We are delighted to welcome author Matt Coyle to Omnimystery News today.
Matt won the 2014 Anthony Award for his first Rick Cahill crime novel, Yesterday's Echo, and the second in the series, Night Tremors (Oceanview Publishing; June 2015 hardcover and ebook formats), was published earlier this month. We recently had a chance to catch up with him to talk more about his work.
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Omnimystery News: Introduce us to Rick Cahill. What is it about him that appeals to you as a writer?
Photo provided courtesy of
Matt Coyle
Matt Coyle: The protagonist for my first two books, Yesterday's Echo and Night Tremors, is Rick Cahill. He's an ex-cop who, years after the fact, is still the lead suspect in his wife's murder. He's physically capable, but not a superman. He doesn't win every fight and his injuries are real. He's smart, but not Sherlock Holmes. Sometimes he makes bad choices and people get hurt. He lives by the code of his late father, also a disgraced ex-cop: Sometimes you have to do what's right even when the law says it's wrong. But doing right may sometimes seem wrong.
I like Rick because he has to live by his wits and sometimes they fail him. His actions always have repercussions that plague him throughout his life. He's inherently a good person but far from perfect. Sometimes he loses control of his anger and can be cruel. He'll rationalize that his actions are for the greater good but they leave scars he has to deal with internally as well as externally. I learn more about Rick with each book and hope to write him for a long time.
OMN: How has Rick changed between the first two books in the series?
MC: He has a different career in book two than he did in book one. In book three, which I'm writing now, his fortunes have changed dramatically from book two. All the actions he's taken over the years to honor his father's code have left him scarred. I can't proclaim that he's a better man than he was at the beginning of Yesterday's Echo, but he's definitely a different one.
OMN: Into which fiction genre do you place this series?
MC: My publisher calls my books Thrillers, my agent calls them literary Mysteries and I think of them as Hard-boiled Suspense with Noir undertones. I'd prefer to just call them crime novels. I'd rather not pigeonhole them and let the reader decide. I think if you just called everything a mystery discerning readers would sort through them and find what they like. I doubt any reader sticks to the sub-genres we currently use.
OMN: Tell us a little more about your writing process.
MC: I do an extensive, intricate outline: it's called a first draft. I'm what is generally referred to as a seat-of-the-pantser. However, my writers groups have always called it a blank-pager in a nod to Raymond Chandler who referred to staring at the blank page on a type writer. Now we stare at the blank page on our computer monitors. I could be considered a hybrid as I do start with a skeletal outline of beginning, end and a few plot point thoughts. However, by the time I'm done the skeleton has lost a few bones and been filled in with a bunch of viscera.
I wouldn't recommend my "process" to anyone. It's disorganized and demands keen-eyed revision. I learn the story and characters as I write. At points I'll drop anchors — scenes that will either grow or die in my subconscious — and come back later to cut or expand. I've tried structured outlining and it just doesn't work for me. Things would be a lot easier if it did.
OMN: Where do you most often find yourself writing?
MC: My writing environment is a lot like my process: a bit messy. I work from home for my day job and write in the same room after I'm done with the bill paying job for the day. However, I sit at two different desks facing two different walls and use two different computers. There's a framed print hanging above my writing workspace. It's an artist's rendering of what looks like the Pacific Coast Highway circa 1940. My books are contemporary but the print helps me think about California, crime, and shadows.
OMN: How involved were you with the cover of your books? And what is the origin of the titles?
MC: The cover person my publisher, Oceanview, uses is fantastic. I'd seen some of his work before I even signed with Oceanview and really liked it. The whole publishing team, the cover guy, and I all had a conference call to discuss the cover of my first book, Yesterday's Echo. We gave the cover guy some ideas but nothing that stood out. At the very end of the call he asked me to send him any images that I thought could pertain to the book. Years before I had bought an SLR camera and taken some night shots around La Jolla, where Yesterday's Echo is set. I sent him a photo of La Jolla Cove I'd taken that my web designer had incorporated into my website. He arted it up a bit and distressed the font of the title and everyone at Oceanview loved it. I love the cover, too, and have received a lot of compliments from readers about the it.
The problem was, that once Night Tremors needed a cover everyone looked to me. I scouted around La Jolla and took some dusk shots with my iPhone for ideas to come back later with my SLR and take at night. One problem, I hadn't used the SLR in years and had forgotten how to take night shots without a flash. Time ran out and I sent in the iPhone dusk shots. George added some art magic and I think the cover is as good as the first one. I'm determined to re-learn how to use the SLR before book three comes out.
The titles to my books have come organically through the writing of the stories. There is a passage near the end of Yesterday's Echo that reads: Life moves forward, but the reverberations chase after you like yesterday's echo.
That passage sums up the "theme" of the book in that you can never escape your past.
Night Tremors was a little more difficult. I never found anything in the book that I really liked for a title. I can't even remember what the book was entitled when I sent it to my editor. She hated it and so did I. She asked me to come up with something else on a short timetable. I thought we were screwed because in two years of writing the book I hadn't come up with anything I liked. However, the title Night Tremors came to me within five minutes of talking to the editor and we all think it's the perfect title. It reflects a condition the protagonist, Rick Cahill, has to deal with throughout the book. I guess I just needed a push.
I hope my editor will be ready to push on the as yet untitled book three.
OMN: Have any specific authors influenced how and what you write today?
MC: Raymond Chandler, Ross Macdonald, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Robert Crais, and T. Jefferson Parker.
OMN: Create a Top Five list for us on any topic.
MC: Top Five Movies in no particular order except for the first:
• Chinatown
• The Godfather
• Godfather 2
• Little Shop of Horrors
• It's a Wonderful Life
OMN: What's next for you?
MC: Writing book three of the Rick Cahill Crime Series.
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Matt Coyle grew up in San Diego, California, battling his Irish/Portuguese brother and sisters for respect and the best spot on the couch in front of the TV. He was a sports addict as a kid, but realized early on that he'd never be good enough to turn pro. Or even amateur. That didn't matter because Matt knew he wanted to be a writer as a young teen when his father gave him The Simple Art of Murder by Raymond Chandler. He didn't stop there and read all the Chandler and Ross Macdonald novels he could get his hands on through high school and college.
Matt earned a degree in English from University of California, Santa Barbara. Once out of college, Matt started writing the next great American novel … until he realized it wasn't very good and he had to eat. His employment career has included various positions in the restaurant business culminating in manager, selling golf clubs for a major golf company, a position of sales manager for a sports collectible company, and owning a sort-lived small business. Over the years, he again dabbled with his true love, writing, before finally getting serious about it twelve years ago.
Matt lives in San Diego with his Yellow Lab, Angus, and is hard at work on the next Rick Cahill crime novel.
For more information about the author, please visit his website at MattCoyleBooks.com and his author page on Goodreads, or find him on Facebook and Twitter.
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Night Tremors by Matt Coyle
A Rick Cahill Crime Novel
Publisher: Oceanview Publishing
Nightmares of the man he killed two years ago still chase Rick Cahill through his sleep. The memory of his murdered wife haunts him during waking hours. His private investigative work, secretly photographing adulterers, paid for his new house but stains his soul.
When an old nemesis asks for his help to free a man from prison, a man he thinks is wrongly convicted of murder, Rick grabs at the chance to turn his life around. His investigation takes him from the wealthy enclave of La Jolla to the dark underbelly of San Diego. His quest fractures his friendship with his mentor, endangers his steady job, and draws the ire of the Police Chief who had tried to put Rick behind bars forever. With the police on one side of the law and a vicious biker gang on the other, all trying to stop him from freeing the man in prison, Rick risks his life to uncover the truth that only the real killer knows about what happened one bloody night eight years earlier.
— Night Tremors by Matt Coyle
