with Jonathan Ashley
We are delighted to welcome author Jonathan Ashley to Omnimystery News today.
Jonathan's debut crime novel is The Cost of Doing Business (280 Steps; November 2014 trade paperback and ebook formats) and is centered on a Louisville bookstore owner, who leaves his used volumes of Yeats behind to get into the drug trade and make some real money.
We recently had the opportunity to talk with Jonathan more about his new book.
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Omnimystery News: Introduce us to the principal characters of The Cost of Doing Business.
Jonathan Ashley: Jon Catlett is the protagonist, or should I say, anti-hero of my first novel. I may never write a novel of any sort, crime or "literature," in which there are clearly defined "good" and "bad" characters. For so many reasons, I find such gross generalizations revolting, especially involving fiction and the creative process. As far as I'm concerned, the capacity for evil exists within all of us, a theme far more interesting.
Catlett, as far as morality goes, might be king of the gray area. While he is an egomaniacal, severely manipulative drug addict, he also possesses an impressive capacity beyond loyalty, love and wisdom beyond his years.
OMN: The Cost of Doing Business is the first of a series. How do you see your characters evolving over time?
JA: Catlett, by his very nature, is an inconsistently, ever-evolving figure. He oscillates between malicious avarice, suicidal guilt, grandiose illusions, and raw purpose. The great question of the series will be, which of these persons best represents our unopposed antagonists' true character.
OMN: How much of your own personal or professional experience have you included in the book?
JA: I put a lot of myself and my own experiences into the series. Louisville has become, much to the chagrin of those of us who love the River City and have called it home, a mini-Mecca in the heroin trade. You can't live there and not be affected by the epidemic. Almost everyone has either a close relative or friend struggling with opiate addiction. As a journalist and business owner who lived and worked in Louisville for over a decade, I personally witnessed scores of lives destroyed. I lost a best friend and a girlfriend to heroin addiction, saw the murder rate in my city increase by 20 per cent, and watched my favorite streets decimated. What better subject for a novel.
OMN: Describe your writing process.
JA: Catlett is a character that compliments my often frantic anxious writing process. While I detest the pop-culture terminology of "organic," the word fits here, as most of the time I begin my novels with the vaguest of ideas, only figuring halfway through the first draft what the story really is about and how it might end. I let the characters go their own way, respond to the situations out of whatever life experience and shortcomings of character they possess.
OMN: How true are you to the setting of the story?
JA: The settling of the series is as much a character as any of the dope mules or dirty cops that live and die on the streets of Louisville, Kentucky. A poor river city, Louisville has a higher murder rate than Boston, MA, a city much larger in size and population. I have lived in L.A., New York, and several other major cities, but have never encountered more disfunction and more memorable characters than in the little Sodom on the banks of the Ohio.
OMN: Do you intend to keep the action of your future books in the Louisville area?
JA: My next series of novels will be set in Northern Kentucky and across the river Cincinnati. They will take place between the 1920s and '40s and involve mafia-controlled gambling, extortion, and narcotics trafficking in Newport and Covington, Kentucky. Media and reform politicians referred to Newport as "Little Chicago."
OMN: What are some of your outside interests?
JA: My writing is steeped in Kentucky culture and history. Much of what I've learned along those lines I picked up while playing in an alt-country group. I wrote and sang for "The Shooting Gallery" from 2003 through 2008 and continued playing with some of the guys from the group for a few more years. I always loved writing music and lyrics, far more than I ever cared for the "show-biz" aspect. I think that's why I've scaled back on performing live music over the last two or three years. I get far greater fulfillment out of writing prose, free from forced interaction with any kind of audience.
OMN: Are there any particular authors you look forward to reading?
JA: My favorite books, those I've re-read and will continue to re-read, include, The Stories of John Cheever; The Man With The Golden Arm by Nelson Algren; The Watch by Rick Bass; The Last Good Kiss by James Crumley; and Valdez is Coming by Elmore Leonard.
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Jonathan Ashley is a freelance journalist and book dealer living in Lexington, KY. His work has appeared in Crime Factory, A Twist of Noir, LEO Weekly, Kentucky Magazine and Yellow Mama.
For more information about the author, please visit his author page on Goodreads.
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The Cost of Doing Business
Jonathan Ashley
A Crime Novel
Jon Catlett, a misanthropic literary obsessive, is facing the loss of the only thing in the world he loves; his used bookstore, a haven for fellow weirdos, outcasts, misunderstood geniuses and malcontents. Jon has several other problems, the least of which are his love affair with a bi-polar femme fatale heiress to a thriving northern steel company or the exponentially growing opiate habit he has developed.
When Jon, during a deal gone wrong, accidentally kills a fellow drug addict, getting away with murder turns out to be the least of his worries. The steps he and Paul, the obsessive-compulsive manager of Jon's store, must take to cover up the killing result in the two cornering Louisville’s blossoming heroin trade.
From West End gangbangers to dirty cops and crusading narcotics detectives, Jon and his unstable partner in crime must dilute their morals and thicken their skin if they are to have any hope of surviving the lucrative but deadly life they've stumbled upon.
