with S. Bergstrom
We are delighted to welcome thriller writer Scott Bergstrom to Omnimystery News today, courtesy of JKSCommunications, which is coordinating his current book tour. We encourage you to visit all of the participating host sites; you can find his schedule here.
Scott's debut novel of suspense is The Cruelty (NuCodex Publishing; February 2014 trade paperback and ebook formats) and we recently had the opportunity to talk to him about it.
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Omnimystery News: Tell us a little more about The Cruelty. Is it the first of a series?
Photo provided courtesy of
S. Bergstrom
S. Bergstrom: The heroine of The Cruelty is Gwendolyn Bloom, who is so very complex that there's no way I could give her up after a single novel. As The Cruelty progresses, she comes to discover an innate power, a particular cruelty within herself, that allows her to do things she never thought possible. Forget the action thriller stuff. Yes, as the daughter of a diplomat she speaks six languages. Sure, she's been trained in hand-to-hand combat by an Israeli Mossad agent. But she's also a young woman who faces the challenges presented by the plot not as a superhero, but as you or I would — with trepidation, with fear, with knowledge that she's becoming different and more powerful than she used to be.
The joy of these novels — and The Cruelty was only the first of at least three — is that Gwendolyn is a new person in each one. At the beginning of the first novel, she's an introverted, easily-bullied teenager. Out of necessity, she becomes something else — the opposite of that. A strong, cunning warrior. Book two will see her as something even more different, a warrior with a serious chip on her shoulder, eager for revenge. Always, Gwendolyn finds herself in morally ambiguous situations where what's right and wrong isn't immediately clear. Yet she has no choice but to make a decision, and where those decisions take her psychologically is at least as fascinating as the plot itself.
OMN: We introduced the book as a suspense thriller. Is that how you think of it?
SB: The Cruelty is unambiguously a thriller, though to me as the author, that means infinitely more than gun fights and car chases. This book involves crime and espionage, yet it's also a coming of age story about a young woman becoming something she had no intention of becoming. It's also the story of young love during a figurative wartime.
The disadvantage to labeling it as a thriller is that it too easily dismisses the complexity of Gwendolyn's struggle. Yes, you can read it on the level of a straightforward action story with bad guys and good guys and lots of twists along the way. Many readers have taken it that way and been completely satisfied. But even more intriguing to me is how Gwendolyn reacts to each event, how she changes and evolves. What would you do if you had to kill a possibly innocent man in order to rescue a beloved family member? What if you had to commit an evil act in order to do good? These are the struggles within The Cruelty and there are no easy answers, neither for the protagonist nor for the reader.
Of course, there are advantages to being simply a thriller. Lots of readers like thrillers. And if they read The Cruelty on that level, that's perfectly fine. But so many of my readers love about The Cruelty — the reason it's gotten such an enthusiastic response — is that it goes much deeper than that, plunging into the psychological implications. What would Jason Bourne or Katniss Everdeen say to their shrink after the battle was over? How would feel after killing someone that ultimately didn't deserve it? That's as much a part of this book as the battles themselves.
OMN: Tell us something about The Cruelty that isn't mentioned in the publisher's synopsis.
SB: Literally every place I describe — from the subway route used to get to bad guys' warehouse in Berlin, to the secret prison outside Prague — actually exists in real life, more or less exactly as I describe it. Some of these places you aren't, legally speaking, allowed to enter. As a writer, though, I've claimed a certain moral authority and gone in anyway. However, the Czech police who busted me for trespassing in a rail yard didn't quite buy the moral authority argument.
OMN: How much of your own personal or professional experience have you included in the book?
SB: Most characters are an amalgam of different people I've encountered. Gwendolyn herself, at least in physical appearance, is very loosely based on a homeless girl I met hustling a three-card monte game outside the Port Authority in New York.
In my younger days, the State Department was a client of mine. Pretty straightforward stuff, really. But I got to know the culture at State, both the good side and the bad side. In fact, my mother works for them, living abroad, a different post every two years. They're all extremely bright at State, but with the potential to be cunning — which is, I suppose, exactly how you want your diplomats to be. Everything in The Cruelty was a loose extrapolation from conversations I heard while doing work for them or stories I've read about since.
OMN: Describe your writing process for us.
SB: For me, an outline is a must, but you have to be free to stray when something feels right. I think of it like jazz. There's a composition, a melody, a structure, and you're free to riff off that if you'd like, but the notes on the page keep you grounded, keep you coming back to the important plot points. I use what I call “the rule of halves.” I find the beginning of a story and the end, then divide in it half. What has to be the center point? Then I divide each half into quarters, Then I divide into eighths, and so on, determining the midway point between each plot development until I have a working outline.
Of course, this is not to shortchange the role of improvisation. In fact, that's where most writers find their biggest joy. In The Cruelty, the character of Rozsa — a terribly attractive Hungarian woman who claims to be a witch — was made up on the fly to fill a narrative gap. Someone had to teach Gwendolyn how to put on makeup, after all. But she became one of my favorite people in the book, as rich as any other character.
OMN: How do you go about researching the plot points of your novels?
SB: Writers can lose themselves in research, because it's an excellent excuse not to write. In my case, I based everything on places I've seen and fallen in love with while travelling. I'd take meticulous notes. The names of the subway routes. The smells inside the subway cars.
For me, the trickiest part of researching The Cruelty was the use of foreign languages. I speak a sort of semi-proficient German, enough to get me by in most situations, but not enough to pass as native. In The Cruelty, I use French, German, Russian, and Czech, and I think even a little Arabic. For these, I had to consult native speakers, and even then I had to make critical decisions to modify certain words. In fact, just today I had an email exchange with a dear relative in Australia who had something to say about my imprecise use of the word "pan" — which is a Czech honorific somewhere between "mister" and "sir". I made the strategic decision to capitalize it, and not to apply the complex Czech case system, so that it would be easier for readers of English to understand. My relative, whose opinion I respect immensely, also suggested a few subtle changes that would improve the verisimilitude of the Czech phrases.
OMN: You mentioned that every place in the book is real. How true are you to the various settings?
SB: Verisimilitude is very important to me, but obviously there are some liberties one has to take. The bad guys' warehouse in Berlin, for example, isn't really where bad guys hang out — at least I don't think it is. It's just a warehouse. And the secret prison outside of Prague is actually in Hungary. But there's no reason it couldn't be in Prague, and that's the point. It's not as if I put a 16th century Ottoman mosque in Wisconsin.
The setting to The Cruelty is one of its most important features. The fact that Gwendolyn is so far outside her element adds tremendously to the plot. She's in an unfamiliar environment and has to pass herself off as European using only her language skills and wit. The setting, in this sense, is working against her, making her struggle all the harder.
OMN: If you could travel anywhere in the world, all expenses paid, to research a setting, where would it be?
SB: I don't want to give away any spoilers, but let's just say I'm strongly considering visiting my friend in Hong Kong. The Cruelty is emphatically about this world, the one we live in. I want to show readers just how interesting our own time is by exposing them to places and people that may be far outside their own experience. With each novel in this series, I'll be exploring at least three new cities.
OMN: What is the best advice — and harshest criticism — you've received as an author? And what might you tell aspiring writers?
SB: The best advice I've gotten as a writer is to get used to living with nausea. My friend Corrine told me that. She put it like this: if you're not sick to your stomach by the risks you're taking, you're doing it wrong. As an author you are always on the razor's edge of both success and failure. When you launch a book, literally everything you do seems absurd and foolish and counterintuitive. Sometimes it works, often it doesn't. But you hold steady, then pivot when necessary, and try to make it all look like it's no big deal.
The worst criticism I've gotten was from my freshman writing professor. He told me I wrote like Henry James, and he didn't mean it as a compliment. I took the criticism to heart, though, and have tried to loosen the prose up over the years.
I'd advise new writers to remember that every writer, from Proust to Hemingway, started off being terrible at their craft. Only practice and the good taste to know what works made them better.
OMN: Complete this sentence for us: "I am a thriller writer and thus I am also …".
SB: I am a thriller writer because the world itself is a thriller. You think this stuff only happens in books? Look at Ukraine. Tell me if the drama, the motivation, the intrigue going on behind the scenes, is not every bit as fascinating as what happens in a book. Also, I'm a thriller writer because the only other thing I'm good at is cooking eggs. I can make a mean omelet, but writing fascinating stories is more rewarding in the long run.
OMN: Is "S. Bergstrom" a pen name?
SB: I go by S. Bergstrom on the cover, but it's no secret the S is for Scott. I did this largely as a superficial attempt to disguise my gender. Since I'm writing about a female protagonist, I thought it might lend me more credibility if I left my own gender ambiguous. This is what S. E. Hinton and J. K. Rowling did, and for precisely the same reasons. My picture is all over the place, however, and most reviewers refer to me as Scott, so I suppose the cat's out of the bag.
OMN: How involved were you with the cover design? And is there any special meaning to the title?
SB: The cover was designed by the great Jason Gurley, who does most of Hugh Howey's covers. As a former advertising creative director, I knew enough to let him design it with minimal input from me, to trust the artist to do his thing. The cover features a very dark, very mysterious setting with a lone figure walking across a bridge. It's the Charles Bridge in Prague, in case you're wondering. It has the sort of smoke-filled, foreboding atmosphere I was going for.
The title was another matter. I wrestled with several titles, but decided on The Cruelty because it captured the core discovery of the heroine. That is, her capacity to be cruel. She uses the definite article when talking about it, as if it were a discrete entity, separate from herself. Ultimately, I liked the way it sounded and what it meant.
OMN: If The Cruelty were to be adapted for television or film, who do you see playing the part of Gwendolyn Bloom?
SB: When I was creating the trailer for The Cruelty (embedded, below) I auditioned about ten actors, and chose Elyse Porterfield. She's an exceptionally talented working actor but hasn't yet had any breakout roles. To me, though, she nailed it perfectly. She had that extremely hard to find combination of youth and — forgive me, there's no other word for it — fierceness. She looked like she could be taking an English exam one moment, then turn around and take out a room full of arms smugglers the next. Imagine Jennifer Lawrence with even more edge and attitude.
OMN: What's next for you?
SB: I'm working quickly on the follow-up to The Cruelty, which will be the second book in the series. Right now I'm going over my notes and photos from visiting the cities where it will be set, trying to recall what exactly I ate or drank at a particular restaurant there, what the sound of the traffic was like, was the light cool or warm — all the little things that add richness to the story.
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Scott Bergstrom is a writer and traveler fascinated by the darker, unloved corners of the world's great cities. His books and articles on architecture and urbanism have been widely published both in the United States and Europe.
For more information about the author and his work, please visit his website at TheCruelty.net or find him on Facebook and Twitter.
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The Cruelty
S. Bergstrom
A Suspense Thriller
When her diplomat father is kidnapped and the U.S. Government refuses to help, 17-year-old Gwendolyn Bloom sets off across the underbelly of Europe to rescue him. Following the only lead she has — the name of a Palestinian informer living in France — Gwendolyn plunges into a brutal world of arms smuggling and human trafficking.
As she journeys from the slums of Paris, to the nightclubs of Berlin, to the violent heart of the most feared criminal family in Prague, Gwendolyn discovers that to survive in this new world she must become every bit as cruel as the men she's hunting.
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