with Matthew Arkin
We are delighted to welcome actor and new mystery author Matthew Arkin to Omnimystery News today.
Matthew introduces former attorney Zach Brandis in In the Country of the Blind (Hawkshaw Books; March 2014 trade paperback and ebook formats), and we recently had the chance to catch up with the author to talk about his book. He also has two book signings coming up, the first at Book Carnival in Orange, CA on March 27th at 6:30 PM, and the second at Laguna Beach Books in Laguna Beach, CA on April 27th at 4:00 PM.
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Omnimystery News: Why did you choose to write In the Country of the Blind as the first of a series?
Photo provided courtesy of
Matthew Arkin
Matthew Arkin: I've been stuck on recurring detective characters since I got hooked on The Hardy Boys when I was eight years old. From there I went on to Poirot and Holmes, and many others over the years, such as Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin, Atticus Kodiak, Kinsey Milhone, Alex Delaware, and Kay Scarpetta, to name just a few. Right now, the writers who are turning out the stuff that keeps me checking release dates are Lawrence Block, John Sandford, and Lee Child.
In reading a series, of course the mystery and suspense is great, but what keeps me coming back, and I think this is true for most series readers, is not just the plots, but the sense that you're getting to hang out with a group of friends that you want to spend time with. You have something invested in them already, and you take pleasure in the way they relate to one another. It's like something that I read once in a review of the first Star Trek motion picture. The critic said something to the effect that the movie itself wasn't spectacular, but it was like getting together with a group of old friends you hadn't seen in a long time, and finding out that everyone was just fine.
I only have one Zach Brandis novel under my belt, and I'm currently in the middle of the second, but I anticipate that he will be growing and changing as he moves through life. Clearly there are successful series characters that remain static, such as John D. MacDonald's iconic Travis McGee, one of my all time favorites. If you look closely when you read Blind, you'll see MacDonald's influence on me quite clearly. But I write about what I have been and continue to go through as I wend my way through life, and I think that's going to continue to find its way into my writing, so that as I learn and, I hope, grow, I expect Zach will as well.
OMN: In light of that, it sounds like you put yourself and your experience into your story. How does that work?
MA: Certainly in Blind, Zach's journey is a fictional recounting of many transformational events, some of them quite traumatic, in my own life. A lot about Zach's life, and the life of the victim in the Blind, I have first hand knowledge of. Although I am now in Los Angeles, I've lived in and around New York City for most of my life, and anticipate getting back there, or at least being bicoastal. Like Zach, I went to Fordham Law School and quit the practice of law after several years. The big difference there is that I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to return to acting. Zach quit the law purely because he was disillusioned, and at the top of Blind he's quite lost. The beginning of his awakening to a new purpose in life also mirrors my own in some respects. My new purpose isn't fighting crime, clearly, but I did have to go through crisis and times of great confusion before I could to come out the other side knowing more about who I am and what I want to do.
OMN: So there are things in the book that really happened?
MA: Yes, although some of them have been twisted to give me a murder mystery to work with. In the real story, just about everything depicted actually happened in one form or another, and although there was no murder, but there was a death.
OMN: Are there characters in this series who are based on people you know?
MA: I take the Fifth.
OMN: Really?
MA: Not really. There are people who will recognize themselves, or elements of themselves, in the novel. Some of them are dear friends who are flattered by their portraits. But if there is anyone who reads the book and who gets upset because they think they're one of the bad guys, I can tell them truthfully that they are not. The villains in the book are made up, except for one. And he's dead, so I'm safe. You can't defame the dead.
OMN: Give us a summary of In the Country of the Blind as a tweet.
MA: I'm going to borrow a bit from a review written by my friend, best selling author Pamela Fagan Hutchins, and rephrase it into a tweet, because she really got what the book is about on its deepest level: "Lapsed New York attorney Zach Brandis seeks redemption and purpose by avenging the death of someone he never knew, yet knew like himself."
OMN: What is the best advice — and harshest criticism — you've received as an author? And what might you say to aspiring writers?
MA: The best advice and harshest criticism came at the same time, from an editor who was also a very successful author of thrillers. He read an early draft, and his critique was delivered so bluntly that I wasn't able to listen to it. The only way I was able to recover was by reading one of his books, which turned out to be terrible, in my opinion, and not something I wanted to emulate at all.
The next editor gave me pretty much the same critique, but in a more gentle way, and with specific examples of what she felt needed to be addressed. This allowed me to take another pass at the manuscript and really tighten and condense it, going from about 117,000 words down to about 92,000. That's a pretty big change. One of the things I learned from this experience is to listen for what's behind the criticism, rather than how it's delivered. You don't know what other people are going through, what their day has been like, what their people skills are, so focus on what they're saying, and not how they're saying it.
To aspiring authors I would say that it's important not to tag something as a problem unless it's picked at by several people. If you listen to one person's critique, and then the next, and then the next, they might all be different. On the same day, I had feedback on a pilot script from both a very successful television writer, and a very, very successful television producer. These are guys whose work everyone would know. They both loved the script, and then both focused on one character. The writer said, "He's got to go," and the producer said that character was the one that took the script from good to great. So don't start rewriting based on one person's response. When you start to hear themes, that's when you should pay attention and get back to work.
I'll also throw some advice out there that I often give to my son Sam, who wants to be a writer. Whenever people ask me how long it took to write Blind, I tell them it took ten years or one year, depending on how you want to look at it. When I first began the work, it went in fits and starts for a long time, because of the voice that I think so many of us hear that says, "How can you write a book? It's too monumental a task. Who the hell do you think you are?" Then, after the birth of my daughter Abby, I was reevaluating my life, as we so often do in the wake of those kinds of events. I looked at my meager collection of pages and asked myself if this was a dream that was going to remain unrealized. At that point, I got to work, and had the finished first draft in a year. So the advice is this: Sit down in front of the empty page or the blank computer screen every day. Don't worry about whether you write on that day, but make yourself sit there. Some days you won't write a word. Don't judge yourself on those days. Something is on the back burner. Other days, you'll write more than that day's fair share. It all evens out. If you write 400 words a day, that's nothing. That's about a page and a half of manuscript. Anyone can do that. Do that every day, and at the end of a year, you'll have a manuscript that is way too long. That's when you can start washing garbage, which is a phrase I like to use for the process of rewriting.
OMN: How do you go about researching the plot points of your story?
MA: Accuracy and authenticity are really, really important to me. Nothing will lose my attention faster when I am reading than an author revealing that they are writing about a situation they know nothing about. When you're dealing with the law and crime, this becomes even more important, because there are so many rules and procedures governing how people have to behave and how things have to work. I don't care if a cop violates procedure, but I do care if I can tell that the author has no idea that it's happening. It destroys credibility. Because of this, I started off in territory with which I was really familiar, and relied on a lot of first-hand experience. As I'm frequently telling people, my mom, author Barbara Dana, always told me, “Write what you know.”
When I get into areas that I don't know about, I consulted experts. For Blind, an assistant district attorney friend gave me the in and outs of money laundering, a forensic pathologist wrote my autopsy report, a sake expert educated me about sake. One thing that makes what we do so much fun is the chance to constantly be learning about new things and to meet many people from various disciplines. Go online and find an expert. The minute you say you're writing a book, people are almost always willing to go above and beyond to help. Just don't forget to credit them in the acknowledgements and send them a copy of the book when it's out.
Since New York City is very much a character in my work, I try to make sure I'm very accurate in its depiction. And since I'm a foodie, if Zach mentions a restaurant and it's good, then it's probably real, with some obvious exceptions. Likewise with bookstores and such. If Zach is critical of a place, or there is criminal activity there, it's pure fiction.
Speaking of which, along with loving to eat, I also love to cook. I'm very much into beer and make my own from time to time, I read a lot, and I like to do a little bit of handyman tinkering. All of those things I share with Zach, and I make sure I get a lot of detail about all of that into my work.
OMN: If your series were to be adapted for television or film, do you have any ideas on who would play Zach?
MA: Well, since I'm an actor, and since so much of me is in Zach anyway, clearly I should be playing Zach. But for that to happen, we'd need a time machine, since I'm too old now. So if I was going to cast someone else, I think right now I'd go for Josh Radnor, from How I Met Your Mother. He's got intelligence and charm, and I think we'd buy him as a guy who won't let go when the going gets tough and dangerous, even though he's not that tough or dangerous himself.
OMN: What would you like to hear from readers?
MA: Bring it on. I'm new in this arena, so I'd love to hear anything from anyone, be it question, comment or criticism.
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Matthew Arkin is a critically acclaimed actor, an acting teacher, and a recovering attorney. He attributes his skill for crafting dialogue and creating characters to his more than forty-five years of experience on stage, television, and film, and to reading approximately one suspense thriller per week since he was a young child.
Following the advice of one of his moms, author Barbara Dana, to "write what you know," Arkin created Zach Brandis and the novel In the Country of the Blind. Like Zach, Arkin gave up a career as a lawyer. Like Zach, he was born and raised, went to law school and spent most of his life in and around New York City. His love affair with the city, his life as a former attorney, and his experiences as the victim of cult abuse allow him to approach Zach’s story with poignant, candid depth and realism.
For more information about Matthew and his work, please visit his website at MatthewArkin.com or find him on Facebook and Twitter.
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In the Country of the Blind
Matthew Arkin
A Zach Brandis Mystery
A dead body is a lousy way to end a first date.
When Zach abandoned his promising legal career, it confused everyone, including himself. Now, with no apparent purpose in life, he has time enough on his hands to get into some very hot water.
When Zach takes Cynthia Hull to dinner, murder and a confrontation with the cops are the last things on his mind. But when he walks her home, he finds himself face to face with New York's finest, who are investigating the suspicious death of the actress's roommate and friend, Alex Penworth. Maybe it's because Cynthia is beautiful and vulnerable, or maybe it's just because the cops rub him the wrong way, but Zach steps in to shield her from their persistent questions. In the days following, Zach finds himself increasingly tied up in knots over the case, and what starts as simple curiosity may end up putting the former attorney in grave danger.
Captivated by the puzzle of Alex's death, Zach begins to play with the pieces. When Cynthia's apartment is ransacked shortly the murder, it becomes clear that Alex was hiding something, something of value to someone. Looking into Alex's mysterious activities in the weeks before his death, more questions begin to emerge: Why was Alex fired from his bartending job? Why is a beautiful undercover narc hanging around the bar where Alex worked, and trying to keep Zach away? Why do the cops seem uninterested in the inconsistencies in Alex's autopsy report? As Zach puts the pieces in place, a picture of the victim begins to emerge: Alex, another lost soul, plagued by his past and the demons of the cult he escaped — a man who, like Zach, abandoned a promising career to struggle as a going-nowhere actor/bartender. Driven by his feeling of kinship with the victim, can Zach discover what ultimately led to Alex's death, and still get himself out of harm's way before it's too late?
