obvious guy, and he's also clearly at least minorly obsessed with Ashlyn. So he does seem like the obvious one, but there are little things like Anntoinette knows. She's seen Ashlyn somewhere before there's too much pressure on them. Um, Ashley's best friend is hinting that Ashley had a secret boyfriend. There are too many little things that until that doesn't want to leave as loose ends and the further they follow them, the stranger and more convoluted, the story gets on the less simple the answer seems to be.
Speaker 4 00:31:59 So was there a specific inspiration for this novel or is this just, uh, something that you came up with out of your head without some external real world event that, that pulled you into it?
Speaker 3 00:32:12 No, there was a, there was a real world event. I'm lucky. I know a retired executive who over the last 10 years has answered just a ridiculous number of questions about every aspect of like police life and police procedure. And he's a really lovely guy and I owe him a lot. And a few years ago I rang him up and I said, Camille, would you tell me, how would you go about interviewing a suspect in this specific set of circumstances? And he said, Oh yeah, sure. I'll sure. And he gave me a quick demonstration of how he would do that using me as a hypothetical suspect. And it was a revelation just like that, like turning on a dime. He switched from this really genuinely lonely guy who I'd known for years to this unstoppable force. It wasn't exactly that he was being aggressive. It was just that he was going to get what he was after in this conversation.
Speaker 3 00:33:04 And nothing I could do was going to get in his way. And it kind of blew me back in my chair. I was on the phone, he was doing me a favor, but it felt like it was a train coming at you. And I started to think about what it would be like to work in an environment where everybody around you has this skill has this, this other mode available to them because it's a necessary part of a detective skillset. And what would happen if I went a bit wrong and that turned in on itself, turned on its own. What would it be like to be surrounded, EO work environment, the environment where you're supposed to be safe and powerful and strong with this force being turned on you constantly. And when I started thinking about this book and about Antoinette, who I'd already set up in secret place as being somebody who wasn't quite getting on well with the squad, I thought of her in that context and how she would respond to that pressure being turned up and what it would do to her sense of herself and reality and herself within the squad.
Speaker 3 00:34:04 So it kind of sprung out of that.
Speaker 4 00:34:05 Yeah. And as you mentioned, she's mentioned in the secret place, that's, it's essentially Steve's book her partner's book. Uh, he's the narrator, Stephen Moran in that book and she's, uh, she's the partner. Um, that's an interesting approach that you have used different narrators in different books. I found Antoinette to be in some ways, a lot more compelling than Steve. I mean, she's a more tortured figure in many ways than Steve is. He seems much more happy-go-lucky and not quite so tormented by the world around him. Uh, is that how you felt too? Did you feel that she was a little more interesting in some ways in Steve or D or does he have his own, uh, uh, charms that you, that you liked?
Speaker 3 00:34:50 No, I think definitely she's more interesting. She was more interesting to write and I would bet that she's more interesting to read because somebody who's who's torn and struggling is always going to be more interesting. Like I completely happy at peace narrator. It's like watching a guy sit on his couch with an X-Box and a bunch of bull Doritos. Like it's nice. It's lovely that he's happy, but I don't necessarily want to watch him for a few hours. What you want from a narrator is somebody who's struggling. He's trying to get someone who's fighting their way through something. And I don't think it's, it's not coincidence. It's Steve, who is the most kind of at peace and undamaged of all my navigators is also the only one who doesn't get the whole book, the nominations switches back and forth between him and other characters in the third person, because I don't think somebody who's basically chilled out and okay. Is that would really be interesting enough to sustain a whole book, whereas that is kicking and struggling and cloying the whole way. And that is more interesting to watch because we're all struggling with stuff in our own ways, in different ways. And one of the things I think we need from a book is to see a character do that and to see that progression, that movement.
Speaker 4 00:36:03 Yeah. Right. And I had forgotten that, uh, Steve is not the narrator throughout the entire book of the secret place. I was thinking it was his book all the way through. But now when you mentioned that, I remember that's right. He isn't, he isn't solely, uh, the narrator there. So is this Antoinette a character that you might come back to, or do you want to try to continue to pursue other characters in other works?
Speaker 3 00:36:24 Um, I'm kind of, I might come back to her at some stage. I never rule it out because I don't know when a story might come up that matches with a previous character, but at the moment I'm working on something that's kind of different. Like all of my previous narratives, they've all been detectives, they've all been on the murder squad. They've all been interlinked to some extent. And with the exception of Steve, they've all been pretty like damaged characters with stuff from their past that needs working through. But this time the, the narrative, the one I'm working on, he's not as active. He's not at the beginning of the book anyway, he's got no real problems. He's a happy, um, happy guy with a happy life until one day, um, two burglars break into his house and beat him up pretty badly. And in the wake of that, when he's in a really bad state, mentally, at least as much as physically, he finds himself in the middle of a cold case murder investigation. And he has to figure out with kind of what's left of his mental and emotional resources, not just, um, what to do about it, but also how he got there in the first place.
Speaker 4 00:37:31 No, that sounds, that sounds fascinating. Um, well, let's return to this book and let's talk a little bit about Ashlyn because, um, we get to listen to Antoinette talk about her experience firsthand, but we have to learn about Ashland through other people, through Antoinette looking into her or through her, her best friend or through Rory. Somebody else has to provide the, the information about her life. So you're, you're delving into these two different lives, but you're doing it in two very different ways.
Speaker 3 00:38:05 That's one of the big difficulties with wedding murder mystery is that the victim is this crucial person at the heart of the entire book. And yet you, without being sued you in seriously contrived devices, you almost never have a way to show this person through his or her own eyes. And it's a really difficult thing to get around because you don't want the murder victim to sort of vanish into the sidelines as the sort of prop that you've dumped in there in order to get the action flowing. And yet you don't really have a way to give that person a voice. It has to be a second time voice. And in this book in particular, there's a kind of irony to that because it's a book about what happens when somebody tries to rewrite someone else's narrative. What happens when somebody else is trying to force you into a certain role that suits their narrative, trying to shape your story in order to suit theirs and the different ways that people respond to that or react to that or fight against it or go along with it.
Speaker 3 00:39:04 And Ashley is one of the characters who in the end fights most passionately and intensely, and with the most dedication against having her story taken over by anyone else. And yet in this book, by the nature of it, her story is only told through other people. And of course, some of them aren't going to know the truth or are going to be reshaping the truth to suit themselves. But I tried, the newest I could do was make her best friends in some ways, one of the most clear sighted characters within the book. I mean, inevitably her view is slightly skewed because there's a strong indication that she was probably in love with Ashlyn since they were kids. So that's going to give her a slightly different take on all the action on Ashton herself, but I wanted to make her sincere and clear sighted to an extent about Ashlyn, because that's the only way that Ashlyn herself, if she was, would get any space within this book, if that makes sense.
Speaker 4 00:40:08 Yeah. Yeah. I, and I noticed that, that you, I mean, I think you did a great job of portraying Ashland through as a Josie. I can't remember now, the Lucy's Lucy's eyes. Um, and so we, we see how she's perceived by others in a way that seems, as you mentioned, very clear, and even where it's not clear, Antoinette is sharp enough to, to realize, okay, this is, this is shaded or filtered by Lucy because of this or that or whatever. So we, so she does a very good job of sort of translating for the reader, the reality of Ashland. And he eventually of course, comes to remember where it is that she has seen Ashland before, which helps her to also define Ashland in her own mind.
Speaker 3 00:41:01 Yeah. And to an extent it helps her to realize that she has in fact, played a role in this case long before it ever happened. She had a small part in taking events to where they will end up. But I think also if you're going to try and portray someone's second hand, having them portrayed from several angles helps, like you get Ashlyn via Lucy, the best friend, the Antoinette who's met her before, via her boyfriend, Rory via other characters who have run into her along the way. And you can kind of triangulate and try and get a clear image of her through all these different characters.
Speaker 4 00:41:35 The, um, the other thing that I noticed about this story is that it's, it's in many ways a story of Ireland and yet in many ways it's a universal story. So there's this, uh, immediacy and geographical, uh, uh, uh, sort of smallness to it at the same time, there's this large universality to it. You know, people are all kind of the same around the world. And so you, you have to sort of define it in terms of where the setting is, but at the same time enlarge it so that everyone can sort of feel like that's, that's our world too.
Speaker 3 00:42:16 I think those two things tend to go hand in hand for me, at least in the books I read the ones that are the most universal do tend to be the most grounded in setting, whether it's a real setting or an imaginary one it's fairly detailed and very grounded. And I think it's because that's, that's the way we experience life is in, uh, in very specific textures in, you know, the sounds of a specific place, the, the dialects of a specific place, that the atmosphere of a very specific place in time. And so if you want to make something universal, you have to acknowledge that aspect of universal experience, which is that we live very much through the context and the context shapes the experience.
Speaker 4 00:42:58 Mm. And some of your books have this aspect of magical realism. This one does not. And I remember the secret place, for example, there's just a little bit of a, you know, the fantastic about it. Um, what is it that pulls you to do that in some books and to, uh, to stay away from it. And now there's, is it just a story that you're trying to tell? And sometimes that element just sort of comes out.
Speaker 3 00:43:23 It's more about the narrator, like the world of the books, because I'm writing first person, the world of the books is totally shaped by the narrator and who he or she is and how they see the world. So some writers have a predisposition or a draw towards that kind of liminal or magical realism feeling like it's present in, in the woods because Rob Ryan, the narrator of that one has a, for him, reality is very, uh, tenuous. It's kind of fractured and dangerous and it doesn't stay solid under his feet. And so that's the world of the book, whereas in the trespasser, for example, or in faithful place, reality, the solid thing, there will be none of this messing around from the characters point of view for the narrator, all this supernatural nonsense has absolutely no place in their world. And so it doesn't come into the book in any way. I think that the world of a book is very much the narrator's world. Yeah.
Speaker 4 00:44:22 Yeah. The other thing you do that I find, uh, interesting and fascinating, and, um, I really enjoyed is that you really take your time conversations. Yeah. I mean, most mysteries and thrillers, the conversations are two, three, four pages long at most. And that isn't the way they really were. Particularly, as you mentioned, like when your detective friend was, was sort of grilling you and being relentless, um, it, it just goes on and on and on, and you're willing to do that. You're willing to stay in that scene for a long time until we get to whatever it is, whatever nugget is going to emerge from that,
Speaker 3 00:45:03 Man, it's a hard balance I'm telling you because you don't want to go too far into realism and end up with like an eight hour interrogation scene. Every phrase on the readers, that's a certain point are going to go off and like get lunch or something. But at the same time, what I find fascinating is interactions between people that's, that's where the real mysteries happen in the real, the texture of, of interactions. But this is what fascinates me is people and how they interact. So you don't want to just pair it back to the bare basics. Did you do this crime? No. Well, here's evidence that you did. Oh, no. I confess, you know, you don't want to pare it back too far, either. You want to give it space to unfold. You want to give the characters space to, to open up into, into that conversation. It's a hard balance to find. I'm not sure I always get it right. I think the length of the book says that I might kind of err on the side of two months.
Speaker 4 00:46:00 Yeah. Well, and it's, it's probably better to err on that side than leave something out. Um, you know, there's the whole debate about style versus story. Uh, Chan Raymond Chandler was famous for saying, I don't really care about the story. I'm much more concerned with the style, but you want to try to blend the two together so that you've got the best of both worlds.
Speaker 3 00:46:20 You want to integrate them, that the style matches with the story and the story matches with a star, but for whatever reason, I just always seem to have big, long ideas. I don't do succinct. Well, I have other gifts that succinct as not high on that list.
Speaker 4 00:46:37 Well, we're out of time. So we're going to have to leave it at that, but it's been wonderful chatting with you. I really enjoyed your book. This is Steve McAllister. I'm speaking with ton of French about her new novel, the trespasser now out in paperback town of French. Thanks for being on right on radio.
Speaker 3 00:46:55 Thanks so much for having me on
Speaker 2 00:47:39 Listening to write on radio KPI on right on radio on cafe 90.3 FM and streaming live on the
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