We are delighted to welcome author Larry Witham to Omnimystery News today.
Larry's new novel, Gallery Pieces (Archway Publishing; January 2016 trade paperback and ebook formats), is subtitled "An Art Mystery" and we recently had the opportunity to spend some time with him talking about it.
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Omnimystery News: Introduce us to the lead character of Gallery Pieces. What is it about him that appeals to you as a writer? And do you see him returning in a sequel?
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Larry Witham
Larry Witham: The protagonist's name is Julian Peale, a fortyish former Navy intelligence civilian with a past of aiming high, but falling short. The context of the novel is the modern-day art world. So I've created Julian as a character who will fit in, but also be an odd man out.
His name, Peale, dates to an ancestor, the famous colonial painter Charles Willson Peale, just in case that connection ties into some future plotting. At the same time, he comes out of a kind of brainy and military background — though he loves painting, and is trying to be a painter. This conventional background gives the character skills for an exciting story, but also I hope can delight readers as he stumbles through a weird, hip art scene, the likes of which he's had little experience or affinity. Peale is an "amateur sleuth," using one book category.
I've written Gallery Pieces as a standalone. But I have a second book on the drawing board, so I've conceived Julian Peale as having the kind of persona and life that can pursue a number of adventures.
OMN: You mentioned "amateur sleuth" as a book category; is this the genre that you'd place this book in?
LW: Good question! When I was pitching my book around publishing land, publishers tended to see "mystery" as a synonym for murder, which is not the crux of my story. Yet there is a mystery to be solved, a kind of who's behind something. Then the plot goes into a historical mystery: why was someone blamed for such and such in the past. The protagonist and his allies figure all of this out (along with the readers) in the end. The novel's stage is somewhat international also, so it could squeak by as a thriller, since there's a global collapse in the art market. Well, so what is it? And is it "genre" or "literary?" Yes, the categories are squishy. But the market demands that you be exactly one of them. Otherwise, you will be left out of the list. So, I chose to emphasize "art mystery" in the title. (My first two novels, in 1994 and 1997, were a bit more thriller-like, unfolding on the international stage).
OMN: When you started Gallery Pieces, which came first: the character or the storyline?
LW: I've never been a great fan of pure biography, though all of my thirteen nonfiction books look at people — but lots of people at the same time. (I was a 2015 Pen Literary Award finalist in biography, but here again, that book had lots of people besides the main character). So I've apparently never been awed by outsized characters or in-depth character studies, whether its fiction or nonfiction. When I started doing fiction, I felt that if the story was not interesting, how would people enjoy the character? So I have to think of both at the same time: What kind of character can I authentically write about (crucial!), and what kind of interesting plot could such a character play a plausible role in? Great literature, they say, is driven by great characters, but I guess I've never caught that bug (though I certainly want them to be interesting). So far, I've done two male protagonists (thirtyish and fortyish), and one middle-aged female heroine. They've all been a little bit cerebral (in topics I know a lot about), but that is so the book can have some intelligence in it.
OMN: Tell us a little more about your writing process.
LW: This time, in Gallery Pieces, I tried a new emphasis. I had my character profiles written up and a plot with a theme and some conflict — a start, a middle, and a finish. However, I really focused on writing individual scenes. Once I had scores of these, I merged some, cut others, expand, and finally formed chapters with an even pacing and a logical unfolding. Once you have the scenes, you have to find the transitions. It's an enjoyable way to write a novel. All kinds of other twists or solutions come to mind as the scenes line up. The emphasis on scenes keeps those key modules of the story sharp and lively, which helps fight the drift toward a lull or what our dear readers call "boring" parts.
OMN: How true are you to the setting of the story?
LW: I do like real locations and find novels that generate imaginative atmospheres out of exactingly real places to be compelling. For some fiction projects, I have traveled, walked around, interviewed people, and taken copious notes (I did tons of this as a newspaper reporter and nonfiction book writer). For Gallery Pieces, I knew the venues and topics quiet well; I lived in the cities, gone to the museums, seen all the artists, even spent a year at an art college (writing a nonfiction book about that topic). I never visited the Russian mafia, of course, but I describe them in Gallery Pieces based on plenty of good sources, from books and news clips to Interpol. My academic sources on history and cybercrime are books I cite in the acknowledgments. Like all novelists, I dream of the perfect set-up: a big book contract, a good advance, a year to write, and months to travel to all the places in which the novel will unfold. I've had it for some nonfiction, but not yet for a fiction project.
OMN: How did Gallery Pieces come to be titled?
LW: When you don't have a murder, a good mystery title is tough to invent (since you can't say murder!) If you have a very singular event or object in the story, you can simply use that (ala the Da Vinci Code, etc.) In my case, there is no singular object, nor a central murder. I chose Gallery Pieces because no one has used it, it falls off the tongue fairly nicely, and does have some metaphorical accuracy: Our hero is trying to put together the pieces of a puzzle, and it's taking him through the world of art galleries. This was my final choice out of about forty titles I wrote down on a list.
OMN: What are some of your outside interests?
LW: Before I took up a writing career, I trained as a fine arts painter (my college degree). So I've always kept an eye on the art world and kept painting as a hobby. For the past six years I've switched gears in my writing specialties, and now focus entirely on art topics. I am also a painter by avocation, entering some works in small competitions and shows. But I'm torn between writing and painting, trying to do both. As a kind of antidote, I have begun to write a twice-weekly blog, "Novelists on Artists," which looks at how novelist have treated the art world from the Roman writers to the present. It's become a consuming project (I'm drawing upon more than 150 novels), and a major section of these have been mysteries, and perhaps some thrillers.
OMN: What's next for you?
LW: I'm not known in the book market as a novelist, and at age sixty-three, I can hardly launched myself with a "debut" novel. If Gallery Pieces gets some traction, I will finish a second installment that I've got on the drawing board. Writing a good novel is a lot of work, and though I know the work ethic quite well, I'm still looking for the real incentive to bring it to completion. And I keep on painting — have a small show in 2017.
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Larry Witham is an author, editor, journalist, and artist. In addition to Gallery Pieces, Witham has written fifteen other books, and was a finalist in the 2015 Pen Literary Awards for biography. He began his writing career as a daily newspaper reporter in Washington D.C., a job he held for twenty-one years. Since 2003, he has written and edited books full-time. Witham has received several national awards for his newspaper work and books, and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for a series he co-wrote on the clergy in America. He was Project Editor for the ten-volume Templeton Press science-and-religion series, and was editor of Science and Spirit magazine in 2007. A painter by avocation, Witham has a bachelors degree in painting from San Jose State University (1974). He lives with his wife in the Maryland suburbs of Washington D.C.
For more information about the author, please visit his website at LarryWitham.com and his author page on Goodreads, or find him on Twitter.
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Gallery Pieces by Larry Witham
An Art Mystery
Publisher: Archway Publishing
Former Navy intelligence man Julian Peale enters the art world for the love of painting, but finds its underbelly of crime just as fascinating — and decidedly dangerous …
In his forties, Julian Peale is getting a fresh start. Formerly in Navy intelligence, he's cast his lot in the New York art world. He's landed a job with the venerable Medici Studios, which also contracts with the NYPD and FBI. On a winter morning, they've run a sting operation to track Russian art smugglers. The caper goes awry, but an odd bit of evidence remains: four art catalogs with graffiti markings.
So begins Gallery Pieces, a story that will keep readers guessing until the end. Peale follows the clues where they lead. He meets a heavy at the Miami Art Fair, chases a mystery bidder at Merriweather's auction in Manhattan, and crosses paths with a Brooklyn performance artist whose pranks are dangerously entangled in the Russian intrigues. Step by step, Peale enters an art world permeated not only by the avant-garde, but by the Russian mob, hackers, forgers, hipsters, and the history of art looting in Europe during WWII.
When Peale least expects it, the catalogs lead him on another trail. He is drawn into a long-forgotten mystery surrounding his grandfather, Maxwell Peale, who had been a "monuments man," a soldier who helped reclaim art looted by the Nazis. Peale is on his way to discovering paintings stolen in postwar Europe. Finding the culprits, however, brings him closer to home than he'd imagined.
— Gallery Pieces by Larry Witham
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