with J.M. Hayes
We are delighted to welcome mystery author J.M. Hayes to Omnimystery News today.
Mike is the author of the Mad Dog & Englishman series but his latest book is a stand-alone murder mystery, The Spirit and the Skull (Poisoned Pen Press; August 2014 hardcover, trade paperback, large print, audio and ebook formats).
We recently had the opportunity to talk with Mike about his books.
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Omnimystery News: Introduce us to your series mysteries and stand-alone novels.
Photo provided courtesy of
J. M. Hayes
J. M. Hayes: I've written eight novels, six in the Mad Dog & Englishman series, and two stand-alones, The Grey Pilgrim and The Spirit and the Skull. My stand-alones were intentionally not part of the series. I've set up a formula for the Mad Dog & Englishman mysteries. They're confined to twenty-four hours or less. There are no chapters, just breaks when we switch points of view or the character's situation. Those segments are generally short but meaningful, full of hooks to make readers want to know what happens next. There's lots of humor, including some slapstick, but the characters aren't shallow or silly — they have the breadth and depth of real, flawed, human beings. There's a manic, Murphy's-law-kind-of-day quality to those books. It's hard for me to imagine writing a book about anyone else using the same approach. That world operates with rules unlikely to fit elsewhere.
I don't outline. I think outlining is a must for non-fiction, but that it cramps my imagination in fiction. I know the story I intend to tell, though not necessarily how it will work out. My characters talk to me. As they develop, they often turn out to be someone different than I intended. Their backgrounds fill in. They may become someone who wouldn't do what I'd planned for them. Or who'd do it differently or for different reasons. All that comes from leaving myself the freedom to imagine. I think outlining robs the author of that freedom. I'd say it's only what works for me, but most of the fiction writers I know refuse to outline.
OMN: How do you find the right voice for your characters?
JMH: In general, my lead characters have all been males — same as me. But I've always written strong females into my plots with significant segments from their point of view. In the last Mad Dog & Englishman mysteries, female characters have increasingly important roles. In English Lessons, one of Sheriff English's daughters takes a lead role as a detective for the fictional Siwa Tribal Police in Southern Arizona. In a project I'm working on, I plan to feature a female lead.
Why? I've featured American Indian and other minority characters in my books. There's been no significant objection to that. I studied Sociology and Anthropology as a college undergraduate. Then spent another four years in graduate school studying all manner of cultural outlooks other than our own. That gives me a little gravitas. But I've been studying the female of our species ever since I realized we came in two genders. My efforts have been both passionate and thoughtful, filled with successes and failures — all of which I learned from. Just as when I write about members of other cultures, I treat my female characters as individuals with strengths and weaknesses. Fairly, I think, because the human race comes in all sorts, good, evil, confused, strong, weak, and hiding behind traits that mask who they really are. I suppose, too, because I'm tired of all the poor little lost girls who so often, even today, need to be rescued by the male hero they'll inevitably fall in love with. I'm getting to be an old man. I've known lots of women. A few played the helpless role, but I've never been convinced any of them really were. And I've known some very strong women. Women who've rescued themselves from abusive relationships. Women who've taken on overwhelming care-giving tasks. Women who've gone to war. We have real gender differences, but I think, in matters of life and death, women are as capable as males. More capable, sometimes, since their impulses seem less likely to lead to acts of deadly stupidity that endanger themselves and others without good reason.
OMN: Into which mystery genre would you place your books?
JMH: While it depends on the book or whether they're part of my series, I think I tend to be less intrigued by who-done-it puzzles and more by creating characters readers care about and putting them in situations where the puzzle is how they're going to get out of it. So, suspense thriller at heart. But, with the exception of The Spirit and the Skull, all of them are police procedurals. And, so far, there's at lest a hint of the paranormal in all my books. I usually try to leave the decision of whether what happened was just blind luck and serendipity or something more. But there are a lot of improbable events in my books that are hard to interpret as not involving a bit of magic. Odd, I suppose, since I'm an agnostic. Maybe it's because I think readers like to escape into a world where magic works at least enough to turn the tables of the bad guys. My heroes generally survive in the end and manage to pull out some kind of victory, even if they don't emerge unscathed. Maybe that's why, despite enough sex and violence to rate the hard-boiled label, my mysteries are sometimes described as cozies.
OMN: Tell us something about The Spirit and the Skull that isn't mentioned in the publisher's synopsis.
JMH: If you've always wanted to know how to hunt a mammoth without firearms, this is the book for you. Several possible methods are described, along with their risks and advantages. Great bears, too, just in case. And the book describes how the spirit of your prey should be treated after it gives the gift of its life and flesh. So few people remember any of that today.
OMN: Are any of the characters in your books based on, or inspired by, people you know?
JMH: Of course not. I'd be a fool to admit it — nudge, nudge, wink, wink.
I've written very few actual people into my books. Most are conglomerates of people or characters I imagined, ideal for the situations I intend them to face — variations on myself. Who I think I might be in those situations and those bodies. In the rare instances I've written real people into my plots, they haven't recognized themselves. Or think someone else, more attractive and heroic, are the characters I based on them.
I've written about real situations, though. Especially in The Grey Pilgrim, since it was based on actual people and events. But I've also written in events from my own life. For example, in the Mad Dog & Englishman series, Harvey Edward (Mad Dog) Maddox recalls how he once kidnapped his girlfriend from a date she went on with another guy. I did that when I was a kid.
Stupid, but I though Humphrey Bogart or John Wayne would do what I did. To this day, I'm not sure how to evaluate the actual event. We continued dating for years.
In my series, Mad Dog has a chance to discuss the event, years later, with his victim and the former love of his life. Her reaction sums up my current thoughts on the matter. "I've never been quite sure whether that kidnapping was a terrible male-chauvinist act of dominance, or the most romantic thing that ever happened to me." Whatever, I strongly suggest against trying it yourself.
OMN: You mentioned earlier that you don't outline and let the characters talk to you. Tell us a little more about your overall writing process.
JMH: The light bulb goes on. I encounter an idea. Sometimes from something I read. For example, my first novel was inspired by an article I read in The Journal of the Arizona Historical Society. In this case, Elmer W. Flaccus article, "Arizona's Last Great Indian War." It described a revolt against efforts to register remote desert-dwelling Tohono O'odham (Papago) for the draft in 1940. I had studied anthropology. I knew where I could find more details about Tucson and the Tohono O'odham in that period. Still better, 1940 appealed to me because it was when Phillip Marlow-like characters walked their mean streets. The rumors the actual event inspired offered all manner of additional plot lines. I stuck it in the back of my head and thought about it, in part because the only novel I'd written at that stage was awful, even in my opinion. And then I read Andre Brink's brilliant work, A Chain of Voices. His series of first-person-point-of-view chapters made me think that was exactly the way to build The Grey Pilgrim. Ultimately, I backed away from that and made it a standard third-person novel, but having written the first draft in my own chain of voices, I developed a tight focus on whose story each chapter was and didn't wander into other points of view. It worked well enough to get picked up by the first agent I approached and, ultimately, the first publisher to whom she showed it.
No synopsis until the book was done and I needed one to help sell it. I began with the actual events, my version of the troubled detective (in this case, a Deputy U.S. Marshal), and variations on the leader of the revolt and an anthropologist who'd been actively researching at the time. Then I let the story develop in my mind. The cast expanded as I wrote. It always does, as new characters emerge to fill roles the growing story requires.
I wrote a second Southwestern Historical just in time for that publisher to drop their suspense line, fire my editor, and reject the manuscript. My agent was having problems that eventually drove her out of the business and she had no luck placing that manuscript with anyone else. I thought it was a great story, so I spent years revising, rewriting, polishing, and otherwise trying to do what it took to find that book a home. Finally I gave up, reinvented myself and my style, and wrote the first Mad Dog & Englishman mystery.
I didn't expect Mad Dog & Englishman to be a series when I wrote it. Otherwise, I'd have eliminated several clever elements that made additional adventures lots harder to compose. The primary example is two characters who shared the same name. It worked great in the first novel, not too badly in the sequel, then became gradually harder to sustain and explain to readers who didn't pick up one of my books until later in the series.
The idea behind the series was a multiple murder that took place in the little Kansas town where my father was born and grew up. It wasn't far from where I grew up, and Dad's view of it and my experiences there had always made it seem idyllic, in a slowly deteriorating way. Small rural towns weren't growing and thriving by the time I came along. Their downtowns were mostly abandoned. Their population smaller — bedroom communities for major and minor cities in the area. Those murders completely changed that village, at least for a time. People who had never locked their doors did so. Neighbors stopped trusting each other. I thought those reactions could make a marvelous subplot for a murder in the middle of the Kansas plains. I had the advantage of having grown up there. I knew the land and the people. I knew its secrets. I spoke the language. And so, I wrote six mysteries starring the same cast. And may write more.
I never began with a synopsis. Just an idea. Those murders and the heat of a Kansas summer. Evidence of earlier, undiscovered murders, and a mysterious baby in the hands of an Alzheimer's patient in the dead of winter. Small-time political corruption. Scams. Religious fanaticism. A school shooting. Illegals. Election fraud and computer gaming. A drug war. You can't open a newspaper, turn on a TV, surf the web, or pay attention to the world without being inundated with plot ideas.
My latest, The Spirit and the Skull, goes back to a summer I spent doing archaeology on the the North Slope of the Brooks Range, Alaska in the harshest and most beautiful country I've ever seen. And the eeriest. I wanted to write about that place for years. It took me a long time to understand I needed to write about it during the migrations into the New World we spent that summer studying. The character of the place shaped the novel more than my archaeological studies and research, though they played a huge role.
OMN: How do you go about researching the plot points of your stories?
JMH: I spent four years in graduate school so I knew how to do traditional research for The Grey Pilgrim. I spent months combing the Arizona Historical Society and University of Arizona Libraries. Skimming newspapers got me some of my best material.
The Mad Dog & Englishman series was mostly based on first-hand experience. I grew up in Central Kansas. I knew those infinite flat horizons and the towering storms. Farms and small rural communities were where I came of age. For the Cheyenne material, I was lucky enough to have studied with the son of the former Arrow Keeper.
I think The Spirit and the Skull was both the most exciting book to research, and the most difficult. Exciting, because I spent a summer doing archaeological field work almost 150 miles north of the Arctic Circle. It's a place that even today has been seen by only a tiny percentage of the Earth's population. It was beautiful, harsh, exotic — the kind of discovery experience all too few people have a chance at. The challenge came in depicting the Paleolithic society in which I set the mystery. There is no way to know the details of how stone age peoples lived, especially those crossing arctic tundra where permafrost confuses the few things they left behind on which we might base that depiction. So I used my knowledge of tribal peoples, especially nomadic ones. And then, because I wanted to make it clear that I don't believe those people were primitives — not intellectually — I gave them some tools and knowledge they weren't likely to have mastered yet. But would, well before anything resembling modern civilization came along. I suspect some archaeologists won't be pleased by my depiction. But they're often not pleased with each others' depictions, either.
OMN: How true are you to the settings in your books?
JMH: My books are set in combinations of real and imagined settings. Try as I might, I couldn't find some of the information about pre-WWII Japan or parts of China during the Japanese invasion. I used what I could, imported buildings appropriate to the settings, and hoped for the best. It seemed to work.
Benteen County, Kansas doesn't exist. It's an inside joke. Custer rode into the Little Big Horn with Major Reno and Captain Benteen. Reno County, where I was born and grew up, is a bigger, more populated place than my imagined Benteen. Buffalo Springs is based on a much smaller and less successful version of Hutchinson — once my hometown — combined with tiny Partridge, the Reno County village where I graduated from grade and high schools. When my characters visited Hutchinson, I tried to get the details of what they'd see right. Same for scenes set at the Wichita Airport. Then I threw Tucson into the series. Again, places are mostly real, or appropriate to the part of town where the action takes place. Some are exact. Some are slightly modified for my convenience and because I don't want to identify someone's business or residence and link it with something negative.
Because I had to invent a whole culture for The People in The Spirit and the Skull, I kept my description of the Arctic tundra accurate. Though the exact places I've been aren't meant to be the locations in the story. Things would have changed over 15,000 years (though maybe not as much as they have just during my lifetime). If you fly into May Lake today and hike around, you'll recognize some of the places I describe. But not all.
OMN: If you could travel anywhere in the world, all expenses paid, to do research for a book, where would it be?
JMH: Can you import the world's finest library to Tahiti for me? I've always wanted to visit Polynesia, but we've dumped a lot of trash in our oceans and my imagined paradise is probably more tourist oriented than I'd like these days. So I guess I'd take Washington, D.C. if I get access to the National Archives, the Library of Congress, and all the city's other libraries. Throw in the CIA and NSA's top secret snooping archives and D.C. becomes a sure thing.
OMN: What are some of your outside interests? And have any of these found their way into your books?
JMH: I love to read. I've edited and proofed so many things now that it's harder to get lost in a book than it used to be. But not impossible. Give me good characters and a compelling plot and I'm off into another world.
In my early thirties, I discovered staying fit and healthy weren't going to take care of themselves. I started running — a perfect addition to a writer's lifestyle. You can zone out when you run. Get into the right rhythm and you enter a Zen-like state. I used to do most of my plot development while I was running. Then my joints began giving out. I swim now. I can almost find that rhythm in a pool, but not quite. Still, it helps keep me fit if not trim.
I've had dogs nearly all my life. There's no way to repay the trust and friendship they've given me. If the afterlife is fair, I'll be the pet of my former dogs and they can treat me the way I treated them. Never as well as they deserved, though I've tried within the confines of what life allows.
When I was twelve I got to pick my own dog for the first time. She was a German Shepherd and I was amazed. Not that any of the other dogs we'd had weren't wonderful companions, but she was so intelligent and bonded to me it was like discovering a new species. With the exception of a Scottish Terror who thought she was a match for passing Tyrannosauruses, I've had German Shepherds ever since. They've all been amazing. I based a rescue wolf-hybrid I introduced in the second MD&E mystery and let her do for my series what my dogs have done for me. Miracles, though of slightly different magnitudes.
I'm a game player. It used to be sports, mostly. Softball, volleyball, baseball, basketball. Not much football because short and slow is a real disadvantage against opposing linemen. I also enjoyed strategy games. Remember the Avon-Hill board games in which you could fight the Battle of Gettysburg, Midway, or even all of the Great War? Now they're computer games. As are all manner of fantasy Dungeons and Dragons games. I've played several of the Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing games. World of Warcraft seems to be my favorite. I wrote it into the last two books of the Mad Dog & Englishman series, Server Down and English Lessons. It was a better fit than you might expect.
OMN: How did The Spirit and the Skull come to be titled? And were involved with the cover design?
JMH: Considering the story, I thought there had to be a skull on the cover. I came up with the idea of an extreme close up that would show one eye socket and just enough bone to make it clear it was a human skull. And I suggested filling that eye socket with a vision of the Venus of Lespugue — by far, my favorite Paleolithic work of art. She could have been carved at virtually any time in human history, including as a work of modern art. As you can see, my publisher preferred a slightly different version, though adopting the same elements.
Several years ago, my nephew Jeff Budd sent me his version of one of my Mad Dog & Englishman covers. He didn't begin from scratch, but he certainly made a good cover much better. I suggested he contact Poisoned Pen Press and show them what he'd done, as well as send samples of his work as a graphic artist. He's done two covers for me now, and lots of others for other writers for the press.
Most of my books go through a series of titles before I find the right one, if I ever do. The Spirit and the Skull only had one variation other than the working title of Paleolithic Novel when I started it. That substituted "in" for "and." It didn't quite sound right to me, and when I remembered an old favorite movie and how dramatically perfect I'd always thought its title, I made the change. That movie, by the way, is The Wind and the Lion.
OMN: What is the best advice — and harshest criticism — you've received as an author?
JMH: In the years between The Grey Pilgrim and Mad Dog & Englishman, James Lee Burke took a few minutes out of his writing day to remind me of his own inability to place a book during a period in his career. He didn't know me. He'd taught at Wichita State and a pair of my thesis advisers had become friends with him. One gave me Burke's phone number and told me to call. I don't think Mr. Burke was pleased at the interruption at first. But he listened graciously and told me what I now tell authors looking for the secret to getting published. It takes patience and hard work. You can't let your frustrations overwhelm you. You have to keep writing the very best material you can, then edit and polish it until it gleams like a diamond. Submit it and start over. Kind and honest advice from an author, who'd come back to establish a very successful career, to a one-book wonder he didn't know. I haven't and won't reach his level, but this was my eighth book.
The harshest criticism I received came from the first critic to review my first book. Since it was a clever putdown without constructive suggestions, it was useless — except in briefly persuading me I would never write again. The best harsh but constructive criticism has come from my critique group. On two occasions I've written "The End" only to have them tell me my book didn't work. There were fatal flaws. The difference between them and that reviewer was that my group offered suggestions for how to fix what they thought was wrong. We get too close to our work sometimes. We know what the story is and think we've explained things that somehow we never put on paper. Hurrah for Elizabeth Gunn, Susan Cummins Miller, J. Carson Black, E.J. McGill, Mary Logue, William K. Hartmann, and the others who've passed through our critique group. And for honest critics who explain the flaws that trouble them. I'm sure I'll never be perfect, but you've all made me better.
OMN: Complete this sentence for us: "I am a mystery author and thus I am also …".
JMH: … working for less than minimum wage. Think your favorite author is getting rich? Guess again. Most of the time they're not earning a living. They've taken up writing for the love of it, and perhaps the hope of one day having a break-through novel. To actually make money, you almost have to get a film or TV deal. I always make something from my novels, but not a lot more than I spend trying to promote them. On the other hand, I've been told I wrote someone's favorite novel. I've generally gotten lots more good reviews than negative ones. I hear from people who loved reading my books. That's priceless. Not that more cash wouldn't be nice.
OMN: Is J. M. Hayes a pen name?
JMH: I really am J.M. Hayes, though it took me a bit to decide to write under that version of my name. I considered Mike Hayes, which is what I go by. I sounded too much like I was trying to be a Mickey Spillane character. I submitted a few things as J. Michael Hayes, but eventually decided it sounded pretentious. My father was H.M. Hayes, saddled by his mother with two family names, at least one of which would have been tough to carry through childhood. Dad's uncle felt the same way, so when he took the baby out to introduce him to the community, he introduced Dad by saying "He's a Jim Dandy, and that's what we'll call him." Forever after, my father was Jim or Jimmie Hayes. But he signed all his business papers and checks as H.M. Hayes. In an effort to be a little like the man I so loved and admired, I went with my initials, too.
OMN: What kind of feedback have your received from your readers?
JMH: I hate the question so often heard from wanna-be authors. "What's the secret to getting published?" The secret is the same one James Lee Burke shared with me when I was feeling lost and hopeless. Hard work, writing the best story you possibly can and then going back to edit and revise it until you've made it the best it can be. That's not the answer they want and I know it doesn't satisfy them. But, short of knowing the right person or being in the public eye in such a way as to guarantee sales numbers, regardless of what you write, I don't know any shortcuts.
I'm continually delighted and surprised to hear from people who've enjoyed my books. And constructive criticism is always welcome.
OMN: What types of books do you read for pleasure?
JMH: Everything. I read more mysteries and suspense novels than anything else. It's escapism, because a few minutes of the news every night begins turning me clinically depressed and suicidal. I break from mysteries and suspense for some good science fiction or fantasy from time to time. And I'm usually reading a non-fiction book in conjunction with a work of fiction. Despite my tendency to be depressed by what humans do to each other, I read a lot of military history. Some biographies and auto-biographies and other histories, too. If nothing else, I enjoy reading about a less-crowded world, about which experts have analyzed humanity's incredible blunders — if for no other reason than we survived them. I'm not so sure we'll continue to do so.
OMN: Do you enjoy watching films? And if so, what are some of your favorite titles?
JMH: I was out for dinner with friends not long ago. One of them had just joined Netflix and she wanted to know our favorite movies for viewing ideas. I started with The Maltese Falcon, then remembered that another film had replaced it as number one on my all-time list. That's the original version of The Lion in Winter. I love its realistic portrayal of 12th Century England. Even more, I love the way James Goldman slipped in thoroughly modern asides for this brilliant cast. The tendency to insert something magically out of place and yet correct for the story has slipped into my novels. I hope I do it half as well as Goldman did.
Among my other favorite films are Lawrence of Arabia, Citizen Kane, Darby O'Gill and the Little People (because I developed my first screen crush on Janet Munro), Amadeus, The Graduate, and Avatar (not because it was a great story, but because it's 3D special effects made seeing it my most amazing experience at the movies since drive-ins back when I was a teenager in lust).
I've taken to streaming some really excellent series recently. So far, I'd rank The Wire as the best I've seen, followed closely by Breaking Bad. I'm quite a fan of Game of Thrones, too. I love the way George R.R. Martin breaks all the rules of heroic fantasy by killing off so many of his principal characters. Nudity, sex, and violence belong in Swords and Sorcery and Martin is a firm believer in delivering on those expectations. I'll be fascinated to see if his story can be brought to some sort of logical conclusion in what remains of my natural lifetime.
OMN: Create a Top 5 list for us on any topic.
JMH: My five favorite novels are:
• To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee, 1960;
• Dune, Frank Herbert, 1965;
• Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry, 1985;
• The Steam Pig, James McClure, 1974; and
• The Man Who Liked Slow Tomatoes, K.C. Constantine, 1982.
OMN: What's next for you?
JMH: Book promotions. And then I hope to get back to that border story I started before revisions and edits and promotions of The Spirit and the Skull filled all my writing time. The border and the people and products that cross it illegally seem to be America's favorite topic these days. I'd like to try a Young Adult novel, too, while I still recall what it was like to be one.
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J.M. "Mike" Hayes was born in Kansas and was studying archaeology at Wichita State University when he joined the National Science Foundation project that inspired The Spirit and the Skull. He moved to Arizona to continue his studies and has lived in Tucson ever since. He has written seven other books — six entries in the Mad Dog & Englishman mystery series and The Grey Pilgrim.
For more information about the author, please visit his website at JMHayes-Author.com or find him on Facebook and Twitter.
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The Spirit and the Skull
J.M. Hayes
A Paleolithic Murder Mystery
Murder is unthinkable to The People — a Paleolithic tribe crossing Alaska.
For them, among the first undocumented immigrants to enter the Americas, murder isn't merely tragic, it's forbidden. Murder poisons the entire tribe and puts it at odds with nature, the Spirits, and the mighty Earth Mother. A murderer must be removed in order to set the world back in balance.
Raven is the aging Spirit Man to a band where a member has been garroted. Worse, witchcraft is involved — another appalling violation of The People's beliefs. A woman claiming to be The Earth Mother, and accepted by the tribe, declares only Raven can solve the crimes and restore The People to harmony. But Raven isn't a Spirit Man by vocation. He's an agnostic — his band needed someone for the job and he needed to secure his place with them. He begins having dreams of a strange man holding his, Raven's, skull in his hands.
How will a man who doubts the authenticity of this Goddess satisfy her demands? What if she and the dreams of some future are both real and solving the crimes must lead to Raven's death? An impossible situation becomes more terrible as Raven realizes he's falling in love with a young woman of his band whom he suspects is the guilty party.
Mac
