A Conversation with Novelist Matt Ingwalson

with Matt Ingwalson

We are delighted to welcome back novelist Matt Ingwalson to Omnimystery News.

A year ago Matt simultaneously completed not one, but two books. Sin Walks Into the Desert and Regret Things tell the parallel stories of Sin Kenfax and his big sister, Nicki McJacob. Sin Walks Into the Desert was published earlier this year, and this past November he has published Regret Things.

We recently had the chance to catch up with Matt to talk more about his books.

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Omnimystery News: Introduce us to the main characters of Regret Things.

Photo provided courtesy of
Matt Ingwalson; Photo credit Chris Sessions Photography.

Matt Ingwalson: I started Regret Things with a single sentence. "I'm not a sex addict, I just have low standards." I don't know where it came from. I just thought it was interesting. As I started free writing around that sentence, characters started to assemble themselves. My boyhood fascination with guns became Sin. My adolescent preoccupation with girls became Grant. And my uncomfortable relationship with materialism became Nicki McJacob. She's an incredible character. She's reckless and ambitious. On the outside she's an idealized version of female beauty. But inside she's conflicted about consumer culture and insecure in her own sexuality. And she has this self-destructive streak that drives her into bed with the wrong people, metaphorically and literally.

OMN: How much of your experience is in Regret Things?

MI: There's a lot of me in there, for sure. Going to rooftop parties in Manhattan in the late '90s. Building a career in Denver. Weekends in Vegas. Roadtripping through New Mexico. And most of all, the amazing people who told me their stories along the way. Much of what happens in the book stems from me remembering a true story and asking myself, "What if that situation had gone horribly wrong?" And then upping the ante like crazy.

OMN: The book hops between several cities and then out into the desert. What role do these settings play?

MI: On some level, Regret Things is a decade-long road trip. Some of the locales, like New York and Vegas, have been covered by other writers, and I had to find a way to put my own lens on them. And the Wyoming high plains and Southwestern desert are also the setting for Sin Walks Into The Desert. But I think the descriptions of Denver are unique to Regret Things, and will really open people's eyes. It's a great city, way larger than you think. But it's also a metaphor for the lies Nicki and Grant surround themselves with. I mean, no city is big compared to the Rocky Mountains, so citizens in Denver get a daily reminder of just how small and temporary humans really are.

OMN: How did the book come to be titled?

MI: There's no way to become an adult without making choices. People tell you that you'll regret the things you didn't do more than the things you did. But Regret Things is a book about two people who have a burning need to feel wanted, to be desired, to seek constant external validation. For them, those needs trump everything else. And eventually they lead down scary roads.

OMN: You finished Regret Things almost a year ago. Why the delay in publishing it?

MI: Fear. Sin Walks Into The Desert was classic neo-Western noir, filled with cool characters. But Regret Things is a hard book to categorize. I expect it to be polarizing. Grant can be perceived as sexist because he objectifies every woman he sees. But he can also be perceived as anti-male because he is so powerless in the presence of the opposite sex. It's a running joke that he never really connects with the action in the book because he keeps getting distracted by pretty girls. And while Grant's chapters are told in straight-ahead thriller style, I unleashed the English language for Nicki's chapters. I wanted them to feel as wild and overwhelming as Manhattan itself. That shift in tone might be exhilarating, or it might give readers whiplash. I don't know. It took a lot of courage and a little whiskey for me to hit the publish button.

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Matt Ingwalson writes mysteries and thrillers. The Owl & Raccoon novellas blend the dialogue-driven edge of modern police procedurals with the locked-room plotting of Golden Age mysteries. The Sin & Nicki books are sweeping stories about characters, crime and consequences.

For more information about the author, please visit his website and his author page on Goodreads, or find him on Facebook and Twitter.

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Regret Things
Matt Ingwalson
A Novel of Suspense

Check out Nicki McJacob. She was preaching anarchy to Manhattan by the time she was 18. Slinging ads on Madison Avenue before she was 20. And running from the mob shortly after that.

Flash forward 10 years. Nicki's raising a family with her high school sweetheart. She's also fooling around with a sex addict named Grant Derrick. But her past isn't finished with her yet. And everybody she knows — including her family and her little brother, Sin — is about to be pulled into a cycle of violence and regret.