We are delighted to welcome author Barry Knister to Omnimystery News today.
Barry last visted with us in early 2014 to talk about The Anything Goes Girl, his first Brenda Contay mystery, and now the second in the series, Deep North (July 2015 trade paperback and ebook formats), has just been published. We recently caught up with Barry to talk more about the series.
— ♦ —
Omnimystery News: Tell us a little more about Brenda Contay.
Photo provided courtesy of
Barry Knister
Barry Knister: Brenda Contay, a young journalist, is the central character in my suspense series. My plan is to follow her life during a ten or twelve-year span. The series begins with The Anything Goes Girl. It's 1998, and Brenda is twenty-eight. Her past has been marked by self-destructive behavior that gained her a reputation in college as — you guessed it — "The Anything Goes Girl". The book opens with Brenda now doing well as a tabloid TV journalist. But she's ashamed of what she does, and that shame sends her on a journey to Micronesia.
Deep North is book two in the series, and has just been released. It's five years later, and in that time, Brenda has won a Pulitzer Prize for a book about the events in The Anything Goes Girl. And so forth.
OMN: How do you see the character developing over the course of the series?
BK: I'm old, and that may be why I'm a little impatient when a series' lead character remains timeless, ageless. True, it's just one more writing convention, but I'm writing in the realist tradition, so Brenda will show her age and change. That's what happens to us, and the main character in my series will not remain a twenty-eight-year-old ingenue. This means more work for me, but more interest as well.
OMN: Why did you choose a female series lead?
BK: Great question. I made the decision to develop a female lead character for several reasons. The first represents a logical response to reality: women buy over seventy percent of all fiction. Besides, why wouldn't I write for them? Only if you believe that men can't create female characters as well as women can would you find fault with this.
The second reason is that in some true sense, Brenda Contay chose me. This will sound like authorial monkey talk to some, but if you're a writer, you may appreciate how such things can happen. The second book I published, a stand-alone short novel for adults called Just Bill is about dogs and owners living on a Florida golf course. There again, Bill chose me. It's a long story, but I had no choice but to make a dog the central character in that novel.
The last reason for developing a female lead character is speculation on my part. I helped raise two girls — my stepdaughters — but never fathered children of my own. I had no siblings growing up, and I suspect this, too, has something to do with deciding to write a series featuring a young woman. Maybe I see her as a daughter, I'm not sure.
OMN: Into which fiction genre would you place the series?
BK: My novels include attributes of mystery, thriller, suspense and mainstream narratives, so they aren't "pure" in terms of genre. Mysteries are puzzles, in which the last piece is missing until the end. Thrillers tend to be paced at breakneck speed. Neither attribute applies to what I'm doing, so I've settled on "suspense" to describe my work.
OMN: Tell us something about Deep North that isn't mentioned in the synopsis.
BK: Because Deep North is a novel of suspense, the emphasis in publicity and book descriptions is on how four women are followed into northern Minnesota's Boundary Waters by two very bad men. My tagline is "How far would you go to protect your chance for happiness?" I hope the story's suspense builds towards a strong climax, which is followed by an unusually powerful aftermath or denouement. But Deep North is as much about friendship as anything else. In fact, an early working title was "Affinity." But that sort of fancy word is one of my "darlings" that had to be killed.
OMN: How much of your own personal or professional experience have you included in your books?
BK: I always answer this question the same way: everything I write comes from personal experience. Some of it derives from external, physical events, some from internal mental events, but all of it is mine, and all of it's personal. As for whether my characters and events come from real life, how could they not? All I've got to work with is real life, some of it acted out, some of it imagined.
But this may be a little too artsy-craftsy for some, so the more conventional answer would be that much of The Anything Goes Girl takes place in Micronesia, and I lived there for two years. Virtually all of Deep North takes place in Voyageurs National Park — the Boundary Waters of northern Minnesota. I fish there for a week each spring, if I can. But other than everything and everybody being a composite of people and places "real" and imagined, no one or thing in my writing is specifically based directly on events or people.
OMN: Tell us a little more about your writing process.
BK: I'm a "pantser" plain and simple, rather than an outliner. In other words, I'm a romantic. By this I mean I treat stories as something organic, something that grows, rather than as something assembled, like a machine. Outliners first design the parts, then assemble the book. Pantsers follow where the story leads. I don't think one approach is better than another. It's a matter of temperament.
OMN: How did you go about researching the plot points of the stories?
BK: Most of the "research" for my stories is done by crawling around in my memory, and simple observation. But for the first Brenda Contay story, I was fortunate to live next to people who could give me reliable, professional information. It had to do with research techniques (the husband's a chemist), and the medical aspects of starvation and dehydration (his wife is both a novelist, and an RN). When in doubt about facts, I rely on the Internet. It's an invaluable resource for any writer.
OMN: How true are you to the settings?
BK: I take a lot of liberties, in part because I'm working much of the time from memories of events I experienced — in literal or imagined terms — long ago. That's part of the reason book one in the series takes place in 1998 instead of right now: I haven't been back to Micronesia for decades, and I'm sure things are different. To avoid getting mail pointing out my mistakes, I decided to start my series back some years.
OMN: If we could send you anywhere in the world, all expenses paid, to research the setting for a book, where would it be?
BK: Good question, and I have no ready answer. The truth is, the idea of going somewhere for the express purpose of using the experience would almost certainly not work out for me. I avoid writing from direct events, because each time I try, I end up feeling bound to "the facts." It's a kind of puritanical hang up, a sense of obligation to tell the truth and get everything right. I don't have to worry about that when I'm working from memory of long-past experience. But I've never had enough money to stay in fancy hotels, so if given my wish, I'd spend a week in the George Cinq on the Avenue des Champs-Elysees. I'm sure I'd come up with something there to write about.
OMN: What are some of your outside interests?
BK: I used to play tennis, and I go fishing when I can for a week in the spring. But I'm a lousy tennis player, and a worse fisherman. Other than walking my dog several times a day, that's about it. And as my wife Barbara would be quick to point out, I'm not handy. No shop in the basement, etc. Maybe that's why I make so much up.
OMN: What is the best advice you've received as an author?
BK: The best advice I ever got as a writer is this: Never, ever think you're finished with a novel, until it's been read and critiqued by a reliable professional editor. Better yet, by two.
OMN: Complete this sentence for us: "I am a suspense writer, and as suc I am also …".
BK: I am a suspense writer, and as such I am also a fraud. When my lower back goes out from sitting too long, yes, I am in a state of suspense. Until I get to the chiropractor's office. Other than that, or waiting for biopsy results, very little of a suspenseful nature figures with me. I imagine a life of peace and quiet helps to explain why I like writing fictions about crime.
OMN: Have you considered writing under a pen name?
BK: No. I publish under my own name. And although it goes against conventional wisdom, I don't use my initials to mask my gender. That may be prudent from a sales standpoint, but it seems ridiculous to me.
OMN: How did you come up with the title Deep North?
BK: I fiddled with several titles, but finally settled on Deep North. I saw some small similarities between my story and James Dickey's Deliverance. That novel is set in the Deep South, mine's set in the Deep North.
OMN: What kind of feedback have you received from readers?
BK: It's very satisfying when a reader comments on something in my writing I hadn't seen or thought about. When that happens, the book seems fresh again. Mysterious, not "over."
OMN: Suppose this series were to be optioned for film. Who do you see playing Brenda Contay?
BK: I can see Jessica Chastain in the role. She's a gifted actor, and would bring a lot to the part. Not to mention being drop-dead beautiful.
OMN: What kinds of books did you read when you were young?
BK: When I was young, I read a lot of science fiction. But I grew out of it. I became impatient with stories that violate the known laws of physics. That puts me in a bad place, in terms of current popular entertainment. Almost every story these days plays fast and loose with the ordinary, workaday world. I guess people need to escape from what we've got, but I don't.
OMN: What do you look for today when selecting a book to read for pleasure?
BK: Prose style is what governs my choice of what to read. I make heavy use of the "look inside" feature at Amazon. The sample pages quickly tell me whether I should or shouldn't consider reading the book. It's discouraging how often books with impressive numbers of reviews turn out to be duds.
OMN: What's next for you?
BK: Next up for me is Godsend. That's the title for book three in the Brenda Contay suspense series. After that, I'm going to re-release my long-out-of-print first novel, The Dating Service. It's still a good read, and the rights have reverted to me.
— ♦ —
After retiring from college teaching, Barry Knister returned to fiction writing. He lives in Michigan with his wife Barbara, and their Aussie shepherd, Skylar.
For more information about the author, please visit his website at BWKnister.com and his author page on Goodreads, or find him on Facebook and Twitter.
— ♦ —
Deep North by Barry Knister
A Brenda Contay Novel of Suspense
Journalist Brenda Contay seems to have it all: a Pulitzer Prize, plenty of money and lots of friends. Just one thing is missing: a relationship that counts.
That seems about to change when lawyer friend Marion Ross invites Brenda to go fishing in northern Minnesota. But they won't be roughing it: they'll be staying on a big, comfy houseboat. Charlie Schmidt has a cabin nearby, and before long, Brenda is thinking a lot about Charlie's gracefulness and good looks.
But two other men have followed the women. Louis Rohmer knew Marion in college, and has an Internet scheme to steal everything she's worth. Jerry Lomak is much more dangerous: Marion's legal skills destroyed him in court. He's headed for prison, but Lomak has no intention of doing time, or of letting a woman lawyer get away with her "crimes."
It's a beautiful place, northern Minnesota. Cold, clear, unblemished. But none of it will count when Brenda Contay must choose between losing her chance for happiness, or committing a terrible crime.
— Deep North by Barry Knister
